Dee closed the door behind him.
Part of Petra wanted to relive her dream, to pound against that locked door. But now the poison seemed like a cure. When the room went black around her she was grateful that she could not move and could not feel anything at all.
5
The Pacolet
AT FIRST, Tomik thought Petra would come back to the Sign of Fire. He watched the door, hoping it might suddenly swing open again and reveal his friend. But it didn’t.
Atalanta lay down. She rested her chin on her front paws and gazed up at Tomik with round, green eyes. “Why Astro go?” she asked mournfully.
“I don’t know.” Tomik shook his head. “I don’t get it.”
Lately, there were a lot of things that Tomik didn’t get about Petra, like what she was thinking when she bit her lip, or shrugged, or made some other kind of gesture that meant she didn’t want to talk about whatever he had asked.
Where Petra was concerned, one thing puzzled Tomik above all others: Prague. Why hadn’t he gone to Prague with Petra? Why had he let her—helped her—travel alone to a city where the first thing she did was put her trust in a Gypsy?
Tomik looked at the shut door again. Something was wrong with Petra, that much was clear, but if Tomik left the shop unattended, his father would be furious.
Tomik’s gaze fell on Atalanta. He made up his mind.
“Attie, I’m going to leave for just a little while. I’ll lock up. Can you guard the Sign of Fire?”
She barked, leaping to her feet.
“Good girl. And . . . if somebody comes by who tries to get inside, who seems like he doesn’t belong, try looking mean.”
Atalanta leaned forward on her huge front paws and growled. A snarl ripped in her throat as her lips pulled back to show rows of pointy teeth.
Tomik patted her head. Atalanta immediately stopped snarling and licked his hand.
“Mean, Attie. Remember.”
“Sorry.” She bared her teeth again.
After Tomik locked the shop behind him, he took something out of his pocket. It was another Glowstone.
When the Kronos family began packing their things to move far away, Tomik saw the danger Petra was in and decided he would try to protect her, whether she liked it or not. He hadn’t lied to Petra, exactly, when he gave her a Glowstone. His invention was better than any candle for seeing in the dark. But it was more than that. It was also designed to track Petra, and she definitely wouldn’t like being tracked or tricked.
Tomik weighed the Glowstone in his hand. He turned to the left, in the direction of the Sign of the Compass. The crystal in his hand flickered with a faint blue light. So Petra had gone home, then. Tomik put the Glowstone back in his pocket and walked down the shop-lined street. It was oddly empty for what was usually the busiest time of day.
Tomik smelled smoke.
“Move out of the way!” someone shouted.
Tomik turned around. Two men rushed past him, buckets swinging from each hand.
He ran after them. “What’s going on?” he called.
“Fire!” one of them replied. “The Sign of the Compass!”
Tomik raced alongside the men. He tried to bottle up his fear, but then he saw the skinny house. It was a tower of flame. Men and women circled it, passing pails of snow and flinging them into the roaring fire.
That’s never going to work, Tomik thought with a moan. The people looked like sticks, their buckets like acorns. Flames flashed along the thatched roof.
Tomik pulled the Glowstone from his pocket. There was no mistaking it: the crystal’s blue light was stronger. Petra had come here.
Tomik ran up to the men and women trying desperately to put out the fire. He spotted Tomas Stakan, blackened with soot, pitching snow as quickly as he could. “Father!”
“Tomik, what are you doing here? Who’s in the shop?”
“No one,” Tomik said hesitantly. “But Attie’s guarding it.”
“What? What were you thinking? Go home, now!”
“No.” Tomik grabbed a bucket.
“I don’t have time to argue with you. Look at that.” His father stabbed a finger at the Sign of the Compass. “Our friends could be inside that house. We have to put out the fire!”
“Then let me help!” Tomik scooped up a bucket of wet snow and stepped toward the crackling wall of flame.
This time, his father didn’t stop him.
The men and women of Okno heaved snow and wet earth into the fire, but they knew they were fighting a losing battle. The fire had already consumed the ground floor by the time the first help had arrived, making it impossible for anyone to enter the building. Now even the roof was ablaze.
Tomik couldn’t allow himself to think. He moved mechanically, passing buckets, filling some, emptying others. He knew his father was next to him, but they didn’t speak.
Then there was a sickening crack, like the sound of a spine breaking, as the beams of the house split.
“It’s caving! Back! Get back!”
Somebody shoved Tomik, pushing him yards away from the fire.
There was a crunching sound of falling timber as the Sign of the Compass began to collapse, the fire rushing down to hollow out the inside of the house.
Tomik felt an arm around him, but couldn’t look away from the flames, even though they hurt his eyes.
“Tomik,” his father said.
Tomik turned. A tear traced over Tomas Stakan’s sooty cheek. “I’m sorry,” his father said, and tried to hug him.
“Stop it!” Tomik struggled.
“Son, no one could have survived that. If they were inside the house—”
“They weren’t! Petra was not inside that house!” But Tomik knew that wasn’t true. His Glowstone had shown that Petra had come here, and his inventions always worked.
Tomik broke away from his father and began to run. He didn’t pay attention to where he was going. He stopped only when he realized that he could no longer hear the crackling fire. Now a different sound filled his ears. A bird was singing.
Tomik had reached the edge of the forest. He blinked up at the trees and saw a sparrow in the bare branches. Suddenly angry—angry at the bird for thinking it had the right to sing, angry at himself, and at Petra, too—Tomik snatched the Glowstone from his pocket and drew it back to knock the sparrow right off its branch.
Something stayed his hand.
The crystal was an even brighter blue than before. Tomik stared disbelievingly.