The Great Beyond At Mary’s insistence they had returned to Atlantic City to search for Vari, but he was nowhere to be found. In the end, Mary had to accept that something horrible had befallen him. Either he had slipped off the pier, or he had been captured by the McGill’s returning crew, and taken out to sea aboard the Sulphur Queen, which was also gone.
She could have gone after the ship, but it wasn’t even on the horizon anymore, and there was no telling in what direction it had gone. As it had been when Nick and Lief were captured by the Haunter, Mary had to put her children ahead of her own desires. She had a thousand refugee Afterlights aboard the airship, and her first responsibility was to them. Van was lost, and it weighed heavily on her, for, it had been her fault and her fault alone.
With mournful resignation, she ordered Speedo to take the Hindenburg aloft, and the ship of refugees resumed its journey north. Once they were airborne, Mary took to the stateroom she had claimed for herself, closed the door, lay down on the bed, and cried. Then she did something she hadn’t allowed herself to do for many years. She closed her eyes and slept.
Nick, however, did not sleep. He was emotionally exhausted, and should have, at the very least, taken some time to rest, but there was too much on his mind.
There were things that simply weren’t sitting right, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to relax until he figured them out.
High up in the girders of the airship, Nick sat on a catwalk, in front of the bucket of coins that Mary had left in his care.
Lief found him up there, and sat across from him.
“They’re mine, you know,” Lief said. “I found them.”
“I thought you didn’t care about things like that anymore,”
“I don’t,” said Lief, “I’m just saying.”
Nick pulled out one of the coins. It was so worn there was no way of telling what kind of coin it was, what country it had come from, or what year it was made. They were all like that-even the one he had found in his pocket way back when-the one he had used to make a wish in Mary’s fountain. Funny how both the McGill and Mary had a collection of these coins.
As he held the coin, cool in his palm, Nick could have sworn it felt a little different. It felt almost…electrified…like a fuse completing a circuit.
That’s when an understanding began to come to Nick-an understanding that Nick instinctively knew was the tip of something very big and very important. He took the coin from his palm, and held it between thumb and forefinger.
“Did you know,” Nick told Lief, “that they used to put coins on dead people’s eyes?”
“Why?” asked Lief. “To keep their eyelids from opening and making people scream?”
“No – it was this old superstition. People used to think that the dead had to pay their way into the afterlife. The ancient Greeks even believed there was this ferryman you had to pay to take you across the river of death.”
Lief shrugged, unimpressed. “I don’t remember any ferry.”
Neither did Nick. But then, maybe people saw what they expected to see. Maybe the ancient Greeks saw a river instead of a tunnel. Maybe they saw a ferry instead of a light.
“I have an idea,” Nick said. “Give me your hand.”
Lief held out his hand. “Are you going to do a magic trick? Are you going to make the coin disappear?”
“I don’t know,” said Nick. “Maybe.” He put the coin in Lief’s palm, then folded Lief’s fingers around it until the coin was firmly in his closed fist. “How does it feel?”
“It’s warm,” said Lief. “It’s really warm.”
Nick waited and watched. A moment passed, then another, and then Lief suddenly looked up and gasped. Nick followed his gaze, but saw nothing-just the girders and hydrogen bladders of the airship.
“What is it? What do you see?”
Whatever it was, Lief was too enthralled to answer. Then, when Nick looked at Lief’s eyes, he saw something reflected in his pupils. It was a spot of bright light, growing larger and brighter.
Lief’s expression of wonder mellowed into a joyous smile, and he said, “… I remember now!”
“Lief?!”
“No,” said Lief. “My real name is Travis.”
Then, in the blink of an eye, and in a rainbow twinkling of light, Travis, also known as Lief of the Dead Forest, finally got where he was going.
Mary called the coins worthless, but Nick now knew the truth. He also knew that Mary wasn’t stupid. She must have known the coins’ true value -their true purpose-and it troubled Nick that she would hide something so important.
Lief was gone. Gone forever to some great beyond. The air where Lief had been just a second before now shimmered with color, but in a moment the shimmering faded.
Nick no longer had his own coin-he had hurled it into Mary’s wishing well, just as every single kid in her care had done. It was a requirement of admission. But now Nick had an entire bucket of them in front of him.
He reached in and pulled out another coin, placing it in his own palm, feeling that odd current again. The coin was still cold in his hand though, and Nick instinctively knew that while Lief had been ready for his final journey, Nick wasn’t. Nick still had work to do here in Everlost, and he had a sneaking suspicion he knew what that work would be.
Hammerhead was happily, if somewhat unsuccessfully, gnawing at a girder when he saw Nick approaching. “What time is it?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Noon maybe. Hey, Hammerhead, could you do something for me?”
“Sure. What?”
“Could you hold this for a few seconds?” And he put a coin into Hammerhead’s hand. “Tell me, is it warm, or is it cold?”
“Wow,” said Hammerhead. “It’s hot!”
“Good,” said Nick. “Would you like to see a magic trick?”
It was late in the afternoon when Mary awoke. When she looked out of her cabin window, she saw the asphalt of the airfield tarmac. They had returned to Lakehurst. Speedo had told her he didn’t feel comfortable landing the airship anywhere else. It was hard enough to get him to land on the Steel Pier. She supposed convincing him to take them all the way back to Manhattan was out of the question.
If they were lucky, the train would still be there waiting for them. If not, they would have to walk, following the dead tracks all the way home. At worst it would take them a few days to get there. Then she could begin the task of processing this large group of children, and integrating them into her society.
In one fell swoop, the population of her little community had quadrupled – but as she had told them, there was more than enough room. She would convert more floors into living space. She would work with Finders to furnish them in comfort. And in the meantime she would give each of these children her personal attention, helping them, one by one, to find their perfect niche. It was a monumental, yet noble task-and with Nick’s help she’d be able to do it.
When she left her cabin, she was surprised to find the hallways and salons of the airship empty. There were no voices coming from the higher reaches of the ship either. Nick must have already roused them and gotten them off the ship. He was very efficient, and it was good of him to let her sleep, although it wasn’t exactly her plan to sleep the entire day.
She descended the gangway expecting to find kids clustered around, but there were none. There was only one figure out there. Someone sitting on the ground a hundred yards away.
As she approached she could see that it was Nick. He sat cross-legged, staring at the Hindenburg. She realized he “was waiting there for her. Beside him sat the bucket of coins.
Only now did Mary begin to get worried.
“This is a pretty big dead-spot,” Nick said.
“The entire tarmac,” Mary answered. “The death of the Hindenburg was a large-scale event. The ground here will remember it forever.” She waited for Nick to say something more, but he didn’t.
“So,” Mary said, “where is everyone?”
“Gone,” said Nick.
“Gone,” echoed Mary, still not sure she had heard him correctly. “Gone where, exactly?”
Nick stood up. “Don’t know. Not my business.”
Mary looked into the bucket at his feet. To her horror the bucket was empty. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing-what he was telling her.
“All of them?” She looked around the tarmac hoping for a sign that this wasn’t true, but there was not a soul in sight.
“What can I say?” said Nick. “They were all ready to go.”
For the first time in her memory, Mary was speechless. This was a betrayal of such magnitude there were no words to express it. It was as awful, and as evil as anything Mikey had done in all his years as a monster. It was worse!
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” Mary knew she was screaming, but she didn’t care. How dare he! How dare he do this to her!
“I know exactly what I’ve done,” said Nick with all the calm in his voice that Mary had lost. “I let them go to where they should have gone in the first place.”
“How dare you presume to know where they should have gone. They were here, which means this is where they were meant to be!”
“I don’t believe that!”
“Who cares what you believe!” It was as if she was looking at a different boy.
She had taken him into her confidence-she had trusted him. They were going to be a team, benevolently leading the Afterlights of Everlost forever and ever. This wasn’t supposed to happen!
Then Nick’s expression changed, and for the first time his calm took a turn toward anger, and accusation.
“How long have you known?” Nick demanded.
Mary refused to answer him.
“Did you know about the coins from the beginning? How long have you been robbing them from the children who come to you for help?”
She found she couldn’t face the accusation, and couldn’t meet his eye. “Not from the beginning,” she grumbled. “And I’m not a thief-they throw their coins into the fountain by choice. They can take them out any time they want-but no one does-and do you know why? Because they don’t want to.”
“No! They don’t take back their coins because it’s your fountain, and they wouldn’t dream of going against Miss Mary. But if they knew the truth about what those coins did-what they were really for- they’d take them in a second!”
“My children are happy!” insisted Mary.
“They’re lost! And you’re no better than your brother!”
Before Mary even knew what she was doing, she brought back her hand and slapped him across the face with the full force of her fury. For a moment she wanted to take it back, and tell him that she was sorry, but then she realized she wasn’t sorry at all. She wanted to slap him again and again and again until she slapped some sense into him. What had she done to deserve this treachery? She had cared about him-more than that, she had loved him. She loved him still, and now she hated the fact that she loved him.
Nick recovered from the slap, then picked up the bucket and tilted it toward her. “Strange,” he said, “but there were exactly enough coins in there for every Afterlight.”
“So what!” said Mary. “A thousand Afterlights, a thousand coins. Nothing strange about that.”
“Look again.”
Mary looked into the bucket to see that it wasn’t entirely empty. Two coins remained.
“Two coins,” said Nick. “Two of us.”
“Coincidence!” insisted Mary. She would not be swayed by it. This was not the universe trying to tell her something. This was not the hand of God reaching out to them. Mary didn’t need a bucket to tell her what God’s purpose for her was.
She reached in, picked up a coin and prepared to throw it as far from her sight as possible…But then Nick said – ” – Is it warm or is it cold?”
Mary felt the coin in her hand. “It’s cold,” she told him. “Cold as death.”
Nick sighed. “Mine’s cold, too. So I guess neither of us are going anywhere for a while. And then he added, “All these years here, and you’re still not ready.”
“I’ll never be ready!” said Mary. “I’ll never leave Everlost, because this world is the eternal one, and it’s my job to find lost souls to fill it. It’s my job to find them and take care of them. Why can’t you understand that?”
“I do understand it,” Nick said. “And maybe you’re right-maybe that is your job…But now I think I have a job, too. And my job is to help those same lost souls get where they’re going.”
Mary looked at the ugly coin in her hand. What was so wonderful about the end of the tunnel? How did anyone know if that bright light was a light of love, or of flames?
If there was one thing Mary knew it was the simple rule that every mother tells her child: If you’re lost, stay put. Don’t walk away, don’t wander off, don’t talk to strangers, and just because you see a light, it doesn’t give you permission to cross the street. Lost children stay put! How could Nick not see the sense in that?
At the sound of a car engine, Mary looked up to see Speedo drive up in the Jaguar she had given him. At least he was smart enough not to hurl himself down a dark tunnel.
“The train’s waiting,” Speedo said.
Nick turned to Mary. “I’m going back to the Twin Towers,” he said. “And I’m going to tell all those kids what I know.”
“They won’t listen to you!” Mary told him.
“I think they will.”
There was certainty in Nick’s voice, and Mary knew why. It was because he was right, and they both knew it. As much as Mary wanted to believe otherwise, she knew her children would take their coins back. They would not be able to resist the temptation. That’s why the temptation had to be taken away.
“Why don’t you come with me,” Nick said. “We can do it together.”
But Mary already knew what she had to do. Remove the temptation. And so without even dignifying Nick with a response, she turned and ran back toward the giant zeppelin alone.
“Mary! Wait!”
She didn’t want to hear anything he had to say. She climbed into the piloting gondola of the airship. If Speedo could pilot this thing, then so could she-and she would get back to her children before Nick did. He would never get the chance to poison their minds, because she would get there first, and save them all.