by Неизвестный
This time, however, the door opened like the emergency escape hatch on an airplane, the way she'd seen it happen in countless movies, and the door sucked Opal through, but not before she'd grabbed Edwin's hand and pulled him with her.
* * *
Down they tumbled, or floated.
“Edwin?”
“I'm here,” he said. “How about Max. Did she get sucked through? Max?”
They waited in the nothingness for a response.
“Apparently not,” Opal said.
She was still holding his hand.
In the darkness, Edwin said, “I'm reminded of Alice in Wonderland.”
“Oh. Is she a serial killer here too?”
“No, of course not. It's just a book. I thought Alice was popular on the mainland.”
“It is,” Opal said. “Funny you should says it's just a book. I thought my grandfather's friend Flora was wacky, and her Broken Shell Island books were just fiction. But here I am.”
“Here you are. And me too.”
“Yup.”
“How long, exactly, does this trip take?”
“I don't know. Last time around, it was about a minute or so. I wish we had a flashlight.”
After a pause, Edwin said, “I expected my life would be flashing before my eyes.”
“You think we're dying?”
He gave her hand a squeeze. “Probably not. But if we were, it would be a shame to have not had those last few seconds to reminisce.”
Opal said, “I wouldn't want to die so young. I have things I want to do. What those things are, I'm not sure, but going now would be too soon.”
“I wouldn't want to die a virgin.”
“That's kind of a weird thing to say.”
“I'm sorry,” Edwin said, loosening his grip on Opal's hand. “You're right. That was inappropriate. I'm nearly twenty, and grownups don't talk to teenagers about those sorts of things. Please accept my apology.”
“I can't believe you're a virgin,” she said. “You probably could have any girlfriend you want, unless there are opposite rules here on the island and whoever I think is attractive is actually the opposite.”
“That's very kind of you,” he said. “If you could see my face, you'd see I'm smiling.”
She squeezed his hand. “Again, I'm very sorry for the loss of your fiancee, Svetlana.”
“Thanks,” he said, just as their feet hit the ground.
The two tumbled and rolled, their hands pulling apart.
Edwin said, “How unexpected. This isn't a hallway.”
Indeed, they were not in the dim, moss-lit hallway, as Opal had described, but in a brightly-lit room with pale lilac walls, and windows.
Opal stood and tried to pull the wedgie her leggings were giving her down without Edwin seeing. “At least we're alive,” she said.
They both ran to the windows. There was no glass on the open-air windows, but thick, sturdy bars prevented them from doing much more than poking their heads out to look around.
Up above was blue sky, and down below—far, far down below—was the ocean, where it met a cliff. At first, they seemed to be inside the cliff itself, but Opal spotted the demarcation line where square-shaped stonework began. Up above them were turrets, which were a dead giveaway they were in a castle.
“That chalk door trick is not a bad way to travel,” Edwin said.
“Except the door only goes one way.”
“Let's try from here,” he said. “It'll blow Max's mind if we pop back out at the cave.”
Opal held out her empty hand. “I used up all the chalk getting us here. Besides, I did try to make a door last time, and it didn't work. I didn't try every single surface in the castle, but I suppose we could, if we had more chalk.”
“Where are we, anyway?”
Opal scanned the room, which was utterly empty on one side, and stacked to the ceiling on the other side with an assortment of desks, chairs, and tables.
She headed for a section that was covered with a dust sheet and yanked the cover away. A trio of brightly-colored plastic exercise balls, inflated, rained down.
As she rubbed her face where the red ball had smacked her on the cheek, she said, “I think this room is where they put unwanted things.”
“Like us.”
“Yeah, like us. Cold storage.”
Edwin pulled at the room's only door and cursed it for being locked. “I don't think it's by accident we're in here. I suspect they found out about your neat little chalk door trick and re-routed us here.”
“Maybe. Now what?” Opal looked around for tools or weapons. “Shall I break off a chair leg and try to pry at those bars on the window.”
Edwin looked horrified. “Is that what they'd do on the mainland?”
“Uh, not exactly. I think if people get thrown into a jail, they usually get their one phone call, to call their lawyer.”
“We have lawyers here.”
“But you don't have phone calls, now, do you?”
“True,” he said, letting go of the door handle. “Need some help breaking off a chair leg?”
A crackle sounded, then a voice boomed into the room. “Do not abuse the chairs.”
Opal looked around the pale lavender ceiling and spotted some speakers. “Then get me my lawyer!” she yelled back.
Edwin whispered to her, “Good idea.”
The voice from the speakers, which was feminine and a little snotty, said, “We have your friend, Peter.”
Edwin said, “Peter's my cousin, and he hasn't done anything wrong. He only came here by accident, because he was frightened by the sound of a terrible, horrible, wretched daemon loose in the Wetlands. If anything should happen to Peter, I hold all the witches of West Shore responsible, because we all know who's responsible for bringing a daemon to the island.”
Opal whispered, “Now you believe me about the daemon?”
He whispered back, “Undecided.”
The speakers crackled, and the muted sounds of several women arguing came out, their frenzied voices mingling as one buzzing mob.
“You really scared them,” Opal whispered.
His pride showed through his modesty as he said, “Small talk never convinced anyone to pay their overdue taxes.”
The speakers cut out again.
Opal said to Edwin, “Should we be worried?”
“They won't murder us or turn us into goats, if that's what you mean.”
Opal shuddered. “Turn us into goats? I'd never even considered that. Thanks, Edwin. I may never sleep again, but thanks for the reassurance.”
“No problem.” He pulled a chair off one of the stacks and set it near the window, overlooking the ocean, then took a seat.
Opal fetched herself a chair and did the same. She said, “What time is it?”
“I don't know. I don't wear a watch.”
“I really need to get one.”
“I never understood that,” he said. “Does wearing a watch make the waiting less interminable?”
“Yes. Special watch magic. Like how spotting the bus a mile away makes it arrive faster.”
“A bus,” he said. “How exotic.”
Chapter Nineteen
Max
Sheriff Max arrived back at the stables with Maple and Gumdrop in tow. After giving them each a bucket of oats and their mineral supplements, she returned to the office. Her clothes had dried quickly while passing through the Drylands, but she had little specks of sand stuck everywhere. The mead in her mini-fridge was calling.
Mr. Fraser had completely sobered up and was being prepared for release by Max's assistant, Ocean, a skinny man with naturally blue hair. Unlike the trolls, who had bright hues of hair because of their heritage, Ocean was fully human, and his hair was blue from some curse the pixies put on his family, many generations ago, for some forgotten misdeed committed by an ancestor.
Ocean looked up from his paperwork and said, “I took the liberty of going through that old suitcase and found a curious le
tter tucked inside. I know teen girls love to write poetry and tell long, sad stories to themselves in journals, but something about this letter struck me as unusual.”
Mr. Fraser sat quietly and pretended to not be listening as he cocked an ear to hear better.
Max said, “It's a shame I'll never know what made this letter so unusual, since I'm headed home shortly and don't have the time or patience to drag the details out of you.”
“It's in Russian!” Ocean announced breathlessly.
“That so?” Max said. “And what did this letter say?”
“Mostly the letter z.”
Max frowned.
“I said it was in Russian,” Ocean said, looking pleased with himself.
“Who around here speaks Russian?” Max looked right at Mr. Fraser. “Does anyone teach the language at the school? Or would you have a textbook?”
Mr. Fraser said, “No, and no. If it were French or Spanish, though, I could help.”
“There's the perogy lady,” Ocean offered. “Wait, no, I think she's Polish. Or Ukranian.”
Max said, “Forgive my ignorance, but aren't those all pretty much the same thing?”
Mr. Fraser said, “Some languages have common roots, similarities, but no, they're not the same thing. Wouldn't Edwin speak some Russian? He was interacting with the young Russian woman somehow.” He held his hand to his mouth. “Did the letter belong to her? This could be a clue, about how she drowned in a dry forest.”
Max said, “For someone who's been drunk the last twenty-four hours, you're better informed than some of my staff.”
Ocean explained to Max, “We've been talking, and Mr. Fraser is all up to speed on the case. I figured we could use all the help we can get.”
The door to the room opened suddenly with a thunderous creak.
Mr. Fraser yelped as though kicked. He fell off his chair and rolled up into a ball on the floor, clutching his arms over his head.
“There, there,” Ocean said, patting Mr. Fraser on the shoulder. “That's just one of our support staff with paperwork. The door needs an oiling is all. It's not the big scary daemon monster coming to eat us all.” He turned to Max and said, softly, “He's a wreck from seein' what he did. He'll probably go home after this and get as drunk as a filthy pixie.”
Max shook her head. “Ocean, what's the status update on the catapult threat? Any word from the witches? Any news about Peter?”
“Just a minute,” Ocean said as he helped Mr. Fraser to his feet and escorted him out the door. The intern, who'd just been there to pick up some mail, also left.
Once the two of them were alone again, Ocean flipped open the wooden box that received mail from the witches—they had their own system, apart from the Ystad Post Office—but the box was empty.
Max sat at her desk and got out her supplies for cleaning her modified service revolver. “No word from the witches, hmm. No word at all. And the catapult threat?”
“We looked into Hank's Hardware, and Bowman Metalwork, but they both denied involvement with catapults. Hank's a bad liar, though. I'd love to get him into a poker game, if you know what I mean.”
“Maybe the anti-witch groups aren't entirely wrong.”
Ocean made a pained face. “Don't let anyone hear you saying such a thing.”
“People being zapped out to the ocean, shadowy things that may or may not be daemons, illegal immigrants using magic doorways, and we hear nothing official from West Shore. And yet, if Gumdrop gets out of the pasture and eats a few mouthfuls of their lucky clover and purple grass, they fill that box with complaints.”
“What are you thinking, boss?”
“I'm thinking they're only quiet because they've got something to hide.”
He shuddered reflexively. “Not…”
“A-yup. I didn't see anything on my trek up to the Wetlands, but I think there may be an actual daemon loose on the island.”
Ocean sat down and cradled his head in his hands. “Cheese and jam.” He looked up, his face drained. “What do we do?”
“What do you think?”
“When's the next boat off the island?”
“Now, now,” Max said. “Do you really think you'd survive on the mainland, assuming you made it there with your brains intact?”
Ocean hung his head. “No.”
Max began cleaning her gun. “Then I guess we'd better get busy, starting with calling an emergency Council meeting.”
“I'll put on the coffee.”
Just then, the intern burst back into the room, her face flushed. “The anti-witch protestors,” she said, breathless. The woman had been moving a little slower recently, as she was due to give birth to her first child in a few weeks. She was a hard worker, though, and she'd insisted on staying at the job right up until her water broke. Today, she didn't seem very happy with her decision. “They're… they're… going to hurt someone.”
Max groaned and smacked herself on the forehead. “Now what? Are they threatening to blow up the whole island again?”
“No, they're not that organized. Just angry.”
Max looked down at her gun, in pieces. She had some tear gas, and a few other things, like nets to shoot over crowds of people, but there weren't many resources at her disposal to keep the peace. The peace generally kept itself around the island, until quite recently.
Ocean got the pregnant intern a glass of water and calmed her down while trying to coax out more details.
The young woman said, “I heard from a friend. They've decided the witches are to blame for everything. Three more fields burned down today, and a house is on fire now.”
“And this set off the protestors?”
“Yes,” the girl said, crying now, and clutching her belly, protecting the young life within. “They set off as a group, headed toward West Shore Castle. They're probably there by now, by the speed they were going.”
“We all know it wasn't the witches who set those fields on fire.” Max pulled an ancient-looking book out of her desk drawer and opened it up. “A daemon,” she read from the pages, “is like a newborn baby. Born from the fire of the earth, it knows only hunger. It begins to feed by turning the crops to ash and drinking up the flames and soot, growing larger and larger, until it must satisfy its thirst with animals, and then, when its hunger grows greater, it drinks the innocent.”
Ocean rubbed his eyebrows, which were as blue as his hair. “That don't make no sense. What does the daemon want?”
“Everything,” Max said as she flipped the page. “Everything.”
Chapter Twenty
For the first hour or two they spent locked in the lavender room with the old furniture and exercise balls, Edwin remained calm while Opal paced.
By the third hour, as the light over the ocean turned pink from the setting sun, they traded off, with Edwin pacing and periodically checking the windows—even though there was nothing to see but sky and ocean. Opal sat on a chair, and then, when she got bored enough, on one of the exercise balls. Eventually, she grew so bored she started doing sit-ups. Just for fun.
“Good idea,” Edwin said, and he got down to the floor and started doing push-ups. “Gotta stay in shape, keep the blood pumping.”
And so, they were both red-faced, breathless, and on the floor when the door opened and someone came in.
Carly. The usually-cheerful blonde.
Overjoyed to see a familiar face, Opal cried out, “Carly!” and rushed over to hug the girl.
Carly's light hair was pulled up in a tight knot, her round figure hidden by a long, gray robe. “What did you two do? The elders are so mad right now, they're practically on fire.”
Opal said. “We came through a doorway, the same doorway I came through before, with Peter. Tell me you found him and fixed him!”
Edwin chimed in, asking about Peter as well.
“I don't know,” Carly said, folding her arms. “We gave him some anti-venom, but he's been quiet.”
Edwin said, “Peter? Quiet? Did you put so
me spell on his mouth?”
“No,” Carly said, scuffing the stone floor with her shoe.
Opal seized Carly by the shoulders and gave her a shake. “Where's Peter? You have to take us to him, now.”
“He's in a really deep sleep,” Carly said, wiggling to get away from Opal.
“Then wake him up!”
Edwin said, “His mother's very worried, and I need to get him home.”
Carly said, “He's sorta in a coma.”
Together, Edwin and Opal repeated, “Sorta?”
“Full coma,” Carly said. “But I'm sure he'll be fine. Almost as good as new.”
The door opened again, and they were joined by another witch, Delilah, the quiet one with red hair and pale, nearly-translucent skin. Delilah stood behind Carly and looked grim.
“A coma. Poor Peter,” Opal said, fighting to keep back her shameful tears.
“He's a tough kid,” Edwin said to Opal. He patted her on the shoulder and they both cleared their throats a few times.
After a moment, Edwin held his hand out to Carly and then Delilah, saying, “I'm Edwin, by the way. I work in the tax office, where I keep a low profile, but I help Sheriff Max with town business on occasion. I'm here on official business, and the sheriff's office is aware of my whereabouts. I suggest you release us from this illegal jailing, or face kidnapping charges.”
“Edwin!” Opal said. “These are my friends.”
“Friends don't imprison friends. What are your names?”
“Oops!” Opal said. “I'm sorry I didn't introduce you guys. I assumed everyone here on the island knew everyone else.”
“Oh, I know who Edwin is,” Carly said, batting her pale eyelashes. “All the girls know who Edwin is.”
“Of course,” he said. “One of you did the translating for me, with Svetlana's letters.”
Carly giggled, and Delilah, behind her, blushed.
Edwin seemed annoyed by their flirtations. “Kidnapping charges,” he repeated.
Opal nudged Carly back toward the door. “Come on, get us out of here. I've been cooped up in this stupid purple room too long.”