by Неизвестный
After a few moments of dark thoughts chasing each other's tails like mad dogs, she got a new idea that didn't involve walking along a stony shore until she dropped from dehydration.
She walked back out to the ocean again, this time with the suitcase, and wrapped her arms around it. She clicked and said, “Giddyup.”
In response, the suitcase burped out a large bubble of air and sank below the surface.
* * *
After wringing out her clothes and shaking the water out of the suitcase as best she could, Opal repacked everything and set off again, groaning under the weight of her soggy belongings. The sun held its position, high overhead, and Opal's only company, her shadow, shrank to nothing beneath her feet.
A mile or more later, her arms ached. There was still no staircase in sight, no exit from the endless shore, so she abandoned the suitcase to lighten her load. Walking away from the suitcase felt wrong, and it sat there, forlorn, on the shore.
“I'll come back for you,” she said.
Lighter now, Opal stepped more easily over the stones of the shore, but still, the monotonous landscape stretched out before and behind her, with a cliff on the left and the ocean on the right.
Another mile later, a new problem was making itself known. Either the shore was shrinking, or the tide was coming in. She picked a dry stone near the wet line on the shore and watched carefully. After a few minutes, the water washed over the stone, and she had to take a few steps back. She turned her attention to the cliff face, and a mark that was visible about halfway up. If the tide were to rise as high as the waterline, and there was no reason to believe it wouldn't, Opal would be in for another swim. Her last swim.
As the sun receded, Opal's shadow returned, in its short form. She began to talk to herself, and, after some discussion, the shadow agreed that climbing the cliff seemed like the only reasonable thing to do. Reasonable was, indeed, very relative.
As she scoured the cliff face for footholds, her eyes played tricks on her in the blistering afternoon sun, glimpsing staircases that weren't there.
In a few spots, the angle wasn't quite as severe, and she could imagine an experienced rock climber scaling the face of the cliff, perhaps gripping the odd outcropping or gnarly old root. She stood on tiptoe and reached for a root, only to have it crumble in her hand.
She dusted off her hands on her cream-colored sundress, now grimy and covered in red stains from the fruit. “I loved this dress,” she said to her shadow. “Now what do I do?”
The shadow pointed a short finger at a broken shell, and then at the cliff face.
She put her hands on her hips, carefully noting their position, and asked the shadow again what she should do.
Either she was hallucinating, or there was magic at work, because the shadow pointed again to the broken shell and then to the cliff face.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw steps, a staircase, but when she turned her head, the staircase was gone.
A staircase?
In the books about Broken Shell Island, the books Flora wrote, the kids used staircases in the sides of cliffs and mountains, and magical doorways too. The kids always carried a few simple items with them wherever they went, including… chalk.
Opal picked up a white, broken shell from the beach and approached the cliff. She scraped the shell against the rock to make a test. The shell ground itself down, leaving a crisp, white mark.
“This is bonkers,” she said. Something licked at the backs of her ankles and she jumped.
The tide was coming in rapidly, the waves reaching her feet, which were less than a yard from the cliff now. The water line marked on the cliff face was both too high and too low. She'd have to tread water, but even if she survived the tide coming all the way in, she still wouldn't be high enough to get over the cliff to what lay beyond.
Quickly, she drew a door on the stony cliff wall.
A wave washed over her feet.
“Bonkers,” she repeated, as she stepped up to the chalk door and closed her eyes. She painfully smacked into the door, nose first, but kept her eyes closed and patted her hands against the stony face. She'd hit hard because the cliff face had been several inches closer than expected. Feeling around carefully with her fingers, her eyes still shut, she discovered something magical had happened with the chalky line after all. The door shape was projecting out from the cliff.
She felt around for a handle or a way to pull the door open, but found nothing.
As soon as she opened her eyes, the solid shape vanished.
“Staircase!” she said.
Two hermit crabs raced by, dashing over her bare toes.
She leaned down and drew a rectangle at the base of the cliff—a rectangle the size of a porch step, and three more on top, before the shell was crushed to dust.
She closed her eyes and put one wet foot in front of herself, gingerly, tapping around. There was a step, as firm and solid as anything. She placed one foot on it, then the other. She took another step up, again, as solid as before. The chalk stairs were working! She opened her eyes and fell through air to the stony rocks, landing hard on her bad ankle.
Why had the drawn stairs worked and then not worked?
More hermit crabs raced by, in a wild variety of cast-off and recycled shells.
Even though she hadn't read the books in at least five years, a memory surfaced. Little Artie, the chatty one, drew the most magnificent staircases, but there were rules, and one of them was you couldn't open your eyes while you were on the staircase.
She may have closed her eyes the first time because of subconscious knowledge, but this time she kept her eyes firmly closed intentionally. The stone-feeling stairs held firm as she walked up and down a few times.
The water had reached the base of the cliff now, and her breath caught in her throat when she saw the waves licking away the bottom chalk lines of her staircase.
She reached around her feet to quickly gather broken shells, and filled the two pockets of her sundress with an ample amount. She closed her eyes and practiced drawing steps, higher than her head. She would have to keep drawing as she went, keeping her eyes shut the entire time.
The shells were soft, and wore down easily enough, but not as easily as chalk. Her fingertips were already sore from clutching the thin bits of shell and scraping them over the rock.
The incoming tide eroded the bottom step, erasing the lines, but the second step still held, even with no foundation.
She closed her eyes and started up the steps.
Chapter Three
Opal had calculated she would reach the top of the cliff within a hundred and fifty steps, but by the time she had counted to one hundred and seventy, she grew concerned. Her pockets lighter already, she became more conservative, using each shell down to its smallest fragment, scraping her fingers raw on the rocks. The steps became narrower and taller, but these frugally-drawn ones were difficult to balance on, as the depth seemed to correspond as an inverse to the height: the taller steps barely projected the width of her foot, but the short steps were platforms by comparison.
She heard the flapping sound again, and, without opening her eyes, imagined that the flock of birds had returned to make their dive into the ocean. The flapping stopped with a splash. A moment later, there was great splashing and cawing.
It's just fruit, not bullets, she told herself as she braced herself against the wall of the cliff, preparing for the onslaught. Fruit rained down on her again, hard enough to leave bruises on her back and arms.
Still keeping her eyes shut, she groped around on the stone stairs that felt real but could not be real, and found some fruit to eat.
“Thank you!” she called out to the birds, and then, “I'm good! I don't actually need any more fruit right now, but thanks!”
In response, a male voice said, “So, it's you who's pilfering my harvest. Human girl.”
She almost opened her eyes and plummeted to possible death or certain injury, but she did not.
“Do you want some help?” he called down, laughing.
“What do you think?”
“No need to be sarcastic,” he said. “I'm not a chowderbucket.”
“Chowderbucket?” She kept moving up, eager to open her eyes and be on real land.
The breeze around her face changed, moving across the surface of whatever was at the top of the cliff. The smell changed as well, to something fresh, like mowed lawn.
Someone, presumably the owner of the voice, prodded her in the arm with something to grab, a strange stick by the feel of it, and helped her the rest of the way over the edge. After patting around her to ensure she really was feeling actual blades of grass, safe on top of the cliff, she sat down and slowly cracked open one eye.
Opal found herself face to face with a goat.
The goat was chocolate brown, not very tall, with a white stripe up its face. The goat was so miniature, that if Opal had been standing, the goat could have easily passed between her legs.
The surrounding area was a meadow the size of a public pool, with a lush forest laying beyond. Some of the trees were purple, but most of them were green. A beaten-down path, made by feet, led through the meadow and then into the forest.
Opal and the goat were alone.
“Hi, little goat. My name's Opal, what's yours?”
The goat dipped its head and munched on some grass around where she was sitting. Most of the grass was green, like back home, but a few blades were purple. Opal had seen purple foliage before, purple because the plants had higher levels of anthocyanin relative to chlorophyll, not because they were magic, but she did pluck one purple blade to examine, all the same. The sample looked and smelled like regular grass.
She peered over the edge of the cliff, down to where she'd come from. The markings of her stairs were fading before her eyes, and the tide was rising, covering the rocks and broken shells of the beach. Thinking about her suitcase full of clothes drifting away out to sea made her feel cross.
“I know you can talk, goat. You already said stuff to me, so stop playing around.” She stood and flicked some dried chunks of fruit off her sundress, which didn't seem to concern the goat at all. She ducked down to peek under its back end and determined the goat was a male. He had no collar, but he wore two straw baskets, held on with a strap.
“Mr. Goat, I'm looking for my great-aunt. Her name is Waleah. I don't know if I'm saying her name right. Wa-lee-ah? Can you help me? No? Nothing? I guess I'm just a silly human girl, abusing a goat.” The goat's ears flicked and he stopped munching. “That's right, I said abusing. I'm going to kick you if you don't say something.”
The goat stepped forward and lovingly rubbed his head on her leg. If she wasn't mistaken, he also said something like, “Mm.”
She leaned down and gave him a good pat, scratching around his head in the spots where she sensed he liked the scratches the best. He gave her little kisses with his soft goat lips and gazed up at her with his little goat eyes.
“Okay, we can be friends,” she said. “For the record, though, I still think you can talk.”
A shadow of movement emerged from the trees and the phalanx of birds appeared again, on their dive to the ocean.
“Here we go again,” she said, looking around for cover. She wanted more fruit, but not in the face, so she raced across the meadow, for the cover of the trees.
The little goat didn't follow, but remained at the edge of the cliff, as still as a chocolate brown statue. When the birds returned from the sea, they swooped as a group and delicately deposited their fruit into the baskets hanging off the goat's shoulders.
His baskets full, the goat turned and trotted up the trail to where Opal was, and continued to trot past her, deeper into the forest.
Her mouth watered for more of the fruit, so she chased after him, wondering what kind of farm or village would be the goat's destination.
* * *
Opal's legs were sore from walking and her feet were blistering, so she took off her sandals and walked barefoot.
She was just thinking about what a pleasant walk this part was, in the shade of tall purple trees and green trees, with some companionship, when someone or something screamed.
The sound was faint, but clear enough that the scream could be coming from within the forest. The goat stopped and looked back at her.
“Was that a woman?” she asked the goat. The walk didn't seem so pleasant anymore. A second scream rang through the forest, and the leaves on the trees seemed to tremble from the sound. A trio of enormous dragonflies flew down from the leaves and darted around, as though confused.
The goat gazed at her with what seemed to be concern, but he did not speak.
The huge dragonflies, sparkling and iridescent, were getting a little too close to her face for comfort.
“Is people screaming in the woods a normal thing around here?” she asked the goat.
Something in the bushes rustled, so Opal dropped her sandals and picked up a nearby fallen branch to use as a weapon. She swatted at the dragonflies, but not very hard, because she didn't want to hurt them.
“Who's there?” she called out.
A twig snapped.
She tightened her grip on the branch, holding it like a baseball bat.
A yellow goat stepped out of the forest. This goat, even smaller and cuter than the chocolate brown goat, jumped and bounced playfully.
Opal dropped the branch and gave the goat mild heck for frightening her.
The goat rubbed its head on her leg and then tickled her feet with its lips. Opal checked the undercarriage, and this goat appeared to be a female, and she really was yellow, the color of a baby chick on an Easter card.
She was carrying baskets as well, and they contained small bananas, maybe half the length of the ones Opal was used to taking in her school lunches.
She was still bothered by the two screams, but for all she knew, the kerfuffle was a birthday party, and somebody had gotten the present they actually wanted, and not an old magical suitcase.
Opal reached cautiously for a banana. “May I?”
The goat didn't move away, unlike the brown goat, who had been friendly enough, but not quite friendly enough to let Opal have any of the delicious fruit in his basket. He'd nipped her hand when she'd reached for them.
The yellow goat allowed her to take some fruit. As she peeled one of the bananas, the three of them started walking again, the goats leading the way and Opal carrying her sandals.
“Chocolate Goat, you are no longer my favorite animal. Banana Goat is my new best friend.”
In response, Chocolate Goat flicked up his tail and dropped a pile of steaming turds right in front of her path.
Banana Goat turned and gave Opal a bemused look. Who knew goats could be so expressive?
* * *
Opal expected the two fruit-laden goats would eventually lead her to a farm, or a market, or a village. When they stepped out of the woods, however, she found a set of train tracks bracketed by more woods.
“How much further are we going, guys?”
The goats stepped up onto a wooden platform near the tracks and looked back at her.
“We're waiting for a train?”
Both goats moved their heads in what seemed to be a nod.
Opal got on the platform and stood with them, then sat, to rest her feet. The blisters didn't seem as bad as before, so she put her sandals back on. Her pale sundress was a mess, from the smashed fruit and its red juice. She hoped her great-aunt, whom she would be meeting for the very first time, would see the blotches as a festive pattern.
She looked in both directions for any sign of a train. She was reminded of back home, and waiting for buses. The worse the weather, the more people would lean out from the sidewalk and look eagerly down the street, as though spotting the bus would make it arrive sooner.
Something nudged her hand. Chocolate Goat was giving her a big, juicy piece of fruit, held daintily between his
big teeth.
“We're buddies now? Are you going to talk to me?”
He turned away silently and craned his little goat neck, looking to the left for something. She munched down on the fruit, then wiped her hands on her stained dress.
The tracks seemed to vibrate and hum and then something—a train—came into sight, hugging the rails. The vehicle stopped in front of them, next to the platform. The two goats boarded first, and Opal followed them on. The train, such as it was, consisted of just the one car, open, like a trolley, with no visible engine or conductor.
“Who's controlling this thing?” she asked the goats. “Is this train automated? Computer-controlled from a central hub?” She looked around for something to sit on, but the car provided standing room only. “Is this even for humans?”
The train picked up speed as the route curved, forcing her to grasp the vertical pole inside to keep from falling either on the goats or out the open doorway. Ahead of them, the tracks disappeared into the side of a mountain—not a tunnel in the mountain, but actual mountain, as in solid rock, and they were headed straight for it.
Opal tried to apply logic. The tracks were not new-looking, nor was the mountain. Therefore, the train had to travel through the mountain itself, perhaps using magic, and she should not, as her instincts were screaming, leap off the speeding train.
The mountain got closer.
She thought hard about jumping.
Closer.
She gripped the pole.
Everything went dark.
The train kept rolling along.
The goats giggled.
“I heard that,” she said in the darkness.
They giggled again.
“Silly goats.”
Her eyes were adjusting to the darkness of the tunnel, not that there was much to see, when they emerged. Opal's mouth dropped open. Fireworks flashed all around—real fireworks, in pink and blue and orange and other rich, vibrant colors she'd never seen fireworks in before. First there were fireworks like peacock feathers, then twirling, doodling shapes. Some popped and cracked and boomed while others, like the rainbow that arced over everything else, made a sound like fawee.