Sherwood Smith

This story got reprinted three times, and was a finalist for the Nebula Award

MOM AND DAD AT THE HOME FRONT

Before Rick spoke, I saw from his expression what was coming.

I said the words first. "The kids are gone again."

Rick dropped onto the other side of the couch, propping his brow on his

hand. I couldn't see his eyes, nor could he see me.

It was just past midnight. All evening, after we'd made sure our three kids were

safely tucked into bed, we'd stayed in separate parts of the house, busily

working away at various projects, all of them excuses not to go to bed

ourselves--even though it was a work night

Rick looked up, quick and hopeful. "Mary. Did one of the kids say

something to you?"

"No. I had a feeling; that was all. They were so sneaky after dinner.

Didn't you see Lauren--” I was about to say raiding the flashlight and the

Swiss Army Knife from the earthquake kit but I changed, with almost no

pause, to "--sneaking around like . . . like Inspector Gadget?"

He tried to smile. We'd made a deal, last time, to take it easy, to

try to keep our senses of humor, since we knew where the kids were.

Sort of knew where the kids were.

How many other parents were going through this nightmare? There had to

be others. We couldn't be the only ones. I'd tried hunting for some kind

of support group on the Internet--Seeking other parents whose

kids disappear to other worlds--and not surprisingly the e-mail

I got back ranged from offers from psychologists for a free

mental exam to "opportunities" to MAKE $$$ IN FIVE DAYS.

So I'd gone digging again, this time at the library, rereading all

those childhood favorites: C. S. Lewis; L. Frank Baum; Joy Chant; Ruth

Nicholls; and then more recent favorites, like Diana Wynne Jones. All the

stories about kids who somehow slipped from this world into another,

adventuring widely and wildly, before coming safely home via that magic

ring, or gate, or spell, or pair of shoes. Were there hints that adults

missed? Clues that separated the real worlds from the made up ones?

"Evidence," I'd said, trying to be logical and practical and adult.

"They've vanished like this three times that we know about. Doors and

windows locked. Morning back in their beds. Sunburned. After the last

time, just outside R.J.'s room you saw two feathers and a pebble like

nothing on earth. You came to get me, the kids woke up, the things were

gone when we got there. When asked, the response was, and I quote, 'What

feathers?'"

But Rick knew he had seen those feathers, and so we'd made our private

deal: wait, and take it easy.

Rick rubbed his hands up his face, then looked at me. And broke the

deal. "What if this time they don't come back?"

We sat in silence. Then, because there was no answer, we forced

ourselves to get up, to do chores, to follow a normal routine in hopes that

if we were really, really good, and really, really normal, morning would

come the same as ever, with the children in their beds.

I finished the laundry. Rick vacuumed the living room and took the

trash cans out. I made three lunches and put them in the fridge.

I put fresh bath towels in the kids' bathroom.

At one o'clock we went to bed, and turned out the light, but neither of

us slept; I lay for hours listening to the clock tick, and to Rick's

unhappy breathing.

Dawn. I made myself get up and take my shower and dress, all the while

listening, listening . . . and when I finally nerved myself to check, I

found a kid-sized lump in each of the three beds, a dark curly head on each

pillow. R.J.'s face was pink from the sun--from what sun?--and Lauren had

a scrape on one arm. Alisha snored softly, her hands clutching something

beneath the bedclothes.

I tiptoed over and lifted the covers. Her fingers curled loosely around

a long wooden wand with golden carving on its side. If it wasn't a magic

wand, I'd eat it for breakfast.

Alisha stirred. I laid her covers down and tiptoed out.

"A magic wand?" Rick whispered fiercely. "Did you take it?"

"Of course not!" I whispered back. "She'd have woken up, and--"

"And what?" he prompted.

I sighed, too tired to think. "And would have been mad at me."

"Mad?" Rick repeated, his whisper rising almost to a squeak. "Earth to

Mary--we are the parents. They are the kids. We're supposed to keep them

safe. How can we do it if they are going off the planet every night?"

I slipped back into Alisha's room. She had rolled over, and the wand

had fallen off the mattress onto her blue fuzzy rug.

I bent, my heart thumping so loud I was afraid she'd hear it, closed my

fingers round the wand, and tiptoed out.

"Hmm." Rick waved it back and forth. It whistled--just like any stick

you wave in the air--but no magic sparks came out, no lights, no mysterious

hums.

"This has got to be how they get away," Rick murmured, holding the wand

up to his nose and sniffing. "Huh. Smells like coriander, if anything."

"Except how did they get away the first time?"

"Good question."

I felt my shoulders hunch, a lifetime habit of bracing against worry.

Rick grimaced. "I know what you're thinking, and I'm thinking it too,

but maybe it's okay. Maybe the other world isn't a twisted disaster like

ours."

"But--why our kids?"

Rick shrugged, waving the wand in a circle. "Found by a kid from

another world? Some kid who knows magic, maybe?" His voice suspended, and

he gave me a sort of grinning wince. "Kid magician?" He laughed, the weak,

unfunny laugh that expresses pain more than joy. "Listen to me! Say those

words to any other adult, and he'll dial 1-800-NUTHOUSE."

I gripped my hands together, thinking of my kids, and safety. I said,

"Touch it on me."

"What?" Rick stared.

"Go ahead. If it sends me where they go--"

Rick rubbed his eyes. "I'm still having trouble with the concept.

Right. Of course. But we'll go together." His clammy left hand closed

round my equally damp fingers, and with his right he tapped us both on our

heads.

Nothing happened.

Rick looked hopeful. "Maybe it's broken."

"I don't think we're that lucky," I muttered, and went down to fix

breakfast.

The kids appeared half an hour later, more or less ready for school.

The looks they exchanged with each other let me know at once that they were

worried--desperately--about something.

Then three pairs of brown eyes turned my way.

"Um, Mom?" R.J. said finally, as he casually buttered some toast. "Did

you, uh, do house cleaning this morning? You know, before we woke up?"

"No," I replied truthfully, watching his toast shred into crumbs. He

didn't even notice.

"Did you, like, find any, um, art projects?" Lauren asked.

"Art projects?" I repeated.

R.J. frowned at his toast, then pushed it aside.

Alisha said, "Like a stick. For a play. A play at school. Uhn!" This

last was a gasp of pain--someone had obviously kicked her under the table.

Her eyes watered, and she muttered to Lauren, "What did you do that for?"

"The play was last month, remember?" Lauren said in a sugary voice,

rolling her eyes toward me. "Mom helped paint scenery!"

I fussed with my briefcase, giving them sneakier looks than they were

giving me, as I watched them trying to communicate by quick whispers and

pointing fingers. Rick came in then, looked at us all, and went out again

--and I could hear him turning a laugh into a cough.

"You all reminded me of a bunch of spies in a really bad movie," Rick

said later, when I was driving us to our respective workplaces. He

grinned. "All squinting at each other like--"

"Rick." I tried not to be mad. "It is our kids we're spying on.

Lying to. I feel terrible!"

He said, "I don't. At least they're home--"

"They're not at home. They're at school."

"They're safe. The wand's in the trunk of the car, by the way. And as

soon as I can, I'm going to take the damn thing out and burn it, and make

sure the kids stay safe."

I sighed as I drove past palm trees and billboards--the once-reassuring

visual boundaries of mundane reality. Mundane made sense. It was safe,

because there were no reminders in that everyday blandness that the rules

we make to govern our lives are not absolute, and that safety is an

illusion.

I dropped Rick off at his printshop. Sighed again when I parked the

car.

And I sighed a third time when I sat down at my computer, punched up

Autocad, and stared at the equations for the freeway bridge I was supposed

to be designing.

When we got home, the first sign that Something Was Up was the house--

spic and span. Usually housecleaning is something that gets done when Rick

and I feel guilty, or when it's gotten so cluttered and dusty I turn into

the Wicked Bitch of the West and dragoon everyone into jobs.

I knew, of course, that they'd given the place a thorough search--but

at least they hadn't made a mess. I considered this a Responsible Act, and

brought it up to Rick later, when we got ready for bed. And didn't a

Responsible Act deserve one in return?

"Very responsible," he agreed. "Won't it be a pleasant, refreshing

change to sleep the entire night, knowing they are safely in their beds?"

"Did you destroy the wand?" I asked.

He studied the ceiling as though something of import had been written

there. "No. Not yet. But I will."

Home life was normal for about a week.

At least on the surface.

The kids tried another surreptitious search, more oblique questions,

and then finally they just gave up. I know the exact hour--the minute--

they gave up because they really gave up. Not just their secret world, but

everything. Oh, they ate and went to school and did their homework, but

the older ones worked with about as much interest and enthusiasm as a pair

of robots, and Alisha drifted about, small and silent as a little ghost.

I hated seeing sad eyes at dinner. We cooked their favorite foods.

Rick made barbequed ribs and spaghetti on his nights, and I fixed Mexican

food and Thai chicken on my nights--loving gestures on our part that failed

to kindle the old joy. R.J. and Lauren said, "Please" and "Thank you" in

dismal voices, and picked at the food as though it were prune-and-pea

casserole.

Alisha didn't talk, just looked.

I avoided her gaze.

Eight days later I passed by Lauren's room with a stack of clean sheets

and towels, and heard soft, muffled sobs. Her unhappiness smote my guilty

heart and I was soon in our room snuffling into my pillow, the clean

laundry lying on the carpet where I'd dropped it.

We're the parents. They are the kids.

That's what Rick had said.

I got up, wiped my face on one of those clean towels, and went back--

not sure what I'd say or do--but I stopped when I heard all three kids in

Lauren's room.

"I can't help it." Lauren's voice was high and teary. "Queen Liete was

going to make me a maid of honor to Princess Elte--my very best friend!

Now we've missed the ceremony!"

"You can't miss it, not if you're the person being ceremonied." That

was Alisha's brisk, practical voice. Even though she's the youngest, she's

always been the practical one.

"Celebrated," R.J. muttered. "How much time has passed there? What if

they think we don't want to come back? That we don't care any more?

Brother Owl was going to teach me shape-changing on my own, without his

help!"

Lauren sniffed, gulped, and cried, "I wish you hadn't picked up that

stupid wand, Alisha. I wish we'd never gone. It's so much worse, being

stuck here, and remembering."

"I don't think so." That was R.J.'s sturdy voice. "Somebody got the

wand, but nothing can take away what I remember. Riding on the air

currents so high, just floating there . . ."

"Learning a spell," Alisha put in. "And seeing it work. Knowing that

it had to be us, that we made all the difference."

"You're right," Lauren said. The tears were gone. "Only for me the

best memory was sneaking into the Grundles' dungeon. Yeah, I hated it at the

time--it was scarier than anything I'd ever done--but I knew I had to get

Prince Dar out, and, being a girl, and an outworlder, and a very fast

runner, I was the only one who could get by those magic wards. I liked

that. Being the only one who could do it."

"Because of our talents," Alisha murmured longingly.

"Because we saw the signs, and we believed what we saw," R.J. added,

even more longingly.

Gloomy silence.

I tiptoed away to pick up the towels and sheets.

Rick was in the garage, supposedly working on refinishing one of the

patio chairs, but I found him tossing the sander absently from hand to hand

while he stared at R.J.'s old bicycle.

"You haven't burned the wand," I guessed.

He gave his head a shake, avoiding my eyes. "I can't."

"I think we ought to give it back," I said.

He looked up. His brown eyes were unhappy, reminding me terribly of

R.J.'s sad eyes over his untouched dinner.

"They're our kids," I said. "Not our possessions." I told him what

I'd overheard.

"Talents," he repeated when I was done.

I said, "What if Alisha had been born with some incredible music

talent? She'd be just as lost to us if she were at some studio practicing

her instrument eight hours a day, or being taken by her music coach to

concerts all over the country."

"She'd be safe," Rick said.

"Not if some drunk driver hits her bus--or a terrorist blows up her

concert hall. We taught them to be fair, and to be sensible. But to be

totally safe in this world we'd have to lock them in a room. The world

isn't totally safe. I wish it were."

Rick tossed the sander once more from hand to hand, then threw it down

onto the workbench. "They lied to us."

"They didn't lie. Not until the wand disappeared. And we lied right

back."

"That's love," Rick said. "We did it out of love. Our duty as parents

is to keep them safe, and we can't possibly protect them in some world

we've never even seen!"

"Think of Lauren, making friends. For five years we've worried about

her inability to make friends--she's never fit in with the kids at school."

"She needs to learn to fit in," Rick said. "In this world. Where we

live."

I felt myself slipping over to his way of thinking, and groped for

words, for one last argument. "What if," I said. "What if those people

from the other world find their way here, but they only have the one

chance--and they offer the kids only the one chance to go back? For ever?

What if we make them choose between us and that world? They've always come

back, Rick. It's love, not duty, that brings them back, but they don't

even know it, because they've never been forced to make that choice."

Rick slammed out of the garage, leaving me staring at R.J.'s little-boy

bike.

I was in bed alone for hours, not sleeping, when Rick finally came in.

"I waited until Alisha conked off," he said, and drew in a shaky

breath. "Damn! That kid racks up more under-the-covers reading time than

I did when I was a kid, and I thought I was the world's champ."

"You put the wand back?" I asked, sitting up.

"Right under the bed."

I hugged my knees to my chest, feeling the emotional vertigo I'd felt

when Lauren was first born, and I stared down at this child who had been

inside me for so long. Now a separate being, whose memories would not be

my memories. Whose life would not be my life.

And Rick mused, "How much of my motivation was jealousy, and not just

concern for their safety? I get a different answer at midnight than I do

at noon."

"You mean, why didn't it ever happen to me?"

His smile was wry.

They were gone the next night, of course.

It was raining hard outside, and I walked from room to silent room,

touching their empty beds, their neatly lined up books and toys and

personal treasures, the pictures on their walls. Lauren had made sketches

of a girl's face--Princess Elte? In R.J.'s room, the sketches were all of

great birds, raptors with beaks and feathers of color combinations never

seen in this world. He'd stored in jewelry boxes the feathers and rocks

he'd brought back across that unimaginable divide.

Alisha's tidy powder-blue room gave nothing away.

The next morning I was downstairs early, fixing pancakes, my heart

light because I'd passed by the three rooms and heard kid-breathing in

each.

I almost dropped the spatula on the floor when I looked up and there

was Alisha in her nightgown.

She ran to me, gave me a hug round the waist. "Thanks, Mom," she said.

"Thanks?" My heart started thumping again. "For pancakes?"

"For putting it back," she said. "I smelled your shampoo in my room

that day, when the wand disappeared. But I didn't tell the others. I

didn't want them to be mad."

I suddenly found the floor under my bottom. "Your dad put it back," I

said. "We were in it together. We didn't mean to make you unhappy."

"I know." Alisha sat down neatly on the floor next to me, cross-legged,

and leaned against my arm, just as she had when she was a toddler. "We

didn't tell you because we knew you'd say no. Not to be mean. But out of

grownup worry."

"We just want to keep you safe," I said.

She turned her face to look up at me, her eyes the color of Rick's

eyes, their shape so like my mother's. "And we wanted to keep you safe."

"Ignorance is not real safety," I pointed out. "It's the mere illusion

of safety."

Alisha gave me an unrepentant grin. "How many times have you said