Chapter Two: The Thing That Doesn’t Sleep

Carli Rockell and the Fire Seed

The next morning, the orphanage windows revealed silver patterns that wrote an unknown language. Its weathered shingles had been painted so many times the layers created a menacing map of Malvolia’s changing color preferences.

From the other side of the bay, the mansion looked like a Victorian wedding cake about to topple off its perch over Echo Harbor. Up close its lawns and gardens were the envy of the village thanks to the gardener Olli. He showed up one day with a card that read, Sun and Moon Gardening, as if the address had waited a lifetime for him. No phone number.

The ancient potting shed, once root cellar, once held rough-hewn wooden shelves with imported delicacies that spoke French and cost more than most people’s monthly wages. The current Devoridge’s rarely gave lavish dinner parties like the Devoridge’s that had built the estate, which meant it evolved into a potting shed. When it needed to be used for Carli, even the gardener was no longer allowed to use it. Now, the shelves now held Carli’s plants and seedlings that grew in the shadows as if there was sun, each one labeled with a cracked egg shell.

The potting shed connected to the kitchen by a weathered breezeway that hugged the mansion wall — a narrow sunroom of sorts — covered in morning glories and climbing roses that had opinions about proper garden behavior. In summer, these created a tunnel of blossoms that hummed with drowsy bees. Flowers seemed to whisper secrets as though they had lived long enough to develop gossip networks. In winter, the skeleton of vines rattled like old bones trying to remember what it felt like to be alive and green and full of summer’s promises.

“You’re pruning me again?” Friend sighed the next morning. Its leaves rustled with the mild botanical indignation that comes from being snipped against one’s will.

Carli nearly dropped her tiny scissors.

Morning sun rays shone on Friend through the cracks of her boarded up windows. Somehow the light made it feel even more impossible to talk to a plant than it had the night before. It’s true she had started talking to it since she dug it up — wild and full of promise — from a hidden corner of the back yard. She snuck it inside to care for, not knowing it would become a silent, steady friend. Now, the whole experience of hearing it talk back had a dream-like quality. She wondered if she’d imagined the entire cosmic lightbulb incident.

“You look like you’ve been struck by lightning,” she whispered. She glanced nervously at the kitchen window. Malvolia’s silhouette turned toward the potting shed, arms folded. She had ears like a bat.

“I was hoping for gently windswept,” Friend replied, managing to sound offended and amused simultaneously. “I want to look like I have spent many seasons hanging onto the edge of a cliff face, as though I’ve learned to bend without breaking. There’s an art to struggle and graceful aging, you know.”

The shed itself seemed to hold its breath around their conversation. Dust motes danced in the morning light. Some of the motes made figure-eights that wanted to speak. Other floating flecks spelled out messages in a strange language made of tiny particles and golden light.

The herringbone brick floor showed its age in the way most old things do —gracefully, with character earned through decades of quiet service. The zigzag drainage channel that ran down the middle revealed golden, liquid light in spaces left between the bricks. It shifted and moved as the very bricks breathed in and out, as one.

Friend’s tone changed as it whispered, “I think you may need a few courage berries to prepare you for what’s coming.” It flexed its branches like muscles and dozens of firm berries popped onto the stems.

“Try a courage berry, Carli.”

By the time she finished saying, “Mmm, tastes like lychee,” she felt a sensation flow from her bellybutton to the end of her fingers and toes . . . a sensation she didn’t recognize.

She looked at her hands and arms as though they belonged to someone else — someone else she wanted to be. “What’s happening to me?” Her voice was barely louder than the gentle hum in the zigzag drain. The hum began to purr.

“It’s courage, Carli.“

“And how is it possible that I can hear you, Friend? Plants don’t talk. Everyone knows that.”

“The same reason you how to make handprints the same way birds know to fly south, or bees know how to make honey. The same reason you know when storms are coming before the first clouds appear,” Friend said gently. “The same reason you can make plants grow without sun by humming to them.”

Its voice carried the patience of something with roots deeper than basements and much older than the mansion above. In fact, if Carli had looked with her blue eye at the basement — and the coal room beneath the potting shed — she would have seen it filled by a golden lake. Her brown eye would have seen a damp, unused spaces with dirt floors and water that weeped between stone wall cracks.

“Your gifts have been sleeping, dear one, waiting for the right moment to wake up,” its leaves rustled with excitement. “And that moment appears to have arrived.”

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The sound of Devlin’s fist against the shed door was like thunder in the peaceful morning, violent enough to make plants tremble and old wood shudder.

“Carli!”

His voice carried that particular note of malicious glee that meant fresh torment had started to brew in his nearly twelve-year-old brain. “Mom says get inside right now! The news is starting! Something about a luxury school bus I might get to ride Because I’m special!”

Carli’s heart jumped into her throat like a startled bird trying to escape a cage door closing shut. She tiptoed down the breezeway and slowly lifted the dog flap, just a crack. Chaos was building in the kitchen. The flap had been her only means of entrance and exit since Barnaby jammed the door during a thunderstorm escape months earlier. He had disappeared into whatever dimension confused Saint Bernards go when they leave muddy footprints that end at vine-covered brick walls.

Devlin raised the dog flap and shoved his face close to Carli’s. “Something about a new global school system,” he blurted, as a cold fleck of spit landed on her cheek. His voice rose with the kind of excitement that usually ended with someone crying and Malvolia blaming Carli for existing.

“Luxury school buses with leather seats that you’ll never get to ride, Freakeyes. And it will probably have snacks!”

Friend’s branches trembled, not from the morning breeze that didn’t exist in the shadows of the shed, but from something deeper and more cosmic — the kind of trembling that ancient trees experience when they sense earthquakes coming on the other side of the world.

“Oh my gentle leaves,” it breathed. Its voice carryied overtones that belonged to forests older than human civilization. “The time has finally come. After all these years of waiting and watching and growing slowly in this little pot, the time has actually come.”

Carli army-crawled through the dog flap into absolute pandemonium. The kitchen swarmed with that day’s Lucky Orphans selected from the upstairs Orphan’s Wing. Their faces inches from the television like moths drawn to flame. Their features glowed with the blue light of whatever impossible thing was being broadcast into their ordinary morning.

Malvolia stood frozen in her pink bathrobe as her perfectly curled hair quivered with the shock of a poodle struck by lightning. Her hands clutched her mug with knuckles gone white as bone china, her eyes were wide enough to make her pupils shrink to pin points.

Diggory gripped the kitchen counter like a man trying to anchor himself to reality, his face still pale from the previous night’s cosmic visions. Every few seconds, he glanced nervously at the light fixture above his head. He expected it to explode and rain down more impossible truths like a disappointing weather forecast.

At the stove, Frida moved with unusual softness. She stirred something that smelled like comfort and safety and memories of mothers who sang to children who belonged somewhere. She hummed under her breath — the same melody from the night before, Eyes that Truly See, a sound that made the very air feel calmer, more peaceful, more protected.

When Frida’s eyes met Carli’s across the chaos, she nodded almost imperceptibly, a gesture so small others would miss it entirely. Was this the Frida she had known all her life? To Carli, this shift felt like a promise wrapped in starlight, delivered on wings of hope.

On the television screen, a bewildered news reporter stood beside the strangest vehicle Carli had ever seen. It looked like someone had taken a vintage VW bus, stretched it through dimensions that didn’t quite fit together properly, painted it yellow and taught it to hover several inches off the ground without wings, or any visible means of support.

The most impossible thing about it was how completely possible it looked. Of course buses had always been meant to float and humans had simply forgotten how to see properly.

The reporter’s voice was tight with professional calm from years of pretending impossible things make perfect sense, “The global high speed school bus phenomenon continues to baffle experts worldwide.”

“People are saying the first worldwide test run of the Omringle HSB was disastrous. Last night, families with surnames P through Z experienced what witnesses describe as impossible transportation, with side effects that defied several laws of physics. Sounds to me like an educational experience.”

The scene shifted to a family in Switzerland who wore the shell-shocked expressions of people who’d seen gravity rewrite its rules in the space of an evening. The mother’s hair resembled a bird’s nest after a tornado. She touched it with trembling fingers to convince herself it was still attached to her head.

“Ve vere gone for vhat felt like hours!” she said, her accent thick with residual terror and wonder combined. “Und ze bus, it did ze barrel rolls! Ze barrel rolls vith ze children inside, but nobody got hurt! Ze children, they vere laughing upside down oont sidevays like it vas ze best carnival ride ever invented!”

“Barrel rolls?” Diggory’s coffee mug began to rattle against the counter. “In a school bus? That’s not physically possible. Buses don’t barrel roll!”

“Mein schnitzel dinner,” the woman continued, her eyes wide with the particular horror of someone who had watched their gravy come to life, “it came up from mein stomach und vas doing ze polka in ze air! And so shtrange . . . none of it landed on ze children—just got sucked up into zeez… zeez mysterious vents in zee ceiling! Then everything shmelled like cotton candy for ze rest of ze ride!”

A new family appeared on screen—this time from Tokyo, where the father still looked faintly green around the gills. His young son bounced beside him with the resilience that only children possess when faced with the impossible.

“My ramen noodles danced,” the boy announced with scientific precision that would have impressed university professors. “They danced with the seaweed shreds before disappearing into the ceiling vents. And my chopsticks played drums on my head!”

His father managed a weak smile as his eyes spoke what words could not through his black-rimmed glasses. “The . . . the transportation was unlike anything we’ve experienced. Very smooth, very fast, very . . .” He paused, searching for words that didn’t exist in any human language. “Very impossible.” He patted his son’s head, “But also somehow exactly what we needed, even though we didn’t know we needed it.”

The reporter’s expression suggested he was questioning every career choice that had led him to this moment. “These . . . spiraling school buses seem to be appearing near the world’s greatest concert halls. Carnegie Hall, Sydney Opera House, Royal Albert Hall . . . sounds like educational experiences await.”

“Educational experiences?” Malvolia’s voice climbed toward dog-whistle pitch. “What kind of educational experience involves floating high speed buses? That’s not education, that’s, that’s . . .”

“Magic?” Carli suggested helpfully. She hadn’t heard the part about looping and spiraling. Malvolia shot her a look that curdled milk in cereal bowls for three blocks in every direction. A pod of porpoises in the harbor dove deeper than usual.

The reporter consulted his notes with shaking hands. “The transportation system appears to be targeting families whose children display what officials are calling unusual characteristics or special gifts.”

Carli’s blood turned to winter wind in her veins. Her blue eye tingled with the electric feeling that came before lightning strikes.

“Unusual characteristics,” Malvolia repeated slowly. Her nose swiveled toward Carli as if her nostrils had just caught a very specific scent. Every orphan in the kitchen turn to look at her.

The reporter’s voice grew more strained with each word that followed, “Tonight . . . yes, tonight folks: families A through O are scheduled for what officials are calling the next phase of educational transport evaluation. The buses are expected to arrive for the test run at exactly seven o’clock at designated pickup points worldwide. Attendance is mandatory for those who don’t want their child held back a year.”

“That’s us,” Devlin whispered, his voice carrying a mixture of excitement and terror that made him sound younger than his almost twelve years. “We’re D for Devoridge.”

Malvolia sucked in a sharp intake of breath. Her voice clicked quietly as a bat’s radar honing in on a fly. “We’ll barely have time to make it to tonight’s rodeo.”

The kitchen went silent except for the tick of the wall clock and the soft sound of Frida’s humming, which had shifted into a melody that felt like being brave when the world turned upside down.

The news anchor’s voice cut through their stunned silence with an announcement that changed everything:

“Folks, we’ve just received breaking news from Modena, Italy. A restaurant called La Cucina Volante — The Flying Kitchen — vanished during last night’s test run, along with the entire Gustallini family who ran it for hundreds of years.”

The news anchor looked up from fresh newsprint. “Listen to this. It appears the first Flying Kitchen wasn’t actually a kitchen. It was a red Ferrari 250 GTO that Papa Luigi used for deliveries.” He squinted at the page again then looked at the camera, “Strange thing was, customers swore their food arrive faster than physically possible — still piping hot, even across town. Some even said they saw the car lift slightly off the ground when Papa Luigi sang particularly high notes. Apparently he still uses — or used — it from time to time.”

Carli felt something stir in her memory like déjà vu, but deeper, more personal. Something about a friend who used to tell stories about his family’s restaurant where food danced and pasta sang opera. She hadn’t seen him since . . . since when? The memory felt fuzzy, like trying to see through steamed glass. The memory made her chest tight with something that might have been grief.

“Truly sad news,” another reporter added, his voice heavy with the weight of cultural loss. “The Italian Heritage Society had just declared The Flying Kitchen a Living National Treasure due to Nonna Giacinta and Papa Luigi’s unique, theatrical approach. Apparently, they sang opera as they cooked and served customers.”

A live Italian reporter appeared on screen and gestured frantically with both hands at the camera. “Who willa make the pasta noodles dance now?” He pulled at his hair and cried at the sky in despair. “Who willa sing arias to the sauce to make the herbsa swirl?”

Bile suddenly bubbled up into his eyes. He glared into the camera and waved his pinched thumb and fingers at the camera as if they had the ability to speak. “Anna whoever stole Papa Luigi’s Ferrari, you agonna pay. I still wanta my pizza delivered by thatta Ferrari!”

As he spoke, something impossible happened behind him. A replica of La Cucina Volante silently landed like a spaceship in the original spot, complete, perfect and utterly wrong.

The reporter started to sniff the air. He continued, unaware: “I musta say I have noted the strange smell offa fresh focaccia. Notta quite Gustallini.” He turned around and jumped like he’d been electrocuted when he saw the replica. “Mama mia! Butta what issa this monster?!”