by Laura Legend
The fox was a message from Kumiko.
Cass was needed back at the monastery.
3
CASS WAS AFRAID that the meeting would be over by the time she got down from the mountain, cleaned up, and made her way to Kumiko’s war room. She was relieved when, on the way there, she found that she wasn’t the only one running late.
In the hallway outside Kumiko’s tea room, Cass bumped into Grey, one of Kumiko’s top lieutenants. As a pair, Dogen and Grey were Kumiko’s right hands and though both Dogen and Grey shared a deep, intelligent devotion to Kumiko and the Shield, their appearances and demeanors pointed in sharply different directions. Where Dogen was effectively a deadly teddy bear the size of a house, Grey was short, stocky, and gruff. While the hair on his head was short and balding, his eyebrows were long and bushy, his beard was full and wild, and his arms were covered in what was pretty much a thick rug of fur. Also—and this was Cass’s favorite thing about him—he had an eyepatch that, though it had originally been a deep crimson red, had faded enough over the past hundred years that Cass couldn’t help but think of it as pink.
“I see that you’re late for Kumiko’s meeting,” Grey offered in his deep, gravelly voice.
“Do you, now?” Cass shot back, smiling. “I’m not sure how you can see much of anything with that pink eyepatch on.”
Grey harrumphed and rolled his one good eye.
“This patch used to be white—until I bathed it in the blood of my enemies,” he said, pretending to accidentally bump into Cass as they rounded a corner. His mass, though, was such that even a friendly bump bounced Cass into the wall of Kumiko’s tea room. When Cass reached out to steady herself, she accidentally punched her hand right through the thin sheet of paper that framed part of the room’s outer wall.
Cass froze, her eyes wide and alarmed. With her hand still poking through the hole in the paper wall, she shot Grey an accusing look.
“We are in big trouble,” she silently mouthed in his direction.
Grey looked at Cass, then at the hole her hand had punched through the wall, and then back to Cass.
“We?” Grey whispered, as he hurried down the hall, throwing one last look over his shoulder and cracking half a smile.
“Traitor! Chicken!” Cass stage-whispered after him as he ducked into the tea room, leaving her alone.
“Cassandra?” Kumiko’s soft voice came with precise and frightening control from the other side of wall.
“Yes, ma’am,” Cass answered.
“Is that your fist poking through the wall of my tea room?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Cass answered again, withdrawing her hand from the hole.
The hole was big enough that Cass had no trouble seeing straight into the tea room, but it was high enough that she had to lean forward a little to find an angle that would bring Kumiko’s tiny body into view. The look on Kumiko’s face was hard but, at the low table behind her, Zach and Dogen were trying desperately to keep straight faces. Grey tried to look both concerned and nonchalant as he quietly slid into his own seat.
Cass shrugged her shoulders, scrunched her nose, and gave a little, apologetic wave through the wall’s new “window.” The gesture had Zach almost in tears.
Kumiko rounded on Zach and Dogen and they both buried their faces in their hands.
“This is no laughing matter,” Kumiko said slowly and deliberately. “The punishment will be severe . . . Grey, I expect you’ll have this repaired before lunch. And I expect you’ll personally see to manning a post at the watchtower all night tonight.”
Grey groaned a little but nodded in agreement. He hadn’t gotten away with anything.
“And Cassandra,” Kumiko continued, “why don’t you join us inside the room for today’s meeting.”
“Oh, right,” Cass blurted out, relieved she was off the hook. She hurried into the room and took her seat next to Zach who, after he’d finished wiping the tears from his eyes, put on a serious face and squeezed her hand under the table.
Cass squeezed back and settled onto her cushion.
The ragged hole in the wall stared at them like a malevolent eye.
“If we could get started now,” Kumiko said, “we have urgent business to discuss. Our sources have informed me that the Heretic is close to acquiring the ‘holy coat,’ a powerful relic connected with Jesus’s crucifixion. We’ve got the Lost on edge at the moment and cannot afford to allow them to tap into this power and regain their balance.”
Cass had sensed the same thing. The Lost were off balance at the moment. But Cass also sensed that the Lost were, as a group, teetering on the brink of something much worse than the status quo. Now might not be the best time to give them a friendly push over the edge and into the abyss.
“I haven’t been around hundreds of years to track this situation,” Cass said, “but it seems to me that something has changed recently—that with Judas’s death the Lost are about to pass a dangerous tipping point, growing more and more dangerous as they grow more and more desperate. This doesn’t feel to me like a ‘business as usual’ moment.”
Zach bobbed his head in agreement. Dogen tilted his head sympathetically. Grey stared hard into the bottom of his empty tea cup.
Kumiko weighed Cass’s words as she poured tea for each of them.
Cass took advantage of the pause to add something more.
“Perhaps there is some other approach we could take. I know how dangerous the Lost are and my blood boils when I think about what they’ve done to Miranda, but perhaps there is something we can do that doesn’t amount to just fighting them. Perhaps we could undercut the threat they pose by ‘helping’ them somehow?”
Cass’s voice trailed off. The room was totally silent. Kumiko had stopped pouring tea and locked eyes with Cass.
“Are they truly beyond any hope of saving?” Cass asked.
Kumiko put down the kettle and took her seat at the head of the table. She took a sip of her tea, then locked eyes again with Cass.
“Yes,” Kumiko said with a cold simplicity. The hard edge in her voice indicated that Cass had, unknowingly, touched a deep nerve. “It is impossible. They are beyond saving. The only way forward is to wipe them from the face of the earth.”
Cass broke eye contact and, a little embarrassed, took a sip of her own tea.
Zach swallowed hard, but didn’t say anything.
Without consciously intending to, Dogen absently rubbed a long, nasty scar that twisted around his forearm like a ragged, purple snake. He agreed with Kumiko: “Kumiko is right. There is only one way forward, dark as it may be.”
Grey spoke up, trying to turn the discussion in a more practical direction. “I have a lead on the relic’s location. We may be able to steal the coat out from under them. But I need more time.”
Kumiko folded her hands in her lap, gathering her thoughts. Everyone else waited in silence.
Zach took a sip of his tea but almost sprayed it across the room when, under the table, Cass trailed her hand up his leg and rested it high on his thigh. He gulped hard, coughed, and placed his cup back into its saucer with a bit of a rattle.
Kumiko gave Zach a weary glance.
With her head bowed solemnly, Cass gave no sign that she’d noticed anything.
“Let us buy you some time, Grey,” Kumiko offered. “Let us attempt a bit of misdirection and leak false information to the Lost that we already have the holy coat and have secured it here at the monastery. This will cause confusion and slow them down, creating some room for you to operate.”
“But won’t this place you in danger?” Cass asked. “I mean, that will bring the Lost right here, and historically that hasn’t gone well …” She trailed off as Kumiko’s eyes narrowed.
“Cassandra Jones, you have an seen an aberration, and your lack of confidence is thus understandable. But you have not seen the full strength of the Shield. While bringing the Lost to our door is risky, in the balance of dangers, the risk is worth it to give Grey the chance to fi
nish his mission,” Kumiko replied firmly.
Dogen nodded his head in agreement and, after considering it for a moment, Grey followed suite.
Then everyone turned to Cass.
She still had her doubts about this approach as a long term strategy, but she could agree to it as a short term tactic. What choice did she really have? At least for the moment, Kumiko wasn’t going to bend on this point.
“Okay,” Cass said.
With the decision made, they finished their tea and the meeting was adjourned.
Cass, lost in her own thoughts, started to wander away, back toward her room. But Zach caught up with her and pulled her aside.
“You need to come with me,” he said, his voice urgent. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
4
WHEN ZACH PROMPTLY pulled her into a tiny broom closet, Cass had to agree that his message did, indeed, seem urgent.
He squeezed the door shut behind them. In the darkness, with the stage set by the romantic scent of industrial-grade cleansers, Zach turned her chin up toward him and kissed her. He kissed her on the lips, then he kissed her eyes and the nape of her neck and behind her ear. Cass pulled his hips tight against hers and bit his lower lip.
They stumbled backward as Cass leaned into him, pinning Zach’s shoulders against the wall and noisily knocking over a small assembly of mops and brooms. One of the brooms banged Zach in the back of the head. When he shoved it out of the way and reached to run his hands through Cass’s dark hair, he got his fingers snarled instead in a mop’s tangle of gray strings. Cass tried to help him sort things out, but the more they struggled, the more scrambled their situation became.
Finally, Cass reached overhead and pulled the cord for the closet light.
With the closet lit up, it looked like she, Zach, a broom, and two mops had just finished playing a complicated round of Twister. Arms, legs, and broom handles were all intertwined. Zach let go of the mop he’d been caressing and leaned in to kiss her again. Cass laughed, kissed him back, complimented his broom handle, laughed again, and opened the door, sending them both sprawling into the hall.
They landed in a heap at Dogen’s feet.
Dogen raised an eyebrow, stepped over the pair of them in one giant stride, and continued on his way.
They shoved the brooms back into the closet. Then Cass took Zach’s hand and they walked down the stairs and out into the monastery’s courtyard.
When they stepped outside, Zach stopped and squinted into the bright light of the midmorning sun. He was taller than Cass, but—unlike Richard—not imposingly so. The sun shone in his black hair and lit up his dark complexion. He cocked his head and smiled at her, shielding his eyes with one hand. Nothing about Zach’s casual, hoodie-and-jeans style would lead you to mistake him for British aristocracy. Nothing about Zach seemed smoky or haggard or world-weary. Rather than smoldering, Zach shone.
Cass stood back a step, taking him in. The man knew how to wear a pair of jeans.
“What are you smiling about?” he asked.
“Nothing,” Cass said. “You.”
“Same difference?” Zach teased.
“Yeah, same difference,” Cass said.
They turned to cross the courtyard, heading back toward their rooms. But they didn’t get far before Cass’s attention was drawn, like an iron to a magnet, by the ancient well at the center of the compound. Cass could feel a subtle pulse emanating from the well. She could feel it calling out to her, inviting her to sink into its depths.
Cass gently nudged their course in the direction of the well. Zach resisted a little, but relented. Cass could tell that he didn’t care for the well and, since the violent transformation he’d suffered in Singapore, he liked it even less.
Still, Cass pressed closer. She just wanted to touch the cool stones for a moment. She just wanted a quick peek into the dark water.
The well itself was wide, lined with stones, and covered with a wood shingle roof. The roof was attached on both sides to a pair of tree trunks that straddled the well. The tree trunks were knotted, pruned of all but their main branches, and anchored deep in the ground by a massive root system that sprawled across the entire courtyard, interfering with row after neat row of cobblestones. The trunks themselves twisted and writhed as they reached upward toward the sun. Together, the pair of trees created the impression that the well was itself alive.
Cass ran her hand along the bark of the nearest tree and, leaning against the stone wall surrounding the well, looked down into the darkness.
She glanced over at Zach. He was nervously rubbing a tender spot on his forehead and, despite the cold morning air, she saw a trickle of sweat run down the back of his neck. He looked a bit ashen.
“We’re not in any hurry today,” Cass said, pushing past Zach’s obvious discomfort. “Tell me about it. Tell me about the well.”
Zach glanced around nervously, looking for an exit strategy.
Cass pulled his attention back to her.
“What is this thing?” she asked.
“Okay, okay,” Zach sighed, “but let’s sit down.”
Zach led her to a nearby bench and, with each step away from the well, his color improved. They sat down and Zach took her hand in both of his.
“I’m not sure how to explain it,” Zach began, “but the well is a kind of door. It’s a door that opens onto the past. It’s like the part of the past that sticks around no matter what, but it’s always been there. It’s … um … it’s like when you cook and you end up with food, but off to the side of the sink there’s a pile of potato skins that are always going to be there and can’t be destroyed.”
“Right,” Cass said, trying hard to follow what Zach was after. “The well is a fragment of something primal—a fragment of eternity left over from the work of creation?—that the world hasn’t been able to digest. So it opens onto something that, no matter what, persists?”
“Yeah, that sounds ridiculous,” Zach admitted. “Try this. The well is a kind of door that opens onto the Underside—but to the part you normally can’t get to. Instead of an access point to the Underside itself, the well is an access point to the . . .” He scrunched up his face, looking for the right word, “The infrastructure, I guess. The foundations that make the entire Underside possible. . . . The plumbing?”
Cass nodded along. Individually, the words still didn’t make much sense. But they did add up to something that felt right. They did capture something crucial about how the well made her feel.
Cass stood up, let go of Zach’s hand, and walked back to the well. Armed with this description, she took a deep look down the length of its shaft, noticing again the set of stairs that, halfway down, gradually emerged from the wall and spiraled down into the inky waters, disappearing into the depths.
A pulse shook the well and sent a ring of concentric waves rippling out from the center of the shaft. When the pulse receded, it left one bright, clear thought ringing in Cass’s head: she needed to go down there.
Zach took her by the hand and led her back across the courtyard toward their rooms.
Cass tucked the thought away and let Zach lead her. He was frowning, his lips pursed, silent.
When they arrived back at the door to Cass’s room, he paused, clearly searching for words.
Cass waited.
“Cass,” he started, “that well . . . it scares me. I don’t know for sure what it means for you. But, for me, that well means nothing but loss and darkness.”
Cass nodded and was about to respond when Zach pressed his finger to her lips.
“I need to say something more,” he said. “I . . . I can’t risk it. I can’t risk anything happening to you. I can’t bear even the thought of anything happening to you. I would do anything to protect you.” His breath quickened, and his eyes searched her own, open and vulnerable in a way that, until now, she’d never seen.
Cass swallowed hard, shaken by his sudden intensity.
With the back of his hand, Zach b
rushed away what might have been a tear from his eye.
Zach took her in his arms, squeezed her tight, and whispered into her ear: “I want to wake up when I’m eighty and find you still at my side.”
Cass was a little surprised. As much as they teased and as close they were, they’d never talked like this before. They’d never talked about the future.
Still, while it frightened her, she couldn’t help but admit that part of her cheered in response. Some part of her couldn’t imagine waking up on her eightieth birthday and not finding him there either.
As she tried to process this, Zach kissed her forehead and took off down the hall, leaving her with her thoughts.
Cass leaned against the door and watched him go.
She couldn’t risk letting any harm come to him either. She would do whatever it took to protect him. If the well was a threat to Zach, she needed to understand how and why.
Tonight, after the lights were out, she would go back by herself.
5
CASS WAITED IN her tiny room with its tiny, narrow bed until she couldn’t bear to wait any longer. The monastery had quieted down for the night. The hallways were empty, the lights were dimmed, and the guards were posted. It was well past midnight now.
Cass slipped into a light pair of shoes, coiled a length of rope over her shoulder, and waited at her door, listening. When she didn’t hear anything, she cracked the door and looked in both directions. Nothing. She stepped into the hall, quietly shut her door, and tugged the hood of her black running jacket into place, shrouding her face in shadows. As a practical matter, this wouldn’t do much to disguise her. There just weren’t that many lithe twenty-something women running around the Shield monastery in dark yoga pants and running jackets. If she was spotted, she’d be identified right away. Still, the hood made her feel stealthy and invisible. What was the point of going on a secret mission if you didn’t get to dress the part?