Running Home – Chapter 8 (Penn and Sword series)

Swirls of steam fill the glowing crimson air. I drink it all in again. The majestic chaos. The unrivaled oddities and confounding shapes. Even gravity feels different. I feel lighter, balancing atop an ornately threaded carpet like a cloud. I can’t believe any of this, but crave it at the same time. The mystery, the oddity, the unending questions.

At the center desk, Penn sits on a stool, bent over the empty jar, lips muttering. Without looking up, he gestures at the steaming cups at his side, one mug handle pointed toward me.

I join him, pulling another stool over. The cup is hot, but I hold it tight, too fascinated with every sensory detail seeping into my mind to notice the pain in my hands. The liquid inside matches the room. Reddish, warm. Sweet and spicy and citrus whirls salivate my tongue. I sip the tiniest bit and melt. Every tension, every knot untangles and flutters through my body, crown to lungs to knees to toes. The drink is thicker than tea, but just as soothing. Drinking more, I note star anise and cinnamon and clove and blood orange and something floral and earthy and unnamable. It provides the body of the beverage, sticking inside my throat like an internal salve.

Meanwhile, Penn continues muttering, tapping the glass of the jar.

I want to ask so many questions, but also just observe, watch this strange person fiddle and mutter and think aloud. I’d watch Eudora the same way. No matter the busy day or draining event, she continued steamrolling forward. Onto the next thing. And the next, and the next. An unending manic energy bursting behind every action, every word.

I set down my cup and match Penn’s elbows on the edge of the desk and dip one small toe into his world. I give the jar a stare, too. “So, it’s invisible.”

“To our eyes, yes,” Penn says.

“And they’re… predators… searching for home?” The clacking whispers return to my ears, sending my spine into a shiver.

“Could be.” Penn scratches at his black hair, casting tendrils in three different directions on top of his head. “Perhaps all we have to do is convince them that the inside of Bethany or any of you is indeed not their home.”

“Why would they think we are?”

Penn turns, eyeing me hard. “Precisely.” He continues to stare, imploring me with his storm gray eyes. Waiting.

I straighten up under his attention. Search my mind for something intelligent, clever, or unique to match his vibrating spirit. “Um, well, that could mean… their home… smells like us?”

“Perhaps.”

“But,” I blurt, “they haven’t attacked all of us.”

Penn finally blinks. “Correct. Which is odd. However, I may be able to bring them back to where they came from.”

“How?”

Penn’s smile crinkles his eyes. He jumps from the table and dashes to the wall of myriads of notes and sketches and coordinates. “I’m the only one who can travel to their plane. Wherever that may be.” He gestures across the sketches as if presenting every answer to my questions in eccentric sketches and glyphs. “If we can find it, I can send them home. Eazee peazee.”

I chuckle at his pronunciation and try to make sense of the pages along the walls again, but find no more logic than last time. “Their plane?”

“Their world, if you like that term better.”

“What do you mean?”

Penn steeples his fingers, pads tapping against one another over and over as he watches me, scans me. I hold his stare. Hold my breath. This entire exchange feels like a test, as if he is waiting to see if I’m worthy of some glorious, earth-shattering secret.

“What is your dream, Acantha Sword?” he finally asks.

“My… dream?”

“Our little friends seem awfully interested in it. So, perhaps there is a clue there.”

I fidget, throat feeling thick.

“So, what is your dream for your life? What is the thing you’re at university to accomplish? What grand design do you have in mind for your many years to come? What legacy do you wish to impose? What happy destination fills your sleep? Why…” He leans down over the desk, drilling me with an unblinking stare. “Would I send you a letter?”

“I…” I know at once what I want to say. What clawing need twists through my dreams every night.

I want… the diner back. But more than that. I want my sister. And our future back. Our lives were meant to stretch far beyond greasy pastrami melts and heart-soothing coffee. Every taste bud quivers across my tongue with urgency. To travel the world with Eudora, absorb every corner of its fields, and vines, and forests, and cities, and rivers. Sample every grain, every fruit, every sauce, every spice. Then open our own restaurant, far from that simple, toxic diner. In a place beyond imagination, beyond our known corner of the world.

But that dream… can only happen with my sister at my side.

Eyes down, I say, “I don’t know anymore.”

Penn studies me for a long time. “No particular subject of interest?”

I shrug. “Something…” I search the impossible room, feeling suddenly small against the grand magic of it all. “Important.”

“So, you wish to be famous?”

“No, like… I don’t know. I want to…” Again, the dream bubbles inside my gut. I grip the ceramic cup in my hands and stare into the strange tea’s depths. Search for the secret ingredient inside, still unable to place the floral honey. “Discover something new.”

Penn’s eyes twinkle. “To travel?”

I nod quickly. “Yes!”

“Meet new people, experience things no one else has experienced?”

I can’t help but stand, heart alight under his perfect understanding. “Yes… exactly.” His wondrous, feathery gray gaze melts through me. No judgement, no question.

Penn smiles again. Another one of those sad smiles that doesn’t quite reach his gray stare. “There is… so much to see out there. Not that Earth doesn’t have many magical qualities. Truthfully, yours is one of my favorite planes to visit.”

“You keep saying that. ‘Earth.’ Like you’re from another planet or something.”

“Or something.” Penn winks.

I return his intensity, holding his stare, trying to read him right back. But this impossible person, so young in face yet wise in words, so energetic yet burdened, with his shining eyes, sad smile, and brilliant red vest, is unreadable as ever. He’s as impossible as the surrounding room. Out of place.

“Acantha,” Penn says, gentle. “This door, as you know, changes location. Because I direct it to do so. With this.” He reaches forward and plucks the wand from the table. “This is my key. And perhaps,” he says, watching my reaction to every word. “Yours as well.”

“A key? To what?”

“What you desire.”

Thoughts dizzying, I steady against the desk. “Travel.”

Penn nods.

“Where?”

Penn’s grin dazzles under the crimson lamps. “Wherever you like.”

I shake my head, laughing in disbelief. I round the desk, slow, afraid to shatter the dream. I try again to find a clue across his red vest, disheveled hair, and strange black-root tattoos. “Who are you?”

“I told you,” he says simply. “A traveler.”

I squint, looking from him to the closed door. Here, on the other side, it matches the rest of the room. His vest. The lighting. The carpet. The tea. Painted a deep, near-pulsing crimson. Vibrant, vital.

“What does this have to do with the bugs from hell?”

Penn studies me a moment, then his long finger points to the cluster of cups on the middle table. “What do you think makes up that tea? You seem very interested in it.”

A curious tickle manifests at the base of my mind. A zing of pride, to prove my nose and taste buds can discern the most obscure of ingredients. Eudora and I played the game often, recreating dishes from other restaurants until getting the mixture of herbs and butter just right.

But Penn is the one asking. Someone so foreign and strange and bringing with him his drink I’ve never experienced before.

“Blood orange, cinnamon, star anise, cardamon, cranberry, and… some sort of floral honey.”

“That’s very, very good.” Penn’s brows raise high, clearly impressed. I beam. “Have I stumbled upon a kitchen witch?”

I giggle once. “I grew up in a diner. I, uh… I’m good with food.”

Penn’s smile spreads like butter, casting sparkles into his eyes. “I know just the place to bring you.”

Like a child playing pretend, he whirls his wand in the air, then points it at the door with a flourish of the opposite hand. I hurry to join him, heart hammering in my chest. Disbelieving, but wanting it to be true all the same. Wanting in on the secret. Daring to believe in something so ridiculous as magic and fairy tales and a chance to escape the mounting grief hidden in the icebox at the bottom of my mind.

“Acantha Sword,” Penn says, casting the key across the top of the door, then down one side. Cascading across his forearms, his tree-root tattoos ignite in red-orange sparks. I startle backward. “Welcome.” He traces the wand around the frame of the door. And once he hits the starting corner, red sparks fly like dancing fireflies. He shakes out his lit-up arm, the crackling energy dispersing down to his fingertips and dissolving. “To another world.”

Covering my mouth, I hold back a giddy laugh. Penn grips the doorknob, twists the black metal. And opens the door.