Water Keep

by J. Scott Savage

  Kyja studied his face. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  “No. But I don’t think we have any choice.”

  He didn’t tell her he had another reason for worrying besides the Dark Circle. He didn’t know for sure where they would arrive on Earth. But the only big city located on the south shore of a really large lake in the middle of the plains that he knew of was Chicago. He’d never been to a city that big, and he had no idea what they’d have to face.

  “All right then,” Kyja said. “I’ll hold Riph Raph and push you back to Ert. Don’t forget to grab onto me when you jump.”

  Careful to face the wall so he’d know which direction to go when he reached Earth, Marcus held his staff tightly and closed his eyes. A cool sweat broke out on his forehead, and then he felt the familiar upside-down sensation in his stomach—he was falling. At once he reached out for Kyja and Riph Raph. It was easy to pull them along, like grabbing the strings of a pair of balloons, but this time he had the awful feeling something dark and dangerous was watching them.

  When he opened his eyes, he found himself sitting on a cracked sidewalk, facing a tall, brick building. The crumbling wall was covered with layer upon layer of spray-painted graffiti. A faded yellow sign taped to the inside of a dirt-grimed window read “Building Condemned. No Trespassing.”

  Marcus turned his head to see a white ball of feathers bouncing toward him on the sidewalk.

  “Something’s wrong with me!” Riph Raph shouted. “Where’s my tail? Where’s my long tongue? What are these white things?”

  As Marcus watched, the feather ball flapped its stubby wings, flew into the side of the building and landed on the sidewalk with a thump.

  “You’re a chicken,” Marcus said, grinning from ear to ear. “Try laying an egg.”

  “A what?” Riph Raph tried to fly, but only managed to get a few feet in the air before performing an awkward somersault and dropping to the sidewalk with an explosion of feathers. “How can I be a chicken?” he wailed. “I’m supposed to turn into a . . . a . . . chameleon!”

  Marcus shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s kind of random.”

  “That’s one big chicken,” said a bearded man sitting inside a cardboard box next to the building. He waved a filthy hand in Marcus’s direction and gave a loud burp that smelled strongly of cheap wine. “You wanna share? I could help ya cook it.”

  “Brawk! Keep that monster away from me!” Riph Raph cried. He disappeared behind Marcus’s back.

  Inside his cardboard box, the man blinked, and his bloodshot eyes grew wide. “Your chicken talks?”

  “I’ve gotta go,” Marcus told the man. “Let’s get out of here,” he said to Riph Raph. Dragging his staff, he scooted along the sidewalk to where Kyja stood looking though a tall, chain-link fence, her fingers hooked around the squares of rusted wire. Riph Raph followed in nervous little hops, bobbing his head left and right as he made sure the man from the box wasn’t following him.

  “Well, at least he didn’t turn into a lizard this time,” Marcus said when he reached Kyja’s side. But all of Kyja’s attention was riveted to what was happening on the other side of the fence.

  “Look,” she said, pointing at a group of older boys playing basketball on a patched asphalt court. “Have you ever seen anything like that?”

  Marcus glanced quickly at the boys, then up and down the street. “Sure,” he said, looking around nervously. “It’s just a game. Let’s get out of here before anything bad happens.” Loud music blasted out of the windows of the nearby apartment buildings, and a short distance away a group of swaying men took turns drinking from bottles wrapped in brown paper bags. All the kids on the basketball court were older than Kyja and him. And they looked tough, with bulging muscles and tattooed biceps.

  He tugged at Kyja’s robe, but she ignored him, her eyes locked on the basketball players. One of the boys took two long running steps, raised the ball over his head and slammed it through the rim. Marcus watched the move enviously. It was the kind of dunk he’d like to have tried—if he had two strong arms and legs.

  “Oh! It looks fun,” Kyja said, putting her hand to her mouth. She turned excitedly to Marcus. “Do you think they’d let me play?”

  “Are you crazy?” Marcus hissed. “The Dark Circle could show up any minute.” He reached for Riph Raph, who was still pacing nervously up and down the sidewalk, and the chicken pecked him on the leg.

  “Ouch,” Marcus said. He pushed Riph Raph away and frowned at Kyja. “Come on. Haven’t you ever seen a basketball game before?”

  “No.” Kyja said. She watched a boy spin past his defender and shoot the ball through the sagging hoop. She bent her knees and took a pretend shot of her own. “All the games the kids play back home use magic.”

  Riph Raph strutted up to the fence and looked around with odd little jerking motions. Probably checking to see if anyone else wants to cook him, Marcus thought. At least he has the good sense not to talk anymore.

  Noticing the way the men with the bottle were watching them, Marcus pulled Kyja’s hand. “We have to go. We might not be safe here.”

  “Safe from what?” a voice asked.

  Marcus turned to see a boy several years younger than him watching Kyja from the other side of the fence. At least two feet shorter than the boys on the court, he was dressed in a basketball jersey that came nearly to his knees and white high-top basketball shoes that looked too big for his feet.

  “What you looking at?” the boy asked, resting a basketball on his hip.

  “Basselball,” Kyja said as Riph Raph quickly ducked behind her. She pointed to the orange ball in his hand. “Do you play too?”

  “You kidding?” the boy said, puffing out his chest. The boy bounced the ball on the uneven pavement with a smooth, easy motion, shifting it from hand to hand, bouncing it between his legs and behind his back.

  “That’s great,” Kyja said, clapping her hands. Marcus felt a wave of envy. “What’s your name?”

  “Ty,” the boy said, shuffling his feet and pretending to make a fancy move around another player. “What’s yours?”

  “Kyja,” she answered, ignoring Marcus as he tugged at her arm. “Why aren’t you playing with the other boys?”

  Ty glanced over his shoulder at the game, and his eyes flashed. “Them? They scared of me.” He bounced the ball off the fence, spun around, and caught it with one hand. “You know Dwyane Wade and LeBron James?”

  Kyja shook her head.

  “No? Well, I’m better than both of them and Michael Jordan put together. I got moves so sweet, Ron Artest and Big Ben Wallace couldn’t stop me. Only reason I’m not playing in the NBA right now is ‘cause I’m too young. But one day I’ll be making me some serious cash and driving a red Lamborghini. Maybe even a gold-plated Hummer.”

  Marcus rolled his eyes, but Kyja nodded excitedly. “I want to learn to drive too.”

  “Yeah?” The younger boy tried to spin the ball on his fingertip and had to grab it when it fell off. “Tell you what. When I get my Hummer, I’ll let you drive it.”

  “That would be great,” Kyja said, her eyes sparkling.

  Fed up with all the nonsense, Marcus jerked Kyja’s hand. “If you’re done talking to Dwyane LeBron Jordan, we need to go. Or did you forget about you-know-who?”

  For the first time, Ty looked past Kyja and noticed Marcus. “What’s wrong with your friend? And what’s he doing with that chicken?”

  Before Kyja could answer, Marcus raised himself up as tall as he could while still sitting and said, “It’s her chicken, and there’s nothing wrong with me. If we didn’t have to go, I’d school you out there on the court.”

  The boy grinned, which infuriated Marcus even further. “How you gonna do that with a messed up arm and leg?”

  Realizing how upset Marcus was, Kyja stepped between him and Ty. “He’s right,” she said, picking up Riph Raph and Marcus’s staff. “We really do have to go. Maybe I can drive your humbler some other time.
”

  “Let’s go.” Marcus spun away and began scooting along the sidewalk, his face bright red. He didn’t know why Kyja had to go around talking to strange people when the Dark Circle could be anywhere.

  Before they had gone a dozen steps, Ty ran around the fence and joined them. “Hey,” he said, putting a hand on Marcus’s shoulder. “I didn’t mean nothing. I was just mad ’cause my brother and his friends won’t let me play ball with ’em.”

  Marcus jerked his shoulder out from under the boy’s hand. “I thought you were too good.”

  The boy bounced the ball off the cracked sidewalk and held it against his hip. “I was just saying that. They think I’m too small.”

  “Look,” Marcus said. “I don’t mean to be rude or anything, but—”

  Before he could finish his sentence, he glanced over his shoulder and saw one of the men who’d been drinking from the bottle. He was no longer swaying, but instead coming straight toward Marcus and Kyja.

  Chapter 53

  The Good and

  the Bad

  Marcus grabbed Kyja’s hand. “That man behind us. I saw him back by the fence.”

  Ty glanced toward the man in the ragged, dark sweater and pulled-down hat. “Ain’t nobody but one of them stew bums looking for a drink.”

  “There’s no way they could have followed us here already,” Kyja said, and yet as they increased their speed, the man picked up his pace.

  “Kyja, look at that.” Marcus nodded at a nearby telephone pole. Stapled to the pole was a picture of the two of them with the words, “Missing Children” above and “$10,000 Reward for Safe Return” below. “Somehow they knew we’d come here.”

  The man was less than fifty feet behind them. Kyja looked for a place to run, but other than a few broken-down cars, the street was empty.

  Ty eyed the poster. “You two running away or something?”

  “It’s hard to explain,” Marcus said. “Kyja’s from somewhere else, and the people from where she lives are trying to kill us.”

  Ty’s dark eyes widened. “You serious?” He glanced at Marcus with a newfound respect. “She from a different country or something?”

  “More different than you’d ever believe,” Marcus said.

  “Thought you two was dressed kind of funny.” Ty eyed the man, who had broken into a shuffling jog behind them. “Here’s what you do,” he whispered. “Soon as we get to the corner, run to the door on the left. It looks locked, but the chain’s cut. Wait inside.”

  “What are you going to do?” Kyja asked.

  Ty just grinned. When they reached the corner, he whispered, “Now.”

  At once Marcus and Kyja hurried down the sidewalk. Just like Ty had said, there was a rusty-looking door with a chain wrapped through the handle. When Kyja pushed on the handle, the chain slipped through the latch, and the door swung open. From around the corner behind them came the sound of a scuffle and a thud, followed by a loud cry of pain.

  Seconds later, they heard footsteps outside the door, and a voice whispered, “It’s me.”

  Kyja opened the door, and Ty slipped inside. Immediately he picked up a splintery board leaning against the wall and propped it under the handle of the door. He pointed to a sagging metal staircase that led into the darkness. “Can you make it up those?” he asked Marcus.

  “Try to keep up with me,” Marcus said, climbing the stairs like a monkey.

  “Kid’s fast,” Ty said to Kyja as they hurried after him.

  They had just reached the third landing when someone began pounding on the door below.

  “Shhh,” Ty said, placing his finger to his lips.

  They stood silently on the stairs, listening as whoever was outside shook the knob and pounded on the door. Finally, the pounding stopped, and Ty nodded. “Use that all the time,” he said.

  Marcus found himself coming to like the boy after all. “What did you do to that man back there?”

  Ty smirked and flipped his ball from one hand to the other behind his back. “My Dwayne Wade spin move.”

  Ty led them up the stairs to another door. This one was ripped off its top hinges, leaning crookedly against a dingy, water-stained wall. Pausing before the darkened doorway, Ty turned to Kyja and Marcus. “Stay close. Floor’s falling apart up here.”

  Keeping her left hand on Ty’s shoulder, Kyja followed him through the dim hall, wincing every time she heard movement around them. Marcus stuck close behind, and for once Riph Raph knew when to keep quiet.

  At last, they rounded a corner and came out on the roof of another building. Ty led them across the tar-and-gravel surface and showed them how to climb some crates onto another building. They passed through a security door propped open with a brick and went down a second flight of stairs. Then they crossed the cracked linoleum floor of a small lobby in an ancient apartment building, where a man in a seedy, black suit gave them an angry glare.

  “Don’t worry ‘bout him,” Ty said, jerking a thumb in the man’s direction. “He looks that way at everybody.”

  Outside it had started to rain, and the air was chilly. Marcus and Kyja glanced up and down the street. But the only people in sight were a couple of little girls playing some kind of game on the sidewalk in front of a brick apartment building, and a woman with a baby, sitting in a car with no tires.

  “It’s cool,” Ty said. “Nobody knows that way but me.”

  “I think we’d better leave anyway,” Marcus said. “No telling who else might be looking for us.”

  But Kyja’s eyes were locked on the woman in the car. She didn’t look much older than Kyja, and, despite the cold, she was wearing only a thin T-shirt. The windows of the car were down, letting in the rain, and the baby was fussing.

  “Why doesn’t she take her baby inside?” she asked Ty.

  The boy shrugged and bounced his ball on the curb. “Her man left. She lives in the car ’til she gets some money.”

  “Kyja,” Marcus said. “We really need to go.”

  “Why doesn’t someone give her money?” Kyja asked.

  Ty shrugged again. “Don’t look at me.” He turned his pockets inside out. “I ain’t got no money. If she takes her baby to the shelter, maybe they’ll take it away from her.”

  All at once something occurred to Kyja—something that seemed completely impossible. She grabbed Marcus by the shoulder of his cloak. “The man in the box. Was he living there?”

  “I guess so.” Marcus turned to Ty with a what’s-the-big-deal look.

  But Kyja felt her heart pounding. This was all wrong. What kind of world was it where amazing machines were everywhere, but a mother and her baby had to live in a broken car and an old man slept in a box?

  Turning to Marcus she asked, “How much money do we have left?”

  “A couple hundred dollars, I guess,” Marcus said. “But—”

  “Give it to me.” As Marcus fumbled in his leather pouch, Kyja set Riph Raph down and pulled her cloak off over her head. “Give me your cloak, too.”

  “I don’t think—” Marcus began, but Kyja took the money from his hand and yanked off his cloak before he could even get it untied.

  “Everyone from her country crazy like that?” Ty asked.

  Marcus shook his head with a rueful grin. “No. Only her.”

  Kyja hurried down the sidewalk, mindful of the rain that was falling harder and the baby who had gone from fussing to all-out crying. As Kyja reached the car, the woman looked up sharply, and her eyes narrowed.

  “What do you want?” she asked, clutching the baby to her chest.

  Kyja pushed the money and cloaks through the open window without saying a word. For a moment, the woman couldn’t seem to comprehend what was happening. She stared at the cloaks and the wad of bills. Then she glanced warily past Kyja as if suspecting it was all some kind of trick.

  Once the woman understood it was real, she ran her fingers over the fabric of the cloaks and closed her hand around the bills as her eyes began to well up. “Who ar
e you?” she asked. “Why are you doing this?”

  But Kyja couldn’t speak. She was too choked up and confused. There were so many good things on Ert—things like chocolate shakes and TV, semi trucks and basselball. But most people seemed to take those things for granted and ignore the things that really mattered.

  Instead of answering, she ran back to Marcus and squeezed his hand fiercely. “Good-bye, Ty,” she said, biting her lip to keep from crying. “Thank you for your help. I hope you get your humbler.”

  With that, she picked up Riph Raph, found herself in the place between worlds, and pushed as hard she could. The last thing she saw was Ty watching her with wide eyes, his basketball bouncing, forgotten, down the street.

  Chapter 54

  Water Keep

  This jump had been worse than all the others combined. It felt like he’d been tossed over a waterfall. He would have thrown up for sure if his stomach hadn’t been empty. Why had Kyja been so upset?

  Before he could give it any more thought, Marcus realized three things. The first was that they were inside the city. All around them, the world glowed with a bluish-green light. And everything seemed to be in motion. Buildings, statues, and odd-looking trees floated alongside strange, blob-like shapes that looked liked huge piles of Jell-O constantly changing colors. It all bobbed and spun like leaves in a stream. Watching made Marcus’s stomach feel even worse than it already did.

  The second thing was that Kyja was upside down. Not standing on her head or hanging by her feet, but just sort of floating. Her hair, which should have dangled down—or up, depending on how you looked at it—lay across her shoulders.

  But all of that was nothing compared to the last thing. He was standing without the use of his staff, which hung loosely in his hand, and there was no pain at all. He looked down at his leg, wondering if somehow he’d been magically healed. It didn’t look any different, but it was almost as if he weighed nothing at all here.

  “You’re upside down,” Kyja said with a shocked look on her upside down face.

  “No, you are.” He pointed to her feet, which were slightly above his head.