by Matthew Cody
After their rest, the trogs ushered them out of the small camp and up a winding path that twisted its way into the hills. As they climbed, Jez began to feel uneasy. A change had come over the trogs, and their once-excited chatter had reduced to an occasional whisper. Whereas their welcome had felt like a raucous party, this hike was beginning to feel like a solemn funeral march. The last trip she’d taken with the trogs had ended at the Gentleman’s ship, and though he and his entire army seemed to have abandoned the Hollow World for who knew where, Jez couldn’t help but be afraid. She imagined herself stuffed and tied up like a pig on a roasting stick. Maybe she’d misjudged these trogs and were being led to a giant cooking pot.
Jez breathed a sigh of relief when the trail ended in a shabby little hut. Sitting outside was a harmless-looking old trog tending a small fire. His fur was mangy and long folds of bare skin drooped and dangled from his skinny arms. But he was obviously a creature of importance among the tribe—they all bowed their heads in respect as they approached.
Upon seeing Jez and Tommy, the old trog rose to his feet—two of his hands leaned heavily on canes while the third waved its curled, arthritic fingers at them to approach. For a moment the picture of the cooking pot loomed large in Jez’s mind, but this frail creature looked innocent enough, so she followed Tommy and the trog as they slipped into his little shack.
The hut was bare except for a small pallet where the trog apparently slept and a pile of what looked like rolls of long, dried leaves stacked neatly in the corner. The trog gestured for them to have a seat, offering them the choice of his bed or the hard floor. After eyeing the tiny black bugs hopping about on the trog’s filthy straw mattress, they choose the floor. Once they were seated, the trog picked through the rolls of leaves, gingerly choosing one from the bottom. With obvious reverence, the trog unrolled it in front of them and Jez realized that what she had mistaken for just a leaf turned out to be parchment. It was covered in some kind of hieroglyphs, a trog picture language. A book.
The trogs in the pictures were easily recognizable by their three arms. Many of the scenes were of trogs going about their daily activities underground—tunneling, building, fishing the great underground lakes. The old trog pointed at one picture of a lone trog standing on the surface and looking up at the molten sun. Then he pressed one of his hands against his heart and said something in trog-speak.
“Oh!” said Jez, understanding. “That’s you. You are the trog in the picture who came up to the surface.”
The trog smiled and repeated the gesture—pointing to the picture and then back to himself.
Tommy nodded. “How about that? He’s like a little trog explorer! We should give him a pair of silly goggles and make it official.”
“Quiet,” said Jez. The trog was pointing to a new page.
In it, the trog was standing next to a circle in the ground—a circle of light. A figure was stepping through, a figure with only two arms.
“Is that a …?” asked Jez, leaving the word unspoken.
“Yes,” answered Tommy, squinting at the crude drawing. “It looks like it. This old guy found a portal.”
The trog continued to flip through the pages, and as he pointed out specific pictures, a story began to unfold. This trog had indeed discovered a portal in his travels, and on the other side of the portal he’d met a man with two arms who’d spoken of the future. The man had told the trog of a black ship that would come and threaten his world. And he’d told the old trog the name of their savior.
The arrival of the Dead Gentleman hadn’t been a surprise at all. They’d been expecting it.
“Tobby Erber,” he said.
“He’s been waiting for you?” asked Jez, smiling uneasily.
“Yep,” answered Tommy. “The person on the other side of the portal gave him my name.”
“But who would know your name?”
Tommy pointed at the drawing of the two-armed man in the glowing circle. A squiggly line was drawn on his backside, like a tail.
“A cow’s tail. Of course,” said Tommy. “The High Father.”
“The who?” asked Jez.
“It’s a long story—it doesn’t matter!”
Tommy pointed next to the glowing circle.
“Where?” he asked the trog. “Where is it?”
He was talking very slowly and loudly, the way that people do when they are trying to be understood, as if volume can overcome the barrier of language.
Miraculously, in this case it seemed to work. The old trog peered at the picture and, with a tired heave, pulled himself to his feet. He hobbled over to his little bed and gestured for the two of them to help him. Tommy grabbed one end of the mattress and, reluctantly, Jez grabbed the other. They gave the loosely tied bundle of bug-ridden straw and sticks a shove. Beneath it was a manhole-sized opening, but it was unlike any hole Jez had ever seen. It was filled with a hazy, soft glow, and instead of descending into the earth, it opened out onto a stone courtyard shrouded in clouds. In the distance was a tall tower.
Jezebel’s heart jumped when she saw the open portal—this could be a way out! The other portal, the one Tommy had come through, would have just led them to a dead end. Jez remembered the paved-over crevice in the Percy’s basement. But this portal might be the first step out of here.
Tommy’s face, however, was anything but excited. They might as well have been back in the Gentleman’s cell.
“The Academy,” said Tommy, slowly shaking his head. “Looks like we’re going home.”
For Jezebel, the experience of stepping through a portal between worlds turned out to be a lot like throwing up. It was terribly uncomfortable going through—a twisting, churning feeling—but when it was over you felt much, much better.
The most disorienting part of it was stepping down into a hole in the ground and then falling out of the sky someplace else. The sister portal in the Academy was four feet off the ground, so when Jezebel emerged she actually fell and landed on her butt. Tommy appeared next to her, expertly, on his feet.
“Going through a portal affects different people differently.” He shrugged. “Just like some get seasick, but some don’t.”
“Great,” said Jez. “You know, I used to get so sick on long drives that my mother had to crush up these pills in jam so that I didn’t taste the bitter … What’s wrong?”
Tommy was staring.
The Academy was empty. The only sound was the banging of a door somewhere being blown open and closed by the breeze. Whole buildings had been reduced to rubble and shattered glass. Jez didn’t spy so much as a cockroach. The Academy was empty, deserted, dead.
“This was once the Academy of Explorers,” he said. “But the Gentleman came here with his Grave Walkers and killed them all.”
Jez looked over her shoulder at the dark skyline of the empty buildings. “Then where are all the bodies?”
Tommy scratched his chin but he didn’t answer. He kept looking, worriedly, at the sky.
“What’s wrong?” Jez asked. “Is it those Grave Walker guys?”
Tommy shook his head. “No, they’ve all gone. This is worse. Look.”
Jez followed Tommy’s gaze up to the horizon. A pink sun was setting low in the dusk sky. A bank of clouds had gathered just below it, signaling rain. After the hazy molten ceiling of the Hollow World, it was a welcome sight.
“What’s wrong? It’s a nice sunset.”
“That’s the problem. We do not want to be here at night.”
“Why not? What happens at night?”
But Tommy didn’t answer her. He was already jogging down the street, toward the tall rose-colored tower in the distance.
“C’mon!” he shouted over his shoulder. “We have to get to the Tower Library. We need to find a portal. Fast!”
It took them five minutes at a steady jog to reach the tower steps. Tommy paused outside and waited for Jezebel to catch up.
“Before we go in,” he said. Reaching up, he removed his goggles and put them
over Jez’s head.
“Hey—” she started to say. The ridiculous-looking things were heavy, much heavier than they appeared, and they tugged on her hair.
“If it gets too dark to see, just flip this switch, here,” Tommy was saying as he adjusted the strap. “They’re charged so you’ll have about ten minutes of paralight.”
“And what about you?”
“Then I’ll follow you. C’mon, daylight’s wasting.”
Within, a wreckage of metal globes and wheels lay shattered on the floor. A headless statue of a fat man greeted them as they walked across the rotunda. Piles of books lay scattered about, their pages torn and covers stained with something awful.
“The Orrery,” said Tommy, gesturing to the debris. “And the statue of Fat Theo. After the Academy fell, the chapterhouse portals were all closed, except for just a few. There should be one in this tower!”
Even at a whisper their voices carried through the hollow tower like an echo chamber. As if in response, there was a sudden sound from above them—like the dropping of a book on the stairs—followed by the patter of running feet.
“Wait!” said Tommy, and the two of them gave chase up the steps. Whatever it was ahead of them, it was fast and managed to keep the distance between them all the way to the top of the tower. By the time they reached the summit, both Jez and Tommy were winded, heaving and holding on to the wall for support.
At the top of the tower steps, they found a lone wooden door that opened onto the roof. The sun by now was little more than a bright-red sliver against the dark sky. In a matter of minutes it would disappear completely. Black clouds gathered and a light rain had begun to fall, hastening the sunset. With the exception of a short three-foot wall, the tower’s crown was open on all four sides, allowing for a 360-degree view of the once-magnificent Academy.
And waiting for them up top was a small boy in a man’s oversized robes. He was breathing lightly, normally, and smiling at the winded pair.
“Hello, Tommy,” the boy said.
“Who’s … that?” asked Jez between gulps of air.
“I don’t know,” answered Tommy.
“But … he knows who you are!”
“Hello, Jezebel,” said the boy.
“Huh,” said Tommy. “Looks like he knows who you are, too.”
“Tommy,” said Jez. “He’s got a tail.”
“Is what you do not see unreal?” said the boy, flicking his bovine tail playfully in the air. “Does the ocean disappear just because the mountain blocks your view?” He had a smug, irritating smile that made Jez instantly dislike him.
Tommy’s eyes narrowed. “A tail? Wait a minute …”
“Tommy, who is this kid?” asked Jez. The boy couldn’t have been older than four or five, but he felt … older.
“I am the High Father of the monks of the Enlightened Hidden City,” the boy answered, pleased with himself.
“The High Father is an old man!” Tommy said to the boy. “Not a … toddler!”
“I am what I am at the moment, Tommy Learner,” the High Father said. “Having recently died, I was born again into this body. It is the way of the monks of the Hidden City to endure a cycle of reincarnation until our appointed task in this universe is complete. Only then may we become one with the cosmos.”
He winked conspiratorially. “It drives the Dead Gentleman to a most furious distraction. He has killed me several times since you and I last spoke, Tommy, but alas, I refuse to stay dead.”
“So why are you here?” asked Jez. “Where did you come from?”
The High Father shrugged. “I came here to find you two. I knew you would come, but I had hoped you’d arrive a bit earlier.” He gestured to the darkening sky. “I’d hoped we would have a chance to talk before the Gentleman’s army awoke.”
“What army?” asked Jez, and at that moment the glimmer of western sun vanished in the sky, swallowed by storm clouds. Night had finally settled over the Academy.
At first the noise was just a distant shuffling, like the brush of fabric on stone. It had been disguised by the steady rhythm of the falling raindrops, but within minutes the city was alive with the sounds of doors opening and wooden floors creaking under the weight of shuffling footsteps. Hundreds and hundreds of footsteps. Thousands.
“I’m sorry, my friends,” said the High Father. “But that army. The Explorers who died defending this place. Their souls are at rest, but what’s left serves the Gentleman.”
Jezebel and Tommy ran to the wall and peered into the gloom below. It was too dark to make out many details, but something was moving on the streets down there. Silent and steady, shapes were stirring everywhere, and they were all headed toward the same place—the Tower Library.
“The dead are coming for you. Your warmth, your life, burns like a fire in their eyes and they hunger for it,” said the High Father. “There is no place safe here for you now.”
“What do we do?” asked Jez.
The High Father held out his hand. In it was a small, familiar device.
“A Cycloidotrope!” said Tommy. “I thought there was only one!”
“There are as many as I deem necessary at any given time,” said the High Father. “No more, no less. And since the Gentleman took yours from you, I have decided that there should be another.”
He continued to hold out his hand and the Cycloidotrope glowed golden in his small child’s palm. “You must use it,” he said. “You must jump through time.”
Neither Tommy nor Jez said anything for a second.
“Jump through a Cycloidotrope?” said Tommy, finally. “Are you out of your little reincarnated skull?”
“I once explained to you, Tommy, that at certain points in time the future is not set. There, different choices can affect the entire timeline, yield different outcomes.”
The High Father leaned in, his small eyes bright and shining despite the darkening night. “This moment we are at one of those crossroads,” he said. “Tonight, if you activate the Cycloidotrope you will see the place you are trying to go. I believe if you jump through you will arrive there safely.”
“You told me that traveling through the Cycloidotrope was almost certain death!” said Tommy. “You said I’d be torn into a million pieces.”
“I did not lie,” said the High Father. “The odds of survival are grim. And yet, it is what you must risk if you are to survive this night.”
“It worked for me,” said Jezebel. “Maybe it’ll work again.”
“A once-in-a-lifetime break,” answered Tommy. “You saw what happened to that Harvester. We’d be ripped to bits in the time stream.”
“Most likely,” the High Father agreed. “But if you don’t jump you will certainly be ripped to bits here. At least the Cycloidotrope offers you a chance, however slim.”
With that the High Father activated the little device, and once again they were gazing at the future, at Jezebel’s bedroom.
“Does everyone have a Cycloidotrope that peeks into my bedroom?” Jez snapped.
The High Father didn’t answer.
Jez walked over to the bedroom hologram. It looked so real, except for the rain—as the rain fell from the sky it created little shimmers in the image. She had jumped through once, and though it wasn’t at all pleasant, she had survived. Could she beat the odds a second time? If she closed her eyes all she saw was the memory of that Harvester being torn apart.
Tommy and the High Father were arguing.
“You expect us to jump through there just because you say so?” he asked.
The High Father’s smile faded. “Actually, no. I knew you would not believe me, but I had to try.”
Jezebel thought she heard the creaking of steps from somewhere below. Running to the door, she listened. Someone was definitely climbing the stairs. More than one, from the sounds of it, and they were getting closer.
When she turned back, Tommy and the High Father’s argument had become heated. But the rain was coming down harder now and it
was difficult to hear what they were saying. Their voices were drowned out by a thunderclap in the distance, but from the way Tommy was gesturing, it was obvious they were talking about her.
There was no time for this. The crack of thunder was followed by the crack of splintering wood, like a small crash from somewhere not far below. Jez poked her head through the doorway, but in the failing evening light the tower had gone pitch-black—she couldn’t see a thing. She remembered Tommy’s paralight goggles strapped to her forehead.
Self-consciously, she pulled the goggles down over her eyes. At first there was nothing different about her vision, just a slight bluish tinge. She flipped a switch, and it was like seeing the world through a lightning flash. Everything was illuminated in a washed-out blue, including the tower stairs beneath her.
Standing there on the steps not ten feet away was a human corpse in a tattered Explorer’s uniform. Its leering face was mostly bone, with only a few strips of flesh clinging to the skull. It was reaching, awkwardly, for her, but its foot had fallen through a weak spot in the stairs, and the splintered wood was clamped around the rotted meat like a bear trap.
And behind it, more corpses as far as the eye could see. They lined the stairs—a scrambling, squirming mess of putrid arms and legs. The only thing keeping them at bay was the one stuck up front. He was creating a bottleneck, but not for long. As soon as they spied Jezebel they surged forward, trampling the leader underfoot. Jez heard the breaking of bones, like the cracking of dried twigs, as the mindless masses crawled over each other to get to her.
With a scream she slammed the door. She looked around for something to barricade it with, but there was nothing.
“Tommy! They’re here!” she shouted, but her words were lost in the roar of the winds and rain. He was so busy arguing with the High Father that he wasn’t paying attention to her or to the doorway.
The door creaked as something smacked against it. The handle began to turn.
“TOMMY!” Jez put her weight into the door. Still Tommy didn’t hear. The storm raged around them so fiercely that her own words sounded muffled in her ears.