by T. L. Bodine
“What?” Startled, he looked around, as if expecting someone to have appeared suddenly behind him.
“The Gatekeeper,” she repeated, looking excited. “On the mountain. He’d know how to get you out!” Her wings flitted rapidly, buzzing like a swarm of bees at her back. “He knows everything. He has doors to everywhere, even the human world. My mother told me all about him…”
“Well, all right. So we go talk to the Gatekeeper. And maybe…” he felt, somehow, as though he were gearing up for a starring role in a Wizard of Oz television remake, and grimaced. What is it you’re looking for, Adrian? A brain? A heart? No — courage. Definitely courage. “…Can you afford to come with me, though? I mean…in case someone comes through the portal…I wouldn’t want to make you leave your job….”
She drooped a little; her wings lay, perfectly still, for just a moment at her back, and Adrian hadn’t realized how much he had grown accustomed to the buzzing until they fell silent. She looked at the ground, thoughtfully, clearly having not considered this problem.
“I can go by myself,” he offered, tentatively, not wanting to face whatever insanity lived outside alone but wanting — at least, in theory — to ease her of his burdens. “If I can find the way.”
“Don’t be stupid, you can’t go by yourself,” she snapped, and shook her head. “No, don’t…don’t worry about it.” Her eyes met his. “I…this is important. Maybe more important than anything I’ve ever done in my life. The crazy people aren’t going to really miss me.”
His cheeks burned a little. He wasn’t sure how he felt about being the Most Important Thing in someone’s life, especially a someone he had only met the day before.
She ignored him. “Yes. Of course. Here — let me just send a message, and then…” she trailed off, opening the door and standing in the doorway, letting out another low, long whistled note.
There was no trace of Zachariah — no stray bits of flesh or hair, no bodiless fingernails — and Adrian breathed a sigh of relief. A new unicorn, one that gleamed a brilliant, pale pink, like sunlight through rose petals, broke through the trees. The fur was still glossy white, but the mane and tail were a bright, rosy pink, and it glowed in the doorway, brighter than the sun, casting everything in the room in a reddish hue. Sonia whispered insistent directions to it, in that strange language Adrian didn’t understand, and then turned back to him with a smile. “As luck would have it,” she said, closing the door behind her as the unicorn took off at a slow, easy canter. “I get a visitor tomorrow. Hopefully the unicorn arrives in time so we can journey back with her.”
“A visitor?”
Sonia made her way back across the room and to the shelf of glass jars, counting them. Her brow furrowed in concentration. “Yes. A merchant, actually. Stops off to trade with me, give me supplies. I don’t make my way into the main village very often. I’m…I’m actually not allowed to.”
“…Not allowed…?”
She shook her head. “It’s kind of complicated. And not really important. Don’t worry about it, okay? Here…” she dug around on a low shelf — one that didn’t have any glass jars on it — and tossed him a satchel. “Start packing.”
LORELAI
That night, Adrian knew what to expect, and tried to brace himself. His stomach full with Sonia’s cooking, the blankets pulled tight around his body, he waited for night to fall. Tonight he would be prepared. Tonight, he would —
The Darkness came suddenly and without warning, flooding into the cottage, oozing into every corner and blotting out all light, all warmth, all reality. Adrian was, once more, utterly alone, and a shiver passed through him. Something slithered past his bed; he heard it, the dry scratch of swept dirt sliding across something’s belly — something slimy and scaly and unpleasant. He reached out for the wall, to steady himself, and found that the wall was gone, replaced with a seething warmth, a furry, pulsating something that moved over his hand, enveloping it.
In the darkness, someone screamed.
It was Adrian.
It’s not real, he told himself, and found that he could not speak the words aloud. He jerked his hand back from the furry thing in the wall and buried his hands beneath his blanket. It’s not real, it’s a hallucination, a reaction to stress and fear and it’s going to climb inside and tear me apart and eat me away from the inside just like Zachariah, oh god oh god oh —
He screamed again, and heard a sob in his voice, and forced himself deep inside his thoughts once more to escape the terrible dark. He locked himself into the panic room in his mind and barricaded himself against invaders.
Adrian was nine years old. His father was gone, out of the picture nearly a year now, and William had gone cold and untouchable, an irritable ball of rage that Adrian grew to fear even as he continued to love him. William didn’t hurt Adrian, didn’t touch him — didn’t touch anyone, actually, and that was the problem.
Nine-year-old Adrian opened his eyes into his world, crafted from the fabric of memory. It was dark here, but not so dark as the reality outside, and so he stayed here, and wandered the halls of his childhood home.
Where’s Mom? Young Adrian wondered, padding down the long hallway between his bedroom and the family room, his footsteps muted on the carpet. He was wearing his Spiderman pajamas. Adrian had always liked superheroes; he had a whole closet full of costumes and toys and action figures.
“Mom?” he called out, but voiceless in the way of dreams. “Mommy?”
She was home, at least in some literal sense; she was on the couch, vulnerable and asleep. Her shirt lay crumpled on the floor. She still wore a camisole, but it fell loose of one shoulder, and there were dark marks like bruises along her neck and breasts.
Nine-year-old Adrian smiled at the man who sat on the floor, one beefy arm resting on the couch beside Adrian’s mother, a rough hand buried between her thighs. He wore blue plaid boxers that were too loose and showed too much; he smoked a cigarette with his free hand and smiled. “Hey little guy,” he said, with a flash of too many teeth. “Mommy’s still sleeping. Clear out, would ya?”
“No!” Adrian heard the words burst from his throat and they jolted him awake — or aware, he wasn’t sure if he had been dreaming or merely remembering. He shivered, and noticed that the Darkness had lifted. Outside, the first tendrils of gray had touched the black sky, and he fell back against his pillow, sweaty and cold, but alive. Whole.
Across the room, in her rocking chair, Sonia’s green eyes flashed in the semi-dark, and she smiled encouragingly. His eyes slid closed again.
* * *
The fire at the hearth died down to embers. Sonia knew that the coals were hot, even though she couldn’t see them through the thick blanket of Darkness that had fallen over the cabin. She felt the shimmer of warmth and heard the low hiss of steam escaping the wood as it burned. The room was warm, but she shivered, and pulled her knees to her chest. Across the room, she could hear Adrian’s breath. In a few hours, when the Darkness lifted, she would be able to see him: the rumpled auburn hair, the worry lines at the corners of his mouth, the furrows of his brow. But now, she knew he was there only by the sound of his voice.
He was crying. She heard the low moans, his voice choking around the sobs in his throat. She knew, when the Darkness lifted, that his cheeks would be damp with tears and his brow moist with sweat. That’s how it had been the first night and she suspected it would be the same every night that he stayed here. Whatever he saw, it was terrible. Whatever humans saw was always terrible. How many times had she sat here, shivering against the Darkness that lay over her world like a blanket, and listened to the screams of humans going mad from their thoughts? Every time. Or, anyway, every time that they survived the night.
So why was he still here, then? That was the question that burned in her mind hotter than the coals in the fireplace. Of all the dozens of humans who had passed through the portal on her watch, no one had retained their lucidity the way Adrian had. At first, she had thought perhaps he
was immune. She’d heard stories of faerie men who had slipped away to the human world and fathered half-faerie sons who found their way back to Dreamland. Maybe he was one of these, she’d thought; maybe the Darkness can’t reach him because of faerie blood.
But that obviously wasn’t true.
His dreams shimmered around him like aurora borealis. She saw them, when the Darkness lifted, curling out of his breath like so much steam in cold air. They were human dreams. Weak, incorporeal dreams…but undeniably human. And, besides, if he were immune then he wouldn’t cry out into the night the way that he did.
No. The first night that he had come here, two things had become extremely clear to Sonia: he was special, possibly even unique, and she needed to protect him at all costs.
Through the windows, the first pale glow of light struggled to break through the shroud of Darkness. The Darkness resisted, but it trembled, and the light broke through its viscous surface like the thrust of a knife. Light tore through the curtain and the Darkness receded, fading through the window in smoky tendrils.
In the pale light of the pre-dawn — the sun would not rise for an hour, at least — Adrian looked pale and vulnerable. Sweat stood out on his forehead. His eyelids fluttered, and he sank down into his pillow. One eye opened, stared unseeingly across the room at Sonia, and then slid closed as he drifted back into untroubled sleep. His dreams crept cautiously from his nostrils and his gently-parted mouth. They moved slowly and gingerly, like uneasy rabbits peering from their homes for a hawk to swoop down onto them.
“Don’t worry,” Sonia said, in a murmur. “I won’t take you.”
The dreams shimmered, flickered, and hung still in the air, suspended like so much gleaming smoke. After a moment of hesitation, they fell back against his body and swept back into him with his next intake of breath.
Sonia smiled a little to herself. They’re shy, she thought, and then corrected herself firmly: No. They’re afraid. She looked guiltily to the floor. Adrian’s steady sleeping breath had been overtaken by a snore. It doesn’t matter. You’re going to keep him safe.
Her own eyelids drooped and her wings lay flat against her shoulder blades. A last, sleepy thought whispered: He’ll forgive you for the lies, once he knows why.
* * *
When Adrian’s eyes opened again, the sun was high and bright. A small dish of porridge sat steaming at his bedside, and the scent wafted into thoughts before his brain had a chance to fully awaken. For a moment, he clung to the coattails of sleep, and he dreamed a jumbled nonsensical dream about porridge: creamy grains with fresh milk and butter and honey. His eyes slid open and he blinked himself awake. Drool gathered in the corners of his lips and he wiped it away with a furtive look at Sonia.
If she noticed the drool, she ignored it. “Good, you’re up.” Her shoulders were tight and her wings stuck up at an awkward angle. She paced the room, her hands balling into small fists at her side. Occasionally she would stop and crane her neck to peer out the cabin’s one window, or open the door a crack to peek outside.
Adrian chuckled, despite himself. “Waiting on your in-laws?”
“What?” She closed the door behind herself and made an inarticulate noise in the back of her throat.
“Whenever my in-laws used to come visit, I’d do what you’re doing now.” Although you look a little more tense than I was, he thought. And that’s saying something.
“What’s an in-law?”
“My wife’s parents,” he said, and then, mechanically, “Ex-wife. So I guess now they’re my ex-in-laws. Not that I have to worry about them dropping by anymore.” Especially now that I’m trapped in in some crazy faerie-land, he thought. He drew himself upright in his bundle of blankets and held the bowl of porridge close to his chest. “What I mean is — you seem nervous.”
“Oh. Well. I guess I am, a little.” She frowned. She opened the door again and peeked out. “She’ll be here any minute. I think I’ll go out and meet her up the path, actually.”
“Who?”
“Lorelai,” she said. “The merchant. I…I should go warn her about you. You’ll be a bit of a shock.” She bit her lower lip. “Here. Get ready.”
Without clarifying what he was getting ready for, she swept outside, wings buzzing like hornets. The door swung closed behind her and he watched her receding form with curiosity as he worked on his porridge. He wondered how Sonia could know whether the merchant — Lorelai — was on time or not. He hadn’t seen any sort of clocks or time-pieces since he arrived, and with the sun’s ambivalent tendency to rise and set whenever it pleased, he couldn’t imagine any reliable method of time-keeping. Maybe he’d ask when she got back.
Except none of it’s going to matter, he thought. You’re leaving soon, remember?
He finished his porridge and rose, setting the bowl down on the hearth. He hesitated a moment before getting dressed. Sonia had provided him with a neat stack of potential clothing he could change into. Most of it seemed to have been scavenged from people who had passed through the portal in varying stages of disarray. He held up a pair of trousers and noted a stain down one leg that looked suspiciously like urine. He set these down. In the pile, thrown haphazardly on top as though added as an afterthought, Sonia had provided some hand-sewn pants and a shapeless white shirt. Both seemed to have been made from some secondhand fabric — flour sacks, maybe, or old sheets — but they were clean, and fit surprisingly well. The pants ended a few inches above his ankles and the sleeves of the shirt hung nearly to his fingertips, but it felt right somehow that they should. He stared down at himself and felt like a pirate. Or a hobo. Maybe both.
He glanced at the window. The path leading into the woods was empty. Adrian looked back at the cabin and debated what he should do next. Finish packing? Yes — that seemed right. They had started packing already but hadn’t gotten very far. Sonia had worked out a rough list with him of the items they might need for their trip to visit the Gatekeeper in the mountains, but she wasn’t as much help in this as Adrian would have hoped. She had never gone on a journey without her family and hadn’t left her own land at all since she came of age, so Adrian had taken over the preparations entirely, feeling — quite justifiably, he thought — that he was more experienced in the matter and, after all, this was one occasion when a rational mind would prove quite useful.
He looked at the satchels she had provided for him, and wondered — not for the first time — if he would be able to fit everything they needed in them. He had asked Sonia, hopefully, if they were some magical bags of holding, bottomless packs which could expand as much as necessary to fit their contents. She had looked at him as though he were insane, and he took that as a disappointing indication that they were only regular travel satchels.
After a moment of consideration, he started packing one bag with food: cakes that Sonia had prepared in extra quantities to set aside for the travel, blocks of hard cheese that he found in her pantry, fruit — fresh and dried — and potatoes. He found some seasonings that he didn’t recognize but which looked useful, so he packed them as well.
In the other pack, he loaded in dishes and pans — Sonia had few of the latter, preferring to do most of her cooking directly on the fire, so this made for quick packing. He added blankets — a few extra, as he assumed mountains would be cold and they would, most likely, be sleeping outside — and then looked down at his packing job, feeling a little inferior. He tried to think of what he would take on a camping trip, and remembered he hadn’t gone camping since he was at summer camp, and that hadn’t quite counted since he had been in a warm bunk bed in an imitation-log cabin on a site with running water.
Outside, a glimmer of pink passed by the window, and Adrian glanced up. The pink-aura unicorn stood on the front steps and pawed at the stoop, tossing her head impatiently. Her horn scraped the door. She’s back with the response to Sonia’s message, he thought. “I don’t know what you’re saying,” he said, loudly, to the window.
The unicorn stamped.
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br /> Adrian thought about opening the door, but he could only think of the wet crunch-slurp noise of the unicorns disposing of Zachariah’s body. He imagined the unicorn impaling him on her thin woven-diamond horn. Stamping him to death under her hooves. Tearing into his flesh with rows of sharp gnashing teeth. “I’m not letting you in,” he said, petulantly. He felt like a child home alone trying to fend off a visitor when his parents weren’t supposed to be away. “Sonia’s not home.”
The unicorn made a low, obstinate sound and scraped her horn against the door again. She stamped her hoof and the door rattled a little on its hinges. Adrian’s heart leaped in his throat and he was certain at any moment that the unicorn would break in and tear him apart.
He opened his mouth — maybe to admonish the unicorn, maybe to scream — but closed it again quickly. He heard Sonia’s voice coming up the path: “Hepzibah, get down from there. You know better.” The unicorn made a quiet sound. Sonia responded in whatever that language was that she spoke. The unicorn tossed her head and trotted away from the door, snorting in what Adrian couldn’t help but feel was a very derisive manner.
Condescended by a unicorn. Add that to his list of firsts since arriving.
The door opened. Sonia started to walk inside but was pushed roughly aside by another woman of similar stature and with thin, veined wings like those of a hornet. She seemed to Adrian both very old and completely ageless. Her silver-gray hair hung in a thick, straight curtain to her knees and her eyes had a shrewd, world-weary look, but her skin was tight and unblemished and she moved with grace that seemed nearly preternatural. She swept into the room and was at Adrian’s side within seconds, catching his chin in her hand and squeezing a little as she turned his face towards her. Her fingertips were warm and dry but her neatly-trimmed nails bit at the flesh of his cheeks.