Too much to hope that Jack was coming out of it? Finally?
Hugo strode across the sand to the edge of the tide. He let the waves creep up close to his toes but no further. He and the ocean weren’t on speaking terms anymore. Was this eccentric? Yes. But that was fine. He was a painter. He was supposed to be eccentric. Once, he’d loved the ocean, loved seeing it every morning, every night, seeing all its facets, all its faces. Not many people knew what the sea looked like in all seasons under all phases of the moon, but he did. Now he knew the ocean was as dangerous as a sleeping volcano. At peace, it was magnificent, but when it wanted to, it could bring down kingdoms. Five years ago, it had brought low the small, strange kingdom of Clock Island.
Jack might believe in wishing—or he had once upon a time—butHugo didn’t. Hard work and dumb luck got him to where he was. Nothing else.
But tonight, Hugo wished and wished hard that something would shake Jack from his apathy, break the spell, give him a reason to write again. Any reason. Love? Money? Spite? Something to do besides slowly drowning himself in overpriced Cabernet?
Hugo turned his back on the water. He found his shoes and dusted the sand from them.
When he came to Clock Island, he’d sworn to himself he’d stay one or two months. Then he said he’d stay until Jack was back on his feet. Five years later and here he still was.
No. No more. Time’s up. Time to go. By this time next spring, he’d be gone. He couldn’t sit and watch his old friend fade like ink on old paper until no one could read the writing anymore.
His decision made, Hugo started for the path. Just then, he saw a light come on in a window.
The window of Jack’s writing factory.
The writing factory that only the housekeeper had set foot inside for years…and today was her day off.
The light in that window was low and golden. Jack’s desk lamp. Jack was sitting at his desk for the first time in years. Was the Mastermind putting pen to paper again?
Hugo waited for the light to go out, proof it was a mistake, a whim, Jack looking for a lost letter or misplaced book.
The light stayed on.
It was too much to hope for, and yet Hugo hoped for it with all his heart and wished for it on every star in the night sky. He wished and hoped and prayed for it.
Prayed for the oldest miracle in the book—a dead man coming back to life.
“All right, old man,” Hugo said to the light in the window of the house on Clock Island. “It’s about bloody time.”
Make a Wish
Astrid woke from a deep and dreamless sleep. What had woken her? Her cat jumping on the bed? No, Vince Purraldi was sound asleep curled up in his basket on the rug. Sometimes the wind woke Astrid up when it rattled the roof of their old house, but the tree branches were quiet outside her window. No wind tonight. Although she was scared, she got out of bed and went to the window. Maybe a bird had tapped on the glass?
Astrid gasped as the room was flooded with white light, like a car’s headlights but a thousand times stronger and brighter.
Then it was gone. Is that what had woken her? That blast of light in her room?
Where had it come from?she wondered.
Astrid grabbed her binoculars hanging off her bedpost. She knelt at the window, binoculars pressed to her eyes, and gazed across the water to where a lonesome island lay like a sleeping turtle in the cold ocean.
The light flashed again.
It had come from the lighthouse. The lighthouse on the island.
“But,” Astrid whispered to the window, “that lighthouse has been dark forever.”
What did it mean?
The answer came as suddenly to her as the light in her window.
Quietly as she could, she left her bedroom and slipped into the room acrossthe hall. Max, her nine-year-old brother, was sleeping so hard he was drooling on his pillow. Ugh. Gross. Boys. Astrid poked Max in the shoulder, then did it again. It took twelve shoulder pokes to get him to wake up.
“What. What? Whaaat?” He opened his eyes, wiping away the drool with his pajama sleeve.
“Max, it’s the Mastermind.”
