The Shadow Thieves Read online

  “To Exeter?”

  “No. London. We’d come back.”

  “But…”

  “Wouldn’t you like to see your cousin Charlotte?”

  Zee bit his lip. He barely knew his cousin Charlotte. They had gone to visit when he was six; he had dim memories of kicking around a football with her at a time when he’d never heard the word soccer, and he had thought she was playing a weird joke on him. It’s not that he actively didn’t want to see his cousin Charlotte; his feelings on the matter were entirely neutral. But August was not for London, no matter about Samantha Golton. August was for Exeter and lemonade and freshly baked cake and the sort of floury, sort of talcum powdery, sort of lotiony smell of Grandmother Winter’s home.

  Grandmother Winter almost did not invite her grandson to stay with her that summer, for she knew that during the summer she would die.

  Once in a while Grandmother Winter knew things. Some of those things were small things. She always knew where Lolita Thornbridge had left her keys. She always knew the specials at the Flying Horse and when they were out of pies. And she always knew, every year, what her daughter was getting her for Christmas. (Though every year she pretended to be surprised. Because it’s not nice to take the fun out of life for people.)

  And some of the things were big. She knew when she left home when she was twenty that she would never go back. She knew when she met Zachariah Winter in Liverpool one rainy day that she would marry him. She knew when she was pregnant that she would have a girl and then no other children. She knew when her daughter was pregnant that she would have a boy, that that boy would be named Zachary, and that he would be the most precious thing on Earth to his grandmother.

  And one day in April, while she was watering her rose bushes, she was struck with the knowledge that she was going to die that summer. Her death would be quiet and painless, a good death as far as deaths go. But it would most certainly be a death.

  Well.

  Once the initial shock had worn off, Grandmother Winter found that she was not upset about dying—she had lived quite a good number of years, thank you. In fact, she had been alive all of her life, but she had never been dead, and it seemed an interesting thing to be. And her husband had been dead for ten years. It would be nice to be in the same realm of existence as him again.

  Of course, she regretted having to leave her daughter. She regretted the sorrow she would cause. And she regretted that she would not be with her grandson as he grew older—yet she also knew that somehow she would never really go away from him. Whatever death held, she would find a way to watch over him. Grandmother Winter had a way of getting what she wanted when she set her mind to something.

  The one problem with the whole scenario was that she did not want her grandson to have to see her die. But every time she tried to come up with an excuse for why she would not be able to host him this summer, her brain came up empty. And every time she was ready to reach for the phone to call the Millers, something distracted her. Somehow she knew that no matter what she did, her grandson would be there with her when she died—that this, like her death itself, was unavoidable.

  So he would come. They would have one last summer together. She would not tell him how it would end, because there was no point in his being sad for one more second than he had to be. He would come, and she would give him the best summer she could, she would give him a lifetime of grandmotherness, and when the end did come, she would make sure he knew that she would always be there.

  For Grandmother Winter sensed something inside Zee. Something that was all closed up, hard and tight, when she saw him in London, something that unfurled when he was there in Exeter over the summer. She had tried to talk to his mother about it, but Suzy did not see it, in the way that sometimes parents cannot see what is in front of them. “Of course he’s more relaxed over the summer,” she had said. “It’s summer!”

  So now Zee would not have his summers anymore, and whatever it was that made him expand, she would simply have to help him find it on his own.

  CHAPTER 8

  Grandmother Winter’s

  Last Words

  WHEN ZEE ARRIVED IN EXETER ON JUNE 8, HE found that his grandmother had gone mad.

  Not clinically mad. Not mad like talking-to-people-who-aren’t-there mad or forgetting-to-wear-trousers mad or hello-I’m-the-Queen-how-do-you-do mad; but rather, mad in the way that a person can be completely normal all of your life, and then one day you discover she’s completely gone off her rocker.

  For when Zee arrived at Grandmother Winter’s house—he had taken an early train to surprise her—he found her baking. This was not unusual in itself; grandmothers bake, and Grandmother Winter was no exception. But usually she baked a cake a week, on Sundays, and Zee would have a slice a night and count the progression of the week by the diminishing eighths of the cake round. Zee never let her throw the cakes away when they were stale—Friday’s wedge might be dry and old, but it was still Friday’s wedge, the crumbly vestiges of the week, and it contained an implicit promise that on Sunday there would be fresh, whole cake again.

  But on this day when Zee walked in the door of his grandmother’s house, the whole place smelled as if it, too, had been baked, from the overstuffed furniture to the flowery wallpaper to the bright, thick carpet. His nose led him to the kitchen, where he found Grandmother Winter and not a cake, but cakes. Many, many cakes. He saw ten cooling cake rounds of various shapes, sizes, and colors waiting to be assembled into something extremely delicious, and judging from the heat in the kitchen, he knew there were more baking in the oven. He saw bowls everywhere, dripping with batter, and open canisters of flour and various and sundry sugars, empty boxes of cream, and several chickens’ worth of eggshells in the sink. As for Gran, she stood at the stove working at a saucepan filled with a creamy substance that Zee knew was a few squares of chocolate, some egg whites, and a splash of rum away from becoming Grandmother Winter’s inimitable chocolate icing.

  When Gran looked up and saw him, a magnificent smile broke out on her face, the kind of smile that reminds you what a wonderful thing it is that there are grandmothers in the world, and she put down her saucepan and hurried to him.

  “Zachary! You’re early!” she said, giving him a flour-covered hug. “Everything’s such a mess. You weren’t supposed to see this!”

  Zee hugged her back, then gestured toward the mess in the kitchen. “Gran! You’ve gone mad!”

  She laughed, “Perhaps.”

  “Are you having the whole town over?”

  She winked. “I couldn’t help it. I was just so excited to see you. I couldn’t decide which kind to make, so I made them all.”

  “I can see that!”

  “Come help me with the icing. Make yourself useful.”

  And so within moments Zee found himself wearing one of Gran Winter’s most grandmotherly aprons, whipping sugar and cracking eggs into the gooey mess while his grandmother looked on approvingly, for she had personally taught him to crack and divide an egg properly, and there were not many thirteen-year-old boys in all of England who could do so with such skill and grace.

  In fact, Grandmother Winter had not gone out of her baking mind; the cakes were not all for Zachary alone. Somewhere around dusk the doorbell began to ring, and one by one his friends from the summer team appeared on her doorstep. Every one gave Zee an enthusiastic handshake or a man hug or a slap on the back, and every one was given a large piece of cake, and as they all talked and laughed through the evening into the night, Grandmother Winter never mentioned that her grandson had made the raspberry icing himself.

  The first weeks of summer passed quickly for Zee. He woke up early in the mornings to find his grandmother making sausages or omelets, or sometimes working in her garden, or sometimes curled up on her big green easy chair with the paper or a mystery. She saw him off to training during the days and welcomed him home at night. Some nights he went out with the team, but mostly he came home to be with his gran. Some nights they cooked together. Zee learned to make Bolognese sauce, which made the whole neighborhood smell of spices; poached fish with the texture of cream; curry thick with potatoes. Some nights they sat down together to watch the sort of television shows eighty-two-year-old grandmothers were supposed to love and thirteen-year-old boys were never ever, ever supposed to admit to watching, much less enjoying, and certainly not gossiping with their grans about afterward.

  Then, on the weekends, Grandmother Winter took him to some absurd tourist destination, the type of thing they had done together when he was six and hadn’t done since. The first week, when she suggested they go to the cathedral and take the tour, he thought she was kidding. But they did it; they even had tea in Tinley Tearoom. Zee ate his fill of scones with Devonshire clotted cream, and they pretended to be Americans. They went to Rougemont Gardens, they went to the House That Moved, they went to the moors and to the quayside. They watched the swans, they ate ice cream, and they rented a pedal boat and went out on the river. Zee told his grandmother that they had tourist things in London as well, and she told him firmly to keep pedaling, smarty-pants.

  Zee felt relaxed, happy, and for a few weeks he was able to keep his mind off Samantha. He could put her away, like the rest of London. He would know when she arrived, and he could deal with it then. For the twenty-minute walk from Gran Winter’s house to training took him right past the university fields. Really, it was the most direct route.

  The summer camps were well on their way by the time Zee arrived in Exeter. His first week of training, the university fields were filled with young kids—ten-and-unders scrimmaging on makeshift half-size pitches. The third week the kids got a little bigger, the eleven- and twelve-year-olds practicing headers or passing the ball back and forth endlessly up and down the pitch.

  And then one day in early July, on his daily trek home, Zee found that the children had been replaced by girls. Beautiful, wonderful girls, with muddy cleats, fierce footwork, and indomitable insteps. And in the middle of them all, executing a dribbling drill with delicious precision, was Samantha Golton, the muddiest, fiercest, most indomitable of them all.

  Zee froze at the sight of her. He had known all along that one day he would see her there, but knowing Samantha Golton is going to be in a place and actually seeing Samantha Golton in that place are entirely different phenomena. He wanted desperately to flee, but since he was frozen, there would be no fleeing. There would be no moving at all. Ever. He was going to stay planted next to the bleachers on the lower football pitch of the University of Exeter athletic fields while the sun slowly set in the hills. The girls would end training, they would head to the locker room, then home for the night, and Zee would be there, still and watchful, and by the next morning, when the sun came up again, he would be covered in fresh dew.

  Or he would have been, had someone sitting in the bleachers not suddenly blown a whistle, and had every single one of the beautiful, wonderful, fierce girls not turned her head in his direction, and had Samantha’s gaze not fallen directly on him.

  Zee unfroze. His feet popped awake and carried him swiftly behind the bleachers, where he caught his breath, began to blush furiously, then proceeded to head home, shaking his head and muttering to himself the entire way.

  After that Zee considered changing his route. This one was obviously fraught with peril.

  But it was the most direct way home. Zee decided simply to keep his eyes straight ahead when he walked by the lower pitch. If he didn’t see Samantha, he would be much less inclined to humiliate himself in some way or another. He could ignore her all summer and wait to humiliate himself in London. Zee stuck to his plan—he never let his eyes waver, and he was proud of his determination and focus. These were qualities a good football player should cultivate.

  On the last Saturday before his parents were to come join them in Exeter, Zee and Gran Winter spent their day walking around High Street. Grandmother Winter kept trying to buy Zee things—new cleats, a new coat, even some CDs with decidedly ungrandmotherly content.

  Zee was busily trying to explain to his grandmother why he didn’t need anything and why she shouldn’t be spending money on him and just what exactly that one album title meant, when Zee heard it.

  Her voice.

  Directed at him?

  He looked around wildly. There, walking right past him, so close he could—oh, better not to think about it—there she was, arm in arm with two girls. She was smiling at him. His jaw dropped. And then she said the most beautiful word he’d ever heard:

  “Hi.”

  Hi!

  The other girls nodded at him in greeting, and the trio walked on, whispering to one another. Zee stood in the middle of High Street with his mouth open.

  She said, “Hi!” He couldn’t believe it. Hi means Hello, and Hello means, well, Hello! It means…Greetings!…Salutations! It means, I know who you are and I wish to acknowledge your presence. In fact, I salute you!

  Zee watched the girls disappear into the crowd, contemplating hi and all its myriad wonders. Grandmother Winter watched him watching them and smiled softly.

  “Who’s that?” she asked casually.

  “Girl from Feldwop,” Zee said.

  “Very lovely,” she said.

  “Yeah,” Zee shrugged, then added with a strange laugh, “You know, half the Feldwop girls are hoping to marry one of the princes.”

  Grandmother Winter tilted her head. “I don’t know,” she said thoughtfully. “She doesn’t look as horribly dull as all that.”

  She grinned at Zee, who grinned right back. His body unfroze, and he laughed. “Let’s hope not.”

  “Come on,” said Grandmother Winter. “Let’s go look at shirts.”

  That night Zee sat awake in bed and thought about the entire hi incident. She knew him. That amazed Zee. Of course, she’d seen him play before and they’d been at events together, but that was no reason for her actually to know him. To have noticed him.

  He maybe could have said something back. Something like “Hi.” Or “Hi, Samantha.” But that might have been too much. And who knew what she would have thought then.

  Zee didn’t know what to do. Clearly he couldn’t keep walking by the fields pretending not to notice her. He would have to find another route.

  So he didn’t see Samantha for another week, and he began to relax a little. The week was busy anyway—his parents had arrived, and his father had a strange love for tourist sites. So they visited all the standards again, this time without the irony, and they didn’t pretend to be Americans because his father actually was one.

  On the next Saturday, Zee had a match. His parents came to the game to cheer him on, but Grandmother Winter stayed home. She’d been feeling a little off for the last few days, and Zee told her it would be all right if she missed one game.

  So his parents sat in the bleachers and watched, and right in front of them sat three girls, one of them with chocolate-colored hair.

  Zee didn’t even notice her until late in the second half, which was good because otherwise he might have fallen on his face. As it was, he was having a good match—he’d scored a pretty nice goal to tie it up in the first half. By the time he saw the chocolate hair, he was too exhausted to freak out in any way, shape, or form. And when the three girls approached him when the match was done, he didn’t even run in the other direction.

  Samantha smiled at him. “Hi.”

  “Hi!” Zee said. That went very well, he thought.

  “Um…I’m Sam Golton. I’m at Feldwop too.”

  Zee coughed. “I’m Zachary Miller,” he said.

  “I know!” She laughed. “Hey, we’re going to the Grecians match next Saturday. Do you want to come?”

  “Um…yeah,” Zee said.

  “Brilliant. We’ll meet you at the gate.”

  Zee nodded. He no longer trusted himself to speak. He might start babbling, or he might refuse out of fear, or he might introduce Samantha to his parents, who were standing off to one side pretending not to be watching the entire thing.

  When he got home, Zee ran up to Grandmother Winter’s room and told her what had happened. Grandmother Winter, who had arranged herself so she looked awake and well when she heard the family come in, winked at him. “See? I told you she wasn’t dull.”

  And then everything changed, and Samantha Golton did not matter anymore.

  The next day when Zee got up, his grandmother was not in the kitchen making sausages or pancakes or omelets. She was not outside gardening, and she was not in her big green easy chair reading the paper or a book. And Zee knew. He did not know how he knew, but he knew.

  “Where’s Gran?” Zee demanded of his mother, who was sitting at the kitchen table drinking tea and staring blankly at nothing.

  “She’s having a lie in,” she said quietly.

  “She is?”

  “I went in twenty minutes ago. She’s still not well.” A flicker of something passed over his mother’s face. “I’m going to check on her again in a few minutes…to see if she needs anything.”

  Zee bit his lip. “Do you think we should…call the doctor?”

  “She said not to.”

  He gulped. “Do you think we should anyway?”

  His mother put down her tea and sighed heavily. She closed her eyes for a moment and then looked at him and said, “Maybe you can talk to her?”

  “I’ll go,” he said. “I’ll go.”

  But twenty minutes later there was no doctor on the way and no ambulance, either. There was just Grandmother Winter in her bed, resolute and strong in her dying. It’s time, she said. They cannot help me, she said. It is my last wish to be here, like this, with my family, she said. Are you going to deny an old woman her last wish? she said.

  Grandmother Winter had a way of getting what she wanted. So the Millers sat in her bedroom, not calling the doctor, not calling an ambulance, not able to do a single thing to stop what they had known would someday have to happen, that they had hoped so fiercely would never happen. Zee’s mother sat by the bed and held her hand, while Zee sat next to her with his hand on his grandmother’s shoulder, and Zee’s father stood behind them, touching his wife’s back.