by Kim White
“Why are they all faded?” I ask. But before the shopkeeper can answer, Minotaur interrupts. “Someone’s coming,” he says. “Get down before they see you.” I crouch down next to him, under the storefront window. A moment later two Keres drift by, stopping in front of the window. I can feel their magnetic pull through the glass.
“They’re searching for you,” Minotaur whispers. “They’ve figured out that you’re in the area.” His silver index finger points out the surveillance cameras mounted on the corner of every building outside; inside, a camera is attached to the wall above the door. It scans the space like a one-eyed robot, swiveling slowly from one side to the other. I gasp when it turns toward me.
“Don’t worry,” Minotaur says. “I’ve altered the cameras on this block. Anyone watching will see yesterday’s activity, and they won’t know the difference. Every day is the same here. I’m certain I reset the cameras before you jumped, so I’m not sure how they’ve detected us.”
“Who are these Keres?” I ask.
“They are the death fates. It’s their job to take each soul to the place it has earned and to make sure it stays put. Shades are not allowed to wander about. Unless wandering about is their fate.” He looks out the window at a group of Keres raiding a building across the street. His persona dims, and the silver armor turns black as his voice becomes stiff and angry. “They are also the Judges’ henchmen,” he says flatly. “Somehow the Judges have figured out where we are.”
“I don’t care about the other ghosts or about the Judges—whoever they are. I just want to find Lucas. If I go with them, will they take me where they’ve taken Lucas?”
Minotaur remains calm, though I know this idea alarms him. “Allowing them to capture you would be a mistake,” he says.
The shopkeeper interrupts before Minotaur can go on. She’s standing in front of me with a sweater the color of blood. It’s interwoven with silver threads that give it a shimmering, liquid quality. “Try this on, dear,” she says, holding it out to me with her paper-flat arms.
I’m so stunned by the color that I forget Minotaur might have been about to tell me something about Lucas. The color isn’t vibrant, but it’s recognizably red. I wonder how this garment was able to retain the beautiful hue.
“Minotaur, will anything bad happen if I put it on?” I ask.
“This is not Asphodel,” he says. “You won’t be trapped here if you wear the sweater. But she’s not offering it to you for free.”
I won’t be trapped—that’s all I need to know. I put the sweater on and it’s even more incredible than I thought it would be; it’s as soft as cashmere and comforting in a deep, almost unnerving way. It’s like being back in the womb.
The shopkeeper gasps. I glance down and see the sweater has brightened to a rich ruby red so bright it almost pulsates with life. The silver strands glint subtly as I drink in the color.
“How are you doing—?” the shopkeeper starts to ask but stops herself, deciding instead to try to close the sale. “Look how perfect it is on you,” she coos. “It was meant for you—only two hundred and fifty dollars.”
“I would love to buy it,” I say, feeling almost happy in the warm softness of the beautiful garment, “but I don’t have any money.”
The shopkeeper frowns and thinks for a moment. “What else do you have?” she asks.
I shrug. “All I have are the seeds in my dress and—” The golden pen pinches the inside of my cheek as if to warn me not to trade it. Cut it out, I want to tell it, I’m not going to give you away.
“And what?” she says. Her face is hard now, all the gentleness gone. She wants a good price and I can understand why. The sweater is magical. When I pull its hood up over my head, my mind is warmed by the same protected feeling I had when I put the sweater on.
“I’m alive,” I say. “I can get you out of here. Give me the sweater and I’ll take you wherever you want to go.”
“And leave my store?” she scoffs. “Why would I want to do that? I built this place. This is my place,” she says angrily. “Take off the sweater.”
I sigh, taking the garment off and handing it back to her. The color begins to fade the moment it leaves my hands.
“Cora,” Minotaur whispers sharply, pointing out the window at a Ker drifting toward the store. I rush over and crouch down next to him, behind one of the display cases. The Ker is peering in the window. It stands there for a few moments, until the shopkeeper smiles and waves at it, pointing to the red sweater in her hand. It looks at her for a moment and pulls at the window. Unable to open it, the Ker moves away.
“It’s going to get reinforcements,” Minotaur says. “When you lit up that sweater, they caught sight of the color, and now they know we’re here. We have to get out quickly.” He turns to the shopkeeper. “If you don’t want them to tear up your store looking for us, you’d best show us a way out of here.”
The shopkeeper’s eyes flash angrily. “Why should I? There will be less damage if I just turn you over to them,” she says.
“There will be a fight,” Minotaur says, “and even more damage if you don’t get us out of here now.”
She thinks this over, weighing what’s in her best interest. “You can use the back door,” she says grimly, showing us a wall behind a curtain.
“It’s just a wall,” I say, confused.
“Put your hand on it,” Minotaur says.
At my touch, a door appears.
“Wait,” the shopkeeper says. “Before you go, give back the color.”
She holds out the sweater and I take it and hug it to my body. It turns bright red. The moment I hand it back to her, the color begins to drain away once again.
“Come on,” Minotaur says as he moves cautiously out into an alley. I follow him.
“I’ll stay by your ear,” says Minotaur, shrinking his persona to a dime-sized glint of light. “Follow my direction and you’ll be okay.”
I stand in the alley with my back against the building. I can feel the pull of the Keres as they drift toward the shopkeeper’s storefront. I move along the wall, mouselike, trying to stay as inconspicuous as possible, but in this City where everything is dark and gray, I’m easy to spot in my white dress and living flesh. I stop at the end of the alley and stare down into the mirror-smooth sidewalk. My reflection shines back at me. My dress isn’t as white as it once was, but although soiled by my fall through the earth and the blackened post I clung to on the ferry, it’s still bright enough that no one could mistake me for a ghost. I wonder how long I’ll survive in this netherworld. Soon, I think sadly, I’ll probably be a ghost too.
“Don’t worry,” Minotaur whispers. “We’ll get you out of here. The moon is setting and rush hour is starting. The shades will crowd the streets to return home from their jobs. That might create enough of a diversion for you to make it to the subway station on K Street. A special train will be waiting for you. My father arranged it.”
When he says that, the pen vibrates on my tooth and I’m not sure I can trust him.
“You want me to get on a subway train that your father arranged for,” I repeat, the ache in my mouth telling me that something isn’t right.
“It’s the quickest way,” he says, his spot of light drifting out into the street for me to follow. “C’mon!” he whispers. But I can’t move. The thought of going underground suddenly terrifies me. I know it’s absurd, because I’m already underground. I can’t explain my hesitation, but I suddenly feel that it’s Minotaur who is capturing me. The pen is busy drilling a thought into my head.
“Minotaur,” I whisper. He’s back at my side as soon as I speak. “If I’m not dead yet, then I don’t yet have a place in the underworld.” Minotaur starts to answer, but I press on, excited about the idea I’ve conceived. “And if I don’t have a place in the underworld, then the Keres have nowhere to take me, which means they don’t have any power over me. Right?”
Minotaur sighs in exasperation. “It doesn’t work that way, Cora. If you
don’t have a place, the Judges will find one for you. It’s hard to explain, but before you make the decision to turn yourself in, you should know that they don’t have Lucas. We do. My father managed it.”
This takes me by surprise. “But I saw the Keres take him,” I say.
“My father’s Keres,” Minotaur says.
I don’t know anything about Keres or Judges or Minotaur’s father, but the golden pen isn’t causing me pain, so could it be that Minotaur is telling the truth about Lucas? My heart leaps at the thought, but then puzzles over the mixed messages the pen is sending. Did it cause me pain earlier so that I would resist and force Minotaur to reveal this truth? Or is it as confused as I am? Doubting my guides (both the pen and Minotaur) frightens me. I can’t afford to waver right now, so I decide to go with Minotaur. If I’m going to allow myself to be captured, I want to be captured by the ones who hold Lucas. Any chance to find him is worth the risk.
So I ask Minotaur, “Which way to the station?”
Running from the Keres
As I exit the alley, the mercury moon casts a dimmer light over the City. Souls come out of the buildings and fill the sidewalks. They are all one-dimensional like the shopkeeper. I weave through them as they hustle home from their jobs, staring blankly as they push their way through the crowd. The streets are jammed with cars and trucks, driven by the same flat people.
The urgent mood and the crush of people make me anxious. The ghosts complain about their problems out loud, talking to themselves as they rush around. I hear snippets of their monologues as they bustle past me. “I need more money, more money, need more money,” one of them chants. Another mutters nervously, “What am I going to do with my life? What am I going to do? What am I going to do? They’re going to fire me,” they say. “She’s going to leave me . . . ” One shade stops nearby to yell into his cell phone, “This is my third message. Do you ever check your voice mail? I need you to call me. I can’t do this on my own. You’ve left me totally on my own!” Then he slumps to the pavement in despair.
I try not to get too distracted by the commotion around me. The Keres are still searching for me, and the crowd is not a perfect cover. I look across the street and see two Keres gliding through the crowd. They move like smoke but are dense as black holes, bending the landscape as they pass through it. Their movements produce a detectable vibration, and my bare feet can sense them as they get closer. The two Keres suddenly see me.
“They’ve spotted you,” Minotaur says. “They’re telling the rest of their group. You’re going to have to run. The station is two blocks away—you’ll have to be fast.”
I try to run, but it’s not easy on the crowded sidewalk. I weave carefully between the one-dimensional shades, who are so lost in their thoughts that none of them make way for me. “Excuse me, excuse me,” I say uselessly, as nobody moves. The Keres are getting closer, and I’m becoming both scared and angry. “EXCUSE ME!” I yell at the next shade in my path, but he stares right at me and doesn’t step aside. In a sudden burst of annoyance and aggression, I push him out of my way. He is a large man and I expect resistance, but instead I pass right through him. It’s like stepping through a curtain of water—I feel wet and chilled, but I don’t actually get wet. Behind me I hear his curses. I turn to look; he is broken to pieces and lying on the sidewalk, desperately trying to put himself back together.
The Keres are now having as hard a time as I am getting through the crowd. Their gravitational fields are pulling in the shades, and they have to pause to spit them out and continue after me. This slows them down considerably, but even so, I can feel them gaining on me, exerting their pull on the glassy ground. My feet slowly begin to slide toward them.
Fear gives me a burst of adrenaline and I sprint into the street. I don’t try to get around the shades anymore. I run straight through them. The smart ones get out of my way; the others end up on the pavement. They all curse me for my rudeness, but it doesn’t bother me. The K street station is in sight when I hear the sirens.
“Faster!” Minotaur urges. “The cars won’t be slowed down by the shades.”
I catch sight of the cars. There are three of them. One is behind me, its sirens blaring. The other two are in front of me, plowing through traffic and mowing down pedestrians. They are made of the same smoked glass as the buildings; their hard tires roll like marbles along the stony streets, onto whose ice-smooth surface the taillights cast red reflections like trails of blood.
Minotaur’s light flickers before me, leading me on toward the waiting train. A sign arched over the subway stairs reads, THE UNDERGROUND.
The cars are coming fast. “You can make it,” Minotaur shouts, but I detect a hint of desperation.
Tires screech on the glass streets like fingernails on a chalkboard. I am only about 75 feet from the subway stairs when all three sedans slide to a halt, two in front of me and one behind. I hear the thunk, thunk, thunk of car doors slamming as the Keres get out and begin gliding toward me.
“Don’t look back,” Minotaur warns.
My heart is beating wildly, and the golden pen has come alive in my mouth—it’s twisting anxiously. When I reach the subway entrance, I pause under the sign, but only for an instant. I turn to look back, but nothing is there. The street is suddenly quiet and empty. Everyone has fled and I don’t see the Keres. Minotaur is silent as well. The pen starts to vibrate on my tooth, and when I turn back to descend the stairs, three Keres are blocking my way. They are taller than I thought they would be. Their sheer black dresses billow around them like breath exhaled into cold air. Although they appear to drift lightly, when I look through their smoky skin I see cyclones turning tightly in their centers, making their bodies firm and dangerous.
I try to step backward, but I can’t. The pull of gravity is too intense. My arms rise up and drift toward the Keres as if to embrace them. My whole body lifts off the ground and floats toward them.
“Let me go!” I yell. “What do you want with me?” I struggle against the pull, but it’s useless. A moment later I am drawn inside one of the stormy bodies, overpowered and unable to talk or move. When the Ker’s shadowy hands pass over my eyes, I can’t even see. It glides toward the car, carrying me inside. Minotaur hovers a safe distance from their force fields, glinting helplessly.
Paralyzed inside the demon, I am floated over to the car. The cyclone force inside the Ker is a kind of pain that I’ve never felt before—an intense pressure building inside me. It feels as though I could explode at any minute. This must be what Lucas felt when they took him. Where is he now? Does Minotaur’s father really have him? The Ker stops next to the car, opens the back door, and gets in. As the car lurches forward, my captor covers my face with a hood of black fog. Now I can’t move or see, but I’m determined not to panic. I close my eyes and put a hand over my heart. I can feel it thumping, and the seeds embroidered in my dress and the apple seed tucked in its hem add their small vibrations of life. The Ker swirls around me, her wind as dead and sterile as the soil of Asphodel. I take deep, slow breaths and concentrate on the life I’m carrying. My own, that of the seeds, and the life I’m leaking into this dead world, as Sybil’s tree released its life back into the barren plain. The rhythm of my breath and the warmth of my blood fill me with a strange peacefulness. I never realized it aboveground—the joy that comes just from being alive.
Writing the Game
I was a prisoner—that much was clear. Even so, Minotaur had gone to a lot of trouble to make me feel at home. This room was exactly the same as the one I’d had in life, except that the ceiling was made of crystal. Through it I could see the City lights shining like faint stars. A small sphere that shivered like mercury turned and vibrated in the center, like the nucleus of an atom, and was speared through by a rod joining the City’s poles.
I studied kendo and seitei jodo before I died, and I kept a collection of martial arts weapons in the corner of my room next to my bed: a samurai sword, a wooden jo staff, and a tachi—a practi
ce sword, made of white oak. I picked up the tachi and looked it over. Every detail was as I remembered, even the nicks and scratches. Minotaur knew my life down to the last detail. That should have made me more wary than I already was, but I found myself admiring him instead.
I looked around, trying to find a way out of my trap. I started with what seemed like the most fragile part of my cell, the glass ceiling. I jumped on my desk, and slammed the wooden sword against the glass as hard as I could. I pounded it over and over until I was dripping with sweat and the end of the tachi was cracked and splintered, yet the ceiling was as smooth as it had been before my attack, not a single scratch or chip. I stared up through the indestructible glass and wondered where Cora was. If she was still alive, how would I find her, and how would I save her?
I gave up and sat down at my computer. Maybe I could hack into the underworld cameras. I wasn’t sure what I would do if I found her, but it was a start. The screen-saver images were the same ones I’d cued up at home, and everything on my desk was just as I’d left it. A half-eaten bowl of cereal and a one-liter bottle of soda sat next to the monitors, a bag of microwave popcorn (mostly burned) lay open on the top shelf next to my collection of martial arts trophies. Two pairs of ripe-smelling sneakers were underneath my desk, dirty laundry littered the floor, a skateboard (rarely used) leaned up against the closet door next to an electric guitar (also ignored), a set of much-used barbells lay next to the bed, caving gear (ropes, clips, and a flashlight) was piled up under the desk, a box filled with computer parts sat next to my chair, and a digital alarm clock glowed with a pale green light on the nightstand.