The Crooked Castle

by Sarah Jean Horwitz

  Bell stood frozen to the spot a few paces behind them, jaw clenched and shoulders tensed.

  “What is it?” Carmer asked. “Do you remember something?”

  Bell shook his head; Carmer looked away while the other boy brushed tears from his eyes.

  “The sad answer to that question, little miss,” Bell said to Grit, “is anywhere we like.”

  Carmer ducked his head against the wind as he followed Bell and tried to ignore the wet seeping into his boots. Bell seized hold of a rip in the envelope and pulled with all his might; Carmer joined in to help, and soon enough, they’d made their own door.

  “Is it safe to walk inside this thing?” Grit asked, raising her voice above the wind. The snow was coming down harder now, clumping on Carmer’s hat and nestling in the folds of his scarf. The thick flakes melted in a circle around Grit; she did her best to kick the rest off the brim.

  “Safe enough, if you’re with me!” said Bell, shrugging. “And I’d rather walk in there than out here, if it’s all the same to you!”

  The sound of the oncoming storm quieted a little as they stepped inside the skeleton of the ship, but the wind still whistled eerily through all the odd cracks and holes. They balanced in near darkness, clinging to the metal frame. Grit turned her light on as bright as she could and hovered over their heads to light the way.

  Carmer followed Bell in silence, stopping only to ask him once or twice to slow down. Bell knew this ship inside and out, even gutted and grounded, but Carmer didn’t have the same practice, and their progress was slow. Carmer’s breath clouded in front of him in the glow of Grit’s light. Eventually, they climbed up to a catwalk that Bell said would take them to the engine cars. Carmer’s arms trembled from hoisting himself up and over and down and around, steel rung after steel rung.

  They seemed to walk forever as the storm raged outside, though Carmer knew only minutes could have passed.

  “We’re almost there,” Bell said, though he didn’t sound as certain as Carmer would have liked. “We’ll have to go back outside again to get into the engine car, but—”

  Squish.

  Bell stopped short; Carmer almost walked into him, but steadied himself just in time.

  Squish. Squish.

  Carmer’s ankle rolled under him, and Bell hauled him up by the elbow.

  “What the—?” wondered Bell. “Are those . . . ?”

  Grit flew closer to the ground, illuminating the source of the mysterious squishing.

  They were stepping on mushrooms.

  Clusters of colorful fungi bloomed beneath their feet. There were white-capped button mushrooms, flowery chanterelles in shades of cream and orange, and others with caps as big and wide as the palm of Carmer’s hand, all covered by a thin layer of frost.

  “I know I’m no expert on human transportation,” said Grit, “but I’m pretty sure an airship’s floor is not supposed to look like that.”

  “It is definitely not,” Carmer said.

  “Still think this crash had nothing to do with faerie magic?” Grit asked archly.

  The mysterious mushrooms were decidedly unnatural. Had they been there since the accident? Surely, if the investigators who had taken apart the Jasconius had seen them, it would’ve been front-page news. Carmer’s breath hitched. If this was some aftereffect of faerie magic, or if the Unseelie fae were still there . . .

  “Tuck your pants into your socks, if you haven’t already,” Grit said, ever practical. “And don’t touch them—”

  Bell instantly retracted his hand from where he’d been about to poke at a particularly springy-looking specimen.

  “—just in case,” Grit finished, rolling her eyes.

  Bell double-checked his ankles and shoved his hands innocently into his pockets.

  They followed the trail of mushrooms onward, ignoring the unpleasant squishing under their feet. The fungi grew in thicker clusters as they went on, even creeping up along the frame of the ship on either side. And it wasn’t just mushrooms: thick, spongy moss spread out in a roving carpet of damp. Bubbles of mold and clusters of flowering lichen rippled under any painted fixtures and covered every surface in a layer of putrid fuzz. The smell of decay became so strong that Carmer and Bell covered their noses with their sleeves.

  It was as if the Jasconius really was the dead sea monster it was named after, and now nature was reclaiming the corpse.

  Grit’s yellow eyes looked unnaturally bright in the darkness of the ship. “I don’t like this, Carmer. I don’t like this at all.”

  “Maybe we should turn back,” Carmer suggested. His foot got caught in an impossibly sticky cobweb, nearly sending him sprawling.

  But Bell shook his head, muttering to himself, and kept walking. He ran his fingers along the wall despite Grit’s warnings about the flowering mold, occasionally squinting up into the vastness of the ship above them.

  “What is he doing?” Grit whispered, flying to Carmer’s shoulder. She looked askance at Bell.

  “Counting rings, I think,” guessed Carmer. “The frame is made up of over a hundred of them. If Bell can find the ring that the engine car is attached to . . .”

  “Gotcha.” Bell pounded a fist against the rusted, fungus-ridden wall, sending half a dozen bugs skittering out from under their decaying hiding spots. Carmer jumped back in disgust.

  The door would have normally led them out of the ship proper and onto a narrow walkway, where they would enter the engine car via another hatch in its roof. But the weight of the grounded ship had crushed the flimsy walkway entirely, smashing the hull almost directly up against the engine car. Bell and Carmer pushed against the first door with all their might until it gave way with a splintering groan.

  Freezing cold air rushed into the ship, bringing snow and flakes of rust and mold along with it. The graveyard outside had transformed into a world of white. Carmer instinctively brought up a hand to the brim of his hat, catching Grit from blowing away just in time. She clutched at his fingers as the wind raged; he scooped her under the hat and held it down with one hand.

  They climbed over the remnants of the walkway, now nothing but a tangle of twisted metal. Bell brushed away the snow on the hatch; underneath, the metal was corroded so badly it practically crumbled at his touch. He kicked the door open and jumped in before Carmer could say a word to caution him.

  The clawing smell of rot rose up from the open car.

  “Bell!” Carmer yelled, trying not to gag at the stench.

  Grit rapped furiously on the inside of his hat. She bent down toward his ear. “At least let me out so you can see in there!”

  Carmer reached up under his hat and grabbed her around the middle; he knew she didn’t like to be held like that, but they had little choice in the present circumstances. With numbing, fumbling fingers, he crunched up the hat—he was sorry to ruin it, but hats, unlike faeries, could be replaced—and jammed it down the front of his coat. The wind and snow bit at his exposed ears.

  Grit’s glow seemed feeble against the darkened sky as Carmer lowered them into the engine car. The space would be close under normal circumstances, with barely room for two men to stand comfortably, but now it was claustrophobic beyond imagination. Frosted mold and flowering mushrooms covered every surface.

  Carmer reached out a hand to steady himself as he climbed in, but the metal railing he grabbed fell apart at his touch, brittle as a spent matchstick. At least two inches of unidentifiable . . . moisture oozed under his feet when he stumbled to the floor, seeping into the holes in his shoes and through his socks. The engine was partially submerged in stagnant water, while half-frozen trickles of sludge oozed out of the condenser. The entire thing looked as if it had been out of commission for twenty years, not two weeks, and had been left on a rain forest floor for nature to reclaim until it was barely recognizable. Something that Carmer hoped was sleet dripped softly from the ceiling.

  Bell stood with his hands hovering over the controls like a doctor surveying a patient injured bey
ond hope, unsure of where to even start to repair the damage.

  “Bell—” Carmer started to say, but the air was so thick with molding debris and blowing snow that the words caught in his throat and nothing but a retching cough came out.

  “Bell, we have to get out of here!” Grit finished for him, slightly less affected by the oppressive atmosphere.

  But Bell stayed where he was, transfixed by the moldering machinery—until the entire engine car shifted around them, buffeted by a particularly strong gust of wind. Carmer clutched Grit closer to him and put a hand against the slimy wall for support. Soon, the weight of the ship would crush the engine car entirely.

  Bell nodded, his eyes still far away. “There’s nothing here,” he said, shoulders sagging dejectedly. “Only . . .”

  Only the contents of a forest floor, Carmer thought, but they didn’t have time to dwell on it just then. He offered his hand to Bell, who took it, and together they climbed out of the reeking car and into the raging storm.

  The snow blasted against their faces as they tried to grasp the lay of the land. Carmer cradled Grit protectively against his chest, but she pricked him with the spurred heel of her boot. His numb hands barely felt it.

  “At least let me be useful!” she protested, shining her light brightly. But it only bounced off the sheets of snow, blinding them. Carmer shook his head.

  “Should we go back into the ship?” Carmer asked Bell.

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea!” Bell shouted over the wind. “Let’s try and get out of here. Just hug the edge of the hull—it’ll protect us from some of the wind! Stay close!”

  Bell took Carmer’s hand again. They moved along at a crouch, huddled against whatever protection the graying corpse of the Jasconius could offer them. Grit had clawed her way into the folds of Carmer’s scarf, where she hung on for dear life and flicked her wings against the accumulating snow. Carmer kept looking down every few seconds to make sure she was still there.

  “This was a terrible idea!” she scolded as they walked, but Carmer wasn’t even sure Bell could hear her.

  By the time they reached the nose of the ship, Carmer couldn’t tell east from west or north from south in the haze of whipping white that surrounded them. It was getting harder to force his freezing feet through the snow that was now at least six inches deep. He’d traveled all over the country, but he’d never seen a blizzard like this.

  “The gate’s that way,” Bell said, jerking his head toward the right. “We can probably break into the guard’s shed and wait this out. Hang on!”

  He took his first step out from behind the shelter of the ship, and the wind wasted no time in wrenching their hands apart.

  “Bell! Bell!” The snow stung Carmer’s eyes, his nose, his chapped lips.

  The wind howled like a wounded animal—like a pack of wounded animals, drowning out Carmer’s calls. The other boy was probably only feet away, but he might as well have been on the other side of the graveyard.

  “It’s no use!” Grit shouted into Carmer’s ear. She looked impossibly small, covered in snow that melted as it touched her fire faerie skin, but not quickly enough. “I can feel their magic, Carmer. We have to— Ahh!”

  Carmer’s scarf tore from his neck as easily as if yanked by strong, icy hands. Grit was thrown with it into the wind, spinning away so quickly Carmer barely heard her yelp before she disappeared entirely.

  “GRIT!” Carmer screamed, but it was like shouting into a vacuum. Panic clawed at his insides, fiercer than any wind and sharper than any bite of the cold. He’d lost Grit. He’d lost her. He’d lost her he’d lost her he’d—

  Something moved in the snow.

  It was nothing but a snatch of shadow, but it was the only thing he’d seen in minutes that wasn’t blinding white and gray. Carmer raised his arms, trying to shield his face, and took a few tentative steps back toward the side of the Jasconius.

  He saw it again. Closer, this time. But he wasn’t even sure what he was seeing.

  “Grit?” Carmer called cautiously, though he doubted it was her. “. . . Bell?”

  In between the snowflakes, the shadow flickered. It was the edge of a black cloak, whipping around a corner and out of sight. It was the curve of a shoulder shrugged just out of Carmer’s reach. It was a hood pulled up quickly enough to hide a quirked, purplish lip. It was all of those things, and none of those things, because when Carmer blinked, the shadow was gone.

  A train whistled, long and shrieking and clearer than any sound in the world—and coming straight for him.

  Carmer ran.

  He ran without thinking or seeing. He stumbled and tripped and once banged his hip so hard on the edge of some jutting thing that he almost gave up and crumpled into a ball, right then and there in the snow. But he kept running. The edges of his vision were filled with moving things: loping animal bodies and churning wheels and a girl’s long curtain of dark purple hair, furling and unfurling behind her like some kind of black waterfall.

  He tripped and went flying, landing painfully on his side, and stared at a tower of landing wheels, all stacked one on top of the other and so covered in snow they looked like a marble pillar from a Greek temple. Other discarded ship parts were stacked in orderly columns around them. The thin canvas that had been protecting them had snapped off; it flapped loose and wild in the wind like a ghostly flag.

  Carmer stood up slowly, his ears ringing, and shuffled into the maze of junk. Better to risk being buried under it than staying exposed out in the snow, running in the open for anyone—or anything—to find him.

  Surrounded by the towers of crunched-up metal, his frenzied mind calmed a little. He counted more wheels, propeller blades, steel pipes in every size and length. They shuddered under the snow’s fury, the same as he did, but they were things he could make sense of, organized and orderly. He took deep breaths.

  He’d imagined the train whistle, he told himself. But outside the towers of junk, he still glimpsed the shadows. Moving and waiting.

  He also smelled something, but it was different from both the fresh snow and the rotting airship. It smelled like . . . burning rubber?

  How could something be burning, all the way out here, in the middle of a snowstorm?

  Grit. Grit was trying to find him. Or rather, she was calling him to her.

  “You are one smart faerie,” Carmer said, though there was no one to hear it. He resolved to tell her later. Repeatedly. With hugs.

  “Carmer . . .” Grit’s voice called faintly, and despite the wind and the snow and the distance between them, he heard her.

  Carmer followed the sound of her voice and the smell of burning rubber, ducking his head against the snow, lungs burning with every breath of icy air and acrid smoke, until he found a huge cluster of tires that were suspiciously snow-free. He crawled inside a bunch of them stacked side by side, like a small tunnel, and waited only a few moments before a glowing, tiny, piping-hot force of nature barreled into him.

  “We are never. Doing anything. This stupid. Ever again,” Grit said, punctuating each syllable with a smack to Carmer’s snow-covered head. Water dripped into his eyes.

  “Remind me of that if we survive this,” Carmer said wearily, suddenly exhausted—and colder than he’d ever been in his life.

  “When we survive this,” Grit corrected him. “Hands. Now.”

  Carmer didn’t even bother to protest. He barely felt her land in his numb palms, but after a few seconds, the feeling began to come back into his fingers, and he almost wished it hadn’t. He cradled his hands to his chest and tried not to cry out from the pain. Grit made soothing shushing noises, but even she was starting to shiver a little. She was only one fire faerie in the middle of a snowstorm, after all. Carmer curled as tightly as he could around her, feet nearly over his head inside the ring of tires.

  “Where’s Bell?” Grit asked, her voice muffled against Carmer’s coat.

  Carmer touched his forehead to hers and gently shook his head. He did
n’t need to say anything else.

  “This isn’t a normal storm,” Grit said. “I . . .” She stopped, pushing his hands apart, and listened.

  Carmer strained to hear whatever she could, but his ears would never be as good as a faerie’s. All he could make out was howling wind.

  “There’s something outside, just here,” Grit said as quietly as she could. “It’s circling us.”

  “It?” Carmer whispered back.

  And then a howl—a very real one that was not the wind at all—burst through the air. Carmer would have jumped sky-high if he hadn’t been crammed into the tire like a sardine in a can.

  A wolf’s head appeared at the mouth of the rubber tunnel.

  “Spirits and zits,” Carmer exclaimed. Was he really seeing what he thought he was seeing?

  “Out,” Grit said. “Out out out!”

  Yes. Yes he was.

  Carmer scrambled in the other direction, willing his stiff, snow-encrusted limbs to move, just move, while the wolf pawed at the opening, trying to squeeze its giant furry body through the tires. Grit shot golden sparks at its face as they retreated. It yelped and shook its giant head with a snarl.

  Carmer clambered out of the last tire, his entire body recoiling from facing the full blast of the blizzard again, only to come face-to-face with three more wolves. Grit grew even hotter in Carmer’s breast pocket; he looked down to see her hands dancing with sparks and the occasional live flame as she muttered whatever dead faerie tongue she called upon in times like these.

  “Wait,” Carmer said, hardly breathing. He squinted through the snow at the wolves, who seemed surprisingly content to stand there patiently in a circle, instead of leaping forward and tearing Carmer limb from limb. One of them whined, pawing nervously at the snow.

  Grit stopped her chanting. Some of the sparks on her fingertips floated away, fizzling with little pops into the air. The wolf barked at them, then looked at Carmer expectantly, and Carmer realized they weren’t actually wolves at all: they were huskies. Very, very big ones.

  “I think . . . I think they want to help,” said Carmer. He could barely speak from the shivers that wracked through him.