Quite Contrary

by Richard Roberts

  “No!” I yelled. The swaying of the floor eased, and I managed to force myself upright. Keeping my feet well apart, I staggered over to the coffin and yanked on it with both hands. It had to move! This time it really was my fault!

  “It’s not your fault!” Rainbow barked at me like she could read my mind. She’d gotten this far, but fell and clung to the coffin desperately for balance.

  “I hate it when people lie to me to be nice!” I snarled at her.

  “Everyone does,” said Maria. The rocking settled gradually, but the floor might as well have been rock still for all the difficulty she had walking up and sitting on the edge of the coffin. “It is your fault, but it’s understandably your fault. It’s been a long time since I’ve heard the dead try that hard to get us to kill ourselves.”

  “I honestly think they’re trying to help.” Patrick panted, testing his footing as he walked up beside us. “They’re just so screwed up and unhappy, everything they say will get you killed. All they can do is trap you like they trapped themselves.”

  I kicked the coffin bitterly, but stopped when I saw Rainbow’s wince. Swinging around, I stormed across the crypt to check out the other door, but between my gonging stomps I heard a scratching noise.

  I swung my head around, following it. One of the bodies in a bunk along the wall had shifted when the ship rolled, and its arm hung down off the ledge. The skeleton didn’t make any noise. The noise came from the mp3 player it had dropped.

  I crept over to it. The scratchy noise was music. Something fast and raucous. Punk rock. It sounded like punk rock. That was fine. I liked punk. I liked musicals more, but I liked punk.

  I wanted it so badly. I pushed the skeleton back into position and laid its arm beside its body to cover for the war raging in my head. Music. We were only supposed to take what we needed. I needed music. Being lost meant too much walking, meeting too many strangers. I needed music to smooth things out again.

  “Take it. She doesn’t need it anymore,” a voice whispered in my ear.

  I wasn’t going to take it just because I’d been told to. I wasn’t going to leave it just because I’d been told not to. Oh, crap. None of that mattered, because I knew, I just knew, the voice had lied to me.

  Bending down, I picked up the player, tucking the headphone’s pads around where I thought a skeleton had its ears. Then I hit the shuffle button and slid the player into a bony hand. It wasn’t mine, and she had a lot more boredom ahead of her than I did.

  “The passage bends right there. This might still work,” I heard Francis say. Guardedly After two denials, he didn’t want to believe it. Who would?

  I tromped along into the next of these endless, mazelike metal hallways. Rainbow rested with her back against the corner by the door, and Stephen ran down past two open doors to where the passage turned. “There’s an intersection!” he shouted back.

  “Don’t run ahead!” Patrick yelled. Stephen jerked upright. He’d been about to bolt. Well, at least I wasn’t the only person dumb enough to need watching.

  We all walked, together. Nobody said anything as we turned the corner. Maria started to fall behind from where she normally walked in front, but Patrick’s hand reached out and took hers, pulling her back up. Stephen had been right. This hallway dead-ended at a T intersection, and the light looked wrong, and something weird hung on the wall.

  “Wait, that’s a window!” I realized out loud.

  “A porthole, at least,” Francis corrected me.

  For once, I didn’t much care.

  Stephen and Joe both leapt forward, but Patrick and Maria caught their shoulders. “We’re going to be careful,” Maria said, firm and patient. “When we see the sun, it will be because we were patient and did things the right way. We don’t rely on luck.”

  As we got closer, Stephen and Joe tugged at the hands on their shoulders, and Maria and Patrick let them go. They ran the last ten feet to the window, and Stephen hoisted Joe up in both arms to help her look out. From here, it looked wrong. Everything was green.

  Still, everyone crowded around it. That green was water. The window was underwater, but that bright, gleaming green meant we were near the surface. They hadn’t been this close to sunlight in so long, I didn’t blame everyone their fascination. But the ladder I’d seen should be down the left branch, and I peered down it, and—

  “Oh, crap. No way.” I clenched my teeth in frustration.

  A gate. There was a stupid gate. Made out of crossed bars, it blocked the whole hallway. Down, way down past it, I saw the circle of brighter light that was the way out, but the gate was in the way.

  Please let it be unlocked. Please let it be unlocked.

  “Mary?” Rainbow called after me as I walked quickly, stiffly down to the gate. I grabbed the bars and yanked. It didn’t move. It didn’t have a handle, but I found the lock. Yes, it was locked.

  “No!” I yelled. The bars were thin. This gate was nothing, it was an excuse! I’d seen better fences on people’s back yards! I kicked it, and it clanged, and metal bent. I kicked it again.

  “Mary!” Maria squealed in alarm. I kicked the bars again, and felt water dampen my cheek. Next to me, three rivets on the wall had sprung leaks.

  “Mary, don’t! It’s okay!” Rainbow begged me. Her hands reached out, but she didn’t touch me. That was the only reason I stopped. She knew I wouldn’t want to be grabbed, and she didn’t grab me.

  I slumped against the wall and gritted my teeth. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t. I was going to get myself killed, and them with me. I just couldn’t obey these rules. I wasn’t patient and good-natured like them.

  “It’s fine, Mary,” Patrick lied to me, “Maria’s right. Luck never turns out for us, so we don’t depend on it. Even without luck, look—” He waved a hand back towards the window. “We’re so close. I’ve never seen a porthole before. We got this far because we were patient. We can be patient some more.”

  “Are you allowed to be clever?” I asked flatly.

  He looked blank.

  “I’m not patient, Patrick. I’m not like you. But I don’t give up, either. I’ve got a plan, and you won’t like it, but I’m going to try it anyway.”

  “Mary—” he tried to tell me, but I had already pushed away from the wall. I stomped around the corner back the way we came. I was a naturally fast walker, and nobody could argue because they had to hurry just to keep up with me.

  Rainbow managed to keep pace long enough to ask, “Mary, can you tell me what’s going on?”

  “No, because you won’t be able to talk me out of it,” I answered shortly.

  I’d remembered the way. It wasn’t hard. There weren’t many other paths possible. That was the gym ahead of us. I picked up the pace. I had to be ahead of everyone else, just far enough that they couldn’t physically stop me when I stalked up to the shut hatch, twisted the wheel back, and swung it open.

  The dark room hadn’t changed. The doorway at the other end hadn’t changed. Sunlight still shone down on a ladder leading up. The others were too stunned to react before I walked out into the room, right into the darkness in the middle.

  I was watching this time. That darkness moved. It was too dark to tell exactly where they’d been hiding, but two wrongly shaped things hobbled out towards me. The same two things as last time. Oh crap, Mary, you’re going to die. But that also meant this would work.

  “Mary, come back!” Rainbow squeaked in terror behind me.

  I’d been standing too long. These things moved faster than they looked. Not fast enough, but when I bolted, a hand grabbed at where my ankle had been and got much too close.

  I didn’t run back towards the safe door behind me, or forward towards the ladder. I ran towards one of the dark tunnels in the wall. This close, the things were desperate. They clambered after me. I wasn’t going to look back, but I could hear them right behind.

  “Run, you idiots! This is your chance!” I yelled back.

  Footsteps. Someone was running. M
ore than one person. Real people’s footsteps, not the awkward stumbling right behind me. I heard Joe squeal in delight, and Rainbow wail, “Don’t waste what she’s doing for us!”

  I hoped this worked. I would never find out. I had to focus on running. As afraid as I was of the things behind me, my body ran cold with fear that I’d trip over something and fall in this blackness. It wasn’t totally black, at least. I’d picked this tunnel because of a tiny glint at the end, and that glint got bigger. A light glowed in front of me, dull as it was. I lowered my head and ran for it.

  I’d left the things behind, but I could still hear them stumbling after me. As long as they hadn’t turned back. The light came from an alcove, shone up from a hole in the floor where a ladder climbed down. The ladder went down, not up, but I really wanted to be in the light right now. When the irregular clambering became loud thumps and metallic slams behind me, I wanted it even more. I wanted it enough not to care when I saw water down there. I dived into the alcove, grabbed the rungs, and scurried down them as fast as I could. The room below was flooded, but I climbed down into the water anyway because an electric lamp blazed right beside the ladder.

  The moment my head cleared the hole, a heavy metal grate swung shut over the top of it. I reached up and shoved. Way too heavy to move. Then I got smarter, spotted the latch, and slammed it closed to lock it. After that, I clung to the ladder, waist deep in seawater and not near the floor of the room, and panted for breath.

  Before long, the Wolf padded up to the grate and lay down on top of it, forearms crossed as he looked down through the metal bars at me.

  “They won’t bother you again, my love,” his bass voice purred to me, “Let me get you out of here.”

  “If you think I’m that stupid, then you’re the one who’s stupid,” I wheezed back at him.

  “I’d like to think I’m your only option, but I’m sure you’ll figure something out. I love the way you surprise me.” He was so relaxed and casual. I hated that. I hated it so much that even with profanity I wouldn’t know how to describe it.

  “You can just wait there while I figure it out,” I snapped at him. I was already trying. The problem was, this room was totally flooded. Water covered the top of the only door, and no light came through it.

  “Take your time,” he assured me, “I’m grateful that I can’t reach you. Now instead of fighting temptation, I have time to get to know you.”

  “You have got to be kidding me,” I barked in disbelief.

  “I love you, Red Riding Hood—”

  “You just said you don’t know me!” I yelled.

  “I know enough to love you. I know that you know what selfishness and temptation are like. I know that you care. I know that at every turn you challenge me. You disappear, or you do the wrong thing when I push you.” He chuckled, and corrected, “No, not the wrong thing. You do something better than I thought possible.”

  “You are getting stupider by the second,” I hissed up at him. Did he really think I’d feel flattered? Up to my waist in cold salt water in a bare flooded room after being chased by monsters?

  “I love what I can see already, but I want to know more,” he explained, as if that would help.

  “F—” I started to swear, but changed it. to, “Go away.”

  “Where do you come from, Red Riding Hood?” he inquired, so very gently.

  “Go away,” I growled back.

  “Did you have friends? What are your parents like?” he asked again.

  “Go away!” I growled louder.

  He sighed, but didn’t sound unhappy. “I can’t make you bare yourself to me. Not yet. How do you feel about me?”

  That one dumbfounded me. “How do you think I feel? I hate you!”

  “But you don’t know anything about me,” he replied mildly.

  “I know you’re the Wolf who’s trying to kill me. Isn’t that enough?” I shouted. Where could he even be going with this?

  “You don’t seem to think so,” he retorted.

  I glared at him, and didn’t say anything.

  “I’m more than just the Wolf, and you’re more than just Red Riding Hood. You’re also a girl named Mary, and I’m also a wolf born near a mining town in Alaska.”

  I hung there, my arms sore from clinging to the ladder, cold water sloshing around me. I didn’t know how to reply to something like that.

  He kept talking, and he sounded wistful, even sad. “I was a failure as a normal wolf. I had the strength and intelligence to lead, and I didn’t want to. It meant nothing to me. I rejected my shallow and meaningless family, and their shallow and meaningless pleasures.”

  I squirmed. He didn’t make the comparison out loud, but shouting it would have been more subtle.

  “I wandered around the edges of the town instead. One night, I watched a pretty girl kissing her lover behind a building, and I understood what I was missing. Her face held so much life, so much happiness and pain and desire. The kisses they shared were a physical passion more intimate than breeding. I wanted her. Not just her, but this deep and meaningful femininity I couldn’t find with my own kind.” His head lay on his paws as he talked, pale blue eyes watching me. Watching my expression as he talked about a girl in pain.

  I stayed quiet. I refused to let him drag me into this conversation. He went on anyway. “I would get what I wanted. I refused to let being an animal stop me from wanting to be more. When I made that decision, I became the Wolf. Soon after that, I met Red Riding Hood for the first time, like all the other Wolves before me.”

  “Oh, please tell me there aren’t more of you,” I whined in disgust and frustration. “No wonder you’re not afraid of dying.”

  “Of course I’m afraid of dying!” he snarled, leaping up to all fours. “Don’t lie to yourself that my love for you is cheap. When I die, I’ll be dead. When the woodsman’s axe came down on the Wolf’s neck, he died, forever. I remember him, but he’s dead. We are all the Wolf, and his memory makes me brave, because I remember how he felt when he died.” The wolf leaned down, pressing his nose to the grating, and whispered, “He died for love. He died for the little girl he devoured before the woodsman caught him. She was worth it.”

  I couldn’t answer him now. My heart was pounding too hard, and I couldn’t control my breathing. “I don’t know how this will end, Red. I don’t know what I want from you yet. I know that I want you, and that chasing you makes me happy, and that one day, you will be mine. Maybe the choice of what that means will be yours.”

  “Go away,” I managed to grumble.

  “For now. This is a terrible place, and you don’t belong here. Unlock the gate. I’m strong enough to lift it, and then I swear, I will leave you alone until I find a way to get you out of here.”

  He stepped off the grating, out of the metal alcove into the shadows. I hung there and tried to decide what to do.

  I couldn’t take this anymore. Patrick and Maria and Francis and Stephen and Joe and Rainbow and Eric and Valdis and Rose—I would never see any of them again. Running away meant leaving everyone behind, over and over. I even missed that stupid old man Magnus. I couldn’t keep doing this. I needed someone.

  The Wolf was trying to convince me it should be him. He could forget it. I’d met better friends in these last few days than I ever had back home, but they all had lives and stories I couldn’t belong to. Only one person had been able to belong to my story.

  “Once upon a time there was a sweet little girl,” I recited, although Rose’s words hadn’t been quite right. “Everyone who saw her liked her, especially her pet rat.”

  I let go of the ladder and dove into the cold seawater, swimming through the submerged doorway. I surfaced again in the sunlight. Well, muted sunlight. Around me were stacked uneven stones running way up to a circle of sky.

  “Great. It worked, and I’m at the bottom of a well in a fairy tale,” I deduced.

  “Miss Mary!” Rat-In-Boots yelled ecstatically from up above.

  could see him.
A tiny rat shape peeked over the edge of that blue circle of sky, way above me. Had I ever been so grateful to see anyone in my entire life?

  “You know who I am. Do you know how to get me out of here before I drown?” I yelled, treading water. Weren’t there supposed to be ladders built into the sides of wells? Not dramatic enough for fairy tale building codes, apparently. All I saw were slick gray rocks.

  “If I lower a rope, can you climb it?” Rat asked.

  I growled a little, then stopped. Not a sound I wanted to hear right now. “There are three kids in my whole school who can climb a rope in gym class, Rat, and I’m not one of them. I don’t even know how it’s possible.”

  “Take off your shoes and you’ll swim better,” he suggested.

  “Not going to happen, Rat,” I shot back. He’d sounded fatalistic about the advice anyway.

  “I’ll get you out. It will be easy if … why, good Sir!” Crowing with glee, Rat disappeared from view. It said something about my last few days that I felt lonely again immediately.

  “I’m a rat, good Sir,” I heard him chatter, as oily as a used car salesman. “What good would she do me? I’ll sell you the spell for two silver coins, and I keep one and the other you throw into the well. After that it’s up to you, but I guarantee the well will give you a girl as pure as your silver.”

  It was all I could do not to laugh as a coin came tumbling down into the well, gleaming with the sunlight until it hit the water beside me and sank. I should have felt bad about Rat ripping this guy off, but my arms were beginning to ache and I didn’t want to depend on passersby maybe feeling generous enough to pull me out before I drowned.

  Rat’s head poked over the edge again. “I think I see her down there, Sir. Help me with the rope?”