by Rena Barron
The only answer I could give him was the truth: “Yes.”
Fifteen
Cue the Dark
Maybe Papa’s staff got it wrong. A broom closet couldn’t be the gateway into the Dark. But a cool breeze undercut the smell of bleach and vinegar that stung my nose. It came from behind a row of mop buckets against the back wall where we didn’t see any vents.
I wrinkled my nose as I stepped inside. I thought about how the metal detector at the community center had transported us to outer space. Nothing happened in the closet except for me bumping into some spray bottles on the floor. When I inhaled again, I caught a hint of fresh grass and trees. This room was definitely more than it appeared. We just had to figure out how to get the gateway to open.
“Let’s see what happens if we close the door,” Frankie suggested.
She and Eli crowded into the room with me, and if not for the breeze, it would’ve gotten hot in there fast. With the door closed, it was completely dark, and I clumsily tried to find a light switch, without luck.
“Hey, watch your elbow,” Eli said. It could’ve been mine or Frankie’s. I couldn’t say.
“Watch your knee, will you,” I shot back.
“Maybe the light switch is outside the room,” Frankie said.
“Give us light,” I whispered to the staff. It glowed so bright that I squeezed my eyes shut. “Not so much.” I winced, and the light dimmed to a soft glow.
“Ugh, that thing has a mind of its own,” Eli said.
“I wish I could dissect it,” Frankie added. “I’d love to see how magic works.”
Eli laughed. “Not to sound too gross, but someone might say the same about you.”
Only Frankie and Eli would get into an argument in a broom closet about dissecting a stick versus a person. While they argued, I turned over the staff in my hand. The magic hummed, and the symbols moved. It wasn’t like when the sun hit the staff and they shimmered. This was different. They danced around the surface of the wood, and I could see them inside my head too—like I had double vision. The leopard, the tree, the lion, grass, sand, stars, suns. Too many symbols to keep up with. I thought about the crossroads and how there must be so many things I didn’t understand. The orishas had kept a whole magical world a secret.
Without warning, I was suddenly in two places at once: in the closet with my friends and in the gods’ realm. This wasn’t the same place the orisha council had shown us with the minigalaxies. Instead, the white shimmering symbols from Papa’s staff floated in the black space around me. I gasped when I saw no floor under my feet, but I didn’t fall.
“Are you guys seeing this?” I asked.
“What . . . the symbols moving on the staff?” Eli said. “Um, yes.”
“No, the gods’ realm,” I said as the symbols spun around me.
“Then no,” Frankie said. “It must be a part of opening the gate.”
In the gods’ realm, I traced the complex symbols in the air with my fingers, drawing curves, loops, and circles. Sharp edges and angles and letters. The symbols glowed in golden light both there and in the closet on the staff. They spun around faster. I was afraid of what was happening but also excited. It wasn’t every day you got to call forth magical symbols to open a gateway into another dimension.
My friends’ voices rang in the back of my mind, but they sounded far away. Even when Eli snapped his fingers in front of my face, I couldn’t stop. He was in the closet, but his hand somehow disturbed the symbols in the gods’ realm. They exploded into showers of dazzling fireworks. But as soon as he moved his hand away, the symbols reformed before my eyes. Then I realized what I had done. I’d moved the symbols into an order that spelled out
I am the guardian of the veil.
Then the symbols—the sun, a leopard with raised paws, and a river—flew at me fast. This was the hardest part to understand. I could feel the symbols inside me—burning beneath my skin. They searched to see if I was the true guardian. I got the distinct feeling that if the symbols didn’t like what they found, they would burn me to a crisp.
But soon the burning stopped. Did the symbols know I was the true guardian’s daughter? Before they left to rejoin the others, they painted a complex walkway in my mind made of hundreds of symbols. That was how the gateway worked. I had to use the symbols to build a bridge to cross over into the Dark. I realized something else too—something that edged at the back of my mind. This space carved out in the gods’ realm was a gateway to many dimensions that humans had no clue about. It didn’t make sense for me to know this, but I could feel the vastness and the possibility of countless choices. The countless doors to countless worlds.
I rearranged the symbols at first into simple strings that got more complicated the more I added. They reminded me of a three-dimensional puzzle. The symbols twisted and bent and stretched to spell out a code. I didn’t know if the order was right, but my subconscious mind seemed to understand the nature of the symbols. I wondered if this was how the Lord of Shadows tricked the godling into opening the gateway before. It was a chance I had to take. But to be safe, I adjusted the code by instinct, making it so that the gateway would close on the human side as soon as we entered it.
Fatigue quaked through my legs, and the symbols started to blur around the edges. I bit my bottom lip, trying to keep focused, but I was losing the pattern.
“No,” I whispered as the gateway shrank. The magic was slipping from my grasp, and I struggled to keep it. “This can’t be happening now.”
Eli put a hand on my shoulder. “You okay?”
My legs shook, and a wave of dizziness washed over me. Of course, always at the worst time. I hadn’t had an episode since the werehyenas. I sucked in a deep breath through my clenched teeth, but the dizzy spell only grew worse. In any other circumstances, I would’ve sat down. That was what Mama and Dr. Kate always said. But I couldn’t do that now. If I stopped building, the gateway might disappear completely. I couldn’t let that happen.
“Her anemia,” Frankie answered for me.
When my legs buckled a bit, she and Eli each wrapped one arm around my waist so I wouldn’t fall down. A groan escaped my lips as the last symbols settled into place. The symbols would open the portal, but it wouldn’t stay open long, so we had to go now.
The gods’ realm disappeared, and the gateway opened at the back of the closet. It appeared as a six-foot spinning circle of gray rings that whipped out cold wind. This was the bridge I’d seen in my head.
“Whoa,” Eli said.
We were at the point of no return. I hardened myself to the brisk breeze and clenched my jaw in defiance. Even if I had to crawl my way into the Dark, I would. There was nothing that would stop me from going.
“It’s ready,” I whispered, breathless, as the dizziness settled in for the long haul.
“Let’s do this!” Eli said, his voice bright and eager. He really was way too excited after having faced darkbringers twice.
“We don’t know what we’ll find,” I warned. “Be prepared for anything.”
My friends stiffened next to me, and even the giddiness faded from Eli’s face. We didn’t know if we’d end up in another broom closet in the Dark or the bottom of Lake Michigan. What if there was a darkbringer army waiting on the other side?
These and a thousand other thoughts went through my head as I stepped into the tunnel with my friends at my side. Our footfalls echoed as we walked on polished stone. The rings spun so fast that they vibrated our feet and up our legs. I wanted to reach out and touch them, to prove that this whole thing wasn’t happening inside my head. On second thought they sort of reminded me of fan blades, and I rather liked my fingers on my hands.
We saw phantoms of ourselves moving outside of time, walking alongside us on the bridge. At one point, I leaned over and faced the ghost version of myself, who did the same. The cranky twins had said that time didn’t exist in the veil. Now I suspected there was much more about this place and the other realms that defied science and logic.
/> “This is creepy,” Eli said, swiping his hand through the phantom of himself, which made it dissipate. Moments later, the phantom reappeared, looking annoyed, and poked out his tongue at Eli.
Even though the portal stretched into a dark abyss, it only took a minute to get through the gateway. After a sudden jerk forward, the next thing I knew, we were a tangle of legs and arms and knees and elbows. We landed on the edge of a cornfield beneath a huge crooked tree with black leaves. Since we didn’t have a darkbringer army bearing down on us, we had time to work out how to detangle ourselves. For a moment, I lay on my back, staring up at the dark sky. It was twilight, and the moon was only a shade or two lighter blue than the night.
The stars were dimmer here. I couldn’t make out any of the constellations. Not the Little or Big Dipper, not Orion’s Belt, or the North Star.
It was Frankie who sat up first and said, “The stars are reversed. The Big Dipper is pointing in the opposite direction. See . . .” She closed one eye and traced the constellation with her finger, and sure enough, she was right. It was all reversed, like the Dark was the opposite of our world. We’d left in the middle of day, and it was night here.
Finally, the dizziness passed, and I stood up. The grass rustled in the cool breeze.
“So far so good, eh?” I said to be cheerful, although we were too scared to move from our spot. The gateway had closed as soon as we hit the ground. I didn’t think I could make another one for a while since I was so tired from building the first.
Eli grimaced as he raised his hands in front of his face. Yellow slime dripped down his arms. “What the heck . . .” He cursed under his breath. In the tree above his head there was a half-destroyed bird’s nest sprinkling down hay.
As soon as the words came from Eli’s mouth, a bird as colorful and big as a peacock nosedived straight for us. But this was no peacock and definitely not dropping in to say hello. It shrieked with its talons stretched wide. I barely shoved Frankie out of the way in time.
“What is that?” Eli crouched with eyes pinned on the place where the bird skidded to a halt. “That’s the biggest and fastest bird I’ve ever seen.”
I knew exactly what kind of bird that was. An impundulu. It had eyes like shiny black marbles and an orange beak as spiked as barbed wire. Spines sharp enough to pick your teeth with jutted out like fish bones from its belly. Another one landed at our backs, the same hungry look in its dark eyes. Seeing an impundulu was a sign of bad luck. It meant that we would run into serious trouble on our journey, but this was much worse. When we came through the gateway, we’d knocked down their nest. Now Eli was wiping his hands on his pants with what was left of the impundulu’s eggs.
I racked my brain to remember exactly what Papa had said about the impundulu.
He had told me a story about a man who had stumbled upon a nest of impundulu hatchlings. The impundulu, like most animals, were protective of their young and fought to keep them safe. Once they marked you as a threat, they would hunt you down even after you left their territory. It was silly to leave the nest unprotected, but who’s going to tell that to a sixty-pound angry bird?
The impundulu hunted the man and caught him three times. The first time the bird plucked out one of the man’s eyes, but he got away. The second time the man shot an arrow through one of the bird’s wings and escaped again. The third time the man lay on the ground pretending to already be dead, to ambush the bird. When the impundulu got close, it could smell that the man was very much alive. It impaled him with the spines on its underbelly before the man could strike.
Most of my father’s stories were goofy and funny and fantastical. This one was sad. In the end, the impundulu carried the man back to its nest to, well, feed its hatchlings. Papa said that the man didn’t know that impundulu had bad peripheral eyesight. That meant not seeing well out of the corner of your eyes. If the man had learned from the first two attacks, he might’ve survived.
When Frankie’s hands glowed with the beginning of her force field, I snapped out of my memories. We needed her magic now.
“I don’t like the way they’re looking at us,” Eli said, his voice shaking.
“They have poor peripheral vision.” I shifted into a defensive position with my legs wider. “As long as we stay out of their direct line of sight, we can confuse them and run away.”
Scratch that: two more impundulu landed in the cornfield. They had us surrounded. So much for their vision problem. No matter which way we moved, we would be in one of the birds’ lines of sight. They were smart, and before we had a chance to think of another plan, they screeched all at once. Sharp pain tore through my body, and I fell to my knees. Frankie and Eli fell too, covering their ears. All four birds wasted no time coming for us, and we had nowhere to run.
Sixteen
When I almost become bird food
The impundulu spread their rainbow wings and shrieked again. The air rippled around them as white light flashed behind my eyes. Sharp pain sliced through my skull. We covered our ears to block out their cries, but that only helped a little. Frankie got off a blast of energy that narrowly missed hitting one of the birds. That stopped them from advancing on us.
The bird cocked its head to the side to look at the impundulu to its right. Its shrieks stretched into long notes that sounded like nails on a chalkboard. Its fellow giant killer bird answered in the same pitch. It was an answer. No mistaking the way they exchanged glances. They were figuring out how best to attack. It didn’t escape my attention that these impundulu still had blood on their spines from their last kill.
“Ahhh,” Eli shouted as we climbed to our feet. “We have to stop them from screaming.”
The killer birds surrounded us as we stood back-to-back. I stared down helplessly at the staff on the ground, but I couldn’t get it without uncovering my ears. Our only break from the noise was when the impundulu sucked in more air for their next terrible cry.
I swallowed the knot in my throat—an idea brewing in my head. “We have to make them run into each other.”
Eli forced a laugh. “Talk about running around like a chicken with his head cut off.”
“You do realize that you have the worst timing for jokes,” said Frankie.
I didn’t mind so much. I needed the distraction. That way I could stop thinking about the impundulu tearing us to shreds.
We froze when the impundulu stopped shrieking. That is, stopped planning how they were going to eat us. Before we could make a move, the birds tucked their heads between their hunched shoulders and charged. They ran straight for us, their wings fluttering wildly and their bloody spines fanned out for maxium damage. I thought we were goners for sure.
We made ourselves stand still, hearts pounding. As the impundulu got closer, it wasn’t fear that kept us rooted in place. It was strategy. The four birds were closing in fast, and if we got the timing right, they would crash into each other.
One, two, three, I counted in my head. “Now!”
We dove out of the way, and only two of the impundulu collided. It wasn’t pretty. My stomach lurched seeing the birds tangled up like that. Each impaled on the other’s spines. There was so much blood, and I couldn’t catch my breath as I snatched up the staff. The other impundulu skidded to a halt.
The two tangled birds fell into a heap of twisted spines and feathers and blood while the other two took to the sky. Their bright wings spanned twenty feet and blocked the little light to be had from the blue moon. We ran through the high grass along the edge of the cornfield away from the angry birds. I stumbled more times than I could count, but we kept going, afraid to look over our shoulders.
If there was one word I would use to describe the impundulu, it would be single-minded. They didn’t stop to mourn their fallen comrades. If anything, they redoubled their effort to kill us. I ducked right when one swooped down at me. Not fast enough. Its talons raked across my shoulder, and I bit back a scream as searing pain brought me to my knees. The bird shrieked, coming at me agai
n, and I rolled out of the way. I fell on my back and slammed the staff into the impundulu’s side. The impact sent the bird tumbling into a cornstalk.
I winced at the pain in my shoulder and struggled to my feet. The other impundulu clawed Frankie across her pant leg, and Eli threw a rock that hit the bird in the gut. The impundulu whirled around, face screwed up in an unmistakable look of indignation. Eli had the prods out. This time, he was ready for it.
The bird charged, and Eli backed away, stumbled, and almost fell. Frankie sent a ripple of energy that hit the impundulu and sent it hurtling through the air. It slammed into a tree and knocked itself out cold. Here was a new thing I learned about the impundulu: they weren’t that smart. The bird that I hit with Papa’s staff was on its feet again. You’d think after seeing us take down three of its friends, the impundulu would count its losses and run, but it didn’t. Maybe it wanted revenge. It looked at each of us, sizing up which one to take on.
The impundulu gave one last battle cry, then headed straight for Eli. I raced between it and my friend with my staff ready, then whacked the bird across the back of its head. The impundulu collapsed to the ground. Neither it nor the one that Frankie hit looked dead, but they most certainly were unconscious.
We stood in the field trying to catch our breath. In the little time we’d been in the Dark, the sky had deepened to midnight blue. If I thought the Dark was a misnomer, that the name didn’t mean anything, I was dead wrong. It was much darker than the nights back home without streetlights.
“We should be in the exact location of the convention center in our world,” I said, looking around. “If that’s how a parallel dimension actually works.”
“Yes.” Frankie straightened her glasses. “Except this area hasn’t been developed yet in the Dark. And it looks like the Midwest here is also known for cornfields.”
Eli picked at one of the stalks. “This corn is black.”
“We have black corn back home,” Frankie said, unimpressed.
