Prize of Night

by Bailey Cunningham

  He heard scraping in the distance. It might have been the stone frog.

  What did they eat?

  If he kept running, it would be fine. It would all be a dream.

  The dagger was hot in his hands. He could feel the blood drying on his palm, the faint but persistent sting of the cut. No matter. He was all scars now, running through the dark with a lightning rod for spirits. Oliver kept pace with him. A former meretrix who, most nights, preferred numbers to sex. He’d been a librarian once. There was a joke there, something about Archive Fever, but he couldn’t quite crack the punch line.

  He wondered if he’d die in the dark. Had that been the plan all along? Maybe it should have been him. What difference could he possibly make? He’d looked into the heart of smoke and realized how small he was. He’d made empty promises. Now he was leading an army to a forgotten auditorium, with no idea what to do next.

  Except for the stupid idea.

  It might work in a fairy tale, or on an episode of DS9. Commander Sisko singing in the dark. Come on, Andrew. The whole Gamma Quadrant believes in you.

  He felt heat on his back.

  Latona’s vanguard was upon them.

  He could make out light coming through the hole in the wall. He no longer knew if Oliver was still behind him. Everything had flattened to a plane of need. This was how it felt to run from a woolly mammoth. The surprise of the survival instinct, rattling through you in a cascade of neurotransmitters. The clarity of knowing, in your blood, that you would live, that you would damn well thrive, even if you had to run across molten lava. Which, at this point, was already a distinct possibility. Knowing that you could kill something, no matter how ancient, or how beautiful it was. Fingers tightening around the blade.

  The chokecherry trees making shadows against white brick, warmed by sun. The possibility that every park might be connected. That they were living things, breathing across the surface of a world covered by cellular towers. Regina had built a park over a graveyard of bones, and now it was haunted by history. The stories greening to perfection beneath the earth. The memory of buffalo. There are no truths, Coyote said, only stories. That much he’d learned from Thomas King. The park was a story that needed to be told. It belonged to everyone.

  He’d never have met Carl, if not for the park.

  He’d never have seen Neil petting an invisible salamander.

  He’d never have felt the stories turning beneath him, those persistent whispers, warp and weft that knew him, truly. The stories that were fireworks. The stories that were cats’ paws kneading. Those ones that were a long, slow kiss, and those others that were fat drops of rain falling on your book, even as you read on, skipping every class, pulled forward by bright need and fear and delight. Stories that had no beginning or end, because they were a touch under twilight, swampy laughter, a gloaming of naked possibilities.

  They burst into the light. Oliver was still with him. Out of breath, he turned in circles for a moment. The faculty offices remained silent. The basement had no idea what was about to happen. Andrew looked down and saw two gnomoi sharpening their claws on the brick. He snapped his fingers to get their attention. The gesture was not appreciated.

  “The wall! We need it again!”

  The gnomoi stared at him. Then they murmured something to each other in a language like clicking tiles.

  Andrew pointed desperately to the open space. He tried to imagine every wall that he’d ever seen. Reinforced steel, crumbling stone, blushing drywall, even a house that he’d once seen on TV whose walls were covered in tomato tins. Anything to slow them down. They’d tear through it in a moment, but a moment was all that he needed.

  The gnomoi looked at him expectantly.

  He dumped out his knapsack on the ground, frantically searching for an offering. There were books, and wrappers, and paper clips, and dead highlighters. Finally, he found what he was looking for. The flat rock that he’d taken from the micropark on the day when he’d told Carl that he was dreaming of salamanders. There’d been a sculpture there, overgrown with grass, that had reminded him of a tumulus. He’d spied the rock near purple flowers.

  Andrew placed the rock on the ground.

  It’s all I have.

  The gnomoi considered it for a second. Then one of them snatched up the offering, while the other began patching up the wall. His claws moved with the speed of an electric loom. Snick-snick-snick. The wall reappeared.

  “Will that hold—” Oliver began.

  But Andrew was already pulling him up the stairs. No time. No miracles left. They were like the dwarves leaving Bag End, forgetting to bring weapons. Everyone had left the dragon out of their calculations.

  The auditorium resembled the set of a postmodern music video. Salamanders had set fire to a few of the velvet chairs, while undinae hung from the curtains, screaming watery imprecations at each other. The caela had broken the stained-glass windows. Their enormity swirled around the vaulted ceiling, dimming the room. A dragon without a hoard. Paul was still playing “Baby Beluga,” since he couldn’t think of anything else to do. His face was pale as he watched the smoke congealing above him.

  Andrew heard humming.

  His eyes widened. “Shit. I was right.”

  A burning white filament hung above the stage. It looked like something from the heart of a plasma globe, nearly dancing as it stuttered in the air. He rubbed his eyes to make sure he hadn’t imagined it. Oliver made a sound next to him.

  Being right didn’t feel as comforting as he’d thought.

  As he looked into the thing, he could see flashes. Indistinct ripples of color that might have been places, or people. He thought he saw a familiar alley, then a grove beneath a steel-blue sky. He saw flashes of other worlds. Towers of glass that rippled beneath unfamiliar constellations. Lush forests with sinister flowers. Cities that flamed and trembled and demanded forgiveness, naked before dazzling windows. They turned and toiled. They sang, erred, screamed in their foundations. It was all there. Even his own story, a fiber-optic point, winking in the smog. The city was betrayal, but it was also solace.

  He couldn’t have moved faster.

  The song hadn’t failed.

  Shelby was beside him. “What’s happening?”

  “What she’s always wanted,” Andrew said. “Chaos. But I think we can use it. I think there’s still a way out. If you trust me.”

  The caela shrieked. It was the sound of a dying star. He remembered the death of a cherubim who’d unmade himself to save a teenage girl. The death of a white hole, bursting his claudication, so that there could be light to read by. The caela were older than imagination, and their scream was the sound of every hinge being unlatched, every atomic bond shivering, breaking away from its mate. They moved as an inky cloud, flowing through the pipe organ. Andrew felt his insides turn to ice.

  “Paul!”

  Ingrid knocked him off the bench just as the organ exploded.

  The pipes burst with an inhuman bellow.

  In the rubble, something gleamed. An ivory key. But it was changing now, in the strange light of the auditorium. It trembled like a root, about to burst forth.

  Shelby moved faster than he’d thought possible. She grabbed the key. Nearly fell. Turned and ran, her expression entirely blank. Claws of smoke raked the space where she’d been a second ago. Ingrid followed her, pulling her brother along. Paul had the dazed look of someone who kept expecting to wake up from a particularly confusing nightmare.

  Sam stood before the cloud of smoke, holding one of Oliver’s prop swords. She seemed to have forgotten that its edge was useless. Her expression was set.

  “This thing is really starting to piss me off,” she said.

  “Sam!” Ingrid made a desperate motion. “Now’s not the time!”

  The engineering student cast a final look at the dark thing that seethed before her. Then s
he stumbled over to join them in the middle of the room.

  “Safety in numbers?” she asked. “Or will they just eat us more efficiently this way?”

  “We need to get to the stage,” Andrew said.

  Sam glared at him. “Did you not notice the crazy thing that’s happening there? You want to get close to that interdimensional twister?”

  He exhaled. “I want to go through it.”

  “The shearing forces alone would tear you apart. Trust me—I study this shit for a living. And even if we did survive—where is that thing going to take us?”

  “I think—everywhere,” he said. “Unless I’m wrong. Then we’ll be spaghetti.”

  It was Paul’s turn to swear. “That’s your plan? You want us to go through some kind of cosmic pasta maker, and out the other side?”

  He heard a rumbling. Something was moving beneath the floorboards. Two gnomoi burst from the ground, clawing blindly. The other lares regarded them with interest.

  “Is that a frog?” Shelby asked.

  Pulcheria rode her mount into the auditorium. Pharsia was directly behind her, spurring on the scrap-metal creatures that drew her chariot. Andrew heard the sound of bronze hooves, cracking against the antique floor. Latona was coming.

  All of his dreams were here, and they wanted to tear each other apart.

  Silenoi were crawling through the broken windows. He heard a noise above and saw that a group of furs had climbed in through the roof. Then he noticed an arc of water through the doorway. The undinae had gotten to the plumbing.

  The caela saw the three queens.

  All of their eyes narrowed.

  “Now now now!” Andrew screamed. “While it’s distracted!”

  They stumbled across the debris. Mouths snapped at them; water and sparks leapt at them. Gnomoi spit jagged stones in outrage. Pain flared along Andrew’s arm, but he kept running until he was up the stairs. They reached the stage. Tendrils of smoke followed, curling at their feet. At any moment, they could turn hard as steel.

  The filament seemed to turn before them. A ballerina in a music box, strangely beautiful, even as it vibrated with horror. Images skittered and blinked within it. The rim of a marble fountain. A coffered ceiling, resplendent with lamplight. A narrow cell whose empty bed reminded him of a tomb. He looked closer, and thought, for a moment, that he could see himself, leaf-tossed in the storm.

  He did not see Carl.

  Was he waiting in the wings, somewhere? Behind the lightning?

  Then, Andrew saw a body, pale as boxwood, floating.

  Roldan.

  Or maybe it had always been him. Two threads in the same pattern.

  He’d given something to the hungry spirits. Something, but not everything.

  “We need to join hands,” he said.

  Shelby gave him an odd look. “What exactly is your long game, here? Are we all supposed to perform You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown? I don’t think the ravenous smoke monster is going to be charmed by musical theater.”

  Andrew held out his hand. “I know I’m dumb. But just trust me. Please.”

  She took his right hand, while Oliver took his left. The others followed suit. Paul had a death grip on Ingrid’s hand. He was holding on for dear life. Sam took Ingrid’s remaining hand, completing the circuit.

  These were his friends. The people who saved him. The people who knew him and didn’t turn away. Because their flaws fit together.

  “We choose to roll,” he said.

  Nothing happened.

  “Are you crazy?” Shelby whispered. “We don’t have dice. Paul isn’t even a member of the company. Roll with what, exactly?”

  “I don’t think we need them anymore.”

  “Not to rain on your charming RPG fantasy,” Paul hissed, “but I don’t think a twenty-sided die is going to make us any less dead!”

  Andrew repeated, more loudly: “We choose to roll!”

  Latona’s bronze horse leapt through the air. He saw fire and ice and shadow on the edges of everything. The world crumbling like parchment. Oliver’s hand in his own. Shelby’s reckless faith. Sam, the spark that continually surprised, making its way through layers of doubt. Ingrid’s patient love for them all.

  Then it was Paul, strangely, who said: “Everyone!”

  They all spoke: “We choose to roll.”

  They all chose. A company as unlikely as it was unbreakable.

  He saw an unexpected face in the tear. Just for a moment.

  Then they dove forward. It was just like discovering the park for the first time. All the hope that lay on the other side. Before, they’d wished to be different.

  Now they knew who they were.

  The light swallowed them, while every other thing screamed.

  He saw the brick first.

  It was hard to look at. He tried to concentrate, but the blocks kept shifting. Yellow moss trembled in the cracks. It was too quiet. The familiar city noises were gone. Something was cutting into his knee, and he realized that he was sprawled on the ground. The uneven paving stones reminded him of cooled lava. Shelby was struggling to rise next to him, and he helped her up. Paul maintained his grip on Ingrid’s hand, while Sam looked around, searching for a clue that might make sense.

  She frowned. “This isn’t my alley. But it’s familiar.”

  Andrew looked for the hole in the wall, but the bricks refused to yield. There was no packet of goods waiting for him in the dark. Just warm stones that kept blurring beneath his vision. He also remembered this place, or some version of it. The shadows filled him with a sense of unearthly nostalgia that he couldn’t quite explain.

  Someone had scratched a B into one of the walls.

  He didn’t know what it meant.

  “It almost feels,” Ingrid said, “like this is everyone’s alley.”

  “Is there a way out?” Sam peered down the corridor. “I don’t see anything. It’s just brick going on forever. I’m going to check.”

  She disappeared. Her footsteps faded for some time, then came back. She peeked around the corner. “I don’t think it ends,” she said. “At least, there’s no exit that I can find. No city. Just alley.”

  “The city of infinite alleys,” Ingrid said. “I guess we found the infinite one.”

  Paul threw up noisily in the corner.

  Everyone turned away politely. Ingrid offered him a handkerchief from her pocket and said: “Don’t worry. That’s normal.”

  “None of this is normal.” Paul wiped his mouth. “Where are we?”

  “It’s called Anfractus.”

  “I’m not entirely sure that’s where we are,” Andrew said. “This is more like an in-between space. A waiting room.”

  “I don’t understand,” Paul said. “Why are we here? What’s going on back in the park? Are those monsters going to set fire to the city?”

  “Regina has survived cyclones and floods,” Sam said. “And once, a rain of frogs. I’m sure it can deal with some angry salamanders.”

  “All of you seem extraordinarily chill about this,” Paul snapped. “Forgive me for losing my shit here, but I was nearly killed by an exploding organ. Then a bronze horse tried to trample me, and now I’m in some infinite fucking alley.” He was breathing hard. He leaned against the wall. “And I think I’m having . . . a panic attack . . . in your nightmare world.”

  “Hey there, mister.” Sam took both of his hands gently in her own. “Look at me. Repeat after me. I am the barbecue master.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Just say it.”

  “I . . . am the barbecue master.”

  “My frosting is sick.”

  “Sam—”

  “Don’t argue with an engineer.” She rubbed his thumbs. “Say it.”

  “My frosting is—” He frowned. “Sick really isn’t
the right word. I’m not even sure what that means. Is it some kind of gaming term?”

  Sam smiled. “And you’re back.”

  He laughed softly. “You’re right. I feel better.”

  She kissed him on the cheek. “Good. Because we’re trapped in an alley while the world is going to hell. We need you to keep a tight lid on that anxiety, until we think of a way out of here. I’ll run out of mantras, otherwise.”

  Paul nodded slowly. “Sure. Tight lid.”

  Andrew ran his hands along the brick walls. “It’s so quiet. Like we’re in some kind of beta-testing space. Maybe this is the first alley.”

  Shelby punched him in the shoulder.

  “Hey! What was that for?”

  “Because you convinced us all to jump, and you don’t even have a plan. Jerk. I really need to stop trusting you.”

  “I do have a plan. It’s just . . . kind of theoretical at this stage.”

  “Great,” Paul said. “Why don’t you write a paper about it?”

  Ingrid snorted. “How long have you been waiting to say that?”

  “How long have you been in grad school, again?”

  “That’s a hostile question.”

  “I just—” Andrew frowned. “Did anyone else see all those different things flickering in the tear? I didn’t think we’d end up in this place.”

  “I thought we’d be naked,” Sam said. “Kind of stoked that we’re not.”

  Oliver suddenly stepped into the alley. “Hey.”

  Everyone screamed.

  He winced. “Sorry. I was way down there.”

  Sam glared at him. “Were you hiding? I walked for a while, and didn’t see you.”