The Queen's Belt

Chapter 13: Grandpa

Vicky stuck her key into the key hole and listened. She expected to hear Lumpy's excited scratching on the floor beside the door on the other side. Something was not right: there was a complete silence inside the house.

Vicky quickly turned the key and entered. There was still no sign of Lumpy, no ecstatic jumps, no frantic licking or sniffing. She ran into the kitchen to see whether the dog was unwell and therefore unable to greet her in his usual way. When she entered the kitchen, she discovered that not only Lumpy was gone, but also his food and water bowls were nowhere to be seen. She checked the date in father's morning paper. The date was right: the same day as she left for Scythia.

Vicky went through the whole house for signs of Lumpy yet found none of the objects belonging to the dog on their usual places: there were no toys, no hair brushes, no dog's basket, no collar and no leash to be seen.

"What is going on?" thought Vicky in despair.

She checked her pockets for her phone and called mom.

"Hello? Mom? Hi! I just got home from uhm... school, and Lumpy isn't home. What's going on? Where is he?"

Vicky waited for mom's response.

"What do you mean, am I well? What a silly question: of course I'm well. I'm fine. Is Lumpy ok?"

Another pause followed.

"What do you mean Lumpy is at grand...pa's...?" Vicky slowed down and stopped talking. She realized that if she opened her mouth again and asked one more question, mom would conclude that her daughter had gone crazy. She had to quickly think of some plausible explanation for her confusion.

"Oh, I see what you mean, mom. Sorry, it's me, I have confused the dates. I thought we were supposed to take care of Lumpy for a couple of days, but I must have remembered wrong."

Mom seemed too busy at work to notice anything unusual in this.

"Yes," said Vicky now listening to a request, "ok, mom. If I'll find it."

She went into the living room.

"The shelf?" she continued, walking into their living room and towards the shelf with some books and vases. "A paperback?" asked Vicky picking up a book lying on one of the shelves, "with flowers on the cover? Yes I've got it. Yeah, sure, I'll return it for you. No problem."

Vicky hung up the phone, moved towards the sofa and sat down with the paperback still in her hand.

"It can't be true. It simply cannot be true. Can it be true, though? Then I must have changed a whole chain of events by returning the belt to Skeleiei. It must have changed the events here in the present too. It is true then. Well, mom's just asked me to go over and give him his book back so it must be true," reasoned Vicky, still unable to believe what she had just heard. "Great excuse for going over and saying hello. Just like the old days. I still can't believe it's true: grandpa is alive!"

Vicky got up from the sofa and went towards the door. Halfway towards the hallway she suddenly stopped. A thought entered her mind: "Grandpa's file... I have to give it back, but how am I to explain why I took it?"

Vicky went quickly upstairs to her room.

"The file must still be on the shelf where I had put it just before I went to Scythia," she remembered.

As she entered her room, she went straight towards the shelves with her school books. She found no file there. She then glanced at her table: the file was not on the table either.

***

Vicky stood in front of the door to grandpa's cottage. She lifted her hand to press the button of the doorbell but hesitated.