Stephen Chambers

by Jane;the Raven King

  “Have a seat,” Gaius said. “Finn, get up. Make some room—you don’t need the whole couch to yourself. Up, up already!” Finn rose slowly, stretching his limbs until every joint—including those in his fluffy toes—popped. Then he sat, licked his lips, yawned, and farted. Finn hopped off the couch, and as he looked for a suitable place on the floor, Jane could’ve sworn she saw the dog smirk back over his shoulder. No, she told herself. Dogs do not smirk. Even stubborn, flatulent dogs forced to surrender comfy couches didn’t smirk.

  “He takes up a lot of space,” Jane said.

  “Yes, well.” Gaius glared as Finn thumped dramatically onto a pile of old coats in the corner. “Be grateful he’s only a dog.” “What does that mean?” Jane asked.

  “Sit,” Gaius said, and he went into the front cabin. “Your brother…?” “He wouldn’t come,” Jane said. “Will he be okay?”

  Gaius ignored the question. “Hold on to something,” he said. “I drive fast.” Wait a second, Jane thought. Isn’t he blind?

  There were no windows, but she could tell by the way the clutter-towers swayed that they were moving quickly. What was I thinking? she wondered. This is crazy! I’m going to get myself killed! We might crash at any—The RV stopped.

  Jane followed Gaius and Finn outside; they were parked near a dark stand of trees. The rain had stopped, and the air was thick, heavy, and silent.

  Jane said, “How did you drive without…?”

  “You don’t need your eyes to drive,” Gaius said. “You only need your hands for the steering wheel and your feet for the pedals.” “But—” “We’ll discuss this again when you have a driver’s license, Jane.” Finn lifted his leg on the nearest roots, and Gaius said, “Here, now—what kind of introduction is that, Finn? They’ll whisper about that for half a mile.” “Where are we?” Jane asked.

  “The park,” Gaius said. He pressed his hand to a tree trunk, closed his eyes, and then glared at Finn. “You couldn’t have used a bush?” They continued walking, and when Gaius stopped at another tree, he said, “We have to go underground to Hotland.” “By slapping trees? You’re talking to them,” Jane said, “aren’t you?” Gaius removed his hand. “Yes. Anyway, these trees have deep roots.” Jane stepped beside Gaius and placed her fingers on the rough bark. She closed her eyes and listened.

  “I don’t hear anything,” she said.

  Gaius resumed walking. “The trees don’t trust you.”

  “Why not?”

  Gaius frowned. “How many pieces of paper have you used? How many wooden chairs, tables, and bedposts have you used?” “They think I’m going to chop them down?” Jane said.

  Gaius said, “No, but they would like an occasional thank you. Written on recycled paper, I suppose.” Finn barked, his tail wagging.

  “Ah.” Gaius brightened. “He found one.”

  They hurried after Finn to a great, old oak tree. Gaius checked the trunk and nodded. Jane pressed her palm to the bark, but again, she didn’t hear anything.

  “Good.” Gaius pointed his cane at the tree. “We are off then.” The center of the trunk darkened, as if it had been covered by a black towel. The darkness looked just as solid as the bark.

  Gaius said, “I should warn you—we will have to cross the Keeper, but she hasn’t stopped anyone in a thousand years. The Keeper is neutral. She watches what goes in and what comes out in order to protect Hotland. Everyone who enters has to cross her once. After that, you’ll never see her again.” “What is she?” Jane asked.

  Gaius stepped closer to the darkness. “Wait and see.”

  Holding the flap of Gaius’s coat, Jane followed him into the tree. Breathing hard, she could hear their footsteps—was the floor made of stone?—but she was as blind as the old man. The moment they stepped into the tree, it was as though they had fallen into a cave or a tomb. Even the entry-hole behind them was gone.

  Jane heard Finn’s paw nails clicking to her right, and she concentrated on the reassuring jingle of his collar. The darkness thinned ahead. They entered a room of stone statues, with a block pyramid in the center. The room was big—at least twice as tall as her entire house—and the walls were the same white marble as the floor. Where was the door? There was no way out, and now when Jane turned, she saw a blank wall behind them.

  Still squeezing Gaius’s coat, Jane followed him through the maze of statues. They passed a bearded man wearing some kind of loose dress and sandals, a stunted spear in his hands, then walked around a group of cowering Asiatic women with babies clutched in their robes and an ugly man in heavy armor with the legs of a goat. There were small men on horseback, bare-chested women chained in a line, and ape-men with high foreheads and stumpy noses.

  “Who are they?” Jane asked.

  Finn sprawled and licked himself.

  Gaius said, “They are the people she stopped.” “They’re real people?”

  “They were—a long time ago, when they tried to enter Hotland. They are stone now.” “I don’t like this,” Jane said.

  “Not so loud,” Gaius said.

  “Why, what…?”

  Finn jumped up. Something moved at the top of the pyramid: a thick silver shape like a beast climbing out of the pyramid’s bricks.

  Jane was trembling. She watched the muscular flank rise, saw a tuft of brilliant hair, and the creature shook itself and looked down at them. It was a horse—a horse the size of a school bus. Its skin shimmered like the moon; its mane was solid gold, and it stared with cruel eyes that glowed the hot white of a furnace fire. On its forehead was the broken stump of a horn. When the Keeper—the unicorn—shifted its weight, sparks snapped under its hooves. It spoke with a strained woman’s voice, as if it had been screaming: “What is your name?” “What do you—?”

  “Speak quickly,” the unicorn told Jane. “What is your name?” “Jane.”

  “Your grandmother, Diana Starlight, is gone?” Diana Starlight? Jane thought, but she said, “Yes.” The unicorn snorted and tossed her head, as if she were shaking away a fly. “How old are you?” “Almost thirteen.”

  “Do you believe there are such things as good and evil?” Jane swallowed, her palms clammy, her pulse jittery and fast. Answer—no, think: What do I believe? Do I really believe in good and evil? Although Jane had been baptized and her parents took the kids to church occasionally—usually on Christmas and Easter—she never thought of herself and certainly never considered her parents religious. There was right and wrong, wasn’t there? Was that the same thing?

  “Answer me, Jane,” the unicorn rumbled. “Do good and evil exist?” “I don’t know,” she said.

  “What principle binds the world?”

  Gaius lowered his head and said, “Honored Keeper, she is only—” “I am not addressing you, Gaius Saebius.” “Please,” he said, “she is no threat to you—she is only a child.” “She is no child.” The unicorn’s eyes flashed. “Speak again unprompted, and it will be for the last time. There is more in her than there was in Diana Starlight or Applepatch Mary. I must know, Jane, what is the binding principle of existence?” “I don’t know that.”

  “Do not lie to me. How do you see the world—is it ruled by order or chaos?” Trembling, Jane thought, Michael was right—I shouldn’t have come here. This isn’t real.

  She said, “I’m sorry, I don’t—”

  “If you do not answer, you will join my gallery.” Jane said, “Please…” And she turned to run.

  “Stop!”

  She froze, struggled to catch her breath. “I don’t know the answer,” she said. “What do you want me to say?” The unicorn stepped down from the summit of the pyramid, and Finn hid behind Gaius. “How does the world appear to you? At its most basic level, is the universe made out of order or chaos? Are there patterns or anarchy?” There must be patterns, she thought. That’s the right answer, isn’t it? Good and evil; order and chaos—Gaius had mentioned those things too. What am I supposed to say?

  The unicorn waited.

  Jane sa
id, “The universe—”

  Wait. She knew my grandmother. This thing—this Keeper or unicorn is here to stop people from hurting her home, Hotland. That’s what Gaius said, right? The Keeper is afraid of me. There isn’t a real answer, is there? It wants my answer so it has a better idea of who I am and whether or not I am a threat. So which is more dangerous: a person who believes there is a pattern or someone who thinks everything is random? Someone who believes in a pattern might have more of a reason to think Hotland shouldn’t be real. I don’t even know if I believe it. But if everything is chaos, Hotland can exist, right? If the world is crazy anyway, a talking unicorn doesn’t hurt anything.

  Jane said, “The universe is chaos.”

  Oh, no! she thought. What if that was the wrong answer…?

  The unicorn said, “You may all enter freely.” She went back to the top of the pyramid, and a doorway opened on the opposite wall, past statues frozen in mid-stride. “I will not see you again.” Gaius clicked his tongue. “Come on.” Jane followed Gaius and Finn around the statues and into another dark corridor. Behind them, the unicorn was gone.

  When an antique elevator came into view at the end of the hall, Jane asked Gaius, “Why didn’t you tell me she would ask those questions? Why did she ask me?” “I’m sorry, Jane,” Gaius said, and the way he lingered meant that he was lying. “I don’t know.”

  As it descended, the brass and iron elevator rattled like dice in a washing machine. The walls and ceiling were inlaid with Victorian curls and hooks of polished ivory and copper; the designs reminded Jane of the ornate balconies and latticework she’d seen on a trip to New Orleans two years ago. At the time, Michael had barely noticed the French Quarter, a pair of guidebooks clutched to his chest. Ghosts. He had been obsessed with seeing ghosts, Jane remembered. Unfortunately, all the ghosts had been on vacation too.

  The elevator banged and shook, and as they continued to drop, the gas lamp on the ceiling sputtered and dimmed until the white-blue flame cast only modest, upside-down shadows.

  “Is this safe?” Jane said.

  Gaius watched the dented iron door. “Good question. It could probably do with some repairs.” The gas lamp flicked out.

  “What’s wrong with the light?” Jane asked.

  Gaius said, “We are crossing over.”

  The elevator was dark. She listened to the pounding thumps of their descent, felt each jolt in her teeth, and thought, If I could face the unicorn, I can handle an elevator ride—even an uncomfortable, dangerous elevator ride.

  “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” Jane murmured.

  A new voice said, “Not yet, amiga, but there will be.” “Who said that?”

  The elevator stopped, and the light came on—lots of them. The brass and iron elevator had grown to the size of a gymnasium. The high ceiling was crowded with electric floodlights. A giant lizard with wings was watching her with red-black eyes. Green scales flowed along its flanks and ridged spine—sparkling purple and yellow on its belly. The dinosaur’s hind legs were thick with muscle; its front legs were longer and ended in five-fingered claws, each as long as Jane’s arm. Its head was as big as a car. The dinosaur sat up, its great wings fluttering in curls of translucent skin. She could see the joints of the bones inside—like a bat’s wings.

  A cat dressed in a brown robe adjusted his cane and said, “There is no need to frighten her, Finn.” Jane forced herself to look away from the dinosaur to the cat-man. The cat’s gray-black fur was striped like a tabby, and when she noticed his cane—Gaius’s cane—the cat-man nodded. His eyes were hazy white.

  Jane shook her head. “Am I…are you…?”

  “This is not a dream,” the cat-Gaius said as he started for a huge sliding door. “And we should get moving.” “You’re a cat!” Jane said. “I mean, how can you be a cat? I don’t—” “We are in Hotland now.” Gaius continued to the door. “It’s best if you stop thinking like that.” Jane said, “Finn, you’re not a dog—you’re some kind of giant lizard, like a dinosaur!” The dinosaur chuckled with a low rumbling of its rib cage, like distant thunder. Gaius unhooked the heavy door, and Finn dropped back to all fours. When he spoke, she saw fangs the size of bowling pins.

  “They’re filling your head with oatmeal at that school,” Finn said. “A dinosaur? Don’t you know dinosaurs are extinct?” “If you’re not a dinosaur, then what are you?” “What do you think? I’m a dragon.”

  Jane said, “I thought dragons weren’t real.”

  “If we aren’t real, then we aren’t extinct either, are we?” Gaius slid open the door, and Jane stared, for the first time, at Hotland—the land at the center of the world.

  Jane said, “Wow.”

  The door opened from the side of a slate mountain to—animals. Lots and lots of animals. There are too many, Jane thought. This is impossible. A herd of wheat-colored antelope loitered beside a crowd of lions, ostriches, and sharp-horned rhinos, and a pack of rats mingled with clumps of pink-butt monkeys and disinterested gorillas. And birds—everywhere, there were birds. The constantly moving, constantly talking animals stood on rolling grass fields (Jane assumed it was grass; she couldn’t see with all the animals in the way) that stretched to the horizon. As Jane stared, a flock of silver birds burst into the sky. She froze. Wait a second. Talking?

  She listened. All the millions of animals (and yes, there had to be at least millions of them) were arguing, joking, complaining in perfect English. Finn stretched as he stepped out of the elevator, his toes and the joints in his great dragon tail popping like oversized knuckles. A group of grizzly bears scattered, calling, “Lizard! Giant lizard!” When Finn laughed, Jane felt the rumble in her own rib cage.

  “Dra-gon,” Finn said.

  The nearby animals had retreated from the elevator doors in a wide semicircle, and their animal voices were low under the rumble of conversation across the fields. The mountain behind Jane rose higher than she could see—through the clouds—and it extended like a wall in both directions. As she watched flocks of birds swoop and weave overhead, Jane murmured, “Huh.” Beyond the clouds, the sky was brown, not blue. But there, above the multitudes of animals, was the sun, just like normal.

  A gray furball was darting through the animals toward them.

  “We need to keep moving,” Gaius said, “if we hope to reach the Purple Marsh before dark.”

  “The Purple Marsh?” Jane said.

  Gaius pointed his cane over the animals. “That way.”

  “What is it?” Jane said. “You haven’t told me where we are—why are all these animals here? What is this place?” And why am I speaking so quickly? she thought. I’m shouting at him—at a talking cat! “I’m sorry, I just—”

  The furball pushed out of the animal crowd and stood on its hind legs, a tiny red megaphone in one of its paws. “Who,” it shouted through the megaphone, “do you think you are? And what is the meaning of this—arriving on the elevator unannounced? There are signatures required for the preliminary paperwork! I don’t expect you considered where you would stay once you got here, hmm?” Its beady eyes squinted first at Finn, then at Gaius and Jane. It was some kind of groundhog, about the size of a fat toaster. “No? I thought not!” the groundhog continued. “The Sunburn Road is overcrowded as it is. I hope you don’t expect”—and here it wrinkled its nose at Finn—“to find a comfy mattress and a piping fireplace waiting for you with no notice!”

  “Actually,” Gaius said, “that is exactly what we expect to find.”

  The groundhog blinked as if Gaius had flashed a laser pointer in its eye. “Wha-wha—who are you?” The nearby animals were quiet now, watching Gaius.

  “My name is Gaius Saebius Marcellus.”

  “Gaius…?” The groundhog’s jaw quivered, and it clicked the megaphone uncomfortably. “You’re not the one who lives in the, uh—in the Purple…”

  “Yes.”

  “Ah.” The groundhog was clicking the megaphone frantically now, its teeth nibbling at the air “We a
re pressed for space, you understand. I am so sorry, sir…”

  “I understand,” Gaius said. “We will be staying in my home.”

  At that, the groundhog’s tiny shoulders relaxed. “Of course, of course! A bobbin—silly me! I should have recognized you, but I’ve never met a—”

  Finn farted a mushroom cloud of fire and smoke. The animals gasped, the groundhog ran back into the crowd, and Jane laughed.

  “There, now,” Finn said. “I feel better.”

  “That wasn’t necessary,” Gaius said.

  Finn clicked his jaw. “You want it to come out the front? Climb aboard, everyone.”

  “Not here,” Gaius said. “The sky is too crowded.”

  Finn looked at the birds overhead and snorted. “So? I’m bigger than them.”

  “No. We walk now.”

  “It would be much faster—”

  “I said no, Finn.” Gaius nodded to the animals. “But you can clear us a path…”

  As Finn approached the animals, Jane thought, There is something bad in this place. I don’t know what, but something here is wrong, like an invisible illness.

  Gaius nodded to Jane, as if to say “Thank you,” and they followed Finn onto a road of overgrown cobblestones.

  The animals may have cleared the road for Finn, but they were more interested in Gaius. As Gaius passed, there were hushed murmurs from peacocks and scrawny dogs, and Jane thought she heard a crocodile whisper “Bobbin.” “Why are they staring?” Jane asked.