Other Worlds Than These

by John Joseph Adams

  Bertha sniffed, and smiled. Her hair was a big, feathered mullet.

  “One of you isn’t smoking cloves,” she said. “One of you is smoking real cigarettes, and I am going to bet it isn’t the one with the kitten backpack. One of you is gonna buy my silence. ‘Why no, officer, I sure didn’t see any young hooligans smoking near your site of vandalism.’”

  Ana, Nick and Julia all looked at Garth. Garth grunted, handed over his pack of cigarettes and walked away. He walked away into the woods.

  “Bye, Ana,” Julia said. “Say hi to Rico. Tell him we need to rehearse.” She took Nick’s arm and the two of them followed Garth.

  Ana could see the graffiti, now. It was red and green and it wasn’t anything Ana knew how to decipher. Parts of it were swoofy, and other parts had sharp, edgy bits. It looked like it was made up of letters, but she wasn’t sure which letters they were.

  Bertha lit one of Garth’s cigarettes. “Gonna have to rent a sandblaster,” she said. “Won’t come off without a sandblaster, and it’s brick so I can’t just paint over it.”

  “Deputy Chad thinks it was gangs that did it,” Ana said.

  Bertha snorted. “Town isn’t big enough for gangs,” she said. “Doesn’t matter anyway. This is just somebody marking their territory. This is colored piss with artistic pretensions.”

  Ana took out her notebook, but she didn’t have any guesses to write down yet. “How’s the novel?” she asked Bertha. This was the usual thing to ask. Bertha had always been writing a novel.

  “Terrible,” Bertha said.

  “Sorry,” said Ana. She wondered if it was better to be a novelist or a traveling actor, and decided it would still be better to be a pirate king.

  “What’s with the notebook?” Bertha asked. She flicked her cigarette butt at the graffiti, and it hit the bricks above the paint with a shower of orange sparks.

  “I’m going to draw it,” Ana said, “I’ll take it home and figure out what it says, and then... then maybe I’ll know who did it. I’ll solve the mystery.”

  “Have fun,” Bertha said. She opened a door in the gym wall with one of the many jingling keys at her belt and went in. The door shut behind her with a loud metal scrape.

  Ana drew the graffiti tag. Luckily she had the right colors of magic marker. It took her seven tries to get it right.

  The screen door squeaked when Ana opened it. The kitchen lights were on. One cold plateful of food sat on an otherwise bare table. Ana’s mother sat at the other end, face down on her folded arms. She was snoring. Ana hid her backpack under the table, and put the plate of food on a chair and out of sight.

  “Wake up, Mama,” she said.

  Her mother woke up. “Where have you been, child?” she asked, annoyed but mostly groggy.

  “Here,” Ana said. “I’ve been here for hours. Sorry I missed dinner.”

  “You should be,” said her mother. “Where—”

  Ana pretended to yawn. Her mother couldn’t help yawning, then, and this made Ana yawn for real. “Bedtime,” she said, once she was able to say anything. Her mother nodded, and both of them went upstairs.

  Ana snuck back downstairs to throw away her dinner and fetch her backpack. She ate the chocolate granola bars while sitting on the floor of her bedroom and studying the graffiti in her notebook. She thought it might say roozles, rutterkin or rumbustical, but there were always extra letters, or at least extra swoofs and pointy edges to the letters, and the longer she stared at it the less each word fit.

  Ana slept. She dreamed that her kitten-backpack climbed snuffling onto the foot of her bed. She woke up when it stepped on her toes, and once she was awake she could see its pointy-eared outline. A car drove by outside and made strange window-shade shadows sweep across the wall and ceiling. Maybe the car had its highbeams on.

  Her bag moved. She kicked it and it fell off the edge, landing with more of a soft smacking sound than it should have. Ana wanted to turn on the light, but the light switch was across the room. She would have to touch the floor to get there. She decided that now would be a really excellent time to develop telekinetic powers, and spent the next several minutes concentrating on the light switch.

  Another car went by.

  She got up, tiptoed across the floor and turned on the light. She turned around.

  The backpack was right at her feet. She didn’t scream. She swallowed an almost-scream.

  The furry, pointy-eared bag wasn’t moving. She pulled on the edges of the zipper and peeked inside. Her expedition supplies were still there. She poked through them with the capped tip of a magic marker, just in case there was also something else in there. The notebook lay open to the seventh graffiti-covered page. She tried to nudge it aside, but the tip of the marker went through the colored surface. She dropped the pen. It passed through the graffiti and vanished. The page rippled like a pond.

  She took another magic marker and used it to close the notebook cover. Then she looked out in the hallway to see if Rico’s bedroom light was on. It was. She took the notebook, tiptoed by her parents’ room, and sped up to pass the stairway. The air felt different at the top of the stairs. It felt like the stairway was holding its breath. It felt like the open space might breathe her in and down and swallow her.

  She knocked on Rico’s door. No answer. She knocked again, because she knew it would be locked from the inside so there wasn’t any point in trying to open it herself. He still didn’t answer. She tried the doorknob and it turned.

  He wasn’t there. She tread carefully on the few clear and visible parts of the floor, and took a better look around from the middle of the room. He wasn’t standing behind his dresser or lurking behind the armrest of the ratty old couch. He wasn’t hiding in his closet, because it was filled with too much junk already and nothing more would fit. She looked under the bed and he wasn’t there either. She looked at the empty bed and found a rolled up piece of parchment. You play tomorrow night, musician, it said. Be ready.

  The parchment crumbled into several brown leaves and drifted to the floor, settling among the socks and books and torn pieces of sheet music.

  “He must be rehearsing,” she said to herself. “I’ll try to find him tomorrow.”

  She went back to her room, and hung the backpack up on the knob handle of one of her dresser drawers to keep it from wandering, and went to bed. She left the light on. She didn’t see anything move for the rest of the night, including her backpack. She heard things move instead.

  Rico wasn’t at breakfast. This wasn’t unusual, because he almost always slept until lunchtime, so their parents didn’t seem worried as they bustled and joked and made coffee and went away to work after kissing Ana on each cheek. Ana went back upstairs as soon as they were gone. Rico wasn’t in his room. Bits of brown leaves crunched and crumbled in the carpet under her feet.

  Ana got dressed, and took her backpack down from the knob she’d hung it on.

  “Don’t go walking anywhere without me,” she said. She took more granola bars from the kitchen, and refilled her little square canteen, and locked up the house.

  It started to rain when she reached the first highway billboard, and Ana’s clothes and backpack were soggy by the time she got to the gym. The bag’s sopping ears lay flat against the zipper.

  She stood in front of the graffiti, took a deep breath and wondered if she was supposed to say something out loud. Maybe she was supposed to say whatever the graffiti said, and she still couldn’t read it.

  Something snarled in the trees behind her. Ana turned around, took a step backwards and tried to press herself against the wall. It didn’t work. She pressed and passed through it.

  “Hello,” said a voice that scraped against the insides of her ears.

  Ana faced another painted wall, stone instead of brick. She took a breath. The air was still and it smelled like thick layers of dust. She turned around. An old man, thin and spindly, sat on a stool and polished a carved flute. He had a wispy beard. He tested two notes on the flute
and set to polishing again. Behind him were several shelves of similar instruments. Some were plain and a pale yellow-grey. Some were carved with delicate patterns, and others inlaid with metals and lacquered over.

  “Hello,” Ana said.

  “The Grey Lady brings deliveries every second Tuesday, and today is neither thing. Are you delivered here? Has she changed schedules?”

  “I don’t know any grey ladies,” Ana said. “Except math teachers. Do you mean Mrs. Huddle?”

  “No huddling things,” the old man said. He set down the flute on a carved wooden stand, picked up a bone from his workbench and took a rasp to the knobby joints. “Tell me your purposes then, if no Lady brought you. Are you here to buy a flute?”

  “No,” Ana said. “I’m looking for my brother.”

  “Unfortunate that you should look for him here. How old?”

  “He’s sixteen.”

  “So old? Good, good. I won’t have pieces of him, then.”

  Ana looked around for pieces of people. There was a straw cot in the corner beside a green metal stove. There were baskets and tin lanterns hanging by chains from a high ceiling. There were no windows. A staircase against one wall led up to the only doorway. There was a workbench, and shelves full of flutes, and a mural of moonlight and trees where she had stepped through the wall.

  “He’s a musician,” Ana said. “A singer. He’s in a band, I think. Last week they were The Paraplegic Weasels, but I don’t know if that’s still their name. It keeps changing.”

  “Very prudent,” said the old man, rasping bone.

  “He’s supposed to play for someone tonight. I don’t know who.”

  “Tonight there are many festivities, or so I’ve heard rumor.” He swapped the rasp for a finer file, and began to scrape the bone more delicately.

  Ana took a step closer. “The invitation turned into leaves after I read it.”

  “Then he’ll likely play his music in the Glen,” the old man said. “You should be on the forest paths, and not here in the City.”

  “City?”

  “Oh yes. Underneath it, a few layers down.” He wiped away loose bone-dust, and set both bone and file down on the workbench. “The stone floor you’re standing on used to be a road, but the City is always growing up over itself.”

  “Oh,” Ana said. She looked down at the floor. The old man reached down, scooped her up by the armpits and set her on the edge of the workbench. She swallowed an almost-scream when he pinched each leg, squeezing down to the thighbones, and then she kicked him in the stomach.

  Ana jumped down, ran to the mural and smacked the surface of it with the palms of both hands. The surface held. Behind her the old man wheezed and coughed and laughed a little.

  “No matter,” he said. “Both bones broken, and all the music leaked out from the fractures. Can’t make any kind of flute from either leg. How did you break them both?”

  Ana turned around to watch him. He sat back on his stool, wheezing, and he seemed to want to stay there. “I jumped off the roof.”

  “And what flying thing were you fleeing from?” he asked.

  “Nothing. Rico dared me to jump, so I did. I didn’t tell on him, either. He still owes me for that.”

  “Well,” the old man said, “I hope you can collect what he owes when you find him. Such a shame that your bones were broken. There are a great many children, and there isn’t enough music. There isn’t nearly enough.”

  “So how do I get out?” She hated admitting that she didn’t already know.

  The old man smiled, and widened up his eyes. “Boo,” he said, puffing out his thin beard.

  Ana took a step backwards, and passed through the stone.

  Her face was inches away from her brother’s graffiti. It was dark, and she could barely see the colors by moonlight. She looked around. She was alone. Her backpack was gone.

  “I told it not to wander off,” she said.

  There was only one forest path she could find. Ana took a walking stick from a pile of broken branches near the edge of the woods, and took a deep breath, and set out. She wished she had her flashlight. She wished she had her backpack. In her head she promised to give it a scratch behind the ears if it would come back, and to never again hang it up on a dresser drawer knob. It had looked uncomfortable there. The air smelled like wet leaves, heavy and rich. She followed the path uphill and downhill and around sudden corners cut into the sides of hills. She passed trees that looked like tall, twisted people until she looked at them directly. Ana hoped she was following the right trail. She saw a wispy orange light between the tree trunks and decided to follow that instead.

  The orange light brightened as Garth inhaled cigarette smoke. He was leaning on a boulder. He looked up and blew smoke at the moon.

  Half of his face was swollen.

  “Hey,” said Ana. “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “Waiting for little girls, maybe.”

  “Your infection’s worse.”

  “True,” he said. “But this bit of silver is keeping me from gnawing on your bones.”

  “Oh,” said Ana. “Good. Everybody should stay away from my bones.”

  He took another drag, brightening up the wispy orange light, and tugged his hat down to cover more of the swollen half of his face. Ana held on to her stick.

  “Do you know where Rico is?” she asked.

  “Maybe. He plays tonight.”

  “Can you take me to him?”

  “Maybe.” Garth dropped the cigarette and stepped on it, crushing the little orange flame. He walked off, away from the path. Ana waited for some signal from him that she should follow. She didn’t get one. She followed.

  Garth took long strides, and his boots hit the ground like he was trying to punish it for something. Ana tried to keep up, and she tried to keep a little bit behind him at the same time. She didn’t want to be too close. He hunched, staring at the ground, and she thought he was moping more than usual until he dove, snarling. He came up holding a lanky thing covered in short, spiky fur.

  “Where does the Guard keep watch tonight?” he asked.

  The lanky thing shrugged and grinned many teeth.

  “Where does the Guard watch the Glen?” He shook the thing in his hand.

  It snickered.

  “Please?” Ana asked, very sweetly.

  The lanky thing blew her a kiss. “Tonight there is no waking Guard,” it said. “Tonight he is sleeping and dreaming that he guards, and he crosses no one unless they cross into his dreaming while he sleeps at his post, which is easy to do and see to it that you don’t. Everything within a pebble’s toss of him in all directions is only the substance of his dream, and inside it the Guard is a much better guard than he ever was awake. He guards the Western Arch.”

  “How many arches are there?” Garth asked.

  “Tonight there is only the Western Arch. All others are overgrown. It rained today.”

  “Thank you,” Ana said.

  The lanky thing bowed, which was difficult to do while Garth held it up by the scruff of its neck. Then it bit him hard on the wrist and dropped to the ground. Garth howled. The lanky thing snickered from somewhere nearby.

  “Let me see your wrist,” Ana said. She had band-aids in her backpack. Then she remembered that she didn’t have her backpack.

  Garth looked at her. Garth never made eye contact, but he did so now, and he held it, and he also made a little rumbling noise in the back of his throat.

  “No,” he said.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “You should know that I’m not interested in dying for your brother. He’s alright. I like him. But I’m not interested in death on his behalf. I’m not interested in any of the things so close to death that the distinction makes no difference. This is something you should know before we go any further.”

  “Okay,” she said again.

  He walked away. She followed. She wondered where her backpack was.

  They found an eno
rmous figure in full plate armor, asleep. The Guard was dreaming a desert the size of a pebble’s throw. All around it was sunlight and sand and nowhere to hide.

  “That’s the Western Gate,” Garth said

  “Where?” Ana whispered.

  “Behind the desert. Cut into the wall of thorns, there.” He pointed. Ana stood at the very edge of the desert and squinted. She could only see sand and sun in front of them.

  Garth dropped another finished cigarette, driving it further into the dirt than he really needed to. “Good luck,” he said.

  “Wait,” Ana told him. “Don’t go yet. I’m going to try something.”

  She picked up a pebble, took aim, and threw it at the precise moment that she stepped forward into desert sand. For just a instant she knew what it was like to be an unimportant part of someone else’s dream. Then the pebble struck the Guard’s gold helmet, clanging loudly and waking it up.

  The desert vanished. Ana ducked behind a tree that hadn’t been there before and leaned against the trunk. She could hear the metal movements of plate armor on the other side. She didn’t know where Garth was.

  “I am a pirate king,” Ana whispered to herself. “It’s a glorious thing to be a pirate king.”

  She ran, and switched directions twice, and tried to circle back towards the Western Gate. She almost stumbled in the dark, but she didn’t. The Guard almost caught her anyway. She felt gauntleted fingers snatch at her shoulder. Then she heard it clang and crash against the ground. She stopped, panting, and turned around to look.

  Garth stood over the Guard, who was much shorter and less impressive than it had dreamed itself earlier. Garth looked at Ana, snarled and jerked his chin towards the Gate. Then he spit on the Guard’s golden armor.

  Ana backed further away. She watched the Guard pull itself up off the ground. It plucked out Garth’s silver piercing with a little spray of blood.

  Garth howled, and his face began to change.

  Ana turned away and slipped inside.

  The Glen was at least as big as a cornfield, and covered over with a dome of branches high overhead. Inside the branches were orange wisps of light, glowing and fading again.