by Patricia Bow
Simon guessed she hadn’t even combed her hair this morning, let alone washed her face. That wrinkled top with the Girls Rule slogan on it was probably what she’d slept in. At least she’d stopped to pull on shorts. The ring was now safe in a zippered pocket.
“Like breeds like,” Simon repeated. “The cave in the gorge was kind of like what we found on the Mythrin side. I wonder if the people who made the doors did that?” Now, this was getting interesting. He repeated it when Ike came out of the building.
“Or maybe the doors did it themselves, automatically,” Ike said. “Maybe they changed the stuff around them to, sort of, match at both ends. Maybe that made it easier to connect those two places. Or maybe —”
“So,” Amelia broke in, “we should look for some kind of big building, in ruins, with tall windows, because that’s what I saw in the dream.”
“Ruins.” Simon looked at Ike. “But where in Dunstone are there any ruins?”
Once they started asking and looking, they found plenty. First stop was a deserted barn on the edge of town. It was huge and smelled of old manure.
“Too wooden,” Amelia said. “Too creaky.”
After that they found a crumbling brick garage (“Too small”), an empty church with plywood over its windows (“Too pointy”), and a house that burned last month and was now being knocked down (“Too late!”).
The three of them ate their lunch on the roof of the Hammer Block, the apartment building where Simon and Amelia lived with their grandmother, Celeste. They sat at a round wooden picnic table under a yellow umbrella. Amelia always said she liked being on the roof. The apartment was hot and stuffy this time of day, but up here a breeze blew and herring gulls wheeled overhead.
Celeste made them wash off their coating of grime and sweat, then gave them money to buy submarine sandwiches. “I don’t have to tell you not to sit on the parapet,” she said. “I know you have more sense than that.”
Simon had more sense, but Amelia didn’t. “I need to see the view,” she said as she chewed. “I need to find this ruin.” Simon stood behind her, ready to grab. At three storeys, the Hammer Block was almost as tall as the town hall tower. It was a long way down to the pavement.
“Some view.” Ike waved his sandwich. Even in Dunstone, surrounded by woods and fields, you could see a veil of smog over trees and buildings. “This is all about global warming. We’ll be wearing gas masks next year, trust me.”
“We should get some of the other kids to help us search,” Simon said. He was thinking of Dinisha.
Amelia gave her head a sharp shake. “No way! Then we’d have to explain about Mara and Mythrin.”
“And they wouldn’t believe,” Ike said.
“Worse. Maybe they would.”
It took Simon only a moment to work this out. Amelia didn’t want to share Mara or Mythrin, that was what it added up to. She thought of Mythrin as her own secret world, and Mara as her special friend. Maybe that was why she hadn’t made any really close friends in Dunstone. Always missing Mara, always dreaming about going back to Mythrin. That worried him.
“Look how close the gorge looks!” She pointed. “You’d almost think you could take a good run and jump and land in it.”
“Not that you’d want to,” Ike said. It was a bad year for drought, and the Dunn River was more rocks than water.
“Huh.” Amelia stared and chewed. “What’s that over there, across the gorge, next to the Dunning Street bridge?”
“The old library,” Simon said patiently. “The one that just closed. We walked by it three times today.”
“It looks different from the back.” Amelia shaded her eyes. “Look at all those boards and ladders and things up the back wall. What are they doing, cleaning it?”
“Why would they clean it?” Ike said. “They’re going to knock it down. Just as soon as they get all the good stuff out.”
“Knock it down? I never knew that. That makes it a ruin! Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Thought you knew. Everybody else knows.” Ike sent Simon an isn’t-that-just-like-Ammy look.
“Wait. Those tall windows on the ground floor, all boarded up. What shape are the tops?”
Simon had to think a minute. “They’re curved,” he said.
Amelia tossed the heel of her sandwich to a pair of hovering gulls, swung her legs across the parapet and was off across the rooftop towards the stairwell hut as if her feet were on springs.
“Wait!” Simon yelled. “We’re not finished eating!”
“Mara needs me!” She hardly broke stride. “And it’s been five hours, at least — on this side!” She clattered down the stairs.
Simon and Ike looked at each other, calculated briefly, then jogged after her, sandwiches in hand. “Five hours, that’s —,” Ike began.
“— fifty hours in Mythrin,” Simon finished. Just over two days.
A lot could happen in two days. Even dragons could die.
CHAPTER 3
THE DRAGON WINDOW
Amelia could have kicked him. It was enough to make you crazy!
Somebody had already pulled the plywood off one of the basement windows in the back of the library, underneath the scaffolding, and carefully cleared out all the glass. There was nobody to see; the library had no neighbours. The front, with its big square porch and columns, overlooked Park Street. On the west it stood against the bridge. On the east there was a lane, with a tall cedar hedge, and grassy parkland on the other side. On the north was a stretch of asphalt parking lot, and a stone parapet, and then the gorge.
The uncovered window was like an invitation. Yet Simon kept them outside, arguing about trespassing and getting permission, for five minutes — “Five minutes!” Amelia was ready to pound him with her fists. “Simon, that’s nearly an hour by Mythrin time! We’ve got to move!”
Simon would have kept it up, but then Ike yipped, “We’re dead!” And they heard the sound of heavy tires crunching gravel in the lane.
From the back there was no way out, besides the lane. Except inward.
Amelia shoved the plywood sheet aside, sat down, and slid through the window feet first. She landed in the dark on a concrete floor.
A moment later, Ike landed beside her and bounced up again. Simon’s outsized sneakers followed, then the rest of him. He sprawled. While he picked himself up, Ike reached out and pulled the plywood back across the window. Just in time. The truck’s engine rattled the window frame.
“Ten to one we’ll get caught,” Simon muttered. “We’ll get arrested for break-and-enter.”
“We didn’t break in! The window was already broken!”
“Okay, don’t yell! They’ll hear you.”
Amelia let her breath out slowly, through her teeth. Simon could be so maddening, in his quiet, reasonable, stubborn way.
A pencil-thin beam of light sprang out and ran across a row of metal partitions, then a row of sinks. (Ike was never without his keychain flashlight.) They were in a washroom. Something with too many legs ran away from the light. The place smelled of clogged drains.
The rest of the basement was just as dark and stuffy. In a slanted space under the front stairs they found a folded blanket, an empty Styrofoam cooler and a tidy stack of cigarette butts, arranged like a miniature woodpile. But whoever had been living here wasn’t here now. The building sounded empty. The tap-tap of Amelia’s sandals echoed back at them.
On the ground floor, Ike switched off his flashlight. The boards covering the tall, arched windows let light in through a dozen cracks. Gold bands stretched down to the floor. Dust swirled through them. Simon sneezed.
Dust, dust, dust. Nothing else. The shelves and tables and chairs were gone. The old circulation desk had left a ghost of itself, a pale, curved mark on the dark floorboards. The ceiling lights were gone. Nothing was left but … Amelia squinted. Some faded gilt words along the tops of the walls: Chaucer, Milton, Sha… something.
“What a sad place!” she said. “It’s like a, a dead per
son in a funeral parlour.”
“Hurry it up, okay?” Simon wiped his nose on his wrist.
She walked along the walls from window to window. At each one she stopped and touched the ring to the glass. After a minute, when nothing happened, she moved on.
Banging sounds came from the back of the library. “Uh-oh.” Simon looked around nervously. “They must be taking out that big back window. They’ll come inside and catch us.”
“Why would they want a window?” Amelia asked.
“Just the stained-glass ones,” Ike said. “They’ll put them in the new library out on Hill Street.” Ike always knew what was happening in town because his father was the local newspaper editor. “Look, the front one’s already gone.”
They climbed up the wide front staircase and stopped on the landing. It was dark because of the boards nailed on outside. A tall, arched window had once filled the outer wall. Now the space was empty, but it was still the right size and shape.
“I wonder.” Amelia tightened her hand around the ring. She looked at Ike and Simon. “Get ready!” Took a deep breath. Reached up with a hand that trembled only a little. Touched the ring to one of the boards.
After a minute she let out her breath and touched the ring to another part of the boarding. After another minute she dropped her arm. “Darn it!”
“There’s still upstairs,” Simon said.
The second floor felt even emptier than the ground floor. It was one long stretch of dusty floorboards. Amelia stood shaking her head. “Look at the windows. They’re all too short. And their tops are flat. What a complete waste of time!” She jammed her fists in her pockets.
Something bumped against the back wall. Metal rattled. “They’re working out there on the scaffold,” Ike said.
Simon sneezed again. “How are we going to get out without them catching us?”
“Luck,” Ike said. “We were lucky before.”
Amelia headed towards the front stairs. Then came a sound from below that stopped her. A click, two dull thuds, and a crash. Like somebody had unlocked the front door, but then it stuck, and they pushed too hard, and it flew open and bashed the wall. Daylight reflected up the stairs. Boots clomped. Voices echoed back and forth.
Ike was already at the far end of the room. He waved at them from the doorway to the back stairs. “Hurry!” he called, and started down. Simon and Amelia ran after him. The back stairwell had a frosted-glass door at the ground floor. They wouldn’t be seen if they moved fast.
Halfway down, Amelia stopped on the landing with her mouth open. “Oh, wow!”
Whoever was working outside the stained-glass window had taken off some of the boards, and you could see the left half of the window plainly. There was a man in a blue coat on a beautiful white horse, and he had a long sword. What was that dark red thing up along the right side?
“Ammy, c’mon!” Simon tugged at her arm.
“Hurry!” Ike whispered from the stairs below the ground-floor landing.
The frosted-glass door rattled. Somebody on the other side said, “It’s locked.”
“That’s my dad!” Ike hissed. “I’m stone dead!” He skittered down out of sight.
Amelia took a last look at the window, and then headed down the stairs with a lump in her throat. Her feet dragged. It felt wrong to leave. Felt like someone was calling her, someone needed her, and she was just walking away.
She stopped next to the glass door to look back up. She couldn’t help it. Simon pulled at her arm. She yanked free.
At that moment, another slice of darkness broke from the outside of the window. Then another. Sunlight streamed through. Jewelled light quivered on the white walls.
“Oh …”
The red thing up the right-hand side was a magnificent crimson dragon. It was huge, far bigger than horse and rider. One wing arched up and over them like a tent. Its eye was an emerald crystal, and its claws were … its claws …
Simon dragged at her arm.
“No! Don’t you see?”
“Hold your horses,” somebody growled on the other side of the door.
Amelia ran back up the stairs with Simon right behind her breathing “What? What?” She saw exactly what she had to do. But the window sill was a good five feet above the floor.
“Boost me up!”
“But ….” Simon looked wildly down the stairs. Keys jingled behind the door.
She got her elbows on the sill and struggled to get a knee up. Hands shoved from below and suddenly she was kneeling on the sill. She climbed carefully to her feet. It was just deep enough to stand in. Simon scrambled up beside her.
Shapes moved on the other side of the window. A man’s surprised-looking face, raspberry-red, stared through the dragon’s wing at Amelia. She smiled at him and touched the ring to the rider’s blue sleeve.
Nothing happened. She leaned her forehead on the warm glass and closed her eyes. But I was so sure …
Down the stairs, a lock clicked.
A whisper ran around the walls. All the colours drained away except the blue, which deepened and spread. The whisper rose to a hum.
Simon grabbed Amelia’s hand — the one not holding the ring to the window.
“You don’t have to come,” she gasped. “There’s still time.” He gripped harder.
“Hey!” from below.
The white horse and its rider faded back into the blueness. The dragon sank back. Blueness seeped forward, became a slab of glass, tall, arched, glowing like an evening sky, its surface a mass of twining shapes.
Someone shouted faintly outside the window. Down the stairs, someone shouted loudly. “Hey, you up there! You kids!”
The slab flared. When they could open their eyes they were looking into a tunnel of light. A tunnel blue as the depths of the sea, blue as dusk. The hum rose to a high, sweet singing all on one long note.
Amelia and Simon stepped forward hand in hand.
CHAPTER 4
THE TRIAD
Light beat on Pier’s eyelids. The gate was opening. Opening for her, as it always did in her dreams, but never while she was awake.
Her eyes opened. It wasn’t a dream. The picture in the window above her was gone. A tall sapphire slab stood in its place. An underwater glow drenched the Hall of Gates. A high singing crept along the edge of hearing.
Opening. By itself!
Pier was on her feet and running. Past the archway, she slid to a halt. Crept back, hid behind the wall, and inched her head forward.
Blue fire crackled under Amelia’s feet. She rode the lightning like a skateboard. Above and below and all around was endless sky. Forever and ever and —
“Ow!”
“Um, you okay?”
“No!”
One moment soaring. Next moment a heap of bruised elbows and ankles on a stony floor. She’d crashed down on something wooden, too, something with sharp corners, some kind of box. At least Simon hadn’t landed on top of her this time.
She rolled over and looked around. Tall, arched, greyish shapes formed in the darkness. “We’re here!” She pulled her feet underneath her. “Oh — ouch!”
“What?” Simon sat up and gazed around in a blind, saucer-eyed way.
“I think my ankle’s sprained or broken or something.”
“The door this side must be high up, like on our side, and we fell out.”
“Yeah, it is. Can’t you see it up there?”
“Sort of. Not much. It must be night here.”
“There’s a moon outside. What’s the matter with your eyes?”
“My eyes are fine. What are you, a bat?”
“Just help me up, okay?”
He scrambled up, tripped over the box, kicked it aside, and helped her stand. She held his arm and balanced on one foot and hopped close to the window. “Look! The picture’s different.” This hero had a blue jacket and a white horse, like the one on the Earth side, but instead of a sword he had a spear, and the crimson dragon was a huge green snake. “Darn. I w
anted to show you the ring.”
“The …?”
“The red dragon in that window back in the library — it had a ruby ring on one claw.”
“Like Mara? How —”
“Like breeds like, Mara said. Anyway, that’s how I knew it was the right window.”
“We’re back on Mythrin.” Simon’s arm trembled. “But where on Mythrin?”
“And how are we going to find Mara?”
“Maybe you should’ve thought of that before …. What’s that?”
They were facing the end of the building where a big, light arch showed in the blackness. A doorway, Amelia thought. Something pale showed at the edge of the arch. It ducked back.
“Some kid,” she said.
“Kid? Can’t be!”
“Well, it was. You still can’t see?”
He waved that away. “A kid? A human kid? On Mythrin?”
“I saw humans in the dream, remember? Maybe they came through one of the gates.”
“Let’s go ask. He didn’t look scary.”
Amelia hobbled the length of the building to the archway, leaning on Simon’s shoulder. He wanted to stop there in case anything large and dangerous was lurking outside, but Amelia gave him a push.
“If it’s dragons out there, it’s okay. We’re Mara’s friends, remember?”
They stepped out from the archway. A moon gleamed overhead: a little thing with one slightly flattened side, like a broken sequin, nothing like Earth’s big silver face. Its bluish light was just enough to show a stony shelf that ended about ten feet away.
Someone was waiting for them.
“Um … hello?” Simon held out a hand. “Uh, hi there.”
A child stood facing them, halfway between the archway and the cliff edge. Seven, maybe eight years old, Amelia guessed. Short, pale hair framed a moon-white face. He (she?) looked like a little plastic doll dressed in clothes three sizes too big. She (he?) was not smiling.
“He saw us come through,” Amelia murmured. “We scared him.”