Steemjammer: Through the Verltgaat by John Eubank Read Free Book Online Page B

vanished one afternoon several months earlier. The children had been in the back yard with their father learning how to swing a mace and block with a shield. When they’d come in for dinner, she wasn’t there.
    A pot of rootkoel - sweet-and-sour red cabbage and apple slices flavored with juniper berries - simmered on the stove. A freshly baked ham-and-cheese quiche cooled on the counter, and a loaf of warm bread rested on a cutting board. But she was gone.
    Henry hadn’t been too upset at first, insisting she’d be back soon and telling the children not to worry. When she didn’t return, he began to stay up late hammering and tinkering on things. Then, he began disappearing, too, and this time, Will feared he’d run into trouble.
    “The thing that makes me so frustrated,” Giselle said, “no, angry – I’m truly angry over this – is how they obviously have a big secret, but they won’t tell us what it is. Like we were still just little kids.”
    “Hey,” Angelica objected. “I’m a little kid!”
    “Take it as a compliment, then, that I’m starting to think of you otherwise. Look, all this stuff about Holland and Ost Frisia. It’s begekkin!” Nuts !
    “Ost Frisia? For us it’s Holland and the Black Forest.”
    “Right, the Black Forest – land of cuckoo clocks. We’re preparing to ‘go home’ to a place that they can’t even name consistently, and what’s with all the paranoia? Do you know why we live on boats? Because ‘Shadovecht don’t do so well in water!’ Can you believe it?”
    Angelica scowled. “I believe my dad.”
    They locked eyes. Giselle was surprised to discover the ferocity of her little cousin’s gaze.
    “Fine,” she said. “Believe him. But where is he? I still say they should have told us something, so at least we wouldn’t be worried.”
    WHACK!
    Startled by the sudden noise, they looked around.
    “What was that?” Giselle said.
    “I don’t know,” her little cousin replied.
    WHACK! SMACK! WHACK!
    Giselle cringed. “Sounds like the boiler’s thumping. Where’s Will? We need to kill the fire, now, or it will explode!”

 
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 6
     
    A voice of warning
     
     
    In the library, Will had passed a breaking point. He knew his father would never approve of what he was doing, but if his parents and Onkel Deet were in trouble, that no longer mattered. Worried that they’d wasted days searching for a secret door, he had to find out what, if anything, was behind the wall. Using the voormaaker, a twelve-pound sledgehammer , he began knocking a hole in the plaster.
    With each blow, he felt like he was getting closer to resolving something. Not just where his parents were, but years of unanswered questions and frustration.
    He recalled the time he’d been sent to public school, because his mother had felt it would be good for him. The math teacher had laughed at him for trying to explain incalculus, while the science teacher had scolded him for believing, as his parents had taught, that there were at least 152 elements on the periodic table and not 118.
    “At least,” he thought, “I never told them about the six exceptions to the laws of thermodynamics.”
    As he swung the hammer, he remembered whispered voices that he could sometimes understand – his fellow students laughing at his strange clothing and unruly hair. A few kids tried to befriend him, but then others ridiculed them, chasing them away. He felt cast out and alone.
    Once he’d summoned the nerve to talk to a girl he found pretty, and she’d actually seemed interested in him – until her friends came and swept her away. Chips flew, and he hammered faster and faster.
    “Will, no!” cried a voice behind him.
    He stopped but could only see a thick cloud of white plaster dust. As it cleared, his sister and cousin appeared, holding cloths over their faces and coughing.
    Vibrations had caused a small glass display box to teeter to the edge of a table, and it was about to fall.