He decided to stop for a moment and look upward. He had kept his gaze firmly planted on his path as he ascended, worried about falling from this height, so had no idea how far he was from the top of the steps. Though he figured he had to be getting close.
But when he looked up, he saw to his dismay that the top of the stairway – or at least, the point where the stairs became fuzzy and vague – seemed to be as far away as ever. He looked down, and could no longer see the Darksiders or their city in the clouds. So he must have gone up, he must have.
He looked up again. The stairs stretched out interminably, apparently as unreachable as the end of a rainbow, as never-ending as time itself.
Billy started walking again, then started running, this time keeping his gaze firmly fixed above him in spite of the danger of falling. Sure enough, as he climbed the top of the stairs seemed to draw away in equal speed. Billy gritted his teeth and pushed himself to run faster. Higher. Blythe's life, Ivy's life depended on it.
The steps below his feet seemed to taunt him, to mock him. You'll never get there, they seemed to say. We'll beat you.
Step, step, step.
Your friends will die, said the stairs. You will die.
I won't, Billy thought back.
Up, up, up.
And after what seemed like days, he saw something on the stairs above. His pace quickened even more, hope pounding new strength into his legs. He was getting somewhere!
Then his heart dropped again as he realized that he was still as far from the top of the stairs as ever.
So what is that? he wondered. At first visible as a distant dot, the whatever-it-was grew and grew, and finally resolved into...
Billy squinted, not believing his eyes.
A goat?
But that's what it was, clippety-clopping down the stairs like a freight train with hooves. As it descended the stairs, the animal lowered its head, curved horns leading the way, and Billy realized that the thing intended to butt him off the stairs!
He looked around for someplace to go, but of course saw nothing.
The goat came closer, and as it did Billy realized with dismay that not only was it hurtling directly at him, but it was the size of a sedan. Like the bear had been, Billy saw that the goat was gray, and would have been oddly beautiful if it wasn't headed straight at him.
He thought thought about putting up his shield, but realized that even if it blunted the force of the blow as it had with the bear, the Toyota-sized goat's momentum would just gently push him off the stairs. Excalibur appeared in his hand as fast as thought itself, the diamond point glinting in the sun. Billy didn't have much hope that stabbing the goat would do him more good than trying to stop it with his shield, but he wasn't going to go down – literally! – without a fight.
Billy crouched, lowering his center of gravity as much as possible as he prepared to clash with the goat. He also decided that if he survived this encounter, he could never tell anyone about it. Even among the Powers, he couldn't think of many people who would believe a story about a homicidal goat on steroids that hung out in the middle of a bunch of spell-stopping stairs.
The goat lifted its head for a moment, drawing a bead on Billy. Its eyes widened, and it literally sat on its haunches in mid-step. That didn't stop it from continuing its downward plunge, though, as its momentum sent it thudding downward. Bumpety-bumpety-bump it went, its colossal rear end bouncing down the steps. Gradually, though, the goat slowed. It remained on its bottom, thudding to a halt only a few feet in front of Billy.
Billy didn't move. What next?
“Whe-heh-heh-here did you get that sword?” bleated the goat after a moment.
It was a measure of Billy's astonishment that he actually managed to answer: for the first time in his life, he had been surprised beyond being speechless. “From Blue,” he said automatically.
The goat frowned. At any rate, Billy was pretty sure it was frowning. Not that he had a lot of frowning goats in his past to compare it to.
“Tha-a-a-a-at's not right,” said the goat after a moment, and then disappeared.
“What is going on?” Billy asked no one in particular.
He started up again.
More hours – or days, or weeks, or months – went by. Billy was exhausted, but for some reason he never quite ran out of strength. He also realized he was hungry and thirsty, and had to go to the bathroom. He couldn't do anything about the first two. As for the third, he debated the idea of just peeing over the edge of the stairs. The thought kind of appealed to him, since he knew Mrs. Black was somewhere directly below him, but he eventually decided to just hold it. No telling what weird thing might happen next, and the thought of being caught literally with his pants down creeped him out.
He was glad of his decision a moment later, when he heard a buzzing noise. He looked around, and ducked instinctively as something whizzed straight at him. The thing streaked by, and Billy saw that it was a hummingbird. Though most hummingbirds weren't the size of a bed, with wings broader than his kitchen table. And the fact that the thing seemed to be wearing some weird kind of armor also struck him as unusual.
The hummingbird – gray, just as the goat and bear had been – wheeled in mid-air. It made a sharp u-turn and dive-bombed Billy again. He dove out of the way at the last second, the air practically sizzling as the huge monster flew by.
Is the City of the Sky some kind of weird petting zoo? Billy wondered in the split-second of free time he had before the hummingbird wheeled around for another pass. He also wondered for a fraction of an instant what size birdfeeder the thing needed, and his mind barfed up an image of a house-sized container full of Hawaiian Punch before he had to duck under another attack run.
Concentrate! he scolded himself. He couldn't keep this up. Even if he managed to avoid a direct hit from the hummingbird's wickedly pointed beak, he knew sooner or later he was going to miss a step and fall from his precarious perch in the sky.
He held Excalibur before him, slashing at the hummingbird as it once more attacked, but the bird was far too fast, even for the quick-as-lightning diamond sword.
Time to switch weapons, Billy thought, and no sooner had he done so then Excalibur disappeared, and he was instead holding the Dagger of Flame. The hummingbird whipped in tight circles, moving so fast it was a blur, and under normal circumstances Billy would have placed heavy odds against anything slower than a laser being able to pluck it out of the sky. But these were far from normal circumstances, and Billy didn't think twice about hurling the dagger at the gigantic bird.
The razor-edged ruby spun through the air, and Billy knew that as fast as the hummingbird was, the dagger was faster. It was one of the weapons of prophecy, and it couldn't miss.
But it did. Or rather, it didn't miss. Not exactly. But it did stop, hanging motionless in mid-air before the now-hovering hummingbird.
The bird cocked its head, looking at the dagger with a quizzical expression.
Billy's stomach sank. He knew that the weapons of prophecy couldn't be taken from him, but did throwing the dagger count as giving it away?
The bird coughed. “Have we met before?” it said in a high, piping voice. “I seem to remember that we met next week. Or maybe next century. I get confused. What year is it? Is SpongeBob SquarePants still on?”
Billy's eyes bugged so far out of his head he thought it highly likely that they would detach and float off like some kind of horrific balloons. “Excuse me?” he finally managed.
“Why?” asked the hummingbird. “Did you break wind?” It cackled madly at this last, as thought it had cracked the funniest joke ever heard. Before Billy could respond, it sobered. “Where did you get this?” it said, pointing its beak at the still-floating Dagger of Flame.
“From a dragon,” answered Billy.
“From a dragon, eh?” said the hummingbird. “Serba?”
“Yes!” shouted Billy, surprised at how excited he suddenly was. Maybe this insane bird could help him somehow; could giv
e him some answers. “You know him?”
“Know who?” said the hummingbird.
“Serba,” said Billy.
“Nope,” said the bird. “But I think I will meet him a few centuries ago.”
Billy shook his head in confusion. This wasn't getting anywhere.
I'm not getting anywhere, either, he thought, looking up the steps. As before, he seemed not to have ascended any further. Discouragement pulled heavily at him. There was something strange going on. Not only was he staying in the same place, but time was acting weird. Like he was in some kind of alternate dimension where time flowed neither forward nor back, but rather sideways. He didn't know how that was possible. Powers Island had had a spell on it that changed time, but that had happened a long time ago under the influence of one of the White King’s fellows, and Billy had never heard of anyone else being able to manipulate time.
The thought led to another, and Billy suddenly looked at the hummingbird curiously. “You ever been to Powers Island?” he asked.
“I haven't been there yet,” answered the hummingbird. “But I will be, a few years or millennia ago.”
Billy couldn't make sense of that, either. “Could I have the dagger back?” he finally managed.
“This old thing?” said the hummingbird. It nodded, and the dagger flicked back toward him. Billy's hand plucked the blade from the air. Billy knew he could never have done something like that on his own, and he felt relieved knowing that whatever bond had connected him to the dagger was still intact. He willed it to disappear to whatever place it went to when he wasn't holding it.
He looked back at the hummingbird. It stared back at him, then suddenly flew upward, shrinking gradually until it disappeared.
Billy watched it go. He climbed another step, and then stopped. Climbing wasn't getting him anywhere. His father had once told him that insanity could be defined as proving that something doesn't work... and then insisting on doing it over and over again. “Take a step back,” his father told him. “Look at what you've done, and try a new path.”
The thought led Billy to think of his father and mother, under the Still as Stone spell and hidden away somewhere by Mrs. Russet. He hoped they were all right.
He shook his head, forcing thoughts of his parents to the back of his mind. He couldn't think about them right now. He had a mission.
A mission that's going nowhere, he thought.
He sighed. Going up wasn't helping.
“Take a step back.”
His father's words were almost audible. He thought about them, then shrugged. Why not? he thought. It wasn't like he could get nowhere even faster.
He moved down, dropping back a step.
He squinted.
He dropped back another step.
Another.
Another.
And with each step, the stairs above him – the ones that had been blurred and unfocused – grew more and more defined.
Billy’s eyes bulged.
He turned, faced downward, and ran as fast as he could down the steps. Ten steps. Twenty. Thirty.
And then, suddenly, he stepped over the top stair. He almost fell down, so surprised was he at the impossibility of it. He had been running down, but he had just stepped up.
He couldn’t explain it. But it was true. In moving forward, he had failed to achieve his goal. It was only when he went back that he somehow attained the heights.
He looked around. The stairs were behind him.
And in front….
“Oh, wow,” he whispered.
CHAPTER THE FOURTEENTH
In Which Billy speaks to Beasts, and meets his Old Friend…
Billy was surrounded by a million different animals. Big, little, medium. From ants to elephants, from sloths to giraffes, from the smallest to the largest, they walked among the clouds, passing back and forth by one another as though such a menagerie was commonplace. Natural predators allowed their prey to pass unmolested, and animals that should have fought for dominance seemed unaware of one another.
All the animals were gray. The same gray that the grizzly, goat, and hummingbird had been.
And almost stranger than the infinite-seeming landscape of creatures was the cloud on which they – and Billy – all stood. Where before the clouds he had stood on seemed ethereal and ready to disappear at any time, this cloud seemed somehow anchored in existence. Like heaven and earth might pass away, but the cloud would remain, hanging alone in the center of a void when the rest of the universe had fizzled away to nothing.
That thought brought another to mind: fizzled. Could all these animals be Fizzles? That might make some sense, since he knew that Fizzles took on many of their makers’ traits and even aspects of their characters. But who would make Fizzles like these? Who would create air-headed gray animals that spoke in nonsensical riddles and yet were smart enough to recognize the weapons Billy held?
Billy took a step forward. He was a bit worried about doing so. The animals hadn’t noticed him yet, but there was no guarantee they wouldn’t… and no guarantee they wouldn’t see him as a threat or an enemy. So his first step was tentative. Careful.
And nothing happened. The cloud remained solid below his feet. The countless animals continued milling about without visible purpose or intent.
Billy moved among them. He reached out to touch one of the animals – a hippo that seemed fat and slow – but it danced quickly out of range of his hand. So apparently the animals weren’t going to attack him, but neither were they interested in striking up a closer relationship.
Billy walked. And just like on the stairs, he seemed to walk forever, but didn’t actually get anywhere. Just seemed to stay forever in the center of a sea of gray cloud and grayer animals.
A thought struck him: maybe he should turn around again! It had worked with the stairs, so maybe it would work here.
He turned… and turned and turned and turned. The stairs had disappeared. He couldn’t walk back the way he had come, because he had no way of knowing where that was. He was in what seemed like the exact center of a perfect circle of animals. A circle that went on forever in every direction.
Billy’s stomach rumbled, and he felt a thrill of fear. Was this how he was going to die? After surviving a War of the Powers, after living through attacks by zombies and Black Powers and even man-eating plants, after escaping a cell whose bars were Death itself, was he going to come to an end on a great gray playground for sky-animals? Was he going to just die of exposure or hunger or thirst, surrounded by every animal in existence?
He stopped moving. Part of this was because walking hadn’t gotten him anywhere, and part of it was a burgeoning sense of despair. He suddenly felt like a five-year-old, unsure and weak and not knowing enough to survive a walk across the street, let alone a quest to retrieve the White King’s arms and armor.
At the same moment, the animals that had until now been basically indifferent to him suddenly shifted in attitude. As one, they turned to face him, and though not a sound was made, the expressions on the gray faces all around him were clearly angry. All the beasts, great and small, were now focused on him. Billy wanted to step back, to retreat, but there was nowhere to retreat to. The animals surrounded him, going forever in every direction.
They all stepped as one, drawing even closer to him. And now they were making noises. Snarls, slavering grunts, barks of rage. He didn’t know what he had done, but whatever it was he had made them very angry doing it.
Billy dropped instinctively into a crouch. The Shield of the Sea was on his arm, the Dagger of Flame in one hand and Excalibur in the other. And as they appeared, his fear dissipated. Suddenly he was no longer just Billy, but the Messenger and Seeker of Powers.
“Come, then,” he snarled. “Come and feel the bite of my blades. Come and feel the edge of my shield and know my wrath.”
The animals didn’t draw back. Nor did they charge. Their expressions remained the same, as though frozen in a single moment in time. Then they spoke.
All of them, with one voice, their mouths moving in perfect unison.
“WHO ARE YOU?”
The sound was so loud it almost knocked Billy off his feet. The noise of a million animals of all sizes speaking the same words was overwhelming, so much so that he couldn’t put together any words to reply.
“WHO ARE YOU?” demanded the horde, and it sounded even louder, angrier.
“I’m… I’m Billy,” he finally managed to say. He had hoped that whatever force kept taking over his voice and making him speak with power and might would show up again, but he was left to his own.
“HOW DID YOU COME HERE?”
“I… I climbed the stairs.”
The animals all cocked their heads. There were so many that the movement itself made noise, a loud rustling like muted thunder happening somewhere in the distance.
“no one climbs the stairs.”
Somehow the sound was quieter now, as though the animals were no longer quite so enraged.
“Well, actually, I went down them.”
“Down them?”
Billy nodded. He looked at the closest animal – a wolf, it looked like – and spoke to it. He didn’t have any evidence the wolf was in charge, but he could hardly spin around and around while he talked, either, not if he wanted to avoid throwing up all over the place.
“Down them?” the animals said again. This time their words were a whisper. Still gargantuan, still epically loud by any normal standards, but much quieter compared to what they had been.
Billy nodded once more.
“Then who am I?” said the voices of the beasts.
Billy blinked. “I don’t understand.”
The enraged expressions returned full force to the animals’ faces. “WHO AM I?” they bellowed.
Billy, already crouched low, felt like he was bending in two under the force of the scream. The animals stepped closer, so close that he could feel their breath on his body, warm and moist.
Who is it? he thought. Who’s behind this?
Billy: Seeker of Powers (The Billy Saga) Page 21