The Gatekeeper

by Nuraliah Norasid

  She had barely regained control of herself when brightness swept over her eyelids. She heard someone in the group gasp. Wei cursed. She opened her eyes to blinding light that caused her to squint. Two of the police raiders were peering into the kolong. For a time, everything seemed to be still as the two parties stared at each other. Barani didn’t know who was more shocked in the encounter—the escaping group or the raiders who had seen her.

  Seen her. Flashes of old images came to her. Barani knew she did not have much time. She had been keeping only one eye barely cracked. Now, she pried them both wide open to give the raiders her deadly stare. And just like all those years before, the men, these soldiers in civil service, froze over into stone. Somehow, something about the whole business of history repeating itself tickled Barani. She started chuckling at first, before it grew into a near manic cackle. The group stared at her, both in fear and with concern.

  “Ani,” she heard Kak Sab say. “Can?”

  Barani’s face was wet. She had apparently been crying too.

  She wiped at her cheeks, replying, “Can, can.”

  When they reached the Gatekeeper’s Path, Barani kicked over the pots of incense, and the others covered up the entrance as best as they could with bits of junk from a nearby trash pile. Barani looked back as she ran, as with every bitter and heavy step Nelroote became a tinier crack in the shadows behind her until, with every lamp they extinguished along the way, it gradually turned into nothing but void.

  Uprooted

  It was strange, this allowance of touch—strange that Ria didn’t flinch away from the accidental brushes of the backs of Eedric’s hands, and that she allowed the light flutters of his fingers seeking hers, and later the lacing of their fingers like zipper teeth joining to close a rift. He, on the other hand, didn’t seem to think anything of it, grinning goofily when she didn’t pull away.

  They returned to the keramat together at his insistence. She’d suggested he go straight home after helping her locate the entrance into the quarry as it was already late, but he wouldn’t hear of it; said it was only proper he saw her safely “home”. They emerged into the keramat, breathing in as if divers from the dark breaking the surface for lighted air. Their hands were still joined and she thought he would let it go, step away, say goodbye. He held on, studying her face in the wavering light of the nearest lamp.

  She felt her face twitch when he ran a thumb underneath her eye.

  “Got eyelash,” he informed her gently, but didn’t lift the thumb from under her skin after he was apparently done. Instead, he ran it along the arc and traced another from the inner corner of her eye to her nose, going down the side of it to lips then chin.

  Too late did Ria hear the voices coming from the Gatekeeper’s Path corridor on the far side of the chamber. When she turned, she was already seeing the lamp light. There was only time enough to edge away from Eedric’s touch as Barani emerged with Lan and about a dozen others including Kak Sab behind her. Bara froze at the sight of Eedric, and in her sister’s countenance, Ria recognised the petrifaction’s aftermath. In the pain her eyes held and the dazedness that Bara was desperately trying to blink away even as she beheld Eedric. Hysteria buzzed just under the surface of her sister’s person. There was none of the aged calm or control that Ria came to realise was a terribly fragile thing. When Bara finally moved, it was to make a dash for Eedric, her hair vicious and alive in a way that Ria had never seen before.

  Ria had to move quickly and plant herself between them, forcing Barani to stop just short of an arm’s reach of the stupefied survivalist. Bara’s livid eyes were so fixated on Eedric that Ria could not help the slivers of fear crawling into her.

  “You!” shouted Barani, pointing at Eedric. “This is all you!” There was a tremor in Barani’s voice. Tears were welling in her eyes, and she snapped her gaze to Ria. “He was supposed to be gone!”

  “He’s my friend,” Ria said, quickly adding, “and he’s just like us.”

  “Like us?” Barani asked, voice dropping low. Bara took a step forward—Ria took one back—and continued, her voice louder, “Like us? What have you been telling him”—Bara stabbed a finger in Eedric’s direction, though not once taking her eyes off Ria—“that led to the raid on our home?!”

  If hearts could voluntarily stop their ceaseless work, Ria’s would have done so at that moment. At first she could only stare at the corridor beyond, seeing only the ominous black from extinguished lamps. Then her eyes scanned the party that had arrived with her sister, took in all the frightened and even accusing faces. A protesting hiss erupted when Ria snapped herself around to face Eedric. When she spoke, her voice was a quiet whisper: “What did you do?”

  She saw confusion cross his face, followed by a state of knowing panic. “I swear I had nothing to do with this. I was always careful!”

  “Was there a reason why you wanted me to go out with you today?” she asked. Escalating in her discomposure, she went on, “I told you about the village, the settlement, where I lived, what I did and you—”

  “Ria,” Eedric broke in, taking hold of her. “Why would I do that to you? Why the hell would I do that to you?” Ria didn’t hear the words, only felt the big hands as they continued to clasp her upper arms and the shaking, always the shaking.

  “A man like him, they need no reason!” Barani put in. “If anything, position! There’s a million like you. They would not have known if it wasn’t for him. Now the police going into our homes, rounding people up, bringing to—”

  Ria spun round now to face Barani. “Then why are you here? Why aren’t you there, helping them?”

  Bara closed up the distance until the angry serpent buzz was right in Ria’s ears. “Why?” Bara demanded. “Why am I here? I am here, for you. As I have always been!” She heard Bara suck in a breath, then draw back. “And what do you think I should do against all of them? I am not you!”

  Bara appeared to regret the words the moment they left her. She gazed down at Ria, shoulders heaving before snapping her attention to Eedric, who in that moment had turned his flickering attention from Barani back to Ria. Acting quickly, Ria grabbed hold of Eedric’s arm and turned him away so that he would not see Barani’s eyes clouding over, all her snakes pointed towards him. Beneath Ria’s hand, Eedric’s body was already racked in tension. She could feel the pulse in his wrist hammering fast. With this much fear and anxiety coursing through his person, she knew his transformation from his Human self into that of the Changer was imminent. His skin was already glossing over, stretching over elongating bone, as the blood vessels rose closer to the surface, warming her hand. If he proceeded with the change any further, the crowd, now an angry, buzzing thing looking for something, anything, to blame, would react, and at the end of it nothing would stand but new statues and the two sisters in a room full of regrets.

  “Don’t,” Ria warned Barani.

  Bara thrust her face towards Ria’s, hissing through bared teeth to add to the din her hair was already making. Her eyes were clear again, but they burnt a corybantic violet, their pupils squeezed so thin the knots were nearly invisible.

  “You would protect him?”

  “You have to listen to me, Kak, please. I have been with him every time he came down here. He has not even got close to Nelroote. He has been nothing but kind to me. It couldn’t have been him. It couldn’t.”

  As the crowd let out a collective cry of nay saying, Ria could see a fleeting softening of her sister’s features, followed by a shot of pain. Then Bara clenched her jaw. Very quietly and steadily, she hissed, “The raid didn’t just happen.” Each cavernous hold seemed to whisper as the silence stretched between the sisters in spite of the incensed murmurs in the background.

  “No,” Ria agreed, keeping a level gaze on Bara and later appealing to the others in the chamber, “I know it didn’t just happen.” She looked to each and every one of them. “But ever since that day, this man has never been to Nelroote. It could have been one of the feelers. Or
someone who goes to the surface a lot. What we can do is—”

  “Like who?” Lan demanded, unable to keep his counsel any longer.

  Ria said nothing to his question, but her guilty regard of him spoke all the answer he didn’t want to hear.

  “No,” said Lan, shaking his head. Scowling at Ria, he added, “You! You were always the problem here. A murderer and a traitor! They are here for you!”

  Eedric went fully tense under her hold. Lan started to take a lunge at her.

  “No, Lan.” Barani’s voice was cold, her expression colder. She drew herself up to her full height, but there was a tiredness to her bearing. She kept her eyes steady on Ria’s face, her face completely devoid of expression. “Don’t come back,” she said. Indicating Eedric, she added, “And take that animal with you.”

  Wei, who had been keeping himself out of the exchange, suddenly stepped from the crowd and appealed to Barani: “We can’t just let them leave! You don’t know what people like him do!” Turning to the rest of the people in the keramat, he went on, “Keep him here. If they come and they find us, they find him with us!”

  There was a ripple of agreement.

  Quickly staunched by Barani, who said over her shoulder, “Ria goes. And the animal with her. If anyone disagrees… You will have plenty of friends in this damn room. And I will start with you, Wei.”

  Ria wasn’t aware of how long she stood there, unable to utter a word. Barani seemed so distant then, and so diminished in her line of sight. She only felt Eedric’s hand take hers—she didn’t even know when he’d come back to himself again—and tug for her to come away with him. She did not move at first.

  “I know the catacombs,” she said beseechingly. “I have studied them. I have maps. There are places you can hide and one not far from here. Let me do that, at least.”

  Barani shook her head slowly, but said nothing.

  “Please,” Ria begged, voice dropping to a near whisper.

  There was no response.

  Eedric tightened his hold on her and pulled harder. Ria would not take her eyes off Barani. Her sister only returned the look with an impassive one of her own. When Ria finally turned away, the world became a blur of grey-blue and black-lined orange. She could not sense the tunnels as Eedric dragged her through them. She heard not his wet, rapid breaths; saw not the lamps or the skulls that lined her walls. Blindly, she climbed the stairs and only looked up when the damp night air hit her face. Where before it had been rejuvenating, right then it was dead cold. And even the moon peeking between the silhouettes of foliage seemed distant and accusing. The sky that had appeared so vast before was reduced to shards in places where the canopy was broken.

  They were still walking when she turned to the man beside her. She had thought he had gone back to his Human state, but she saw that the vestiges of his other form were still in the process of ebbing away, leaving his skin visibly pallid even in the dark of the forest. His grip on her arm was strong enough to bruise.

  She had thought she would see disgust in his face. Men like him, they never wanted a hassle, a problem, on their hands. Yet he disregarded the danger of her snakes and pulled her into an embrace. He hoarsely whispered, “I’m so sorry,” and pressed his mouth into the side of her neck. His lips were dry, scraping at her skin. “I shouldn’t—I shouldn’t have—”

  She stood stiffly before wrapping her arms around him. His shoulders gave no comfort. Nonetheless, she clung to him.

  Drown

  Ria clung to him, cheek against his neck as her fingers dug into his shoulders. As if he were an anchoring tree. The feel of her snakes sliding against his skin made him shiver, but he’d come to understand that they were a far better expression of her emotions than her well-schooled features could ever be: a wild buzzing nest in anger, focused regard at the moment before petrifaction, and the nicest complement of undulating waves whenever she was pleased or happy. Right then in haunted misery, they crept away from her, pulling at her scalp in the slow manner of one who wished to leave another who was grieving.

  Ria started to draw away. He caught hold of her wrists just in time. There was a surprised hitch in Ria’s breathing before she gave him a stare that teetered between surprised and crazed hostility. He held her hands, palms facing upwards in supplication, fingers curled into claws. He could feel the rapid pounding of her pulse, and above it all there was the grating sibilance of her snakes. Everything about her was shaking as she cried. Cried, he noted, the sight of it heartbreaking.

  “Don’t,” he managed to say. Don’t. Don’t what? Don’t go? Don’t look? Don’t fucking cry? Even if he hadn’t had anything to do with the raid, and knew nothing of the inner workings of the country’s government, he might as well have been the criminal here. It would have been easier for her to give him over to the underground people, to her sister who regarded him with so much cold hatred it could have frozen lava. It would have been easier for her to leave him to die that first time round too. He recalled seeing her from the back as the fight went out of her at her sister’s renouncement. She had fought for him at every turn and he couldn’t even do the same for her.

  “Come home with me,” he said to her.

  A raising of snake heads. “No.”

  He shook his head again. “We can’t stay here.”

  “Go then.”

  He dug his fingers into her arms. “If the authorities don’t find you, the people here might. They are not going to be nice and your sister might not be around to protect you.” He thought he saw Ria’s expression harden and he went on before she could say anything. “And if you fight them, those people will die.”

  He felt Ria stiffen. Her eyes stared, wild with despair.

  “There is nothing you can do any more,” he told her. You are no longer anyone’s adik, he wanted to say, but couldn’t because of the sudden escape of breath from her lips. Her eyes were glistening over again.

  “But you can run,” he went on. “The life you had before. All those people down there. This raid. There is nothing to hold you back. You’re free now.”

  Ria didn’t respond, beyond letting her eyes drop. He took that as a “yes”.

  A fear-ridden walk to the car park after, they were in his car. Within its dark interior and behind the tinted windows, he felt a little safer. He leaned back in his seat and let out a heavy, tired sigh. He ought to have thought of something better. His house was not the best of places but where else could they go? Hotels were too risky. Miz’s place was too crowded and Mama’s family flat was a place severed from him by his own neglect. Also, he didn’t want to implicate them any more than was necessary. Ria was, by historical precedent, a dangerous fugitive. He was concerned about what it meant for his future life if he was ever caught with her. But—he looked over at her—for the first time in a long while, he had someone he really cared for, someone who at this moment needed him. And he was not about to run helter-skelter down the road like a frightened pup.

  If he was lucky, he thought as he started the car, Father and Stepmother would not even be in when he returned.

  As he belted her up, she said absently, “The car smells like you.”

  He noticed the smell then: his cologne mixed in with the lemonscented air freshener. The interior was warm from nearly a day parked without the air-conditioning running.

  “It’s the only thing my father gave me that I actually value,” he answered. And suddenly he didn’t want it any longer.

  Ria nodded and said nothing more, keeping low in her seat. The street lamps cast her in a constant orange light. He found himself thinking how it was no different from the lantern glow in her chamber.

  The lights in the house were out when they drove up the short driveway to his spot under the patio. Father’s car was nowhere in sight. In a bid to disturb no one, he’d rushed out to open the gates and then bundled Ria into the house as quickly as he could to minimise whatever his neighbours’ cameras might catch. If he was lucky, they would dismiss it as him being the
immoral son, bringing home some girl he was going to bang without his parents’ knowledge.

  He kept a tight hold on Ria’s hand when the motion sensors flooded the hallway with light, and an even tighter hold when he saw Suri, the family’s maid, standing at the end of the hallway, having heard his car and come out to greet him. Suri was a tiny woman, made more diminutive by her oversized T-shirt and pair of worn cargo shorts that might have been his from back when he was a kid. She was only in her late teens but Eedric thought she looked a decade older.

  It wasn’t the first time he’d brought a girl home, Adrianne or otherwise, but the look on Suri’s face wasn’t one of discreet knowing. Suri stared at Ria, transfixed. Eedric looked down to see that a snake had escaped from Ria’s drawn-up hood and was sliding over her cheek. Being so used to her hair, he hadn’t realised it until it was too late.

  Suri opened her mouth, on the verge of a scream. Eedric lunged for her, pleading for her to calm down.

  “She’s not—she’s my—” Eedric began, clamping his hand over her mouth. He glanced back at Ria who was hurriedly tucking her hair back in. Slowly, he told Suri, “She needs help. I don’t—I can’t—” He placed a shaking finger over his lips, while his other hand remained, so tight he felt as if his grip might crush her jaw. But he wouldn’t let up. “Ma’am and Sir cannot know, okay?”

  Suri let out a squeak and then tried to shake her head.

  Eedric was about to say more. The urge to press down harder and make her swear upon her life that she wouldn’t tell was overpowering. For a moment, he wondered if the only assurance he could get was to suffocate her in silence—and all he had to do was move his hand a little and hold on until she stopped struggling— but Ria stepped forward.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he hissed.

  Her only reply was to reach up for his hand and, with surprising ease, remove it from Suri’s mouth. He blinked hard. Suri couldn’t have appeared tinier than she was then, when she was cowering from him, peering up in terror. His hand had left a pale mark over her mouth and on her lower cheeks. It soon blushed a deep red with the returning blood.