Exciti

Chapter 42 (Adam)

The shaking of the house resumed almost immediately. The old Excitus moved the stairs, slipping and sliding until Adam and Lucy managed to get ahold of him. The Key Maker sat on the bottom step of the stairs and held onto the banister, his silver eyes shifting from one place to another. Whether they did that to avoid looking at them or to stop himself from crying, Adam didn't know. "What happened to Berta?"

"Berta...Taken." the old Excitus panted

Fear invaded Adam's chest, "Taken where?"

"I don't know. The awful people, they took Berta."

Adam frowned. The Key Maker's scarce use of words didn't help clarify things. He exchanged a look with the other two and knew that they, too, did not think of him as dangerous. "But WHY?"

The old Excitus wrung his hands, a tortured look on his face, "You don't understand."

Adam didn't know what to say to that.

The house movements slowed down again, and The Key Maker took a Crystal-clear key out of his pocket and fiddled with it. He suddenly blurted, " I guarded the entrance for a hundred and sixty-two years, 5 months, 10 days and," he looked at his watch, "two hours, fifty minutes and thirty... two seconds."

Liam raised his eyebrows but remained quiet.

"I'm always...alone. Everyone in a hurry...No one stops. It is...it is..." he stopped, agitated.

"Lonely?" Lucy provided, slowly descending to sit next to him.

He looked at her, looking desperate for someone to understand him,"Berta, old Berta, is my first friend."

"Old Berta?" Liam mouthed to Adam.

"She stopped...talked...listened... never in a hurry, Old Berta." He looked up from the key, "But never happy. Her life force," he shook his head and looked back down, "too bitter."

Adam wondered if the Key Maker was talking about the same perky, happy Berta.

"Then...those awful people found her. I told her, Don't!'" He rocked back and forth, his voice shaking, "She didn't listen."

When he looked again at Adam, his old eyes were full of tears. He pointed at him, the key shaking in his hand, "Then you Eclipsed her."

Adam's deep confusion was tinged with trepidation, "Key Maker," he tried to be gentle, "I have never Eclipsed Berta. I would never hurt her like that!"

The Key Maker resumed rocking, shaking his head violently. His words gushed out in a rush, as if a dam had just collapsed, "You did, you Eclipsed Berta, took away all the bitterness. You took so much, she almost vanished." He smiled a watery smile, "But, she became little Berta...happy little child. I hid her ...from the Awful people ...and the Hushers."

Adam's heart broke for the old Excitus, and Lucy's eyes shone. Even Liam stopped looking suspicious. Still, his words made no sense. "I still don't understand. When did I Eclipse her?"

He took a trembling breath, "The day they took that apprentice...your sister."

Adam frowned and opened his mouth, then closed it only to opened it again. "But I didn't..." An image of an old woman in a blue dress with snowy ringlets under a knitted hat flashed in his mind

Adam sprung up like the stairs were burning, yelling, "You mean old Berta was? ..."

The Key Maker stared at him, as if waiting for him to say the words.

Lucy looked between the two, "What is it?"

Adam didn't answer her, he still hadn't believed it himself. "Berta? Berta is Ms. White?!"

The Key Maker nodded, then put his face in his hands and burst into sobs that rocked his entire body.

Liam stood up as fast as Adam did mere seconds ago, and Lucy looked like she'd just been slapped.

Adam brandished a finger, breathing hard, "You mean to tell me that the one who made my mother forget about her own daughter, was under my nose all along?"

The Key Maker extended a hand up to where Adam stood, then stopped when Adam backed away, "Please, she isn't bad now. Just a little child. They will hurt her...make her do bad stuff again. Please, help little Berta."

Indignation burnt in Adam's chest, "Help?... She made everyone forget about Tam!" He screamed down at the old man.

"Adam," Lucy's voice was very soft.

The Key Maker's voice was soft, too. "She called you 'friend'"

Adam vibrated with anger, his breathing shallow and fast. He closed his eyes against the spinning room. It was her all along? Flashes of Berta and Ms. White alternated in his head, his brain struggling to reconcile the two.

His heart, however, knew that the Key Maker was telling him the truth. "How...," he swallowed and opened his eyes to stare at the Key Maker, "how did she do it?"

The old man's shoulders slumped. He turned and fiddled with the key again, "Berta is a book about memory. It is her power." He looked up at Adam, "She could do it with a word, a touch. She went to your sister's school ... came to the annual meeting. Everyone was there. It wasn't hard."

"Not everyone," Lucy said, "We were in California."

"That is why you remember." Liam signed and sat back down.

The Key Maker continued, "She said that you were.... a problem. She didn't know why her voice didn't work with you. She thought she could make you forget if she touched you...but you Eclipsed her." He lifted his head and sniffed with a red, dripping nose. "Your gift protected you, and your friend. It almost destroyed her. When she came to me, she was little Berta. She didn't remember anything, until she saw you a few days ago. She said eclipsing hurt... like fire."

Adam nodded and sat down, thinking of the fire racing up his veins, and the seizure that kept him unconscious for days. He wondered if the intensity of the eclipsing heat was due to Berta being a third circle.

That's when realization knocked the breath out of him, like he'd been punched in the stomach. "Are you telling me that Tam's kidnappers have the doll house?"

The words had barely left his mouth when the house bucked, throwing them all toward the Exit then spitting them out on a solid, smooth ground.