Harper stood, and so did the Tree Sisters; Gwenda tugged Maya to her feet, and Benjamin and Rowan rose as well.
Maya was surprised that Harper was only about her height, five feet tall.
Rowan roughly shook Travis’s shoulder. Travis snorted and opened his eyes.
“Uncle, does Travis come with us?” Rowan asked.
Harper frowned and stared at Travis, who rolled to his feet. “I’m game,” said Travis, “whatever it is.”
“You could stay here and take a nap,” said Benjamin. “We’ll come back for you.”
“And miss out on the fun?”
Harper stared at Travis. “That raises a question. Do you consider this fun? We don’t usually recruit giri so young, but we will make an exception for you. Will you join the giri, or should we wash away your memories of this day?”
“Those are my choices? What the heck is a giri?”
“Giri are our helpers in the outside world. They know and keep our secrets, and they do us necessary services we can’t do for ourselves.”
Travis’s brows drew together. “What the heck could I do that you people can’t?”
“Travel outside the range of the portal,” Harper said.
“What’s the range of the portal?”
Harper exchanged glances with the Tree Sisters. “Perhaps thirty miles,” he said. “There is some individual variation. But not much.”
“Whoa,” said Travis. “Does that mean you guys can’t get away from here?”
“Not after we become adult and bond to our specialties,” Harper said after a pause. “It is a peculiarity of the Earth portals that they hold us tight. Though I can go through a portal to any place it leads, I cannot go far from it on this side or any other.”
Travis frowned. “What kind of special services do you need from—from giri?”
“Not as many as we used to, now that we have the Internet,” said a Tree Sister, “although we can’t use it in the house.”
“We could use some help with that,” said the other Tree Sister.
“Mostly it involves going somewhere to get us something,” Harper said, “or to check out a situation. These tasks will not be yours until you are older. For now, it would mean maintaining secrecy and protecting our affairs.”
“Well, good that it doesn’t involve more work for me right away. I’ve already got jobs after school that take up all my time, one of which”—he grabbed Maya’s right hand and tilted it so he could look at the face of her watch (no spark; Maya’s egg must have recognized Travis as a friend from his first touch)—“I’m totally missing right now, and I’ll catch holy hell when I get home. My oma really did stuff like that for you?”
“She did,” said the Tree Sister. “She loved to travel. Sometimes she tracked down strays for us, and sometimes she brought us special things we couldn’t get for ourselves.”
“Oh,” Travis said. “Strays? Like that fairy Maya talked about? That explains—the Doowah Box, maybe? Oh. Whoa. And that wand thing? Oma used to point it different directions, and sometimes it would light up. She never let me play with it, though. And she never took it out when Opa was home. Is that—?”
“A seeker,” said a Tree Sister. “It can detect chikuvny. Very few were made, and we have lost the technology. Does she use it still?”
“She doesn’t use much of anything still,” Travis said, his voice flat.
“My apologies.”
“So I can probably ask if she’ll let me return it to you.” His voice softened. “We still talk, anyway. About almost everything, except she’s never mentioned this secret life she used to lead. Cowabunga. You’re offering me a choice between a life where I know what you guys are doing versus a life where I don’t? I’m so much more wanting to know. I’ll go with the giri thing.”
“Good,” said Harper. “We have not welcomed a new giri in a long time. A young one will be good. There are some necessary steps to making you giri we will have to take, but right now, we must talk to Loostra about the sissimi matter. Come.” He strode toward the door. Rowan got there ahead of him and held it open for the Elders.
Maya put away her sketchpad and slipped her pack on. “Where are we going?” Maya whispered to Gwenda.
“To the portal,” Gwenda whispered back. “Loostra can’t come far from it.”
FOURTEEN
Rowan led them farther into the building. The corridor turned right, and just past the turn, on the right-hand wall, there was a wide door with no knob. Rowan tapped his fingers against a small square in the center of the door, in a rhythm more complex than an ATM code, and the door opened with a whoosh.
Beyond the door was a landing, and then stairs that led down into a darkness interrupted by halos of multicolored light. Cool, spicy-smelling air rose up the stairwell toward them.
Gwenda took Maya’s right hand, and they followed Harper, Rowan, Benjamin, and the Tree Sisters down into darkness, Travis at their heels.
Down the rabbit hole, Maya thought, where everything works differently and strange is the new normal. Maya wished Stephanie were here. Steph would have been dancing with excitement. Why are you so slow, Maya? A new world is waiting! Maya’s throat tightened with missing her.
Sudden anger flashed through her, too. How could you leave me, Steph? Look at all the stuff you’re missing! How can I enjoy it without you?
The sissimi purred against her wrist. I’m here, it said.
“You’re here,” Maya whispered. She pressed the egg against her cheek. Warmth, a shifting movement under her skin, the silent vibration of comfort.
There was a dark maze beneath the Janus House Apartments. Other corridors branched off from the one they were walking. The air changed as they passed by. Sometimes warmer, sometimes colder, it carried scents of cooking, incense, roses, electricity, fire, and many things she’d never smelled before. Everywhere there was the scent of fairy dust. Chikuvny.
Rounded doorways opened off the corridor on either side, but most of them were curtained shut. Maya heard strange voices and unknown languages through some of the curtains, and felt heat radiating from others. One curtain was crusted with ice crystals. Another seemed woven of glass strips.
“What is all this?” Maya whispered to Gwenda.
“This is where we work. Most of us live upstairs, and the classrooms and kitchen are up there, too. Our real lives mostly happen down here.”
“Sunless,” Travis muttered from behind them. “Kinda creepy. Like mole rat colonies.”
“There’s light, but it comes from other places.”
Finally they passed a door where a curtain was parted. Maya paused to peek in, and Travis peered past her. Three people sat in darkness, studying windows in the walls. Or were they windows? They were a little like old-fashioned TV screens, or portholes. Maya had a brief shivery thought that they were in a landlocked submarine.
Different moving scenes showed in the portholes: forests of plants Maya had never seen before, spiky cities, mush-roomy cities, cities of giant flowers, where people who weren’t human flew or crawled or wandered. Skies over the strange landscapes ranged from lilac to lime to lemon, with clouds streaking across them like flotillas of cotton candy, ice crystal scarves, or dark, gritty trails of sand.
“You guys!” Gwenda dragged them away.
They came to another doorway. Harper lifted the curtain and spoke to whoever was on the other side. He said the word “Loostra.” Someone said something back. Harper nodded and dropped the curtain before Maya could see past him.
They came to a threshold at the end of the corridor and stopped.
The threshold was about a foot wide, ringed with colored lights. Beyond it was a cavern the size of a basketball court, with other light-ringed entrances around it. The entrances were different sizes. One was so small Maya wasn’t sure she could fit through it on her hands and knees. Another stretched up almost to the cavern’s ceiling, wide enough for elephants or maybe whales to go through.
“Is that the porta
l?” Maya whispered to Gwenda, pointing at the circle of lights before them.
Harper turned toward her. “No, child, this is not the portal. Step carefully.”
They crossed the threshold one at a time, starting with Harper, followed by the Tree Sisters. Gwenda went before Maya, then turned and looked back. “Be careful,” she said.
How could Maya be careful? Try not to trip?
She stepped into the opening. Before she could put her foot down on the other side, something swaddled her in clinging folds of invisible energy and lifted her above the ground, while zissing electric noises snapped in her ears. Her skin fizzed. Suspended midway between the threshold and the top of the doorway, she shivered and shook. She struggled, tried to move her arms and legs, but she was trapped tight, smashed between clear planes, as though she’d been laminated. She tried to scream, but she couldn’t even open her mouth.
The egg pulsed against the bones of her wrist, hot, cold, hot, cold, and then scorching.
Something shifted. A streak of heat shot up her arm from the egg, zoomed all through her and out to the tips of her fingers and toes.
The restraints that held her vanished. She fell through into the cavern. Gwenda caught her shoulders before she collapsed, and Travis and Benjamin were there, too, steadying her. “You’re all right,” Gwenda said gently. “You’re all right.”
Maya rubbed her eyes, scrubbed her cheeks. The shaking stopped, and she realized she actually felt okay. “What was that?” she said. Her voice came out too high.
Chikuvny smell was very strong here.
“One of our safeguards,” said Gwenda.
Benjamin patted her back. “It’s kind of like customs, only without the questions. The trap ring activates when contraband comes through.”
The others gathered around them.
“So the sissimi didn’t come through our portal,” said the first Tree Sister thoughtfully. “Or it has changed since it arrived.”
“What does that mean?” Maya asked. Again, too high.
“Normal humans can walk through the ring without pause,” the Tree Sister said and nodded toward Travis. “Your egg snagged you, as it would have snagged anyone carrying it through the other way. Smugglers haven’t troubled us in a very long while.”
“What shifted?” Harper asked.
“What do you mean, Uncle?” asked the other Tree Sister. “Didn’t you shut the trap ring down and release her?”
“No. Something shifted to accommodate the tangle.”
They all stared at Maya’s wrist. She looked at her egg. It hadn’t changed, as far as she could tell. Pink pulsed across it, followed by grass green and Chinese red.
“Hmm. Possibly it did come through our portal.” Harper turned to the moon-pendant Tree Sister. “Sarutha, please get me the work logs from the last five days, and ask Nydia to query all other Earth portals for unusual activity in the past—Maya, when did the renegade come here?”
“Renegade?” Maya asked.
“The person who gave you the sissimi.”
“I don’t know,” she said. Little one? she thought.
Rrr, the egg responded, a growl softening into a purr. How could the egg measure days, when it hadn’t even hatched yet? Maya shook her head.
Harper said, “That picture we have of him. You drew it?”
Maya glanced at Benjamin, who nodded.
“I did,” she said.
“He looked haggard.”
“He was really sick by the time he put the egg on my arm. Much sicker than when I met him in the morning. The sketch is from the morning.”
“If local conditions made him sick, five days’ backsearch ought to be long enough,” Harper said, and he nodded to the Tree Sister, who slipped out through the light-ringed doorway they had just come in.
“Gwenda, call the portal team,” Harper said.
“You okay?” Gwenda whispered to Maya.
“I guess.” Maya still felt shaky from being trapped by the door. Now Gwenda was leaving. Benjamin stood beside her, though, and he looked reassuring. Travis was a tall presence on her other side, and Rowan stood nearby, though whether that was good or bad, Maya wasn’t sure.
“I’ll be right back.” Gwenda squeezed Maya’s shoulder, then ran through one of the other doorways.
She returned followed by six people, three men and three women, different shapes and sizes and hair colors, dressed in varied clothes. They spread out near the center of the cavern in a ragged circle.
“Is Loostra ready to come through?” Harper asked.
Gwenda nodded, then stood beside Maya. She gripped her own elbows and hunched her shoulders.
The newcomers spread their arms wide. A low hum sounded, making the ground thrum under their feet. The people sang, softly at first, a melody that almost repeated but didn’t quite, each time a variation on the time before. They started in unison, and then they split into a multistrand harmony, and the song grew louder. The hum under their feet rose, louder and a little higher, and a streak of fluttering, glowing red appeared in the air in the center of the cavern, within the circle of the portal team. A sheet of green shimmered into sight, followed by a panel of lavender, then orange, blue, yellow-green, scarves and scoops of glowing colored light, weaving around each other, growing denser, curtains and waterfalls and skies of color.
Reflected light danced over the walls. Pale spirals and circles glinted in the smooth, glassy surface of the floor. The air smelled like the scent after a lightning strike, and, inexplicably, like violets, but most strongly of carnation and cinnamon.
Maya slid her pack off and grabbed her notebook and a pencil, then just stood there. This was the most amazing thing she had ever seen, but what could she do about it? Oh, Steph, if only—
No way could she capture this without colors. She leaned forward and set her mind on Memorize.
“What is that?” she murmured.
“This is the portal,” Benjamin whispered.
The hum rose again, the song reached a high chord, all the colored light brightened toward white, and then—
Something long, pale, and jointed scuttled from the center of the ragged rip in the air.
FIFTEEN
One end of it rose up. It had hundreds of small jointed legs fringing its sides. It was flatter than a snake, and it had many body segments. It looked more like a humongous centipede than anything else.
“Wha—wha—wha—” Travis gasped.
Maya clutched Gwenda’s arm and tried to drag her toward the door.
Gwenda didn’t budge. “Wait,” she said.
The top of the thing’s body waved in the air. It had six longer limbs at that end, each jointed three times, below a bulging, rounded head. The longer legs curled and unfurled as the portal faded behind it.
A moment later, the cavern was just a cavern again. Plus a giant centipede.
The six people who had conjured up the portal lowered their arms.
Nobody was running away.
The centipede’s six long limbs wove gracefully through the air until they all pointed toward Maya. Then they stopped.
“Fetch it,” said the centipede. It sounded female.
“Child,” said Harper. “Come.”
“You’re—what? You’re—” She didn’t even know what to ask. A crazy image of Peter trying to find a jar big enough to hold this creature flashed through her mind.
“Come,” Harper said again, in that creepy voice that made her obey, and she walked unwillingly toward the enormous centipede, fear knotting her stomach. Was it going to eat her? Was that how they solved their problems?
“Just a danged minute,” said Travis. He came up behind Maya, put his arms around her chest, and lifted her off the ground. Her feet kept walking on air, her heels knocking into his shins. “Somebody tell us this thing is safe!”
“I will not harm you,” the centipede said. Its voice sounded warm and comforting, like the best mother in the world. “On the lives of my three hundred children I
swear it.”
Gwenda said, “It’s Loostra,” as though that explained everything. “She never hurts people.”
“Take the whammy off Maya anyway, and let her get there by herself,” said Travis.
There was heat at Maya’s left wrist. A shiver ran through her, and her legs stopped kicking. Travis set her down and she stood, uncertain. She twisted toward the door they had come in through, then back toward the center of the cavern, where the giant pale segmented bug from outer space waited, its forelegs curling and uncurling in her direction.
No danger, thought Maya’s egg.
“All right,” Maya said. She walked toward Loostra, and so did everyone else. Travis stayed even with her, and she glanced up at him and mouthed, Thanks.
As they got closer, Maya smelled Loostra: vinegar, damp dirt, a hint of rank, crushed grass.
“This is Loostra,” Harper said. “Loostra, this is Maya.”
Maya tried to slow her heartbeat; it was shuffling in her ears, and it pulsed through the egg.
Everybody else seemed calm, even Travis, as though he ran into giant talking centipedes every day. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“Maya,” said Harper, “and a sissimi.”
The centipede had a hard round head with six dark velvety spots on it. “Ah,” she said, but Maya couldn’t tell where she spoke from. “Show me.” She sounded like the best mother in the world again, asking to see a scraped knee so she could put a Band-Aid on it.
Maya calmed.
Benjamin nudged her.
“Don’t hurt it,” Maya said, pressing the egg against her chest and shielding it with her right hand. “Don’t take it off.”
“What have they told you about me, Maya?” asked the centipede. “Whatever it is, it is wrong. I only ever look at things. I study them. I decide and inform, but I do not do.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
Maya edged three steps closer to it. Its vinegar scent was almost overwhelming. She held out her wrist.
It lowered its front end. The six longer limbs reached out and hovered above Maya’s egg, then wove through the air around it. “Ahhh,” it said. “Beautiful. Ahhh. Rarely have I seen one of these so close.” It made soothing, wordless, musical murmurs. “A new variant. Of course. With every new host, a new variant. What an elegant creature it is.”
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