Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky

by Kwame Mbalia

  “Okay,” I said, impatient. “So where is it?”

  Chestnutt gulped, and instead of replying, she turned over the note. Everybody gasped.

  The schematic of a dark, foreboding mountain range was scrawled on the paper, showing tunnels, access points, and exits.

  The same mountain range rising in the distance beyond the Golden Crescent.

  “I think he hid it in the Ridge.”

  GUM BABY SCRAMBLED UP TO her favorite perch in my hood and propped her elbows on my shoulders as we left Anansi’s home. “The Ridge, huh? Gum Baby heard some crazy things about that place.”

  In Ayanna’s arms, Chestnutt nodded. “Yup, yup. A mountain fortress. Nothing gets in or out without going through twelve levels of inspection. They’re very territorial.”

  “Yes,” Ayanna agreed. “MidPass and the Ridge have never gotten along. Something to do with the stories of Alke, and which belonged to whom.” She pulled the raft from over her shoulders, laid it down, whispered something, and the raft grew to its normal size. She stepped on, set Chestnutt down in the middle, then raised an eyebrow. “Well, are you coming?” she asked. “We’ve got floating rock lasers to sneak past.”

  “Wait, wait. Run that by me again?” I said.

  “You heard me,” Ayanna said as she went through her checks.

  “No, I don’t think I did, because it sounded like you just said we’ll have to dodge rock lasers.”

  “I did.”

  “Aaaaaaaand that’s where you lost me.”

  Gum Baby climbed down my back and stalked around the raft with tiny footsteps, muttering to herself. Chestnutt began sketching something on the floor of the raft.

  “Rock lasers shouldn’t be a thing,” I said. “Why are they a thing?”

  Ayanna opened her mouth, closed it, then spoke in a rush. “Remember Kumi? The statue sentry from Nyame’s palace? It’s like that. The first line of defense.”

  “That’s supposed to make me feel better?”

  She threw up her arms. “What do you want me to say? The Ridge people don’t like visitors. And if they sense for one second that their homes are under attack, they’ll send out every warrior they have.” In a sudden fury, she stabbed the air with a finger like she wanted to pin me to the raft. “So you’d better be absolutely sure about this. Because it’s…” Some of the heat faded from her eyes as she turned to fasten her staff to the back of the raft. “This is going to be hard.”

  Chestnutt hopped over and nuzzled Ayanna’s leg, and the pilot stooped over, picked her up, and buried her face in the bunny’s fur. Then she set Chestnutt down, cleared her throat, and nodded. “Let’s go over the plan. Maybe this time something will go right for once.”

  Chestnutt sat back on her hind legs and pointed at the map she’d drawn on the raft floor. “This is our target. The Ridge. A heavily defended, fiercely guarded, fortified city high up inside Isihlangu.”

  “Isihlangu?” I repeated with a frown. “Does that name mean anything?”

  “It means shield.”

  A shiver rippled down my spine. I squinted at the thick black section Chestnutt had drawn as she continued.

  “But Isihlangu isn’t just any mountain. It’s a wall of rock so steep and high that its peaks are hidden in the clouds. The people used to come down and trade—at least that’s what the records in Anansi’s palace said—but ever since the iron monsters started boiling out of the Burning Sea, they’ve stayed behind their gates.”

  Chestnutt paused and I looked at Ayanna. “Having second thoughts?” she asked me. “Just wait, it gets better.”

  I ignored her, then turned pointedly back to Chestnutt. “Okay, it’s a tough walnut to crack. But it can be cracked, right? We can get in there somehow.”

  Chestnutt cleared her throat. “Yup, yup. Well, sort of. Maybe.”

  “Maybe?”

  “I mean, I think it’ll work. Hopefully.”

  “Hopefully?” My voice started to rise, and Chestnutt hurried to continue.

  “See, look at these.” She tapped a paw on a section of the drawing where it looked like a series of trails went up the mountain. “They need some way of getting food from the farms at the bottom of the mountain to the city at the top. So they built these trams. They even carry passengers.”

  “Like trains,” I said. “So we’ll ride with the other passengers?”

  “Oh no. They’d see we’re strangers. We’re going to hide in the back, with the trash.”

  I stared at her.

  “With the trash?”

  “Yup, yup! Only for a little bit, and then, before we’re discovered, we’ll slip off into a ventilation tunnel. Hopefully.”

  “Assuming that works,” said Ayanna, “what do we do once we get to the top?”

  The bunny took a deep breath before saying, “According to my cousin Lily, who heard it from her sister Apple, whose best friend’s mother’s second cousin, Tulip, traveled there with a trading party one time, the people of the Ridge have a vault where they keep their most valuable items. They call it the Atrium. Anansi circled it on this diagram.” She pulled out a page she’d taken from the Weaver’s workroom.

  I squinted at it. “The Atrium, huh?”

  “That’s gotta be where the Story Box is. Yup, yup,” said Chestnutt, hopping excitedly.

  “All right.” I looked at my squad. “So we catch the tram, make our way to this Atrium, snag the Story Box, and hightail it out of there. Sounds easy enough.”

  Ayanna didn’t look convinced. “But first, we have to avoid those floating rock lasers. Everybody, hang on tight—I need to be sure you’re not rolling about, getting sick over everything.”

  My stomach lurched at the thought.

  “And, Gum Baby?” Ayanna said. “Get ready for some precoffinary measures.”

  “AAAAAHHHHH!”

  Have I mentioned that I don’t love heights? If it weren’t for the fact that the island of MidPass, hundreds of Midfolk, and the spirit of my dead best friend depended on me, I would’ve called it a night.

  “AAAAAHHHHH!”

  Silver and black lightning bolts were being hurled at us by giant black stone towers with jewels at the tops, but that was no reason to panic, now was it?

  “AAAAAHHHHH!”

  I lay on my back on the raft, spread-eagled so I looked like a brown X, my hands and feet stuck in mounds of sap. Why? Well, flying rafts don’t come with seat belts, and the rock lasers were all riled up.

  “Will you stop screaming!” Ayanna yelled at me.

  She stood in a crouch, both hands on her staff as the wind whipped her braids behind her. She flinched to her right, and all of a sudden the raft tilted sharply, and, regrettably, I was unable to follow her instructions.

  A blast of night-dark lightning (Nightning? Did I just make up a word? IT’S TRADEMARKED, CHUMPS, HANDS OFF!) whizzed by and scorched the earth below. I could smell burning grass and dirt.

  “Make them stop shooting at us!” I hollered.

  Chestnutt huddled in a corner, the straps of my backpack—which Ayanna had secured to the raft—crisscrossed over her little body like a harness. She squeezed her eyes shut and her ears lay flat against her head.

  Ayanna gritted her teeth. “Oh, I’m sorry. Allow me to make that request.”

  Another blast barely missed our heads. I opened my mouth to scream, but Gum Baby’s voice cut me off.

  “We’re almost clear, Ayanna! Just one more! Ready?”

  I looked up, pressing my chin to my chest to focus on the doll at the front of the raft. She stood with her legs spread wide, her hands on her hips, and her miniature braids pulled back in a ponytail.

  “Ready for what?” I looked back at Ayanna. “Ready for what?”

  She grimaced. “Something I hoped we wouldn’t need to do, but if we don’t shut down these lasers, reinforcements will be all over us.”

  “Um—”

  “GB!” she yelled, talking right over me. “Here we go!”

  Gum Baby no
dded. Ayanna tightened her grip on the staff and glanced at me. “Hold on tight.”

  I tried to crane my neck as far up as I could. “But I’m already stu—OOOOOHHHHH!”

  The raft jerked to the right just as a polished rock tower the size of a skyscraper appeared in our path. Perfectly smooth, like a cylinder of black glass, it stretched way above us. As we circled it, rising in a spiral, the sheer height of the thing blew my mind. Jagged blue sapphires and purple amethysts floated in a space cut way at the top, and they flashed in warning, like a lighthouse. The hairs on my arms stood up straight, and then, with a crackling burst, another blast of nightning shot out of the precious stones. The raft swung sideways to avoid it, and Ayanna yelled.

  “Now, Gum Baby!”

  But our fearless little marksman—markswoman (marks-doll-baby?)—was already taking aim and screaming at the top of her lungs.

  “Sap attack! Sap, sap, sap, sap attack! Super sap attack!”

  Glob after sticky glob of sap landed right in the center of the blinking gems, dousing the beams of light, and Gum Baby waved her hands urgently.

  “Go, go, go!”

  Ayanna pulled back on the rudder, and the raft peeled away, diving toward the rocky slope far below. The shiny tower whizzed by as we dropped, and then a rumble sounded high above us. The sap must have gummed up the works, because a deafening crack echoed down the mountainside.

  Chestnutt squealed in fright, and I clenched every muscle as the tower began to lean to one side. Its top was gone—a smoking crater was all that remained. The structure continued to topple until it hit the mountainside with a thunderous boom and rolled down the slope in pieces.

  “So much for stealth,” I muttered. “Can someone un-gum me now?”

  Ayanna ignored me, focusing on keeping the raft low to the ground. Gum Baby hopped on my chest. She squatted and patted me on the jaw.

  “Gum Baby would help, but she don’t do ‘un-gum.’ So sit tight, big boy. Enjoy the rest of the flight.” She sat on my chest and leaned back, rolling her little head like she was stretching her neck, and sighed. “This is nice. We should do this more often.”

  I growled. “I’m gonna—”

  “I see the tram!” Ayanna called.

  A long dark trench sliced through the steep slope of Isihlangu, stretching up into the clouds, where it disappeared. At the bottom was a gleaming silver train, its line of cars nearly vertical as it waited to travel up the mountain.

  A piercing whistle sounded, and Ayanna’s face grew worried.

  “They’re about to leave. Hold on!”

  She aimed the raft straight down, and we dropped like an anchor. The wind pulled the scream from my mouth, and my lips flapped like I was blowing a thirty-second raspberry. The train grew bigger and bigger, and Gum Baby cackled louder and louder as we got closer and closer.

  “Ayanna,” I tried to say calmly as we flew at full speed toward the rear of the train. The lip of the canyon zipped past in a blur.

  “Ayanna?”

  The last car on the train had an open door, wide enough to hurl garbage in and out of, I guessed. That’s where the raft was heading. That itty-bitty entrance.

  “Ayanna!”

  I looked back and my heart skipped a beat. She wore a grim, determined expression and I swallowed, then squeezed my eyes shut tight. The last thing I heard was Gum Baby’s shrieking in my ear.

  “Aha-ha-ha-ha, y’all ain’t ready for this! Gum Squaaaaad!”

  Whump!

  IT WAS DARK, AND SOMETHING squishy pressed against my arm.

  “I…want to go home.”

  My hands were still glued, or gummed, to the raft, which had landed. Something else—slimy and cold—touched my face, just above my mouth, and I couldn’t free my arms to brush it away. I kept my lips very still as I spoke. “I really…really…want to go home.”

  The floor of the tram vibrated, and it felt like we were aiming straight toward the sky.

  Something rustled next to me, and then the darkness disappeared as whatever was lying on top of me was pulled off. Ayanna held on to a metal pole that ran from floor to ceiling, an exasperated look on her face.

  “This,” she said, waving her arms up at the front of the tram. “This was all your idea. You don’t get to whine, flyboy.”

  She touched her staff to the raft, and the wood warmed beneath my wrists and ankles. The gummy restraints loosened and I dropped down, crashing into the back wall.

  “Oof!”

  Ayanna snorted. “When you’re done being goofy, you should take a look at this.”

  As I watched her use some handholds to climb to the top—or front of—the tram car, I made a face at her back. When I sat up, my face froze that way.

  I was sitting in Alke’s version of a subway. Chicago’s L train was nothing compared to this.

  I mean, the rear half of the train car was disgusting, but it was all our fault. It was the trash car, after all. When we landed, we’d knocked over thin, papery containers filled with garbage. Old clothes were strewn across the floor, and bags of rotten food had splattered the walls. I shuddered. It was like we were riding in the loader of a garbage truck. Ever smelled the nasty trash water they drip behind them? Yeah, I needed a bath. Two baths. With a shower in the middle. A clean sandwich.

  I groaned as I pulled myself upright. I slid closed the door we had entered so the trash wouldn’t fall out and give us away. Then I scrambled to join the others.

  A shimmering curtain of light separated the rear half of the car from the front. When I passed through the divider, I felt a tingling sensation from head to toe, and the scents of lemon, ginger, and fresh air washed over me. I closed my eyes. When I opened them, all traces of our nasty landing had been removed.

  “Man,” I breathed. “I need one of those curtains in my bedroom.”

  This part of the tram car had a soft silver glow. Ayanna and Chestnutt sat in slightly inclined bucket seats that were beaded in beautiful patterns. Gum Baby stood on the back of Chestnutt’s chair. They stared at the scenery out of floor-to-ceiling windows.

  As I approached Ayanna—very slowly and carefully—she nodded toward the outside. “Look.”

  I collapsed into a seat next to her, whispering a prayer of thanks for the harness I strapped on, then gazed out the window—

  —and gasped.

  I had seen the train’s vertical position from the air, but it was even more intense when you were actually inside it. We were climbing straight up the side of Isihlangu. The walls of the trench we were moving through had dropped, and the view beyond stretched for an eternity. The valley of the rock-laser sentinels lay far below. The mountainside was streaked with sparkling black and blue lines, like the veins of some giant we little insects were inching across. When I pressed my face against the window, I could see the mountain peaks disappearing into the clouds.

  “Look.” Chestnutt pointed out tiny turret-like rocks with the same gems rotating in them. The tram zipped past a series of them, and suddenly hitching a ride in a trash train didn’t seem so bad.

  Between the rock lasers, the sheer mountain face, and its completely obscured city on top, the Ridgefolk really did seem to discourage visitors.

  Yay.

  Ayanna nudged me. “This is our stop.”

  Gum Baby scrambled back behind my head and into my hood, and Ayanna picked up Chestnutt. I frowned. “But we’re still moving.”

  “And we don’t want to be on board when it stops,” said Ayanna. “Unless you want to introduce yourself to a group of angry guards.”

  “Ah. No. No, I do not.”

  Ayanna expanded the raft, we all stepped on board, and we floated through the cleansing curtain and back into the trash compartment. The bits of nastiness whirled around when I slid open the door, and I flinched as something wet splashed against my bicep.

  Chestnutt poked her head out of the crook of Ayanna’s arm. “Wait for it. A service entrance should be coming up in three…two…one—now.”

&n
bsp; The raft shot out of the tram, through a small cloud of mist that felt cool on my skin, and into a hole cut into the smooth exterior of Isihlangu. Ayanna set us down just inside the entrance, and more veins of blue silver lit the passage beyond.

  Chestnutt hopped down and her ears twitched forward. After a second, she turned around. “I don’t hear anything.”

  “Something went right for a change,” Ayanna muttered softly. “The guards must’ve been distracted by the laser-tower explosion. Well, let’s not waste the opportunity. They know something’s wrong. We need to get in, grab the Story Box, and get out.”

  Gum Baby nodded and leaned forward by my ear. “Don’t touch any strange statues this time, Bumbletongue,” she whispered.

  “Me? You’re the one who—”

  Ayanna hissed and glared at us. “Hush!”

  “But—”

  “Quiet! You’re going to get us caught.”

  I shook my head as Gum Baby cackled softly in my hood and followed the others deep into the mountain.

  The tunnel twisted and turned for several hundred feet. As we moved farther inside, the vibration I’d felt earlier grew stronger.

  “What is that noise?” I whispered.

  Ayanna shrugged. Gum Baby ignored me and hummed a few bars from the song she’d been making up. She called it “The Ballad of Gummy.” It was catchy.

  Chestnutt glanced back. “The Warren doesn’t know about this. It’s one of the few places we can’t get into. My aunt’s best friend’s cousin said they’ve caught every kit sent here.”

  My eyes grew wide. “You mean baby rabbits? What happens to them? They don’t…”

  Chestnutt shook her head. “Nope, nope, nothing like that. They just send them home with an insult. Better luck next time—that sort of thing, only ruder.”

  “Oh.”

  “That’s why this is so incredible. If I can bring new information back to the Warren Society, they’ll have to let me in. They just have to.”