by Martin Kee
“A tooth for a tooth,” Victoria had said. “Teach you to punch me.”
“Hold her down! Get her down!” Dona’s laughing voice echoed in Skyla’s mind.
They had nearly gotten her too, the bullies with their expensive clothes and cruel eyes. Melissa had sold her out alright. It was a raven who had saved her in the end, never a person.
Laughter and taunting clouded her thoughts. Skyla shunted the memories away, forbidding herself to dwell on them.
Dwelling is a luxury for people with money and time, not for the dirty faces of the Gutter Wedge. Not for the hunted, not for people like me, she thought, wiping a tear from her cheek.
Missy’s red book bounced in her rucksack, suddenly feeling heavier as her footsteps drove her forward, a cadence into the unknown.
*
Her journey through the sewers was damp and tedious, but not nearly as terrifying as the stories promised, aside from her discovery of a banana slug the length of her arm. Then there was the beetle colony that scattered, covering the floor in shifting blue before vanishing into the cracks. But there were no monsters, not like the monsters in her house before it burned.
Now that was a monster, she thought. Even now it seemed more like a dream, the shapes too impossible, the movement too fluid.
They traveled down the same hallway next to the canal for miles it seemed. The only variation was the widening and narrowing of the walls and ceiling where different eras of construction collided. Juxtaposed slabs of reality hid behind curtains of moss and algae. They said all of Bollingbrook was built on the shoulders of greater cities. Now she could see why.
“The way they talk about this place, you’d think it ate children alive,” she said to Orrin.
Croak. Click, click, click, went Orrin.
She had begun talking conversationally to the bird more and more, partly because no one else was around, but also because she had the feeling that he actually understood what she was saying. When she spoke, his head would tilt slightly and his eyes would gaze at her. Sometimes his vocal range was extraordinary, from croaks and clucks to deep squawks and actual words. Other times he would simply blink once or twice and then look away as if mulling over her statement.
“I mean the place doesn’t seem to be very scary at all.”
Squawk.
“Dona would be scared, if only for fear of getting her shoes dirty. Missy told me once that Dona had over four hundred pairs of shoes. Who needs that many shoes?”
Cluck.
“She had so many that her parents had to build a new room on their mansion to fit them all.”
Croak.
“I miss Melissa…”
Squawk.
“Do you think they’ll find us?”
This was met with silence. Orrin only stared.
As the thrill of being chased began to wear off, Skyla yawned. Her eyes felt like they had sand in them. There was no sun or moon to indicate what time it was. She hoped they could make it under cover of night, but who could tell? They may as well have been walking for days.
When Skyla had found Orrin, he was entangled, tethered to the ground, boys throwing stones at him. She had thrown herself in-between him and the cruel boys without even thinking, because Orrin was small. Orrin was defenseless and beaten. She could relate.
He had spoken her aunt’s name, and then her own.
“Ree-ah,” he uttered from her shoulder. A rusty old sound, nothing like a common crow.
Much to her mother’s chagrin, she kept him, claiming that her crazy Aunt Rhia had sent him all the way from Rhinewall. How else could he know her name?
“Only if he stays in your room.” Lynn had allowed it begrudgingly. And so he did.
Now Orrin’s little mimics were the only clues she had.
“Ree-ahh,” Orrin sang, his voice echoing against the walls, “Reeee-ahh.”
“Are you taking me to see Rhia?” she mused. “Judging the way I am giving you a ride, I think it’s the other way around.”
Or are we just going to die down here in the sewers? she thought.
In response, Orrin stretched out his neck and opened his mouth wide. The sound that came out was a clicking, chittering sound. It electrified the hairs on the back of Skyla’s arms and neck.
“Where did you learn that call?” she asked.
Orrin only blinked, his body bouncing along on her shoulder as if detached from his head. He clucked a few times indignantly.
“Where did you learn that call you just made?” she asked again.
Orrin croaked and it almost sounded like he said, “Eyes.” But Skyla couldn’t be sure.
After walking for what felt like hours, they came to a fork which forced them to turn. What had been a tunnel leading to the right had been sealed ages ago. To her left was the canal, dark and deceptively smooth. It bisected the city and provided power to turbines humming behind thick walls.
This leads to the Flux, to the Wilds, she thought with a thrill. This leads out of the city. I’ve never even been out of the city… I’ve never been anywhere.
As they rounded a corner, blue gray morning light poured over the damp concrete walls, lifting the gloom and hurting her eyes. The canal that had rushed along beside her seemed to fall off the edge of the world. A cool breeze smelling of pine and loam hit her face, washing away the shadows.
Orrin caught the breeze in his feathers and spun around happily on the edge of her backpack. He launched from her shoulder and flew up ahead, his shadow fluttering on the sides of the damp walls.
She found her path blocked by a gate, which spanned the width of the tunnel. She gripped the bars like a prisoner. She sighed.
What now? she thought.
Orrin whistled from across the canal. She turned to see him perched on a large, wet lever sticking out from the opposite wall. A chain dangled from the lever, an open lock hanging from the end. Orrin was wiping rust from his beak with a claw.
“How am I supposed to get over there?” she yelled over the roar of water.
Orrin looked at her from the lever and squawked. Not my problem, kid. I want to get out of here as bad as you, he seemed to say.
The bars had two crossbeams that ran along the width of them. Skyla shimmied her way across the rapid water, given a sharp fright when her foot almost slipped at first. School uniform shoes were less than ideal for this.
Black, violent water rushed underneath her, pressing debris that had built up for decades—maybe centuries—against the bars, a throbbing viscous garbage dump. The lever, she decided, was probably to purge the filter somehow.
Skyla cringed as her fingers sunk into the slime covering the lever. Despite the coating of sludge and rust, it moved with ease. Several tons of steel bars fell through the floor of the canal with a loud sploosh. Foam drifted out over the surface toward the ledge, followed by the smallest bits of refuse, an aquatic parade of castaway rejects, free of their watery purgatory. What looked like a large blue and pink fish drifted several yards beneath the surface and was gone. Skyla shivered when she thought she saw a face—and hair.
The parade of random waterlogged objects finally dwindled to a boot, a newspaper, some rope and other small indescribable objects. Skyla decided that it was probably best to keep moving.
Orrin perched at the edge of the drop, cawing cheerily. Skyla watched him as she sat down on the lip of the canal, only a few feet away from the violent current. From the edge of the pipe, the city wall of Bollingbrook fell away on either side in rows of great copper monoliths, so high that it was impossible to see where they ended. They blended into the distant fog where the forest trees, grown wild from the Flux, crowded and pressed against them.
Nobody knew what the Flux was. Most people simply called it The Wilds, a place that caused visions and madness. Others said it held the truth—whatever that meant.
Below her feet, the water cascaded out of the canal in a deafening roar, vanishing into the gorge below. A large branch plunged over the edge, performi
ng a dramatic suicide. A deep canyon had been carved by centuries of water from the city, trailing off to where it would eventually merge with the greater Lassimir River. The forest was simply cut off at the river’s edge as if a great axe had come down, cleaving the earth in half. From the granite face, exposed roots twisted to find purchase. Gnarled toes from a beggar’s shoe.
The forest spread out in front of her, a vast blanket of greens and grays, hinting at the jagged Flux-torn landscape that lay hidden beneath. It rolled and rolled until it too vanished into the morning fog.
She shrugged off her backpack and rummaged inside, her stomach growling. As she grabbed the last scrap of cheese from her rucksack, her hand brushed up against the smooth surface of the box. It had honestly been the last thing on her mind. Holding the food in her mouth, she removed it from the satchel.
Now that it had been jostled, it was somewhat free of dust and she could clearly read her name written in thick red letters on the lid. Skyla placed the box on the ground and tugged the cord that held the lid in place. Fine particles of dust and old twine flew into the air as the strand unraveled.
How long has she had this under her bed? she wondered.
Two smoky green glass disks encased in rings of brass stared up at her from the middle of the open box. They sat half-buried in a nest of ripped white tissue, each ring with a fine set of grooves around its circumference, resembling the lenses of an old camera. Tiny symbols were etched at even intervals around the polished brass rings. The lenses were mounted on a brown, soft leather skullcap via a complex brass hinge. From the skullcap dangled a chinstrap lined with soft wool.
Skyla held the aviator goggles out in front of her as something fell from inside them. It landed in the box with a dull thump. Not wanting to get them dirty, Skyla placed the cap on her head; the lenses rotated upward. They shaded her eyes like a visor and she thought that if it rained again, they might prove valuable for keeping her face dry at least.
She sank her hand back into the packaging and felt something hard, cold, and circular. As she grabbed it, Skyla felt a tingle travel up her forearm, a faint electrical jolt. It lasted for only a moment.
I‘m so tired my mind is playing tricks on me, she thought.
It was a coin, large enough to cover her palm. A curious square hole cored out its center and the face reminded her of dirty moss. It might have been bronze at one point, but now it was covered in a thick patina of decay. She flipped it over and noted the design of a snake winding its way around the circumference of one side. Its skin was detailed and vivid even under the apparent corrosion. Its back arched and flexed its way around the coin until it met its own tail, which it appeared to eat.
Flipping it over revealed a series of characters she had never seen before. They too spanned the circumference of the coin and ended exactly where they started. There was no way to tell where they ended or began. It seemed to be just one continuous circle of inexplicable text.
She pocketed the coin and crushed the box flat, then placed it at the bottom of the pack, along with the twine, on top of its lid. Orrin watched all this with patient curiosity, occasionally preening a feather or sharpening his beak on the concrete.
The skullcap felt warm and comfortable. She found the chinstrap and adjusted it to fit snugly on her head. Wearing the goggles and looking out from the huge pipeline, Skyla felt like the world’s youngest aeronaut at the helm of some enormous airship. She imagined herself in one of those aerolores they made in the factories behind her house, or maybe even one of the gigantic airships she had seen only in books. She dangled her legs over the ledge, smiling.
Caught in a moment of playfulness, she pulled the brass fittings down over her eyes where they seemed to latch on their own with a muted click. All at once the world went dark.
But not Orrin. He was as white as a star. He winked at her.
She held her hand out, in front of her face and noticed a few strange things. For one, her hand appeared highlighted, only a shade dimmer than Orrin. A personal spotlight seemed to illuminate her skin. But everything else was almost imperceptibly dark.
Waving her hand produced, to her astonishment, brilliant trails. She adjusted the lens and noticed a needle in her periphery. It wiggled and ducked depending on where her hand was placed in her field of vision. Next, Skyla grabbed one of the knobs around the lens and twisted.
There was a click, and then her world vanished.
Her vision was consumed in a swirling kaleidoscope of images bleeding into one another. The gorge was there and not there. It was a meadow. It was a grey waste. It was a pavilion of pillared ruins. It was the center of a volcano. It was a desert, a taiga, a grassy plain.
The sewage pipe she sat in disappeared and she found herself sitting on thin air. It reappeared again and encompassed her like a huge concert hall. The waterfall was at once beside her and very far away, then not there at all. She saw stars.
She felt herself wanting to puke.
Her stomach doing cartwheels, she grabbed the lenses and pulled with trembling hands. They unlatched, swinging back up and away from her face. She gasped for air.
The strap came away with shaking, sweaty hands and Skyla threw the goggles back into the backpack as if they were alive and rabid. She took long, controlled breaths of the rich pine air. Her eyes stayed closed until the dizziness subsided.
She looked at Orrin. The raven looked back at her.
“Did you know that would happen?”
Squawk.
She stared at the closed rucksack, then at her surroundings, not entirely convinced that they were real. She touched the concrete, touched her face. It was nearly an hour later before she felt comfortable getting back to her feet.
To her left a small landing of jagged rock spiraled downward to the edge of the cliff where the forest began. Skyla took great care choosing her footing, testing every foothold, not entirely certain which rocks were real and which ones weren’t.
Here lies The Wilds, she remembered the childhood warning, the place where men turn mad, screaming of gods and impossible beasts, a place of infinite change, where the curtain of the world can no longer obscure what lies beneath.
She stood a moment, gazing at the thick wall of trees that seemed to yawn at her like a mouth.
Skyla took one last breath and stepped through.
Chapter 5
“So glad to finally meet you,” said Chief Constable Perlandine. “The archbishop said to expect a visit.”
Perlandine was a stout man with a wide dark mustache that curled upward at the ends. His navy blue uniform bulged in odd places betraying years of comfort and privilege, its brass buttons doing their best not to pop off from the strain. His helmet sat on one corner of his desk, the traditional gold shield emblazoned on the front. His eyes squinted as he reached out a meaty paw and pumped The Reverend’s hand so hard it was as if he thought coins might fall out. After shaking hands, the two men sat opposite each other in large comfortable-looking leather chairs near a wide window.
Perlandine offered a cigar to the Reverend from a cherry wood box.
“Hard to get cigars like these, from what I hear,” said Lyle, admiring the label stamped on the brown skin of his cigar.
“They’re nice aren’t they?”
“Very much so,” Lyle said, letting his eyes wander over the room.
The two men puffed away for a moment, settling into their surroundings. The Reverend considered the deep walnut-paneled walls and the various trophies that lined the shelves. The elephant tusks, carved with precision to resemble a sky-bound kingdom; a necklace made of tiger claws; gold plated guns and swords; rare crystals the size of a child’s head; all of them unique and finely crafted—all of them illegal.
Souvenirs, thought Lyle. The man likes his souvenirs.
An elaborate military uniform covered a fitting dummy in one corner of the room, an ornate saber dangling from its belt. An empty general’s hat sat atop the dummy; gold and blue feathers grew from it like
wild ferns.
“You used to be militia?” Lyle finally asked.
“Why yes,” Perlandine said, inflating in his chair as he spoke. “Holy Guard. That was ages ago. Seems police work is the only money to be made by men who can use a gun these days.”
“Well you seem to have done well for yourself,” Lyle said. He held the cigar out. “I assume these gifts come with the job?”
Perlandine shifted in his seat, causing the chair to squeak. “Those,” he said, “are from the last and only successful raid on the Lassimir settlement. They are, I dare say, about twenty years old.”
“They hold up.”
“Indeed they do.”
“Lassimir is a city?”
“It is, of sorts. Illegitimate.” He pronounced it “ill-ee-gittimate”.
“I see,” said Lyle. “Gypsies?”
“Gypsies, bandits, vagrants… pirates,” said Perlandine, taking a puff. “The refuse that flows from the cities finds its way there.”
He slid back in his chair as if settling in for a long story. Lyle waited for him to adjust himself, wondering just how long the man would make him wait. Perlandine continued. “Lassimir is an undocumented city that sits along the river of the same name. There is some history I won’t bore you with, about how it came to be called that. Either way, you might remember passing over it as you entered the city by train.”
Lyle nodded politely, waiting.
“The Lassimir River is a popular detour for trading barges,” said the Chief Constable. “They send smaller lighter boats in through the sound to trade items that The Church would find… questionable. Over the years, the tent city has grown exponentially. They pretty much dominate trade throughout the region, much to the distaste of the citizens of Rhinewall and here, of course.”
“I am familiar with Rhinewall,” said Lyle. More familiar than you’ll ever know, he thought.
Perlandine nodded and continued. “We attempted to disperse the Lassimir encampment several decades ago.”
“How did that work out for you?” Lyle grinned. He had already heard the mutterings from businessmen about the pirate town that would not die, but instead flooded the markets with cheap, illegal goods.