by Patricia Bow
She touched the ruby to the grey stone. The only sound was Ike unzipping his camera case. Nothing happened to the wall. Ammy let out her breath and lowered her arm.
Simon let his breath out, too. “Well,” he began. “That’s...”
Something was happening to the wall.
Blue light bled through the bright yellow of the flashlight beams. A tall rectangle of blue light with a curved top. With twining shapes like tree roots all over it, only glassy — no, jewel-like — no, clear and deep as the evening sky.
Ike’s flashlight crashed to the floor. His camera buzzed and clicked.
Simon got a good grip on his own flashlight and, remembering that they’d planned to keep track of the time, looked at his watch: 4:52.
Ammy stood absolutely still. The door shone before them, solid, beautiful. And closed. She raised her arm again and touched the ring to the door. It flared electric blue. When Simon could pry his eyes open again, the door was gone and an arched tunnel of brilliant blue light stretched away in front of him. The far end was lost in dazzle.
Ammy grabbed a breath and looked at him. He couldn’t speak. Go in there? I can’t!
“I always said I wanted to go places.” She laughed shakily.
“I never did, specially, but...” But if I don’t go in, I’ll spend the rest of my life wondering...
“Yes,” Ammy croaked. She grabbed his free hand and stepped forward. Ike yelped and grabbed his other sleeve. They walked forward side by side. Blue light curved around them and under them. Like walking in sky. Simon didn’t dare look down.
A high, sweet humming made his ears tingle. “It’s singing,” Ammy whispered.
“It’s something to do with those ... what are they?” Lines of light branched around the tunnel, around and under, always moving. Dart, flicker, vanish, like snakes’ tongues — he wished he hadn’t thought that — or like electricity, arcing from point to point. The singing sounded electric.
As they walked the sound rose higher, sweeter, more piercing. The tunnel became a deeper, richer blue. Blue as the depths of the sea, blue as dusk. There was no up or down to it. Simon wasn’t walking now, he was sliding. Sliding on his feet down an endless curve of twilight sky.
He heard Ammy yell but he couldn’t feel her hand. He heard Ike yell, and somebody else yell, and...
And then they were lying in a tangled heap someplace where the light was not blue. The singing faded to a sigh and then to nothing.
Ike groaned. “I feel like some of me got left behind.”
“Not your feet, anyway,” Ammy snapped. “Get them off my stomach!”
Simon rolled painfully off the debris of his flashlight, stood up and looked around. Good thing it wasn’t dark here. The blue door stood behind them, but it wasn’t glassy and shining. It looked painted on the wall. Not a stony cave wall. A wall that was smooth and reddish brown, like clay tile.
“Where are we?” Ike was up and aiming his camera. He took a picture of the painted-on door, then held up his camera. “Darn! It’s stopped working! Must’ve been that tunnel.” He shuddered.
“Felt like riding a bolt of lightning,” Simon agreed. He looked at his watch. The digital display was blank. He held out his wrist to Ike, who checked his own watch and nodded.
“Temporal distortion effect,” Ike said.
“That’s just words.” Ammy unzipped her jacket. Simon did the same. It was warm here, or at least not cold. “You don’t have a clue what’s going on,” she added briskly. “Now, where’s that book? Mara said we’d see it right away. Take the book and get out fast, she said. Don’t hang around.”
They were standing in a triangular space with walls stretching away from them left and right. About twelve paces away the ends of six rows of shelves began, all of them the same smooth reddish brown as the walls. Simon moved his head and squinted. The shelves radiated away in all directions. Something wrong with this. He looked again. Shook his head.
“This’ll give me a headache.”
“It’s already given me a headache.” Ammy rubbed her forehead.
“Now we know for sure.” Ike gripped his camera case. “We aren’t in Ontario any more.”
“Then where are we?” Ammy’s lips whitened.
“No clue. But that’s nothing to be scared of,” Simon said past the coldness in his chest. “We know the way back.”
She forced a grin. “Sure. Mara wouldn’t be scared. So I won’t be.”
A tall, narrow table stood in the middle of the triangular space. It looked like the lectern in the Dunstone Public Library that held the big Oxford Dictionary. Maybe it was a lectern, because a book was on it. “This must be it.” Ammy picked up the book, using both hands. “Oof. Heavy!” It was about a foot tall and eight inches wide and a good two inches thick, and it was bound in dark green leather in a reptile pattern.
“Is that snakeskin?” Simon touched it. “What’s that on the front?”
A shape was pressed into the centre of the cover. It looked like an eye, oval with two pointed ends. A line curved out from each end.
“It’s the same symbol as on the ring. Guess that proves this is Mara’s book.” Ammy braced it against her hip. “Right, we’ve got it, let’s go! Ike!”
Ike had got over being scared. He was in among the shelves. “What a place!” he called. “Look at all this stuff!”
“Mara said not to go farther!”
“Probably thought we’d get lost,” Ike called back. “We won’t. Look — I can’t travel through a dimensional gate and then just turn around and go back!”
“Me neither,” Simon said.
“Well....” She shrugged one shoulder. “There’s nothing here but us. We’ll just have a little look.”
They followed Ike along an aisle between two rows of shelving. On each side were hundreds of books in bindings of all colours and materials, including some bound in what looked like metal or glass. Some had writing on the spines in gold or black or shining colours. The writing was not in any language Simon recognized. The characters were strange.
“This place is huge!” Ike pointed upward. The shelves rose until they faded into the shadows high above. The ceiling, if there was one, was invisible in the dark.
In between the books were jars and bottles and boxes. Simon stopped to brush the dust off a quartsized jar and found himself looking through the glass into a hideous little face. He jumped when the thing — it looked like a rat with no hair or tail — blinked at him. “Look at this!”
It was floating in a cloudy liquid, like a science exhibit. “How can it be alive in there?” Ike put his nose close to the jar. “I wonder if we should let it out.” He reached toward the lid, and the animal opened jaws lined with teeth like skewers and snapped at his hand. The jar rocked. He backed off. “I don’t think so.”
They walked and walked. They passed books the size of tables and books no bigger than Simon’s thumb. And not just books.
“Look!” Ammy pointed out a small silver box with scenes of marching men etched in its sides: men in armour and cone-shaped helmets, with spears on their shoulders and banners flying over their heads. “Isn’t this neat!” She reached to lift the lid.
“I wouldn’t,” Simon began.
As soon as Ammy touched it, the lid flew up and hundreds of squeaking mice poured out and scattered. All three of them yelped and jumped back. In seconds the mice were all gone.
Ike craned his neck to see into the box without touching it. “How could all those mice have been in there?”
“Maybe they weren’t really mice,” Simon said. “Or maybe that wasn’t just a box. Did you see? Some of them were holding little sticks in their teeth.”
“What kind of a place is this, anyway?”
“Maybe it’s a kind of weird museum,” Ammy said. “Mm, look at this!”
On a wooden stand sat a cap made of overlapping feathers in the blue-purple-gold of a peacock’s tail. Simon bent close, not daring to touch. A faint twittering sound came
from it. He wondered what it was for.
“Hey, this is cool.” Ike was squinting through a brass tube that looked like a telescope. “You can see another country through here. Really! It’s summer there. There’s hills and trees and things, and the trees are moving — like the wind is blowing — and, hey, there’s some guy lying in that grass under the trees, and he’s — oh, neat, I think he sees me!” Ike lowered the tube to beam at Simon.
“Careful!” Simon reached for the tube, but Ike swung it away and put his eye back to the lens. “He definitely sees me — he’s pointing something — ah!” A flash lit up Ike’s cheek, and the tube jumped in his hand. He dropped it back onto the shelf.
“Told you,” Simon said. “Ammy, did you see that?”
She didn’t answer. When Simon looked back at her, she was reading that book of Mara’s. She had it open and propped on a shelf, and her fingers were resting on a blue square. There was nothing else on the page.
“Ammy?”
She blinked once, slowly. Otherwise, she didn’t move.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
INTO THE DEPTHS
So, what’s in this book of Mara’s? Amelia wondered. Simon and Ike were playing with that brass tube, so she set the book down on an empty shelf, opened it, and flipped through. The paper was thick and stiff. Funny, there was no print, just squares of colour — one big square on each right-hand page. All different. Shadowy purple, foggy grey, fiery red, canary yellow, blue-black with glints like stars. And dozens more.
Here was a square of blue-green. Her hand stopped. “Oh....” She had never seen such a beautiful colour, so deep and rich, like a lake cupped between mountains. She touched it with her fingertips and — yes, it had depth. It felt wet. It actually was...
Water.
Amelia was no longer looking at the blue-green square. She was in it. Her mouth opened in a yell, but instead of choking, she found she was breathing the water like air.
She forgot to be terrified. The colour was so beautiful. Floating in it was like flying. Almost like her flying dreams, except this was not hot and red but all cool and blue and serene. Below, instead of sharp-edged pinnacles, were soft, feathery plants that waved gracefully between and around smooth rocks.
One of the rocks was tall and straight, with four sides. It was probably ten feet tall, and was clearly not natural. It looked like a war memorial or the kind of thing they put under a statue, only there was no statue.
Above her, like a window, floated a bright, white square. Amelia noticed it, then forgot it. It didn’t look important.
Something stirred in the blueness ahead. It became a shadow that grew solid, until she could see it was a person. A boy. His body was thin and bluish white, and no bigger than hers. He undulated through the blueness like an otter, and the weedy green tatters of his clothing undulated with him. She bobbed comfortably and watched him approach.
She thought: This must be a dream. If it were real I’d be afraid.
The boy floated in the blueness in front of her. His eyes were the blue-violet colour of chicory, and huge. Who are you? he mouthed, and a moment later his voice came to her, slow and echoing. “Who are you?”
“I’m Amelia. Amelia Hammer. Who are —”
“You are not one of us. Are you one of the Urdar?”
“Urdar? What’s that?”
“Urdar. The Wise Ones.” His eyes turned a stormy dark purple. “That’s what they call themselves.”
“What do you call them?” Amelia asked, to soothe him. It didn’t help.
“The destroyers! The enemy! This was our world. Then they came from outside and drove us into the deeps of the sea. And even here they come, leaving their mark.” He stabbed an angry finger at the tall stone pillar. “Claiming the last of what is ours for their own!”
“I didn’t know that. It’s very interesting. But I still don’t know who —”
He drifted backward and his eyes narrowed. “But you must know!”
“I’m a stranger,” she explained. “I’m new here.”
“You could be one of them. They are never what they seem. They steal other people’s shapes.”
“I’m not one of them, I swear it!” But he was swimming backwards now, keeping his chicory eyes fixed on her. “Don’t go!” she called.
He flipped and darted around the tall stone and was gone. Amelia started to swim after him, then back-paddled to stop herself. She stared at the flat front of the stone, where a shape was carved. An eye shape with curved lines coming from the ends. Same as on the cover of the book and on the ring.
Leaving their mark? Was that what he meant?
But something was wrong. It was getting hard to see. The blue-green cooled to blue-purple, then to indigo. The water was icy. Amelia tried to swim up towards the white square. It looked small and far away now. And she was so cold. And it was so hard to move her arms and legs. And it was getting hard to breathe the blueness. Her lungs hurt.
I’m drowning!
Her vision darkened. Just as the darkness became inky, a giant hand reached down from the white square, a hand as big as her whole body. It gleamed bluish white in the gloom. It grabbed her arm and hauled her up into the light.
§
“What’s the matter with her?” Ike asked.
“Don’t know. Ammy!”
She stood there absorbed in her book, but she wasn’t turning pages. Simon gave her arm a shake and she straightened up with a gasp. She slammed the book shut and leaned on it, panting. Simon looked at her, worried.
“What’s wrong?”
“This book. You’ll never believe — It takes you places —”
“Then you better not open it again.”
“Think I’m crazy?” She told them about the underwater boy and his story of the Urdar. “And guess what I saw down there? A stone sort of monument, with this on it!” She tapped the sign on the cover of the book. “Exactly the same thing!”
“Then you were somewhere in Mara’s country, I guess,” Simon said.
“Urdar, eh?” Ike said. “‘Steal other people’s shapes.’ What are they, body snatchers?”
“They sound like bad news,” Simon said.
“But the boy said” — Ammy tapped the book again — “he said this was their sign. That means the Urdar are Mara’s people. Mara’s not like that!”
“The Assassin is, though. Maybe Mara’s brother is, too.”
“My headache’s worse. And we’ve been here an awful long time.” Ammy squinted along the endless row of shelves. “We should get back.”
Simon had a disturbing idea. “Your headache. Like when the Assassin was reading your mind?” He looked around uneasily.
“No. This is like my head’s breaking into pieces and crashing back together again.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “I think I’m starting to remember something about that first night. I keep getting these images...”
“Maybe going through that passage unscrambled your brain,” Ike said. “I wish I could remember. Or maybe not, if it hurts like that.”
Simon lifted his head. “Funny!”
“What?” Ike spun around in a panic.
“I can smell fresh air.” A tiny breeze lifted a strand of Simon’s hair. “There must be a way out of here. Forwards, I mean, not backwards.”
Ammy sniffed. “I wonder what we’d find outside?”
“Let’s follow the fresh air and find out where it comes from.”
“But Mara warned us,” Ike began. “Still, we haven’t seen anything to be scared of yet. Not even a librarian, or whoever would be in charge here.”
“I vote we explore.” Simon’s hand shot up. “Cautiously.”
“I vote the same,” Ammy said.
Ike hesitated, then nodded. “Okay. Cautiously.”
They followed the scent of fresh air between the towering shelves. Every time they came to a gap between the shelves on the left, they stepped through.
“See? We can’t get lost,” Simon said. “We’re always t
urning left.”
A few paces farther on they came to a gap twice as wide as any of the others. They stepped through, Simon leading, and found a clear space about twenty paces wide. And then a reddish brown wall. In the wall was an archway, with stairs leading down into darkness. Standing at the top they could just make out a landing, and below that more steps disappearing down to the right.
“What’s down there?” Simon wondered aloud.
“Sh!” Ammy breathed. “We don’t know who’s down there.”
Ike stepped back a pace. “Wonder if my dad’s worried yet.”
“It can’t be that late,” Simon said. “We haven’t been here all that long.”
“I’ve lost track.” Ike took a shaky breath. “Suppose we go back and, like, centuries have passed?”
A river of cool air flowed up the stairs. It carried an earthy, rocky, grassy, unmistakably outdoorsy smell. “I wonder if we could see the stars out there.” Simon took a step down. “If we could, maybe we could tell where we are.”
“They would look different, wouldn’t they?” Ammy said. “Strange stars. Or if it’s day, a strange sun.” She stepped down beside him.
“A new world. Maybe a different universe.” Simon’s heart thumped. He exchanged a scared, excited look with Ammy and they took the next step together.
“Um, I don’t think...” said Ike, from the top of the stairs.
“C’mon, Ike!” Simon called. “You’ll kick yourself for the rest of your life if you don’t.”
“Sh! Listen!”
Halfway down the flight, they stood still and listened. Below the landing, where they couldn’t see, someone was climbing the stairs towards them.
Simon opened his mouth to call out, then closed it again. There was something in the sounds that he didn’t like. Whatever was climbing the stairs was heavy and had feet with long nails. It was climbing carefully, as if not to be heard, but its nails clicked on the hard surface of the stairs.
Ammy said nothing, but she gathered a handful of Simon’s jacket at the shoulder and tugged. He followed her silently back up the stairs and across the bare space and through the gap in the shelves. Ike was well ahead of them.