Betwixt

by Tara Bray Smith

  Morgan was certain they were not alone. The darkness was crowded, it seemed, with sounds. Metallic clanging and the plashing of water, and then darker, lower, the scrape of something against stone, and a scratching wheeze she could only interpret as human breathing. Mooooorgaaaana. Had someone just called her name? Like in the forest? No. She was scared, she told herself. Despite her bravado that morning, she was scared. Though she had promised herself that she would be strong — what was Morgan D’Amici if not strong? — she reached forward, terrified, to make sure Nix was still there. She felt his slender back, and before her next step hit the earthen floor, his warm hand closed around hers.

  Nix and she stayed linked, walking slowly through darkness, till they reached a brick-walled room, the shape and size of a small building’s cellar. A single gas camping lamp sat in an alcove lined with rough-hewn wood, the source of the light that they had seen upon entering the tunnels. It had the uneasy feeling of a place that someone had just left.

  “Nix?” she whispered. “I don’t —”

  She was about to utter something craven, something utterly un-Morgan-like — she wasn’t sure what — when Nix thankfully interrupted her, pointer finger pressed first to her lips, then to his own. She silenced. They weren’t to speak. He looked at her, and then away, at a different door from the one they’d come through.

  They were to go there. But how did he know? They were in the Shanghai Tunnels. Scary people came down here — looking for — looking for what? Morgan tried to telegraph her thoughts to Nix but the boy only stared at her again, obviously waiting for her to signal that she was ready to follow. She stopped, confused. Time had become loose, like a hangman’s loop, and she felt light-headed and disoriented. She could feel the dead-endness of the place, its creepy history: shanghaied sailors and old hookers and doomed loggers and dead Indians and suffocating Chinese railroad workers. She felt a strong urge to run but quelled it. Humans were always wanting to do things they shouldn’t, she told herself, go places they weren’t supposed to be. It was just like during the change, when she was a child, in the forest. That’s why she was scared.

  She let go of Nix’s hand.

  Why did they have to be silent? It couldn’t be for anything as simple as escaping detection. Was it something about those wheezing sounds? Weren’t they just junkies looking to score? Weren’t she and Nix more powerful than them? Why didn’t they have flashlights? And where was Bleek?

  Morgan had done her duty. She had gotten Nix into the tunnels. Now she wanted to go home. She stood up straight and nodded at him, but he only bobbed his head curtly and turned to walk on.

  That little bitch Neve. She got us into this.

  There were three low, primitive doors leading in three directions. The one they had come in by, which Morgan knew was behind her — she resisted the urge to turn around and run back toward it — and two in front of them, one on the right and one straight ahead. Neither were marked, or suggested any kind of different destination from the next, but Nix stared at each in turn, as if judging, weighing, walking down the length of the corridors beyond with his mind. He reached for the one on the right, and as he walked through it Morgan wondered what had made him choose. She was tempted to make him stop and explain his decision — to tell her why he knew in a way she didn’t, couldn’t — but just as quickly as they had entered the dully lit room, they exited, and darkness swallowed them whole.

  She held back now, conscious that Nix must have sensed her cowardice. Only the day before she had jumped at the opportunity to follow him, thinking it would get her closer to Bleek, thinking that it would provide her with some opportunity for power. But the labyrinth of the tunnels and their stubborn, unplumbable darkness offered nothing — and terrified her. Who would find her if she died down here?

  She felt a dull clotting in her throat. She should have at least told K.A. where she was going. At least K.A. should have known.

  When we get out of this, I’m going to — I’m going to neutralize that conniving little crack. No way is she dating K.A. and …

  Morgan let the poisonous clouds fill her head, walking quietly and swiftly toward what she could see was the next light. Where Nix was taking her, who knew, but if Neve got out alive she was going to make that little strung-out whore pay.

  Dumb cow. She probably wanted everyone to come looking for her. She’ll probably be pissed that K.A. isn’t here. But then, she’s probably fucking Nix, too.

  She entered through yet another low doorway on the right and stood alone. Nix must have taken a step beyond. She reached her head back out past the doorjamb, then chastised herself because she wouldn’t have been able to see anything anyway. Hearing light steps, she called the boy’s name. She had gotten farther behind than she intended.

  “I’m back here,” Morgan half whispered. “I’m back here, at the room.”

  More scuffling, closer. He was heading back and would be angry that she’d spoken. She was glad she’d called, though; she wanted to speak again but didn’t dare. She looked behind her. A wooden table sat in the middle of the room, another lantern upon it. So these rooms — they were occupied. Morgan wondered what they had been used for in the old days. What unspeakable things had happened here?

  Long chains lay on the shadowy floor, and were those … cuffs? And that thick, dark substance smearing the top of the table, was that —

  Not down here. Not down here.

  She couldn’t help herself. “Nix,” she called, and moved toward the door. No one answered. No hand covered hers.

  Morgan picked the lantern up by its handle and once again approached the doorway, intending to hold the light out into the dusky passageway. Earthen walls were illuminated, still bearing the jagged scars of where they had been hacked out by picks and shovels and hands a hundred and fifty years before.

  The steps ceased. She raised the lamp again, closer.

  She saw the blood first, blooming raggedly across the girl’s midriff, an apron of smudgy brown. Like a painter’s smock, Morgan managed to think before she stepped through the doorway, pale and glassy-eyed and utterly silent, her skull shining through matted fine blond hair. The girl was dirty; the sundress she wore was smeared and splattered, and a strap hung like a broken petal off her shoulder. In the glare of Morgan’s lamp, she stopped. She pulled her parched lips back. Her teeth glinted and a sticky pearl of saliva welled at the right corner. It was only when Neve lifted her frail, bruised arms and lunged toward her with a sudden violence that Morgan finally allowed herself to scream.

  CHAPTER 24

  ONDINE WAS THINKING OF RAPHAEL. “The last thing I make before I die will be a hole,” he’d said in a lecture she and her mother had once gone to in New York, the first time she’d ever seen him. She’d tittered a little at first — it sounded porno-graphic — until she realized he was talking about a grave.

  Raphael made things — holes, cairns, oceans, mountains — with computerized wood and water and mud and stones, and colored pigment, and shadows and frost, and then printed his creations with digital ink, on huge LED canvases, in tortuous linking combinations that Ondine could only imagine came from the machinations of a computer never put to sleep. Tiny things moved among the patterns, all interspersed with a tepid yellowish light. The result was a mirror to this world of despicable and eerie flatness. All Ondine could think was: I’m glad I don’t live in there. And: I wonder what does.

  He could make something here, Ondine thought, walking past the vast, solid milky-blue canvas that was Lake Michigan. I could make something here.

  She was heading toward the rose garden at the center of Grant Park — the taxi driver had told her where to go — and had seen a small silver fish, no bigger than the eucalyptus leaves they had back in Oregon, lying dead in the grass some distance from the lake. Too far for the fish to have gotten on its own. A bird must have dropped it from its beak. Its eyes had been eaten out by ants already, and a silent column of them was entering its body through the holes in its head.
Immediately Ondine thought of Raphael, and envisioned a painting: the silver fish, the water behind, the column of ants, but far, too far, from the lake.

  How we get from here to there; how it makes such delicate sense. How every story, even the one she was living, was an attempt to explain that improbable jump.

  It was past season and only a few wilting petals hung on to their frizzle-topped hips. No benches beckoned, and Chicago’s rose garden — unlike Portland’s pride — was small enough to see entire. So Ondine just stood there, hands crossed over her chest, looking up at the skyscrapers or at the tops of distant trees, or the blue lake beyond, every so often scanning the level of the bushes for the brown woman who had served her a club soda at 30,000 feet the day before.

  Surely the woman would approach her if she were here. Surely she hadn’t imagined the whole thing. She looked at her watch, then pulled the napkin out of her pocket, staring at its neat black letters, slightly fuzzy at the edges from where the ink had bled.

  “I’m glad you came.”

  A shining voice reached her ears and Ondine looked up. It was she. Deb. Donna. Whatever her name was, who used to sell chemicals on the road. Her seatmate on the plane, wife of Mike, though she remembered a different voice. With the migraines. Who had offered her eyedrops, which Ondine refused. Still carrying that purse, black, shiny, which she was reaching into now with a pale, freckled, bony right hand. Ondine’s heart skipped and something lower slipped. She turned on her heel to run.

  She had been tricked. Manipulated. Again. If they had converts on planes, if they could single Ondine out, find her, track her down —

  She started to panic but checked herself. She had almost reached the border of the park. If she could breach it she could run away. She could go to the police —

  And there was Donna again. In front of her. Deb. Diane. How had she gotten here? From there? And it was not a gun or a knife in the woman’s hand, but a small brown bottle with a black stopper. Eyedrops.

  “Ondine.”

  When had she revealed her name? How did this woman know her? She was in Chicago now. It was a day later. She had stayed with her parents last night. Her mother had awoken her. She had eaten no breakfast.

  The woman approached her and Ondine backed up into the pathways that cut through the roses like a small labyrinth. The woman, her dark hair pulled back today to reveal massive purple-gray eyes behind fuchsia middle-aged lady glasses, stepped toward her, still holding out the small glass bottle.

  “Ondine, look at me. Look at me carefully. You know who I am. You came here because you know. We must not spend too much time or energy on this. There is a cutter after you. The stewardess —”

  “Flight attendant —,” she whispered. Was she stoned? What was happening to her?

  “On the plane. She will kill you. She tried last night, with the club soda. That’s why I tipped it over. She — or someone — is here at this park, right now, I am sure of it. She gave you that note to lure you here. I am lucky I intercepted it. I can stay only for a moment, or she will try to kill me, too.”

  What was she doing with her face, this woman? Was it her glasses? Was it the shadow of a building? How did she get it to look like that, her eyes getting bigger, the black hair pulled back, coiling into a ring of —

  “We can change a little, most of us. Our appearance. Obviously we don’t want to do that too often. Humans scare easily with things they don’t understand.”

  Ondine stilled here, aware of nothing but this woman in front of her, the eyes, the light breeze ruffling the leaves around them. Everything was pixilated and very, very bright. From outside, she knew, the scene comprised nothing more than two women, one older, one younger, one brown, one pale pink, stopping in a park to say hello. But inside she was that little silver fish, in something’s beak, about to be let go.

  “His name is Tim Bleeker. You know him. He is dangerous. Right now he is planning something with your ring — to hurt your ring. He has sent another cutter to kill you. You must use these drops. They will help you see clearly. Just use them. Then fight. We don’t have any time.”

  The woman straightened, reached into her purse once more, and handed Ondine a letter.

  “Read this. I have to go now. She is coming; I can smell her, and I must go. You have to help them. They need you. The key is in your blood. Are you hearing me, Ondine? The key is in your blood, and you have to find a way to use it. You don’t need to understand yet, but are you hearing me?”

  Ondine could not do anything. She could only stand and stare.

  Beyond the woman she could make out an old lady standing by the edge of a bank of trees, her hand tethered to a leash, at the end of which was a small black dog.

  “You have the power to fold the worlds. But perhaps you are still too young. Have you discovered who you are yet? Have you had the inkling?”

  The woman moved closer now, her quartz-colored eyes wide and staring at Ondine’s own. It was Viv, she realized. It was Viv. The woman whose egg —

  The woman who had donated —

  Ondine wanted very much to sit down and cry.

  “No,” she whispered. She had no idea why she’d just spoken.

  “It’s all right.” The woman reached her hand out slowly and placed the small bottle in Ondine’s palm. She felt herself grasp it. “If a changeling is given her gift too soon, she risks not feeling its full weight. The burden of her power.” Viv paused, staring. “It’s why they gave us wings in their pictures. It’s why they make us prettier than them. Power is very heavy. But you’re ready, Ondine. You’re ready now. You must …”

  She was already moving away, quickly now, looking around. “I have to go. Take this and use it.” She looked at the girl one last time. “I’m sorry this is happening so soon. I’m sorry I could not clear your path.”

  Then she stopped. “I love you, Ondine. We all do.”

  By the time the words reached Ondine’s ears, the woman was gone, faded into the space between the trees at the edge of the park. She felt the smooth bottle in her hand. The old woman with the dog lifted her head and walked away.

  WOULD IT ALWAYS GO BACK TO THIS?

  This meaning alone, in a dark place, looking for something he wasn’t even sure he could see.

  It wasn’t until Nix reached a dead end — his feet stubbing an earthen wall, hands searching damp dirt — that he knew he had lost Morgan. He had told her to be silent; now he regretted it. He could die — or at least, his body could. How foolhardy he’d been to come down to the tunnels, with no real sense of what he could or could not do. Nix didn’t like being underground. Every hair on his body distended, sweat trickled down his clammy neck. He was afraid to move lest he touch something — someone? He didn’t know what was around him because he couldn’t see anything, and the whole reason he’d come down here, to find Neve, seemed distant as the sun. Something he read in high school came to him:

  Abandon hope all ye who enter here. Dante.

  He had to find her. He had to get close enough to take the light.

  He traced his hands across slimy earth and found a corner, turning to face it. Despite the thudding in his chest, he willed himself to calm down. His throat constricted — what was that bitter smell? — but he made himself stand up straight, thereby knocking his head against the ceiling and feeling damp earth trickle inside his collar. When had the ceiling gotten so low?

  With one hand on the wall he fumbled for the mini-flashlight he had tucked into his pocket before he’d left the squat. He hadn’t wanted to use it, hadn’t wanted to allow himself to be seen, but now …

  A cold, white light illuminated a shoe, and Nix was almost surprised to realize it was his own. What he had thought was dirt was gray clay, scored with soft, round marks, as if hollowed out by dripping water. He bent to look at them. Overlapping ridged grooves were interrupted here and there by flatter, rounder, wider impressions — somewhat familiar. Surely he would have remembered going into a room. Was he that disoriented?
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  One of the impressions was separated from the others. He traced it with a trembling finger, inscribing a rude, squarish circle, hollow at the center. He laid his fingers against the wall.

  The last creation before the grave.

  Palm prints. They were palm prints. Someone desperate in the dark, trying to get out. Then the light was going, searching, darting everywhere around him in the small cavern. On every surface he could see, in every square inch, overlapping palm prints pushing against clay.

  Nix dropped the flashlight and it rolled away from him. He grabbed for it and the light skipped over something metallic. With one hand he held the flashlight, and with the other he pried the necklace from the clay and held it in front of him. It swayed and glinted in the light. Cheap, gold-plated.

  Neve, it read, in cursive hand.

  That’s when Nix heard the screaming.

  THE FIRST THING MOTH SAW on the other side was the door behind him.

  He walked toward it. Was it the door he had just come through? He took a step, reached out his hand to touch it, and found himself farther away than when he’d started, his hand nowhere to be seen. Another step. Farther again. He turned. It was an empty earth-lined tunnel Moth saw, but strangely, as if constructed from fading Christmas lights. One corner of his vision was illuminated and he wondered what it was that gave the tunnel its eerie, ultraviolet cast. Had he already entered the limina? Was this what it looked like? As if he were playing Xbox with night-vision goggles?