A HENRY STORY 2: Trials Of The Fallen Prince

XVI. Threshold

"How much time is left?"

"Another minute on here, and then your daily hour." Kismet's claw audibly tapped the hourglass, and Henry groaned, nearly losing balance. The bucket of water on his head swayed dangerously, spilling some of its contents, and he had to raise his hand to prevent it from falling.

"Hands off!" snarled Kismet immediately, and underneath the blindfold, Henry rolled his eye.

The silence bore down on his ears, yet Henry's attention was taken up by maintaining his balance. Standing on one leg, especially with an additional item on his head, was surprisingly more challenging without his eyesight. The brain lacked a frame of reference when visual perception was absent, so it was harder, but it remained feasible. This exercise had ceased to be particularly challenging for weeks now. The most arduous part was the tendency for his leg to become numb if he had to stand on it continuously for two minutes.

The moment the hourglass clacked, Henry breathed a sigh of relief, lowering his second leg and quickly grabbing the water bucket. He shoved his blindfold up and hopped off the little pillar, grinning toward where he sensed Kismet. "We all set?"

"Yes, you may embark toward the cave now." She gave his back such a hefty pat that he lost his footing and dropped the water bucket, causing its contents to spill all over the wall. "You're not forgetting the . . . What is this?"

In a split second, Henry sprang forth, reaching for the notebook he'd had hidden under his shirt. But Kismet was already one step ahead of him. With a flick of her tail, she snatched it up before he could even blink. As Henry looked at her, he saw her eye narrow. "Henry . . . ?"

"I may explain," he urged, but the expression in her eye betrayed her understanding of his true motives. He sighed, acknowledging that his scheme had only worked for a short while and that her catching on eventually had been inevitable.

"So, this is how you choose to spend your time up there?" Kismet scoffed, brandishing the notebook in front of Henry's face. He scrambled to his feet, reaching to retrieve it, but she retracted it. "You know, I ought to rip this to pieces for disobeying my instructions." A wave of panic shot through Henry, yet before he could protest, she continued: "I will refrain this time, but I will confiscate it until our contract is fulfilled. You hardly require a notebook for the task at hand. And remember this: if I ever catch you engaging in anything remotely comparable, I will shred it. Now, be gone."

She pointed in the direction of the cave that housed the pillar, urging Henry to move. He ambled toward it halfheartedly, shooting a few angry looks at Kismet and fretting over where he would record his logs if she had taken his notebook. Then an even worse thought crossed his mind, but before he could tell her to steer clear of reading the entries, she had already vanished toward her own cave, leaving him to his thoughts.

Henry let out a long, heavy sigh, his frustration mounting. The day had been a series of disappointments, starting with unusual volcanic activity forcing them to postpone their planned lake trip, and now this.

As soon as he reached the grand cave, he spotted the glow of the creek and began sprinting toward it, twirling the blindfold in his hand. While making his way up the pillar, he mused about the idea of going to the lake tomorrow and continuing his log entries in his mother's notebook. He would have to take care, though, or he would risk losing all his invaluable survival notes and sketches of inventions—not to mention those of his mother too.

It might be wiser to hold off on any log entries until he had managed to persuade Kismet to return his own notebook. He wondered if he had any chance of convincing her to give it back during the time that wasn't the hour of stillness.