--Family Secrets--
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Chapter 1
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Chapter 13
“The basement?” Steve asked as Grandma Lily pushed the door open.
“In a manner of speaking,” she replied mysteriously, waving him through.
Steve sighed and went down the few short stairs. Gran followed, swinging the door shut behind them and plunging them into gray darkness. They had left Chris and Jean in the sitting room, both looking slightly disgruntled.
A moment later, the room was bright again. Grandma Lily had flicked the switch.
The basement looked almost exactly how Steve remembered – paneled in wood and full of clutter. If anything, it had become even more cluttered in the 13 years since he’d left. Not that he had spent much time indoors– who would want to be down in the dark scary basement when there were large expanses of field on which to playoutside? Plus, Gran and Laurel had encouraged him to stay away from the basement. They hadn’t had a tool shed, so the basement was full of a lot of sharp and injurious objects. It wasn’t a place you wanted an unsupervised 3-year-old toddler.
He turned and waited for Gran to complete her slow and slightly unsteady trip down the stairs. She was strong, but she was getting on in years. His eyes narrowed in concern.
“Gran?” He called. “Don’t you think it’s time you moved somewhere you wouldn’t be alone all time?”
“Hey... I’m not that old,” she replied with a small chuckle. “Besides, where would I go? Your Uncle Pete’s down in Florida? That’s one step away from an old people’s home, and I’m definitely not ending up in one of those. And don’t forget, there are things in this house I have to keep safe.
“The totem,” Steve stated.
“Yes,” she said. “But not just that.”
Not just that? There were more things here? Steve paused, realisation sinking in. This was the reason she had brought him down to the basement, not for the totem but for something else. He automatically scanned the room, half-expecting to see more totems or mystic objects hanging on the walls.
Gran smiled. Then she turned and began ambling towards the far corner of the room.
“Can you remember,” she said as she walked, “the first time you went into a basement on this street other than ours? It was the Polkiens’, I believe. You came back full of questions about why theirs was so much bigger than ours.”
Steve frowned. He couldn’t remember.
Gran grabbed a bunch of old-fashioned keys hanging at the corner and turned back around. She chuckled. “You were a very inquisitive boy, but your curiosities burnt out so easily. You were never one to nag. We told you ours only looked smaller because we had more things in it, and you accepted at once. Well, to be fair, it wasn’t a lie. We do have more things.” She chuckled again. “If you had been just slightly older before the move, you might have seen it – it’s not that well hidden.”
She walked to the middle of the wall and pushed aside an old almanac, revealing a keyhole. Steve held his breath as she inserted one of the large silver keys on the bunch into it. The lock clicked.
Gran was right. The door that swung open wasn’t well hidden at all. Steve was surprised he hadn’t seen it and the wooden wall which he now saw ran straight down the centre of the basement for what they were at once. His eyes were wide, his mouth slack. The house he grew up in had a secret room?
He walked in slowly. In the very centre of the room were a desk and a chair. Off to one side was another table, with different types of paper piled on it. A short shelf of well-worn books stood in front of one of the smaller walls. The other walls...
Steve gaped. The other walls were all covered with pictures and paintings. He could barely see the paneling under them. Real photographs of streets, buildings and cities were placed side by side with fantastical drawings that, though beautiful and enthralling, were clearly handmade. Some of them looked vaguely familiar.
Gran put a hand on his shoulder. “This was your father’s study,” she said. “After he and Laurel moved back here, he spent every moment he wasn’t by her side doing research into the things he saw in their visions. He worked day and night, drawing what he saw and reading anything that might help the mission.”
Steve raised a hand to one of the more colourful diagrams. It showed what looked like a dragon spewing swirling flames of blue, red and yellow and basking in them.It was remarkable.
“Dad drew these?” He said.
Gran nodded. “Your father was a talented artist and creative designer. He’d even graduated Summa Cum Laude from the Rhode Island School of Design. Before he embarked on his mission, he had been a much sought after landscape designer.”
His eyes roamed the walls. There were pictures of places he recognised, others he didn’t. He saw pictures of Asian Buddhist temples, structures that were clearly Roman or Greek, segments of the Great Wall of China, English castles, Tibetan monks and African shrines. There were some landscapes, but Steve recognised none of them. There were also some depictions of the sun in varying seasons. Some of these pictures were placed next to remarkably similar drawings.
“When he left, he kept in contact with us,” Grandma continued. “He never told us exactly what he was doing, but he did give us a few vague progress reports. He always seemed to think there was a more immediate danger coming.” She shook her head sadly. “Everything seemed great when he suddenly disappeared. We heard nothing –we just lost contact. For over a year we waited, hoping he would return someday like he had always planned to. But when nothing came, we had to accept the fact that he had gone forever. The danger he was so afraid of had caught up to him.”
Steve felt himself tearing up. “He was killed by some of the benders he was leading,” he informed her quietly. “The Alliance –the organisation he had formed – they told me. The others wanted to rule over non-benders and wanted to kill the Avatar… the Incarnate. And when he didn’t agree with them...”
Grandma Lily sighed. “You can only be betrayed by those you trust,” she said. She went to the other side of the desk and leaned on it. “Stephen, I didn’t bring you down here only to show you these.”
Steve turned. She was gazing at him hard and piercingly. “What is it?” He asked.
She paused before replying. “As I told you before, the totem is troubled.” She paused again. “I wanted to ask you about your new friends. How well do you know them?”
Steve was surprised at the question. He suddenly remembered his dream and what had happened to the Avatar who bore the totem in it. But this wasn’t the same.
“Not well, really,” he admitted. “But, don’t worry, Gran. I do trust them. They saved my life and mom’s too. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for them. I know Jean seems... hostile, but she’s a good person, really.”
“And what about the boy, Chris? He seems a little too charming, too eager to get the totem.”
“Chris is great. He’s the son of Sir Robert McGregor, the industrialist – one of those dad started the Alliance with. He has even put himself in danger just to save me. I trust him.”
Gran peered at him for a second. Then she sighed, pulled open a drawer and brought out a brown, leather-bound book that looked even more worn-out than those on the shelf. She handed it to him.
“This was your father’s workbook,” she said. “He might have written or drawn something that will help you on your journey.”
Steve took it tenderly, suddenly filled with emotion. This was the first piece of his father he had ever had. “Thank you,” he said.
Gran nodded. “It should be yours,” she said.
But as they left the room and headed back upstairs, she repeated, so quietly she might have been talking to herself, “You can only be betrayed by those you trust.”
Watch Here for the Next Chapter: 'Next'!
The Lost Legend series is fan fiction based off Nickelodeon's Avatar franchise.
Find more of my original works as Peter M. Ogwara on Amazon!
