Chapter 41: Reunion

Crescendo

Chapter 41: Reunion

Molly skidded to a halt in front of the cave. She checked behind her for any sign of Veronica, but didn’t hear or see anything. Beside her, Joseph fidgeted nervously. “Why are we here?” he asked. “This will be the first place she’ll look.”

“We have to destroy it,” Molly said. “So no one can ever use it to hurt anyone again.”

“We can’t!” Joseph said. “Samantha is still in there. We have to get her out.”

“They can’t be alive in there. It’s impossible.”

“I saw them,” he said.

“I know you love Samantha, but she couldn’t have survived a fall into the fountain. At her age she couldn’t have lasted more than a minute.”

“She’s not dead! She’s in there.” Joseph pushed Molly aside and then ran into the cave. He bent down at the edge of the fountain. As Veronica had said, the algae had grown thicker so that a solid coat covered the water. He couldn’t see anything reflected on the fountain’s surface. “No. She can’t be gone. She can’t be.”

Molly put a hand on his shoulder. “We have to destroy this place before Veronica finds us,” she said. She looked around for the defenses Wendell had installed years ago. She found one of the trip wires, holding up the severed pieces. “They’ve disarmed everything.”

“Isn’t there some way to fix it?” Joseph asked.

“I wouldn’t know how,” she said. Joseph knelt down beside her to examine the broken trip wire. “Can you repair it?”

“I don’t think so, but there has to be another way.” He looked around the cave for anything that could be of use. He saw only the empty stone floor and walls. “What did these wires go to?” he asked Molly.

“They triggered some rocks over the fountain,” she said.

“Then we have to find a way to get up there.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. Build a ladder.”

“We don’t have any tools and we’re too little to move any big rocks or logs.”

“You have ladders in town, right?”

“Yes, but if we try to go into town Veronica will find us.”

“Not if we’re careful.” He grabbed Molly by the shoulders to calm her down. “It’s our only hope. We can split up and that way maybe she’ll only catch one of us.”

Molly thought of Annie’s words again. She had to act like a grownup in this situation. She wasn’t as smart as Joseph. Any hope to destroy the fountain lay with him. “Go into town and find a ladder. I’ll draw off Veronica,” Molly said.

“Molly, no. I’m the one she wants. I’ll distract her and you get the ladder to destroy this place.”

“Joseph, please, you have to let me do this. It’s the only way that makes sense.”

“No it’s not!” Tears came to his eyes. “I can’t let you do this. I can’t let you end up like the others.” He couldn’t let Molly die like his parents and Samantha. Not after all she’d done for him in the last three days.

“I can’t destroy this place, not on my own. I’m not like you. I’m just a weak little girl.”

“That’s not true.”

“We don’t have time to argue,” Molly said. “If you think about this logically, you know this is the best way.” She again thought back to what Annie had said. “We each have to do what we were meant to do.”

“You weren’t meant to die!”

“I’m sorry, Joseph. This is the way it has to be.” With that, she ran from the cave. Joseph called after her to stop, but she’d already disappeared into the trees. Another person he cared about was gone.

He started towards the cave entrance to head into town for a ladder. Before he reached the opening, the cave exploded in red light, blinding him. Joseph pressed both hands to his eyes and dropped to his knees. As he knelt there he heard a familiar voice say, “I’m widduh again.”

“Samantha?” he called out.

“Joseph?” He felt a hand on his shoulder. “What are you doing here? When are we?”

He patted the folds of her tattered dress to hug her. “Oh thank God,” he said. “I knew you were still alive. I saw you in the water and I knew.”

“How wong have I been gone?” she asked.

“You’ve been in there for three days,” he said.

“But I wasn’t in there,” she said. “I was in Seabwooke, but it was years ago when I was a gwownup.” She told him about waking up in a Savannah motel room to discover she was a 40-year-old FBI agent. She went on to describe the string of murders that led her to Seabrooke, not mentioning the murder of Joseph’s mother. She finished by relating her meeting with Miss Brigham and capture by the reverend. “Then I woke up here.”

“That’s impossible,” Joseph said. His vision began to clear so that he could make out Samantha’s chubby face. What did it matter where she had been or what she had thought she saw? All that mattered was that he had her back. He kissed her on the forehead, cheeks, and then lips. Even in her current state, her flesh felt the same as he remembered.

She pushed him away, “Joe, we have to stop Veronica.”

“I know. Molly and I were going to destroy this place, but we can’t get up to the ceiling to trigger a cave-in. We need to find a ladder.”

“Ow help you,” Samantha said. She took his hand, but before they could start out, the Fountain of Youth erupted in red light again. Joseph clapped a hand over Samantha’s eyes and closed his own to keep from being blinded. When he opened his eyes, he saw little Prudence and Wendell lying at the edge of the fountain, entangled in each other’s arms.

“Pwoodance! Wenduh! You’re awive!” Samantha said. She rushed forward to hug her friends. “I taught you were dead.”

“What’s going on? Where are we?” Prudence asked.

“You’ve been gone for twee days,” Samantha said. She hugged Prudence again. “But now you’re back.”

Prudence started to cry. “Oh, Smanfa, it was terrible. The reverend raped me. And he killed Rodney and the whole village of natives.” She broke down into uncontrolled sobs.

“Pwoodance, I don’t understand. The weverend? Wodney?”

“We were back in time, about three hundred fifty years ago,” Wendell said. He explained about the shipwreck, the schism between Prudence’s husband and Reverend Crane, and the reverend’s discovery of the Fountain of Youth.

“But how can this be?” Samantha said.

Joseph clapped his hands, the three other children looking to him. “Of course, it’s so obvious now!” he said.

“What?” Wendell asked.

“This algae. It’s not just some stupid plants. It has temporal properties that allow it to serve as some kind of gateway through time. Do you see what this means?” The others shook their heads. “This whole thing here is like a time machine. We don’t need a ladder or anything else. We can use this to go back in time and stop Veronica.”

“But we twied before and wost,” Samantha said.

“Yes, but your memories were wiped. If you go through now, you’ll remember everything.”

“Who should go back?” Prudence asked.

“Wet me go,” Samantha said. “Veronica is my pwobwem.”

“Samantha, no, it’s too risky,” Joseph said. “Let me go.”

“I’m the one who should go,” Wendell said. “I’m the one who let the reverend find the fountain in the first place.”

“Wendell, you can’t. I don’t want to lose you too,” Prudence said and began to cry again. Samantha, Joseph, and Wendell argued among themselves until they heard a drum beat outside the cave. “What’s that?”

The children went to the entrance of the cave to see a line of torches approaching. The sound of drums grew louder as the torches came closer. They stopped at the foot of the hill so the children in the cave could see them.

Every child in Eternity had gathered at the base of the hill. The boys carried pitchforks, knives, and boards for weapons along with their torches. The girls drummed on pots and pans, playing an ominous march. They continued drumming as a group made its way through the crowd. Veronica stood at the head of the group, along with a trio of boys dragging a squirming Molly.

“Joseph, we know you’re in there. Come down and I promise Molly won’t be hurt. I’ll give you thirty seconds to answer or I’ll cut her throat.”

“I’ll come down when you let her go,” Joseph shouted back.

“I’m afraid I can’t let her go. She has to answer for the murders of poor Helena and Phyllis. But I promise if you come down, she’ll only be locked up in the cellar for a while. Think it over. You have twenty seconds.”

“What do we do?” Prudence asked.

“I’ll go down there,” Joseph said.

“Joe, you can’t!” Samantha said. “She’ll kill you!”

“It won’t matter if you use the fountain to go back in time and stop her. It’ll be like none of this ever happened.”

“Aw wight,” Samantha said. She kissed Joseph for what might be the last time. “I won’t fay you this time,” she said as she let him go.

“I know you won’t.” As Joseph started down the path, someone emerged from behind a rock to grab him. Samantha cried out a moment before a net descended upon her, Prudence, and Wendell. Two boys came out of hiding, shouting with triumph.

Samantha kicked and clawed at the netting, but it was too strong for her tiny limbs. The boys dragged the net down the path, leaving them at Veronica’s feet. She knelt down and reached through the netting to grab Samantha by the hair. “This must be my lucky day,” Veronica said. “As soon as I get the fountain back, you and I are going to have ever so much fun.”

“No!” Joseph shouted. He tried to break free from his captors until one of the boys elbowed him in the stomach. Samantha screamed at this and again clawed at the netting.

“Take them back to town,” Veronica said. Before letting go of Samantha, she whispered, “This time you and your little friends aren’t going to escape me.” As the boys dragged the net towards town, Samantha cried for having failed Joseph again.