by Ginn Hale
In the quiet, John noticed what he would have otherwise missed—the small tracks of a deer, droplets of rain still clinging to a spider’s web, the intent gold gaze of a jet-black crow.
In the past, he had tried to point out these details to his friends, but something was always lost in the inevitable ensuing conversation. He seemed only able to maintain his delicate appreciation in solitude. Words fell short of capturing how the open air, the forest scent, and animal sounds washed over him, washed through him. He couldn’t convey his feeling of immense intimacy and reverence to anyone else.
The sensation was strongest here, where he knew the land well. There were even times—when he pressed his hands down past the fallen leaves and decay to the dark, rich earth—that he almost sensed something reciprocal, a warmth beneath his fingers, a soft pressure, like an animal arching to be stroked. He never mentioned it to anyone else. It was too private, too absurd, and too deeply touching. But, sometimes, he sensed that the very earth felt his affection and in some way returned that sentiment. He guessed that this was what it was like to fall in love with a lifelong friend.
Today, John only had to pause a moment in the silence as the wind rolled over him to know that something was wrong. At his feet lay small shards of that polished, yellow marble. More of them lay partially hidden under the litter of fallen leaves and mud. John knelt to pick one up, then recoiled as an irrational repulsion shot through him. He could no more bring himself to touch the stone than he could have reached out to grasp a dead body. John drew his hand back, bewildered, then stood and continued to work his way up the mountainside.
The wolf rock was a large, granite outcropping that, when they were both seven, had struck John and Laurie as looking like a gigantic dog, howling at the sky. At the time, the two of them had lived in a state of almost hallucinatory fascination with wolves and with a series of books called The Wolf Riders. Both of Laurie’s German shepherds had been dubbed wolves, as had cars, bicycles, and several couches. Anything the two of them could sit on had pretty much been fair game, including this particular extrusion of granite.
Its gray mass still jutted out from the side of the mountain. But where it had once dominated the terrain, now an arc of cracked and splintered yellow marble monoliths rose over it. One even erupted through the side of the wolf rock itself. Huge marble fragments were strewn about the base of the upright stones.
They all had the same highly-polished surface, but some also seemed to be etched with a filigree. In certain places, the etchings resembled a flowing foreign script; at other points, they looked like a series of symbols. John moved closer but didn’t touch any of them. One stone lay flat on the ground in the very center of the arc. The etching over its surface was thick and shot through with fissures. John leaned over and stared down at what looked very much like a series of moons surrounding a small keyhole.
It struck him as familiar. He fished into his pocket and pulled out Kyle’s key. It looked like it might fit.
A weird, unreal feeling came over him. For the first time in his life, he had the idea that he might be dreaming, that this entire morning could be some exceptionally vivid illusion. But the earth beneath his feet was too real. It just would have been so much easier for him to accept if it were a dream. He might be able to enjoy himself, instead of feeling slightly sick and stupid.
He heard Laurie trudging up the incline, talking.
“See, what did I tell you? It’s freakier in the daylight.”
John glanced back to see Laurie and Bill picking their way between the shattered stones.
“Yeah,” Bill said. “It seems kind of screwed up to see the same thing when you’re tripping and when you’re sober. These rocks are huge.”
“So what is it?” Laurie asked John.
“I don’t know.” John gazed down at the keyhole again. His hand closed around the key.
Bill crouched down beside him. “Well, what do you think it is?”
“I told you, I don’t know.”
Laurie sat down on the other side of him. She leaned over the stone’s etched surface. “You know, that kind of looks like a keyhole.”
“Yeah, it does.” Bill leaned forward as well. “That’s kind of cool and kind of creepy.”
“Do you have any more Sugar Babies?” Laurie asked Bill. He dug through his pockets, then shook his head.
“You ate them all?” Laurie asked. “You had, like, ten packs.”
“I left them back in the jeep.” Bill squatted down and then lay back against the ground. “Man, the sky looks beautiful today. Calling in to work was definitely the right thing to do. You just shouldn’t have to work when it’s this nice out.”
“We should camp out tonight.” Laurie smiled and leaned back on her arms beside him.
Neither of them were rational thinkers, John realized, so they couldn’t be as shaken as he was by the sight of these stones. Both Laurie and Bill believed freely in a multitude of ludicrous and fantastic things. It made them unfazed by the outright impossible. After all, huge, inscribed monoliths appearing from nowhere weren’t all that exotic if you already accepted the idea of angels from other planets manifesting as household pets and leading the way to a higher spiritual resonance. If that was the reality you lived in, then this was an almost pedestrian occurrence.
Still, all of Laurie and Bill’s other beliefs were just that—faith without evidence. Their cat had never actually floated through the house telling them to resonate. But these stones were solid. Very real. And John noted that neither Bill nor Laurie had touched the yellow stones either.
“So, what do you think it is?” Laurie asked him again.
“I really don’t know.” John stared at the circle of moons. It was a common symbol. But was it just coincidence that the identical design appeared on the envelope of Kyle’s letter? It probably fell well within the realm of probability. The key almost felt like it was burning in John’s hand.
“Yeah, but what’s your theory?” Laurie flicked a bug away from her face.
“I don’t have one,” John answered. He wished he could just think quietly for a few minutes. If he could just get a feeling for all of this, he might be able to figure his way through it.
“Could it have been buried, and some kind of earthquake pushed it up?” Laurie looked slightly distressed.
“No. That would have pushed everything above it up and out of the way. The marble wouldn’t have passed straight through the wolf rock.” John nodded his head in the direction of the granite outcropping.
“Jesus!” Bill suddenly sat upright. “I didn’t notice that last night.”
“Oh, poor Wolfy!” Laurie lifted her hands to her mouth reflexively. “It looks like it’s been speared.”
John opened his hand just a little and studied the key. It was dull gold and warm against his palm. A moon marked one side. He turned it over. Tiny lines of flowing script etched the other side. He had to find out if it fit. If it didn’t, then he’d feel stupid and gullible for a few days and if it did… He didn’t know what then. But at least he had to try it.
Laurie glanced over to him.
“What do you have there?” she asked.
“A key.” John slowly rocked forward and held the key over the keyhole. It looked perfect.
“I don’t think your house key is going to fit,” Bill said.
“It’s not my house key,” John said.
John lowered the key directly down and felt it slide perfectly into place. He had known it would. Somehow, he had felt an absolute assurance of it.
“Oh my God,” Laurie whispered. “It fits.”
John crouched there, staring at the key and the stone.
Laurie asked, “Do you think something will happen if you turn it?”
“You’ve got to,” Bill said. “You can’t just stick a key in and then not turn it.”
A key opens a door, John thought. That’s what would happen. Some door, somewhere, opens. Then what?
“Go ahead.” La
urie moved a little closer to him. “Bill’s right, we’ve got to try it.”
“All right then,” John said.
John turned the key. It moved easily. He could feel something slide and click inside the stone. He held still. Laurie and Bill leaned over with him.
Nothing happened.
“Damn it,” Bill said.
Laurie frowned.
“Maybe it’s broken or—” The rest of her sentence split into a squeal as the ground dropped out from under the three of them.
A sudden crushing pressure enveloped John in a wall of blinding whiteness as if he had plunged into a pool of blazing water. He squeezed his eyes shut against the brightness. His lungs burned. He struggled to swim upward. A desperate hand clutched at his arm. He felt another body bump into his side. He caught hold of them and kicked hard.
They had to get through this. They had to get air. John kicked upward. The weight of both Bill and Laurie dragged him down, but he had gotten them into this, and he couldn’t let them go.
Then suddenly a gust of dry, cold wind rushed over John. He opened his eyes and dragged in a breath. Laurie lay on his right and Bill on his left. Both of them gasped in the thin, frigid air like dying fish. Banks of snow loomed up on either side of the three of them.
John sat up and stared out over the empty white land and bare black trees. The pale sky met seamlessly with the snow-covered mountains.
He looked at his empty hands. He had lost the key.
Chapter Six
Kahlil turned a shard of yellow marble over in his hands and thought that the day was only getting worse.
He had come home to find the key missing, his sword shattered into dull gray splinters, and trash strewn all over the kitchen floor. The trash shouldn’t have bothered him, but it had. Perhaps the scattered garbage had struck him as too much of an omen of how the fragile domestic comfort of the last ten years would soon end. He’d cleaned it up but it hadn’t made him feel any better.
Then he had gathered his weapons and ammunition from the locked kitchen cupboard; he had put on his heavy coat and he’d gone up the mountain to find John.
He pocketed the yellow stone and stalked through the trees. He felt sick and ugly, deciding which one of John’s two friends he would trade for the key and which one he would kill outright. The witch would have to be killed, he decided. He couldn’t take a chance with her.
He hated the thought of murdering a woman only a few hours after she had held his arm so warmly and smiled at him without a hint of malice. It was too easy to imagine her expression of happy surprise at his arrival. He could see that expression lingering on her face for a moment too long, as if she were unable to comprehend how his knives could be tearing through her flesh. She wouldn’t understand. She wouldn’t know anything in her last moments but pain, horror, and confusion.
No. In this world it didn’t matter how he killed a witch. She wouldn’t be skinned down to her bones afterwards. He didn’t need to keep her skull intact. He could simply put a bullet through the back of her head. That, at least, would be fast. She wouldn’t see him. She wouldn’t know anything but the instant of impact. It would be over before she could even realize it. That was the only kindness he could offer Laurie.
He couldn’t be so good to Bill or John. Particularly not John. But he promised himself that he wouldn’t make either of them suffer for long. He would be quick. He had accepted it. It was all he could do.
But now more yellow stones glinted from beneath the leaf litter.
Kahlil turned a small shard of polished yellow marble over in his hands, then dropped it back down to the forest floor, where it landed next to a brown candy wrapper. Pieces of the gateway were scattered across miles of the forest. An entire half of the arc had erupted from the mountain rock like new teeth bursting through a barren jawbone. The term “damaged” didn’t begin to describe what had happened.
“Damaged” implied some hope of repair. This was utter destruction, and he understood what it meant. It had been the same reason that his sword, the key to the gateway, had been splintered. The priests weren’t taking any chances should he fail to destroy the Rifter. They hadn’t just locked the door behind him; they had eradicated its very existence.
But that didn’t explain this. Kahlil crouched down and continued to stare at the stone in front of him. The circle of moons he could understand. They were the symbols of his order. The words written around them were archaic but familiar. Like words to a nursery rhyme, he recalled them as reflex, without trying: “Behold the doors of the God’s Kingdom. Behold the Gates of Divinity and Desolation. The Kingdom of the Night. The Palace of the Day.” The prayer went on and on, just as he would have expected.
But this keyhole made no sense. It wasn’t even the right shape. It wasn’t in the right place. It simply shouldn’t have been there.
The dog sat down next to him. She lifted her head, following the flight of a bird. She looked intent, and for a moment, it was hard to imagine that she wasn’t a just a dog. Then she glanced back down to the stone.
“The Rifter had his-self a key an’ he made his-self a keyhole,” she said. “Opened it right up an’ gone through.”
“This is bad.” Kahlil scowled at the keyhole.
“For them on the other side.” The dog yawned. She seemed oddly content with the situation.
“The Rifter has crossed through to Basawar,” Kahlil said, just to make sure that she did understand. “He’ll destroy it.”
“Tears it in two, that’s what the Rifter do.” She nodded her cream-colored head.
“We can’t stop him or warn anyone because they’ve crushed the gateway,” Kahlil added. “And even if I could cross, I couldn’t kill him because I don’t have the deathlock key. He does.”
“So them thats locked you away, gots themselves hell to pay.” She stood up and took a deep breath of the rich air. “I wants to chase me a fluff-n’-flicker, little tree-beastie.”
“It’s called a squirrel.” Kahlil looked down at her. “Doesn’t this bother you?”
She shook her head and then leaned her soft muzzle against Kahlil’s leg.
“When theys cut the meat from me,” she whispered, “when theys pierced me with knives an’ tied me in they red ribbons— then I screamed. I cried likes the whole world died. Not now. Now I tastes wind full of sweet bird meat. I runs where I likes, an’ I pisses on a tree. An’ thems that would can’t do a thing to me. They brought they bad end. They got they Rifter revived.” Closing her eyes, she let out a deep animal sigh. Kahlil could feel her entire body relax against him. “Not a thing you can do abouts it now. We both free now.”
He shut his eyes and sat still, a patch of sun slowly warming his back. He could hear animals, birds he supposed, making noises in the trees. The air, as always, tasted as strong and rich and exotic as a dream.
He did not belong to this world, a world that was too good for him. He was not like the bones. He had not already given everything up for his own home. He had no right to lay claim to the richness and luxury of this world while what was left of Basawar was torn to pieces.
Kahlil had been entrusted to watch over the Rifter: to find him in this world and protect him until it was decided if the Rifter would be needed or not. If he had been needed, then Kahlil would have brought the Rifter back and released him like an apocalypse over Sabir’s red army of Fai’daum. If the Rifter was not needed, then it fell to Kahlil to destroy him.
It had been simple, only the matter of the single word “Don’t” and the tiny key that opened the Rifter’s death. And he had missed it.
He stroked the dog’s head. When the order had come, he had been in the orchard, carrying her on his back. He had saved her, but at the cost of his whole world.
She deserved this life, the warm sunlight, the pungent scents and lush tastes. He didn’t.
Kahlil opened his eyes.
“I have to go,” he said. “I have to try to stop him.”
“Don’t,” she whi
spered.
“I’m sorry, little sister.” He stroked her head, ran his fingers over her soft, warm ears. She gazed at him and then slowly pulled herself up.
“Doors all closed,” she said. “No words yous can say to opens them again.”
“There’s still one way.” Kahlil drew his longest knife.
A small, involuntary whimper escaped the dog. The same kind of knife had been used to lay her open once. She took a step back from him.
“It’s not for you,” Kahlil assured her.
She sat back down but didn’t come closer to him.
He didn’t have his sword or the key, but the blood of a witch flowed in his veins and, offered in sacrifice, it might awaken the shattered gates one last time.
If he used his blood and the bond that linked him to John, then he might be able to follow him. But there was no certainty. He might bleed to death here on this hill or, worse, be torn apart and scattered across two worlds and countless ages. If he died, then it would be what he deserved for his failure. But he had to attempt his redemption.
Kahlil set the knife down on the stone and pulled off his coat. Stripping the bandage from his shoulder, he pulled the wound open again to start the blood running. His hand trembled as he picked up his knife again, but he forced himself to keep it steady. He sliced it quickly down his right arm, opening a wide furrow. A sharp pain rushed up in the blade’s wake. Hot rivulets of blood ran along his arm. He could hear the dog whimpering, but he didn’t look at her.
Closing his eyes, he concentrated on finding John— feeling that gentle pull as constant and strong as his own heartbeat—and following him back to Basawar.
At first the images were faint. Black branches faded in and out, as if coming to him through fields of static. Steadily, as his pounding heart pumped more and more blood from his wounds, the image became clearer. He could feel a searing cold wash over him. White masses of snow flurried against a pale sky. He pushed the air out of his lungs and threw himself into the shattered gate.