Jane Doe and the Cradle of All Worlds

by Jeremy Lachlan

  ‘Roth,’ I say. Dad can’t help it this time. He turns to me, shocked I know the name. I jerk my head at Hickory. ‘He was gonna turn me in before we got caught.’

  Dad glares at Hickory. Hickory just shrugs back as if to say Can you blame me? so I kick him in the shins. He’s about to kick me back when the girl slaps him upside the head. I force a smile in thanks but choke a second later as our chain gang’s marched out of the pen. The bounty hunter grips my shoulder as we walk.

  Strange, but it’s almost comforting.

  I help Dad into the carriage. Old habits and all. He tries to shake me off, partly because we’re supposed to be strangers, but also – I suspect – simply because he doesn’t need my help anymore. Not the way he used to. I don’t know how that makes me feel just yet. Amazed? Happy? Thrilled? Maybe, if I’m being honest, even a little sad and scared. All I know for sure is that he’s still a little unsteady on his feet, and I’m fighting a decade of instinct to care for him, help him, look out for him. He’s gonna have to put up with me bugging him for a good while yet.

  The carriage smells even worse than the camp. There are stains on the rusty walls. Steel doors front and back. The side door screeches shut once we’re all aboard. The bounty hunter lingers outside a moment, watching me through one of the barred windows. He nods, satisfied, and vanishes. I wonder if we’ll stop at other camps on the way to Roth’s. I hope so. Anything to buy us more time.

  A horn blows. Steam blasts. The carriage shudders and squeals.

  ‘This is my first train ride,’ is all I can say.

  Dad’s dimples flare again, like a couple of Manor candles. ‘Mine too, kiddo.’

  THE GUARDIANS

  I finally get my hug. Three seconds and Dad holds me tighter than anyone has ever held me before. Now that Roth’s goons are out of the way, he doesn’t seem to care who sees. He says he’s sorry. Tells me I shouldn’t be here. Asks if my bandaged hand is okay, and inspects a few cuts and bruises. His voice is as scratchy as his chin, and he doesn’t exactly smell like roses, but I’m sure I smell just as bad. We stink, we’re trapped, and the collars are half-choking us, but neither of us cares.

  We’re together, and that’s all that matters.

  ‘I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be,’ I say. ‘Winifred told me –’

  Dad pulls out of the hug. ‘Winifred Robin? She sent you in here?’

  I nod, and a shadow passes over Dad’s face, but I still can’t help but smile because he’s here, really here, and he’s looking at me. There are so many things I want to tell him, want to ask him, need to say. For now, though, I can only get out one word.

  ‘Dad …’

  ‘I know, Jane,’ he says. He hugs me again. Tells me how proud he is, how brave I am, how thankful he is for everything I’ve done. When his voice breaks I’m terrified he’s fading away again, falling back into his trance, but then he clears his throat and pulls out of the hug. ‘There’s so much I need to tell you, but first I want to know how you came to be here.’

  The old man shuffles to the wall and sits down. The rest of us have to follow, dragged down by the chain. The thin woman. The two kids. All the scared but silent men and women who have their own horror stories to tell, I’m sure. Dad sits down, then me and Hickory and the girl. The other chain gang in our carriage does the same. It’s noisy, crowded, hot and clammy, even with the wind whistling through the barred window and the rusty holes in the walls.

  ‘Go on,’ Dad says. ‘What happened after I left Bluehaven? Tell me everything.’

  And so I tell him. Everything. About the hidden gateway under the catacombs. The snow. The Tin-skin in the booby trap. Hickory’s shack and the explosive Spectre-scum. The carnivorous forest and the bounty hunter. Dad death-stares at Hickory a few times, but keeps his eyes fixed on the floor for most of the story, nodding now and then. Nobody interrupts me. Hickory couldn’t speak even if he wanted to, what with the gag and all. I think I’ve sent the girl to sleep. Her head lolls slightly with the not-so-gentle sway of the train. Actually, I’m kinda bummed she missed the bit about me saving Hickory back in the forest.

  ‘Jane,’ Dad says. ‘Keep going.’

  ‘Sorry. Um. Well, that’s it. We got through the dart trap and the Leatherheads caught us. Took us to the prison camp with the bounty hunter.’

  ‘And he still has the key?’

  ‘In one of his pockets, I think. Dad, I’m sorry –’

  ‘It’s okay,’ he says. ‘You of all people have nothing to be sorry about. Better he has it than a Leatherhead. We can get it back.’ The train rounds a bend. The lights in the carriage flicker. He shakes his head. ‘I can’t believe this is happening. You know, I was actually happy when Winifred turned us over to the Hollows. We owe her our lives, I know, but I knew she’d never stop searching for answers – about the key, about us –and I knew whatever she found would only put you in greater danger.’ He sighs. ‘I suppose we never really escaped the Manor. Deep down, I think I always knew it would get you some day.’

  ‘Knew the Manor would get me?’

  Dad nods, slowly. ‘We should have been there to protect you from the beginning, but you had to be the parent. No child should bear that burden. Elsa and I didn’t –’

  ‘Elsa?’ My throat catches. I can barely form the words. ‘Is that …?’

  Dad’s eyes fill with tears. He blinks them away, hard. Grabs my good hand and nods.

  ‘I’m sorry, Jane, I – yes.’ He smiles. ‘Her name is Elsa.’

  My mother’s name is Elsa. Don’t reckon I’ve heard a more beautiful name.

  This is the stuff heart attacks are made of.

  I grab Dad’s arm. ‘What’s yours? Your real name, I mean.’

  ‘Charleston Eustace Grayson.’ He screws up his face. ‘The Third.’

  ‘Oh. That’s …’

  ‘Terrible, I know.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll just … keep calling you Dad?’

  ‘Please do.’

  ‘And mine?’ Crap, it could be worse than Charleston. ‘Actually, you know what? I don’t want to know. I’ll stick with Jane.’ Right now, I’ve got bigger fish to fry. ‘Dad, where’s Mum? Where did we come from? What happened to you? Why are you better now?’

  ‘I am free,’ he says, ‘because I returned to the Manor.’

  ‘Free from what?’

  Dad takes a deep breath. ‘I believe you two call them Spectres.’ He raises an eyebrow, nods. ‘Quite an appropriate name, actually. Not bad at all.’

  I’m sure I’ve misheard him. ‘The Spectre got you? I don’t understand.’

  ‘There’s more than one of them, Jane,’ Dad says. ‘And they don’t come from an Otherworld, they come from the Manor. Or rather, a very powerful place within the Manor.’

  I glance at Hickory. He looks as shocked as I feel.

  ‘The Spectres are the guardians of this powerful place,’ Dad continues. ‘Two escaped because of what we did. Hunted us down. We would’ve tried to seal them back in but we had to think about you. Get you to safety. Then Elsa and I were separated. I tried to find her again, but …’ Dad swallows hard. ‘I found another gateway. It opened. I didn’t want to leave Elsa – I thought I could get you clear and return to find her once the Spectre had gone – but I was too slow. It caught me. I fell through to Bluehaven and collapsed at the top of the Sacred Stairs. The gateway sealed behind me. I felt the Spectre, I don’t know, panicking inside me. I don’t think they can exist outside the Manor without a host. I told Winifred to keep the key safe and secret, but then the Spectre settled. It had no way of returning to the Manor, so it stayed within me, its host, feeding on my fears, tearing me apart.’ He forces a smile, pulls at a strand of grey hair. ‘Gave me a new look too.’

  Hickory says something then. It sounds like moosh through his gag, so I translate for the jerk. ‘He was caught by one a while back. Must’ve been that second Spectre you mentioned. He said it took him to a place he calls the Grip.’

  When Dad looks at
Hickory this time there’s still hate in his eyes, but there’s something else too. Understanding. An acknowledgement of shared pain.

  ‘A waking nightmare,’ he says. ‘There were moments when I could see through my own eyes, but most of the time I was consumed by that white light. One that brought all my fears to life, made them real. Turned any happy thought or memory against me. I found Elsa in there after a while. She was caught as well for a time, back inside the Manor.’

  ‘What do you mean you found her in there?’

  ‘The Spectres are connected through this – this Grip, as you call it. Elsa was still being hunted inside the Manor. Couldn’t run forever. She was Gripped. Not permanently as I was. In that place, that realm of nightmares, we were together for a while.’

  Just a while. Not forever.

  ‘What does that mean?’ Suddenly the carriage feels even smaller, the rusted walls closing in. ‘Dad, is – is she alive or –’ I can’t bring myself to say that other word.

  He wipes away a tear, which pretty much rips my damn heart out. ‘I don’t know, Jane. I never saw her again after that. She vanished from the Grip before we could say goodbye, but that doesn’t mean the Spectre …’ He looks me square in the eyes. ‘She could’ve broken free. She was – she is – the strongest, wisest, most resilient woman I’ve ever known.’

  Could it be? Could Mum have escaped the second Spectre somehow? Maybe it released her from the Grip, same as Hickory. Left her alone. She could still be in here somewhere, hiding from Roth and his army, surviving, waiting for us to come get her.

  The carriage expands again, wider than ever.

  Breathe. As thrilling as this prospect is, it’s gonna have to wait for now.

  ‘I saw others,’ Dad says. ‘Roth’s soldiers mainly. Rarely – never for long – but I shared their nightmares, too.’ He nods at Hickory. ‘Probably even saw him in there once. They’d appear, vanish, and there I’d be, alone again. But something changed whenever a quake struck Bluehaven. The Grip would … shift somehow. The Spectre was reacting to them. When Winifred took me to the festival – when your hand hit the Stairs – it went crazy. The Grip cleared. I could see you. I wanted to go to you, but something had changed. It was as if … as if the Spectre was being called back to the Manor, drawn up the Stairs. It knew the gateway was about to open. I couldn’t stop. I was running, but I wasn’t in control.’

  ‘And when you stepped back inside the Manor?’

  ‘The Spectre fled my body immediately, flew off into the Manor, disappeared. After all those years of suffering – all those years when you cared for me so brilliantly,’ Dad runs a hand over my hair, ‘I was free.’ Then he drags his eyes around the carriage. ‘Was being the operative word. You’re lucky you entered the Manor through that second gateway. I was found by a whole platoon of Roth’s soldiers right away. I was too weak to fight, to run.’

  ‘But why were the Spectres after you in the first place?’

  For the longest while, Dad doesn’t say anything. Then he takes a deep breath.

  ‘We opened it,’ he says. ‘The powerful, sacred place they’re bound by the Makers to protect.’ And he traces a finger through the grime on the floor, draws the symbol from the key. ‘We opened the Cradle of All Worlds.’

  THE TRUTH ABOUT JOHN AND ELSA

  ‘The Manor goes by many names, and is known across many worlds, as are the people of Bluehaven. The history of our own world, Tallis, is littered with accounts of –’

  I hold up a hand, need a second to let this sink in.

  Tallis. Our home world is Tallis.

  ‘Are you okay, Jane?’

  ‘Mm-hm. Yep. Just … processing. Tallis, huh?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I wanna know everything. What does it look like? What’s the weather like? Can we go there when this is over? Why did we leave? Do they have coconuts there? There are so many questions they all get jammed in my throat and I end up just staring at Dad, wide-eyed, mouth flapping slowly like a fish drowning in air. He waits for a bit, then clears his throat.

  ‘Um … can I continue?’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Right. As I was saying, the history of Tallis is littered with accounts of mysterious strangers coming to aid us in our greatest time of need. The Hundred Year Plague. The Reign of the Winter King. The Uprising of 1312. Many had forgotten the stories. Most believed they were myths, legends. But not us. Elsa and I had devoted our lives to finding the lost gateways of old – to proving not just the Manor’s existence, but the Otherworlds’, too. Ancient texts, scrolls, documents – we scoured them all. Gathering information, plotting potential gateway locations, to no avail. Other historians thought it was all a waste of time. We were ostracised.’

  I know what this word means. ‘People chased you with knives too, huh?’

  Dad frowns. ‘No, I meant – I meant people laughed at us. Called us fools.’

  ‘Oh. Right, yeah. That isn’t very nice either.’

  He sits straighter, narrows his eyes. ‘Somebody chased you with a knife?’

  ‘Yeah. Um. I never told you that. It’s okay, though. Good sprinting practice.’

  Dad clenches his fists. ‘Right. We’ll deal with that later, shall we? Where was I? Ah, yes. Well, everything changed on our expedition down the river Tallin. Elsa had finally gained access to an ancient text belonging to a local warlord – look, it’s a long story. Very dangerous and exciting. The point is, she translated the text, cross-referenced it with a load of other information and maps we’d gathered over the years, and found us a gateway. I’m talking actual coordinates. We were close. I couldn’t believe it. I hadn’t even wanted to go on that particular expedition.’ Dad forces a sad smile. ‘Elsa was pregnant, you see. Three months.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say, buzzing at my appearance in the story, albeit in foetus form.

  ‘“We’re not turning back,” she told me. “Not now.”’ Dad falls silent, lost in the memory. The train chugs round another bend.

  ‘So you went and found it,’ I say.

  Dad nods, slowly. ‘Deep in the jungle. A day’s journey downriver, hidden in a valley of limestone pinnacles. A stone door in a shallow cave. We stood there before it, unable to move, unable to speak. Then we moved as one. Touched the stone. The gateway opened.’

  ‘You entered together? You broke the Third Law.’

  ‘I think the Three Laws were created by the people of Bluehaven, long ago. As far as I’m aware, they exist nowhere else – certainly not on Tallis. So, yes, we entered the Manor together. Found ourselves in a candlelit corridor. It was like stepping into a dream.’

  The gateway closed behind them. They never saw their home again.

  Mum and Dad walked. Corridor after corridor, hallway after hallway, rooms and chambers shifting behind them as they went. They encountered no booby traps. Had no idea what kind of nightmare they were about to walk into. Then they saw it, touched it, another gateway that opened onto a different world with two suns. One small and white. One large and orange. They were standing at the base of a cliff, looking out upon a dune sea.

  ‘Arakaan,’ Dad says. ‘A desolate world. Ruined. Decayed. Roth’s world.’

  Bitter air blasted their lungs dry. The gateway sealed when they stepped out of the Manor, indistinguishable from the cliff face. Bullets sprayed the sand at their feet at once. They tried to run, but found themselves trapped in a net, watching as a troop of Leatherheads rappelled down the cliff and surrounded them. The gateway was obviously no secret.

  ‘Someone must have used it before. Perhaps Roth saw them leave. Maybe he tried to leave with them but was a moment too late. Either way, it was clear he’d been waiting a long time for the gateway to open again.’ Dad’s voice gets a little shaky now. Even after all these years, the memory still scares him. ‘We were bound. Gagged. The soldiers – Leatherheads, as you call them – sent up a black flare. We didn’t know it, but that was the signal for Roth to come. Day turned to night. The temperature plummeted. We were
given no blankets. No food or water.’ He trips over the start of his next sentence, tries again. ‘We felt him before we saw him. The air turned sour. We felt ill, as if struck by a sudden sickness. Roth is no man, Jane. He’s a walking disease, contaminating the very air he breathes.’

  ‘Is that why he wears the mask?’

  ‘He wears the mask out of vanity. I think his was a fair race. Strong and proud, now all but extinct. I don’t know how he came to be the way he is. Whatever happened, he’s now an abomination of his former self. Rotten to the core, but still very much immortal. I fear even the Spectres are powerless to stop him. I never saw him in the Grip. Not even his mind can be broken.’

  ‘What happened to his people, then?’ I ask. ‘Were they immortal too?’

  ‘If they were, somebody obviously found a way to kill them. Maybe he found a way to kill them. Roth, the last of the immortals. I think he’d like the sound of that.’

  The thin woman’s trying to comfort the two kids now, talking to them, patting their heads, wiping the tear-streaked grime from their cheeks. I think they’re in shock. A man from the other chain gang’s sobbing quietly to himself, nursing an arm that’s clearly broken. Several more have gone to sleep. All these people from different worlds forced together, trapped and terrorised by Roth. I clench my fists so hard it hurts my injured hand.

  ‘And when he came to you that night in Arakaan? What did he say?’

  ‘Well, technically he didn’t say anything. He doesn’t have a mouth.’

  ‘Oh, yeah. So, um, how does he talk?’

  ‘Roth has no need for speech. He pokes around inside your mind. Reads you. Drains your thoughts. You can’t stop it, it’s –’ Dad shakes his head, can’t find the words. ‘We pleaded and begged. He just stood there. Reading us. Breaking us down. Telling us in our minds what he wanted, his voice like ice, scraping around inside our skulls.’

  And what he wanted was to get inside the Manor. Roth dragged Mum and Dad back to the gateway. When they refused to open it, he pulled a couple of curved, sickle-like blades from his cloak. Held one of them to Mum’s neck and traced the other down to her belly.