Stephen Chambers

by Jane;the Raven King

  “I have to go back to our house,” Jane said. “On topside Earth, I mean.” She told Finn about the stone and then said, “I have to find it.”

  As he landed at the elevator doors, Finn said, “Good luck.”

  “What?” she said. “You can’t come with me?”

  “I have to go back for Gaius now.”

  Jane said, “But I thought you told me that was pointless! How will you—?”

  “I thought Gaius would meet us,” Finn said. “But he isn’t here. There’s no time to argue! Go!”

  When Jane started to protest, Finn took off, flying back the way they had just come.

  I hope my family is okay, Jane thought as she got in the elevator. The stone might not be the Name of the World, but it was a place to start.

  The elevator went dark, and when the lights came on, she was alone in a cramped, rickety elevator. It stopped at the top.

  Out of the elevator, Jane walked through blackness—her shoes loud on the stone floor—then abruptly stumbled into daylight. She was back in the park, and the sun was just coming up. The soft yellow light cast long shadows. She was almost home.

  All that was real, Jane thought. But now, walking on the sidewalk past familiar suburban houses, she began to wonder. The porch lights were lit on every doorstep. There’s nothing odd about that, she told herself. It’s early in the morning—no one’s had a chance to switch them off yet. In the early sunlight, Jane couldn’t tell whether the lights were on inside the houses. So what if they are? she thought. They’re just lamps and light bulbs—nothing to be scared of.

  She walked in silence for a long time. This felt wrong. There were no birds. They’re in Hotland, Jane thought. I saw them. But that wasn’t what was bothering her. It was the lack of cars; the streets were empty. Sure, it was early, but someone should have been out, going to work or school or the grocery store. Where was everybody?

  Several corners later, she spotted her house at the end of the block. It looked the same as it always did. The porch light was on, just like all the others.

  She stopped at the edge of the front yard. The neighborhood was as quiet as if it had just snowed. But it was springtime.

  Maybe I shouldn’t be here, Jane thought. Maybe the stone is just an ordinary marble. But what else can I do? I don’t have food or money, and for all I know, it might be like this everywhere. The Raven King is doing this, she thought. He’s distracting the adults with electricity and machines so they don’t even notice that all the birds are gone.

  “This is not a good idea,” she told herself softly.

  Jane went up to the porch. The front door was open.

  The television was still on, along with all the lights in the front hall and the lamps—everything was the same…except that Jane heard only a metallic drone from the TV and static on the radio upstairs. She looked into the living room. The television screen displayed colored, vertical lines. The remote control was missing, so she turned it off manually.

  “Hello?” she called. “Mom? Dad? Michael?”

  Something rustled, and Jane spun: Michael was cowering behind a chair in the corner.

  “They won’t look at me,” Michael said. “Jane, Mom and Dad won’t…”

  She ran to him and took his hand. Michael was trembling. “Stay with me,” she said. “Come on.”

  With Michael behind her, Jane went to the hall. She was about to turn for her bedroom when she saw something in the kitchen out of the corner of her eye. A thin, gray-eyed man sat at the table, cradling a cell phone in both hands. His chin stubble and the dark lines around his eyes made him look lost and old. A fragile woman sat beside him, so pale and motionless that she might have been made out of cardboard.

  “Dad?” Jane called. “Mom?”

  Her parents didn’t stir. Michael squeezed Jane’s arm harder as they approached the kitchen.

  “Mom? Dad?” she said again. “Are you all right?”

  Her father squinted at the phone as if he thought her voice might be coming from it. As they entered the kitchen, Jane could see that her dad’s lips were cracked and chapped. Her mother’s eyes were half-closed, as if she’d been drugged. Haven’t they eaten? Jane thought. Haven’t they had a drink of water in all this time?

  Jane went to the cabinet and found two glasses. Her hands wouldn’t stop shaking. She turned on the sink faucet. Nothing happened. She jiggled the handle and tried again. No water came out.

  “I’m sorry,” Michael said. “I was scared. I didn’t know…”

  “It’s okay,” Jane said. “Dad? When was the last time you had something to drink?”

  When their father didn’t answer, Michael said, “We have to get out of here.”

  Jane tried the refrigerator. There was leftover broccoli casserole, burritos, ketchup, and milk. She grabbed an orange juice carton and poured two glasses, then returned to the table and placed the glasses in front of her parents. They didn’t move.

  As Jane got the casserole out of the fridge, a big cockroach crawled across the kitchen table. She stared at the roach. It was fat with long antennae.

  Still her parents didn’t move.

  Michael said, “I don’t know what’s wrong with them.” He jumped away from the sink. There were centipedes, roaches, pill bugs, and silverfish crawling out of the pipe.

  “I shouldn’t have come back,” Jane said, but her legs were shaking. She smelled something sweet and sick, as if the casserole were covered with mold. But it wasn’t rotten.

  All the lights went out—even the daylight. A man in a torn, bloody cape was standing in the room. It was as if he’d been there all along, and now that the light had changed, she could see him. Jane tasted acid-fear. We have to run, she thought. Why won’t my legs move? She heard something beating, like drums or wings. She dropped the casserole dish and heard it smash on the floor.

  “Hello, Jane,” the Raven King said.

  Where is it?” The Raven King’s voice was calm, and a moment after he spoke, Jane couldn’t remember the sound. She couldn’t see his face—only the outline of his body and dark cape.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “I will hurt you if I have to, Jane. But first I will hurt your mother, father, and brother. Do you understand me? Think for a moment before you answer,” the Raven King said.

  Michael said, “Leave us alone!”

  The Raven King was closer. One moment, he stood near the wall; the next, he was behind her parents, an arm’s length from Michael and Jane. “I’m sorry,” she said, reaching into her pocket. “I don’t know where it is. I can’t give it to you.” She took out the envelope and fumbled open the last paper.

  Three Spells Inside,

  One for Fire, One for Escape,

  And One to Make the Evil One Break.

  The last page said: Bas ravel.

  “What is that?” the Raven King demanded.

  Jane raised the paper and shouted, “Bas ravel!” The paper brightened, as if it were a dirty window someone had wiped clean. On the paper, Jane saw a mountain made out of shiny black rock, dark clouds, and a brown sky. The paper was showing her a mountain in Hotland. Now the picture faded, and the paper and envelope crumbled like old leaves. The pieces fell away. A mountain, Jane thought. How does that help me?

  The Raven King said, “I will ask once more, child. Where is—?” Jane and Michael ran into her bedroom, and when Michael opened the window, it smashed back down, just missing his fingers. The Raven King stood in the doorway. Jane knelt beside her bed, but before she could reach under the pillow, a desk lamp jumped and hit the side of her head.

  Jane was shaking. “I don’t know where it is!” “You’re lying!” the Raven King said. “What did you see?” “Please,” she said. Don’t cry, she told herself. Jane felt helpless, like a cornered animal. She was breathing hard. “I don’t know!” The room flickered like a scratched record, and Jane saw the shadow of a bird with a hooked, bloody beak. “Do not”—a bolt of black like the opposite of a flas
hlight beam shot at Michael, and he slumped to the floor—“lie to me.” Jane lunged at her bed. There was Grandma Diana’s marble, right where she left it. She threw the marble at the wall, and it shattered like glass. The window flew open in a whirlwind of papers and books. A golden shape rushed through the window and hit the Raven King like a wrecking ball. He didn’t fall, but he was in the hall now, as if someone had shoved him out.

  A woman’s voice said, “Be still, children.” Soft arms scooped up Jane and Michael and carried them through the open window and into the sky.

  Panting, Jane watched the houses and treetops grow smaller until she could see blocky neighborhoods passing under her dangling feet. She craned her head. A woman with golden skin and a white cape carried them. They were flying. This was impossible. The woman was beautiful—not like a person but like a mountain or a river or the sun. Jane heard the regular thump of wings, like a heartbeat, and although it was only a woman carrying them, when she closed her eyes, Jane saw a golden eagle.

  Jane slept.

  She woke to cold wind that burned her cheeks and tossed her hair. She was laying on a dark platform of tar, boxy air conditioning vents, and colossal antennae that looked like giant, blinking stalagmites—each as tall as an office building. Michael was asleep nearby. The golden woman stood at the edge of the platform, facing away, her cape fluttering in the wind. There were soft clouds around and above them. But where are we? Jane wondered.

  As she approached the golden woman, something dropped in the pit of Jane’s stomach, as if she’d swallowed a rock. They were on the roof of an office building—no, not just any office building. Below, the ground was a grid of skyscrapers and roads, and there was water, like the ocean or a big lake, not far away. They were so high that she could see past the downtown buildings to miniature neighborhoods leading all the way to the horizon; they were so high that there were clouds below them—and smoke. Tiny puffs of soot-colored smoke rose here and there.

  Although Jane had never thought of herself as being afraid of heights, just watching the golden woman standing on the ledge of the building—what seemed to be miles above the ground—made Jane’s legs wobble.

  “Where are we?” Jane’s voice was swallowed by the wind.

  “A safe place obviously,” the golden woman answered without turning. “I can hear anyone coming for miles.”

  “But what are all those buildings down there?”

  “Chicago.”

  Chicago, Jane thought. This is the Willis Tower, the tallest building in America.

  “Are there fires down there?” Jane asked. “Is something burning?”

  “Yes.”

  “Please don’t stand on the ledge,” Jane said.

  The golden woman stepped away and said, “Call me Rachel.”

  “Thank you for saving us.”

  “You called me with the Wishing Stone, you know. Are you Diana Starlight’s daughter? You seem very young.”

  “She was…she is my grandmother. You called that purple marble a Wishing Stone…?”

  “It was the last bead from Justinia Lovelock’s necklace.”

  Jane said, “Justinia who?”

  Rachel sighed as if Jane were back in class, wasting time with easy questions. “A long time ago, I gave a girl a necklace with special beads so she could call for my help. Justinia was the first person to save us from the Dark One.”

  “She was the first person to stop the Raven King? And you’re a Great Eagle, one of the twelve eagles that…” Jane tried to remember what Finn had told her “…that protected people and everything, right? So you’re not dead?”

  “Not yet, no,” Rachel said.

  “Are the other eagles still alive?”

  “That’s complicated. I haven’t seen them in a long, long time—how’s that for an explanation?” Rachel crouched beside Michael. “Your brother is dying, you know.” Rachel lifted his shirt. There was a dark smear like a shadow growing in the center of his chest.

  Jane’s heart was racing. “What is that?”

  “The Dark One struck him. The poison will spread, and when it covers Michael, your brother will become a shadow like the others.”

  A sansi, Jane thought. Michael will turn into one of them. “What can we do?”

  Rachel said, “The only way to stop the poison is to stop him.”

  “And I need the Name of the World to do that,” Jane said. “What is it?” When Rachel didn’t answer, Jane said, “You won’t tell me? Then why are you here? What’s the point if you won’t help me?”

  “You misunderstand, little girl. I’m not here to guide you or counsel you—think of me as a weapon to protect you. I will help you, but I can’t lead you,” Rachel said. “The Wishing Stone means that I will grant your wishes, but I can’t tell you what to do. That’s up to you, not me.”

  “Like a genie or something?” Jane said. “Then I wish to have the Name of the World and kill the Raven King.”

  “It doesn’t work like that, Jane. I’m strong, not all-powerful.”

  “Is everyone frozen like my parents? How much longer can they live like that?”

  “Not long,” Rachel said. “Civilization is forgetting itself. But clearly not everyone is standing still—hence the smoke. Soon everything is going to get much worse. In another day, maybe two or three, the Dark One will win. You are part of a very small group that was not seduced by technology.”

  I won’t panic, Jane thought. I need to think about what I have to do—there isn’t much time. “So you can’t tell me anything,” she said. “But you can help me. Okay, my grandmother was the last person to use the Name of the World, right? When was that?”

  “In 1945.”

  Grandma Diana was my age back then, Jane thought. “Can we go to London?” she asked Rachel. “How long will that take?”

  “Yes, of course we can. As I fly, it will take several hours,” Rachel said.

  But I can’t waste several hours, Jane thought. Michael is dying, everyone is in danger, and for all I know, the Raven King could be waiting for me at Grandma Diana’s apartment now. I wish Thomas was the champion, and I didn’t have to do this. What if the Name of the World isn’t at Grandma Diana’s apartment anymore? And if she did still have the Name of the World there, why didn’t she bring it with her to America when she came to visit? She didn’t know the Raven King would show up, that’s why.

  What if I’m wrong?

  “We have to go,” Jane said. “I guess I don’t have a choice.” And in her best Grandma Diana voice, she said, “Take us across the pond, dear.”

  Before reaching the Atlantic Ocean, they stopped in New York City to get food. Jane had never been to Manhattan before, but she had seen it enough times on television and in movies that she expected to see a massive metropolis. It should have looked like a grid of office buildings with a square slice of trees, Central Park, at the center. Now the city was buried under brown smoke that made Jane’s eyes water. She tasted hot cinders that burned the back of her throat.

  As they dropped lower, the soupy air cleared, and Rachel brought them down on the sidewalk of a wide avenue of glass buildings with banks, clothing stores, and all-night convenience shops on their bottom floors. Everywhere there was broken glass, and bodies cluttered the sidewalk, as if there had been a stampede or a riot. The streets were jammed with yellow taxicabs, blue sedans, buses, and cars—all motionless and empty. Some of the cars were just burnt-out shells. Black smoke rose from sewer grates and open manholes. Fires raged inside nearby buildings. Jane heard a man screaming in the distance and a random popping sound, like firecrackers. The traffic lights at a nearby intersection changed from red to green; the red Don’t Walk hand turned into a white Walk person.

  “Be quick,” Rachel said. “I’ll watch from that rooftop. Call my name when you’re ready.” She flew onto the roof of an office tower.

  Michael said, “It looks like a war.” He pointed past the carnage. “Is that Times Square?”

  A few blocks
away, Jane saw the flashing lights and restaurants of Times Square, just like on television on New Year’s Eve. The intersections were crowded with crashed cars, and she saw more bodies. Jane spotted people walking through the square with long sticks—spears or rifles, maybe—in their hands.

  “Yes,” Jane said. “I’ll be right back. Do you want roasted peanuts for the flight?”

  Michael was already asleep again. His poison wound made him groggy and confused. When Jane checked under his shirt, the blackness had almost spread to the top of Michael’s stomach.

  In a nearby convenience store, a balding man slouched behind the counter. His shirt was covered in blood. A woman was waiting to pay for sandwiches and soft drinks, which she’d placed on the checkout counter. She was staring at the static on a television above the door and holding a tiny pistol in her left hand. In her right hand, she held a dark blue smartphone just like the one Jane’s mother used to have.

  The woman didn’t look down. It’s all right, Jane told herself as she stepped quietly past the woman to the refrigerators to get sodas and prepackaged sandwiches. There were bloody smears on one of the refrigerator doors. The only way I can help them is to stop the Raven King, Jane thought. When she had filled a paper bag with food, she turned for the exit. The woman was staring at her.

  “Why won’t he call me back?” the woman said. She shook the phone. “I can’t check my email.” She started to cry and tapped the gun against the side of her head.

  Jane’s pulse was loud in her ears. “I’ll fix it,” she said. “Please, don’t do that.”

  “I just want to hurt someone,” the woman said, and she cocked the gun.

  “Rachel!”

  The woman aimed the gun at Jane.

  Jane shouted, “Wait—!”

  The pistol clicked. It was empty.