The Gatekeeper

by Nuraliah Norasid

  She spared the petrified soldiers only the barest of glances before crossing the threshold into the underground. She navigated the dark, scraping her shoulders against the patterned walls on either side. When she finally came to a tunnel deeper in, she was met by the glare of floodlights that had been set up at points along the walls. There had been no guards by the staircase. However, two more men patrolled the northwestern tunnel leading up to the keramat.

  Their backs were to her and they had not seen her the brief moment she had chanced to step into the blazing light. She crept up to them and made just enough noise to make them turn around before petrifying them. Rounding the corner ahead, she saw a few more men poking their rifles at the recesses, sweeping remains from out of them and sending them clattering to the ground. Ria’s heart clenched at the sight and sound. Without remorse, she turned those men too. After disposing of two more patrols, she finally reached the keramat.

  Ria quickly slunk into the nearest pocket of shadow, very close to the alcove with the sarcophagus. She tried to remember if any of the escapees from Nelroote had carried belongings with them when Barani confronted her days ago, for she had come upon the remains of what had once been a crude encampment. Some of the loculi had been cleared of their occupants and there were beds made out of cardboard and piled-up cloth. The remains of a small fire sat in the centre of the chamber—the dust of charcoal surrounded by skulls that propped up a crooked wire mesh that was already blackened from use. The whole place stank a little of urine and shit, and decomposing food matter was mixed in with the odour.

  There had been no guards at the entrance from which she’d come. Only a few strips of police tape that she had easily ducked under. Either she had caused enough of a commotion on the surface to draw attention away from Nelroote, or the majority of the raiding forces were clustered in the main settlement itself.

  The keramat, however, was not entirely abandoned. A few police guards were stationed on either side of the far exit and a few more stood by the pillars. Her things were still in their old places—her books stacked in the alcoves, the suitcase in the corner filled with her cave survival needs—but she could sense the mark of someone else’s touch all over them. Even right then, there were men and women milling about her chamber, examining things with gloved hands, taking pictures of the various statues and setting up numbered signs by them. The bones of the skeletons she had kept so reverently, even though she held no beliefs, had either been removed or knocked askew in their loculi. The sarcophagus of the jar nah-uk’rh was closed and it bore scars where the gold leaf halo and eyes had been scratched out. She could not tell for sure if these transgressions were the investigators’ doing or her own people’s, in a desperate bid to make money out of selling the ancient gold leaves.

  On the ground at the painted lady’s feet, Ria caught the glint of the tool that had likely been used to deface her: a small scalpel that Ria had used to prepare the bodies before their interment. She peered above the stone table and when she was sure no one was looking, she darted out to grab it. Wasting no time, she used the momentum of her movement to take her to the far corner of the chamber. There, she pressed herself into the shadows again and waited, heart pounding, to determine if anyone had seen her. No reaction. She was glad that the floodlights the raiders had installed only illuminated the centre of the keramat and the various statues housed within. She looked about her, weighing her chances of sneaking past the party. When it finally occurred to her that she could not, Ria stepped into the light.

  A wave of shock rippled through the investigators. The guards were quick to recover from theirs, pulling their weapons free from the holsters. One of them took a silenced shot. Ria ducked behind the massive Cayanese statue in time to avoid it. A few more came and a bullet whizzed past the statue’s opened legs to land on the ground near her. Instead of creating a crater in the stone floor the way bullets ought to, the projectile bounded off of it before coming to a standstill. There was a hint of red and she saw that they were not firing bullets. Instead, what had landed near her was a tranquiliser dart. Her suspicions were confirmed then.

  With resolve, Ria edged around the statue to confront the guards. They had split up into two groups: one to flank her, the other to draw her out. She met the first and turned them before taking cover behind another statue. The need to take her alive meant they had to get into a position where they could get a clear shot. They had limited ammunition, and the presence of unarmed civilians meant they could not risk any misfires.

  A movement in front of her caught her eye. She turned to see one of the investigators backing away from her. However, his eyes were firmly fixed on the display screen of the digital camera that he was pointing to her. She glowered at him. He made the mistake of looking up at her. When his back hit the statue behind him, he and his camera were already stone. She barely paid attention to the man’s fallen body before she came out of hiding and confronted the last of the guards. They were quickly disposed of, and a few investigators right after. She caught sight of the backs of the others slipping out of the exit that led to the settlement and the southeastern gate. One of the guards she had turned to stone had his walkie-talkie raised to his lips. There was a likelihood that reinforcements were coming her way, but there was still one more thing she had to do.

  At the exit, she paused and cast her eyes over the keramat. Then she turned and started to run.

  Only to collide with a body standing at the head of the tunnel.

  Ria tried to leap away, gaze already armed to petrify. However, the body grabbed hold of her arms, preventing her from moving.

  “I knew when I heard shouting that it was you,” Barani said. Her grip on Ria’s upper arms tightened and she shook the younger woman as she demanded, “Why did you come back?”

  Ria had not thought to see her sister so soon and the sight of her caused Ria to freeze up, muting her. Barani was more haggard than when Ria had last seen her. The floodlights cast her eyes in shadows and deepened the cavities of her sunken cheeks. Combined with her stature and the threatening answering murmurs of her hair, her gaunt appearance made her appear fiercer than she usually was.

  Ria’s voice was barely audible when she finally spoke: “Kakak.”

  “You shouldn’t have come back!”

  “Then where could I have gone?” Ria asked.

  “Up there. Make a life with the Changer. Somehow.” Barani’s gaze on Ria was hard and there was a touch of fear in it. “They are looking for you, Ria. I managed to sneak into the settlement for a bit to get supplies. The raiders talk. Of you. They have been asking questions about you.”

  “Who told them?”

  “Does it matter now?”

  Ria nodded, then shook her head. Uncertain. Terrified. Already wretched. But not at the prospects of being apprehended. “They mustn’t find you,” she said quietly.

  “Better they find me than—”

  “No!” Ria cried, cutting her off. “It’s not better.”

  Barani looked at Ria with surprise.

  “Right now the world above is looking for anyone to blame.”

  “Why? What did you do, Ria?”

  Ria went on as if she had not heard. “They will take you and they will imprison you. And they will make you take the blame for what has happened.”

  “What did you do, Ria?!” Barani asked again, shouting now. Fear had begun to creep into her countenance.

  When Ria didn’t reply, the fear turned quickly to despair as Barani remarked in a quiet voice, “Why does it always have to come to this?”

  “I don’t think people like us will ever have freedom. Not as long as we still have these eyes of ours,” said Ria. Her hand tightened around the scalpel that she had held on to throughout her fight in the keramat. Her arms hung like heavy slabs on either side of her. Every minute passed as a carved word on an epitaph, every moment filled with growing dread. She remembered now the lost statues in her catacombs, helpless on their backs or knees, clutching at the
backs of their necks or holding on to snake-bitten wrists—the ones she always made sure to break, to leave nothing of them but feet and pieces of hand in the rubble that she swept off into dark corners. She had heard of other medusas who couldn’t even control their powers, petrifying people with every turn of the head, every accidental look. But at least they were not burdened with the guilt that came with the autonomy of bad decisions.

  “What we have is a curse,” Ria said, stepping up to her sister. “We can be taught to use it wisely but when things get bad, control can be lost so easily.”

  “You cannot believe that, Adik,” Barani beseeched. “You really cannot.”

  Barani’s eyes were truly on her now, wide and violet. They had grown more vibrant with passing time, brightening until they were nearly red. Everything about Barani was perfect, so perfect, and a part of Ria was compelled to keep her that way: beautiful, good and…perfect. Because Barani had every right to be. Beautiful things had every right to be, even if they made all others ugly in comparison.

  A dark cobra stretched itself towards Barani’s face, pulling Ria closer to her sister. The body of the hooded cobra glimmered in the dark, the snake’s predatory silence a loud annoying hiss in Ria’s ear. Barani continued to regard her. Nothing about her posture or expression showed any sign of fear or doubt. There was only sadness, and Ria knew she would be haunted by it to her dying day.

  It was two cobras, not one, that struck eventually. One to clamp over her sister’s mouth and another to sink fangs into her right eye. Barani blinked and drew back in reflex. Ria almost did the same. She wasn’t even ready. But how could she be, for such a thing? Barani lashed out a hand to grab Ria by the neck and squeeze. Her own vipers were in a flurry, biting down on the cobras each time they came in to attack, at the same time fighting to tear themselves off her head. Barani uttered no cry, of horror or of pain. She couldn’t have if she had wanted to, for the venom worked quickly. Still, it required a third snake bite before Barani was properly paralysed, eyeballs rolling upwards, face immobile as her body went slack and her hand loosened from around Ria’s neck. Ria dug the tip of the scalpel in then. There was resistance, then a breach. Liquid was spilt, colourless then red. She felt her face grow wet, wet as her sister’s was from blood, but she couldn’t stop, would not stop. In her mind, she played the memories of every one of her sister’s wrongs—the abandonment in the hut, then in the catacombs during the war; all the moments of silence in the stretch of time after, only to have that culminate in her sending Ria away after she had discovered her with Eedric. Fuelled by these memories, she worked the scalpel, worked, worked, worked, completely possessed by the need to divest her sister of their identity’s cruel determinants.

  When it was all over, the first thing Ria remembered was how her sister used to sing. Every night when Ria was very young. Because Ria believed her voice kept the ghouls and spirits of the dusk away from their house.

  She wept then, cradling her sister’s head as if it were a baby, the nest of vipers sliding over her arm in loops and esses, intoxicatedly slow. She didn’t hear the sounds of people approaching from the tunnel ahead. She didn’t hear them stop to regard her with fear and shock while she sobbed out as if she had known no other pain. And there was no other pain.

  She did not see the red dot that trembled on her arm before skipping away. Why, she barely felt the sudden piercing pain on the back of her neck, near the base. Numbness began to spread, leaving parts of her body feeling alien and empty. She wanted to hold on to her sister’s body, but she reached back and pulled out the dart, the tail-tip red-and-silver point glistening with a bit of her blood. While she gazed upon it, another pain came, less keenly felt but still there; lower spine. With the last of her strength, she dropped her face onto her sister’s neck and whispered her apology into the other’s warm skin.

  Aegis

  Medusa the First died from a beheading, and in a dream Ria saw herself on a rickety stage kneeling before a crowd that stared at her with eyes of the already dead. They appeared bloated and removed, spots of black bloom floating before them like they were an image in a de-silvering mirror. She saw herself in full, her dress hanging limp from her body, the hem coming undone in places. The air that hit her was cold and she regretted wearing a sleeveless dress. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw her headsman, an ample hood obscuring half of his face such that all she could see was a sculpted nose and stubbled jawline. His emotions were indiscernible as he raised his axe to take a swing. Fear rattled through her, keeping her rooted, unable to turn her head and inflict on him the force of her gaze after the initial ineffectual glance. She was finding it hard to breathe, as if her lungs were fighting both the tears and a weight on her chest. Her snakes were lifting from her shoulders and neck, exposing it, to coil into tight curls around her head. She felt the cool line of steel touch her skin above the silver chain of the army tag she wore as if the headsman was gauging where it would land before lifting the axe again. He whispered an apology, said her name in Eedric’s voice, so concrete she could smell his cigarettes on it, feel the weight of his touch and of his gestured volatile gaze. Later, she felt buoyant. The people down below turned sideways and in that way went up, then down again, before the sky came over her like a blanket. In the sightless light, she thought she saw the diamond of a kite trailing streamers behind it.

  Ria came to slowly. Sensation had returned to her limbs and she could feel her arms wrapped close to her body in bandages, her feet clamped down onto a hard, unyielding surface in what seemed to be the centre of a large and empty room. Her head still felt heavy, her snakes unalive. When she tried to heave herself off, she realised that there were further restraints around her forehead, neck and waist. There was an uncomfortable tightness along her hairline and over the whole of her scalp—it must be a cap, her hair was barely breathing. She could feel the blindfold pressing over her eyes and the bridge of her nose.

  This was before the opening and closing of a heavy-sounding door, before the hard voice of a man had begun asking questions about her political affiliations—Manticurean or F’herak, as if she belonged to either—her ambition in creating uprisings, her war contributions, motives… What else, Ria could not remember. Her reticence had angered him and had earned her strikes of fists across her face. Then came the endless wait without food, water, or a means of relieving herself. She was aware of the room’s strange smell, as if it had been previously doused in a kind of cleaning fluid. She guessed that it wasn’t new, nor particularly used. It had only waited a long time for an occupant. There must have been other interrogations like hers; no country existed without someone’s teeth being removed or tongues torn out with hot pincers, and all that usual drama. No birth without blood. No erected monument without a tragic explosion. Biasa lah.

  Feet moved with intermittent apologetic squeaks across the floor and every now and then she could hear a mechanical click and whirr.

  A woman had come next to ask her the same questions, her voice deep and charismatic, reminding her so painfully of Barani’s. She had introduced herself as Diyana and called herself Ria’s friend, but not before speaking coldly to someone: “You beat women, Officer?”

  “She wasn’t cooperating, ma’am.” Suara manja, a voice used to getting what it wanted, belonging to a creature who felt itself entitled to never wiping its own backside.

  “Try doing it when her restraints are off and when she is not blindfolded.”

  “But—”

  “We do not hurt our suspects like some Esomiri secret police,” Diyana had cut in, biting down on every word. “Do you understand?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  There had been the indignant stuttering tap-tap-tap-shrieks of his exit and then nothing, to which Ria allowed her mind to take in the presence of one who had sought to defend even one such as her.

  Diyana. Diyana… Nama sedap. Ria imagined someone tall and regal, with groomed eyebrows and full lips painted blood red, framed by a short hairstyle per
fectly parted and sleeked down with oil or cream. The suit she wore would be sharp and precisely ironed, shiny buttons down the front of a perfect figure, and a knee-length pencil skirt with a slit at the back. Stockings too, stretched black with the showing beige of skin like a face through a mourning veil. Diyana had apologised for her colleague’s behaviour. Ria only rasped, “It’s the only time they can beat a metu’ra.” She had tried to shrug but her shoulders were stiff and the neck clamp got in the way, like a thick, heavy collar coiled up and over with chains.

  “You mean, me-tura?” Diyana had corrected her. “Snake woman and not…what is the other word? Storyteller?”

  “Inscriber.” Ria had not got it wrong.

  After that, Diyana suruh ci’ta, Ria ci’talah, throughout which someone had typed away vigorously on a keyboard. They must be recording her too, with those big cameras meant for shooting movies. She had wondered if she would be in colour or in black and white, the date static below, hours ticking, seconds running and running the way she had been running from this very captured state for years and years.

  Diyana had been listening without interruption. Now, she spoke up, “We have been looking a long time for you, Ria.”

  “Yes.”

  “Your file is a very interesting one, Ria. Kenanga is practically legendary in Manticurean folklore, the disappearing Tuhav soldiers in the Ne’rut rainforest…military horror stuff the men still tell each other at camps.” Ria noticed that Diyana used the old pronunciation for the forest’s name, the one that distorted and emphasised the first syllable making Nerut sound like nye’i’root. It was an old Tuyunri way of pronouncing words but Diyana didn’t sound that old.

  Diyana had paused, as if she had been consulting something. Then she added, “And then… Rose Ville Estate down at Dornor Lane. Plus…all those soldiers and officers.” After a beat, Diyana remarked, “These are very serious crimes, Ria. Murder in fact. Why?”