Pettikin

by Abby Smith

  “Gatekeeper.”

  I felt like ice was being injected directly into my veins, crystalizing throughout my body, and I shrank away from him.

  “Break the Contract.”

  What?

  I straightened myself up slowly and tightened my grip on the purple knife.

  I felt another percussive blow. The photonegative effect around me intensified, bringing the glowing purple lines between Mr. Cutter, the sslorcs and myself into greater focus.

  The knife glowed and pulsated, alternating between violet and white light. I raised it up toward my neck. My hand was shaking. I took a deep breath and slashed through the purple thread that stretched from my neck to Mr. Cutter’s hand.

  There was a blinding flash of white light and another percussive beat. I felt like blood was rushing to my head and a feeling of relief washed over me, like I could breathe freely again. Had that thread really been there ever since my first experience with the bats in the void? Had the warriors been able to see it? Did they know? Did Vala?

  The warrior was still brandishing Mr. Cutter in front of him.

  “Break the Contract.”

  Hadn’t I already broken it? The lines binding Mr. Cutter to the sslorcs were still there. If the line I just cut represented the hold the sslorcs had on me, I guess those lines represented the original contract Mr. Cutter made with them. Pulses of energy flowed from Mr. Cutter down the lines to the sslorcs. I wondered if that was what was keeping them alive. Were they feeding off of his energy? Was I supposed to save him too, after everything he had done?

  Although, if I hadn’t been fully aware of the line binding me to him, could it be that he wasn’t fully aware of what he had done, the effect that those purple lines were having on him? Part of me didn’t want to believe it. Hadn’t I been an unwilling participant and hadn’t he always been greedy, seeking money and power? Still...I gripped the knife and strode across the field to where the warrior held him.

  “No, no.” I must have had a scary expression on my face because Mr. Cutter sounded panicked. “Please don’t kill me, Allie, please. I give up. I promise I’ll let you go. You can have the Gateways, I won’t bother you again on Earth—”

  “Shut up, idiot. I’m not going to kill you. I’m saving you.”

  I strode past him to the first purple line.

  Slash. A flash of light more powerful than before, and, this time, the ground shook with the reverberation of the noise. Mr. Cutter cried out, and the first sslorc shrieked and began withering in the light from the knarren’s eyes. It backed away and tried to flee, but one of the knarren took off after it.

  I waited until the ground stopped shaking so I could regain my balance, took a deep breath and then slash, slash I cut the remaining two bonds in quick succession. The lightning flashes and reverberations that followed were too powerful. I lost my balance and staggered, the purple knife falling to the ground.

  The photonegative effect disappeared and the world came into focus. Without the power of the bonds, the sslorcs were dissolving in the light from the knarren’s eyes. They tried to flee but the knarren chased after them.

  Mr. Cutter had lost consciousness and was hanging limp from the warrior’s hand. The warrior tossed him roughly to the ground.

  “Take him back.”

  I ran over to Mr. Cutter and crouched down next to him. He was unconscious but breathing. The knarren roared in the distance. I wondered if I should do something else since it was my fault the sslorcs were in this world. Had any kind of permanent damage been done?

  The warrior answered my unspoken thoughts.

  “We handle them. You take him back.”

  His eyes held no emotion when he talked to me. He obviously wasn’t protecting me out of some kind of compassion or kinship, so I assumed he was here because Vala had asked him to be. Which meant he and Vala were friends.

  What type of being would you have to be to be friends with this guy?

  The warrior turned and walked away. I shivered and turned my attention to Mr. Cutter. No black haze surrounded him anymore. He looked like the Mr. Cutter I knew from home, his face pale and clammy.

  I poked his arm.

  “Hey, Mr. Cutter. Are you OK?”

  He didn’t respond. Crap. He weighed almost twice as much as I did. I would never be able to carry him. I grabbed his shoulders and shook them, hoping, too late, that he didn’t have a serious head injury. So much for CPR training.

  He groaned and put one hand up to his face.

  “Hey. Yay. You’re awake. Can you stand up? We need to get out of here.”

  He opened his eyes, saw my face, groaned, and closed them again.

  “Hey. Dude. C’mon. We have to get out of here before they change their minds and come back for you too.”

  His eyes flew open and, he sat up, turning his head toward the carnage in the distance. The knarren had already dissolved the larger sslorcs and were now dissolving a few stray bats that the warrior flushed out from the edges of the forest with his sword. A gray, putrid haze hung in the air around them, slowly expanding and drifting in the afternoon breeze.

  Mr. Cutter pushed himself up, staggered, clamped a large, unwelcome hand on the top of my head to catch his balance, then, over my annoyed protests, shoved himself the rest of the way up.

  He seemed to not be able to use his left arm, the one that had been bound to the sslorcs. It hung limp against his side, and he reached over and clasped it near the elbow with his right.

  “Get me out of here. How do we get out of here?”

  He was giving me orders now? I stood up and marched toward the bridge, not even bothering to check if he was following. I stopped at the edge of the bridge, staring at the metal Gateway in front of me.

  “Why are you stopping? Is this how we get home?”

  I suddenly realized that I had no idea how to get home. I could hear Vala’s voice in my head, telling me that the last part of the Gatekeeper’s test was to see if I could find my way home. How was I supposed to do that? Could I go through this Gateway, or did I have to go find the one that we used to enter this world initially? Did I have to go back through each of the Gateway worlds we had gone through on the way here in reverse order? The thought of dragging a conscious, human Mr. Cutter through the gold world wasn’t appealing.

  “What’s wrong? What are you waiting for?”

  “Give me a second,” I snapped. I wished I were still traveling with Pettikin instead of him.

  The thought of Pettikin brought a flood of memories. Little, screaming Santa on the kitchen table flinging cake, sitting on my shoulders, riding Socrates, peeking out from behind Vala’s head, bouncing down a rainbow slide. My brain zoomed in on a particular memory, an image of when we first met, of him telling me with wide, blue eyes how he had accidentally come to Earth.

  “When I thought about being with her, I found myself here.”

  I stared at the Gateway. I thought about Andie, Mrs.Widgit, Professor Theopolous, and Dad, all waiting for me at home.

  Vala. Would he be there waiting too?

  A blue green light formed in the middle of the Gateway, traversing all the metal rods until the whole thing glowed turquoise.

  I reached back, grabbed Mr. Cutter’s sleeve, and pulled him in front of me. I gave him a small shove from behind.

  “Come on, we’re going home.”

  23

  I felt like I was sinking, becoming heavier, more solid, more real. I saw a fuzzy glow in front of me, like static on a television, and stepped through it into the dim, gray light of an October afternoon in Ohio. Mr. Cutter stood beside me.

  We were in the yard on the eastern side of the cottage in front of the Gateway. Mrs. Widgit and Andie were talking a few feet away from us. Andie had her arms folded across her chest, perhaps because Mrs. Widgit’s arms were animated enough for both of them. Professor Theopolous and Bob stood a regulation-safe distance away from Mrs.Widgit’s arms, and Dad paced in front of the two of them, rubbing his head. Ever
ything felt a little too heavy, looked a little too real.

  Mr. Cutter took a step forward and collapsed on the ground.

  Everyone froze, and then Mrs. Widgit, the Professor, and Bob rushed forward to help him in a flurry of motion, while Andie and Dad accosted me, a jumble of hugs and questions.

  “Oh my God, you’re back, are you alright?”

  “Is everything OK? What happened? Are you hurt?”

  “What’s Mr. Cutter doing here?”

  “Is Pettikin home?”

  I opened my mouth to answer, but my brain couldn’t quite formulate words fast enough.

  I felt a presence behind me, like the sun radiating against my back. I turned.

  Vala, in his human form, leaned against one of the old beech trees. His arms were folded, and he looked tired but happy.

  “Welcome back, Gatekeeper.”

  He closed his eyes, and I felt a feeling of warmth and light descend around me.

  “Gatekeeper! Allie you did it!” Andie grabbed my arm.

  Vala pushed himself up from the beech tree and walked over to Mr. Cutter. He knelt down and put the palm of his hand against his forehead.

  “Is he OK?” Mrs. Widgit sounded skeptical.

  “He’s OK. He’s just unconscious,” Vala said.

  “Was he with you this whole time?” Andie asked me.

  “Yeah. I mean I guess so? Apparently. I dunno.” My brain-word output unit was still malfunctioning. Vala grinned up at me, and I felt a strange tingling in my head like he was repairing or rearranging my synapses.

  “I mean, I’m not sure I understand all the technicalities about what just happened, but he definitely wasn’t in church. Speaking of which, why are you here, Dad? Didn’t anyone go to church this morning?”

  Everyone but Vala looked at me as if I were insane.

  “It’s four o-clock, Al. You’ve been gone for hours. Even the alpacas came back already. We thought you were dead,” Andie said.

  So last time I felt like I had been gone for days, and it had only been minutes. This time I felt like the trip had been much faster, but I was gone for hours.

  “Time must be really weird here on this planet—I don’t really understand it at all,” I said, echoing Pettikin’s words from this morning. What was he doing now? Was he happy to be home on Arcorn?

  Did he miss me?

  My eyes welled with tears.

  Andie gave my arm a gentle tug. “Are you OK, Al? What happened? Is Pettikin OK?”

  I laughed and wiped at the tears that spilled down my cheeks. My hands were shaking.

  “Pettikin’s great. He’s home.” I took a deep breath and recounted the entire story as best as I could—the almost uneventful trip through the dimensions, the beauty of Semba and the fluffermus, the horror of encountering Mr. Cutter and the sslorcs, the bittersweet goodbye with Pettikin, and the final ordeal with Mr. Cutter.

  When I finished, Vala stood up and held my gaze for a long moment, his bright green eyes pouring light and warmth into whatever gaping hole Pettikin had left in my heart.

  “So you didn’t just save Pettikin, you broke the contract!” Mrs. Widgit sounded amazed.

  “I thought the contract couldn’t be broken,” Andie said.

  “Couldn’t be broken on Earth,” Vala corrected. “Not without killing Mr. Cutter. That’s ultimately why May sacrificed herself. The sslorcs attacked her before she had time to formulate a plan to both break the contract and save Mr. Cutter’s life. Rather than kill Mr. Cutter to defend herself, she allowed herself to be killed, knowing I would close the Gateways. But unbeknownst to the sslorcs, the summoning stone brought Pettikin here at that moment.”

  “The stone summoned Pettikin?” I asked, surprised. “I thought he came here accidentally.”

  “It probably seemed accidental to him, but even with the sincerity of his feelings, I don’t think he could have stepped through a Gateway to a forbidden world so easily. From the moment Mr. Cutter made the contract with the sslorcs, there were two possibilities—the possibility that Earth would become a shadow world, or part of a shadow realm, or the possibility that the contract could be broken in the higher worlds, the sslorcs eliminated, and the Gateways reopened. The summoning charm saw the possibilities and brought Pettikin here to ensure the second possibility. The sslorcs were fooled into thinking everything was going according to their own plans because they underestimated Allie and Pettikin. They never saw them as a threat.”

  “Breaking the contract wasn’t even part of the test,” Mrs. Widgit said.

  “Extra credit,” Vala said and grinned. “What do you say to that, Theo?”

  Professor Theopolous made a noise that sounded like a backhoe hauling gravel through his throat. “I will admit that Allie performed admirably, although I don’t think we should assume that this proves out your teaching methods, Vala. It seems that this entire affair involved a great deal of risk.”

  “So much so that I’m almost wishing I hadn’t been filled in on the details.” Dad said. He had been twisting his cap in his hands while I spoke, his face a bit peaked.

  “What happens to him now?” I pointed at Mr. Cutter, who was still lying on the ground.

  “He won’t remember anything when he wakes up,” Vala said.

  “Nothing at all?”

  “Not a thing, not even his original contract with the sslorcs.”

  “But how do we know he won’t make another contract with them?”

  “He can’t. At least for a while. He doesn’t have enough personal power anymore.”

  “So what should we do with him?” Mrs. Widgit asked.

  “Andie,” Vala’s lips twisted into a mischievous smile.

  “Uh, yeah?”

  “Would you like to do the honors?”

  “The honors, you mean you want me to… to…”

  “You got it.”

  Andie gave me a funny look and took a few steps toward Mr. Cutter.

  “You know I have no idea what I’m doing or what happens to him when I do this,” she said to Vala.

  “Don’t worry, I do. He’ll wake up at home with no memory of what happened. Actually, Dan, perhaps you could assist in that.”

  “I’ll stop by to check on him later with a plausible cover story. It’s amazing what can happen to Deacons at church after everyone’s left,” Dad said.

  Andie shook her head. “This is all so wrong.” She bent over Mr. Cutter’s inert form.

  “Please go away!”

  And he was gone.

  Dad made a funny noise that sounded like “Gyah” and stepped backwards.

  “First time you’ve seen her do that?” Vala asked.

  “I had no idea…”

  “Not your average ally,” Vala said.

  “No, not average at all,” Dad said slowly, staring at the spot on the ground where Mr. Cutter had been.

  “Well!” Mrs. Widget said briskly. “That’s one person down.”

  One person down? Were we planning to do this to everyone? And then I remembered.

  “Oh my God. I totally forgot you guys still need me to take you home.”

  The thought of going through the dimensions again today made we want to cry.

  “Oh heavens no, Allie, I should have told you right away. Vala has asked us to stay and do a job for him here on Earth. It will probably take us several months, so you won’t have to take us through until then. That should give you enough time to rest and recharge.”

  “And practice,” Professor Theopolous added.

  “Pfft. I’ll get you through, Professor, with only maybe a fifty percent chance of us getting lost in a void, killed by sslorcs, eaten by knarren…”

  I doubt my bravado really hid the relief I felt, but everyone laughed politely anyway.

  “And on that note we should be going,” Mrs. Widgit said. “Bob. Theo. Shall we go tidy up the cottage a bit and be on our way?”

  They left, and Vala walked off in the other direction, his gaze skyward, his gait uneve
n and meandering. He stopped in front of the Gateway and seemed to be waiting.

  “Hey, Mr. Thomas, weren’t you going to, uh, show me that thing in the cottage?” Andie asked.

  “Thing? Oh right, the thing! That I wanted to show you. In the cottage. Come, other daughter.” Dad draped an arm over her shoulders, winked at me, and steered her toward the cottage with the others.

  Vala’s arms were folded, his attention on the Gateway. Was he leaving? Did he want me to join him, or did he want to be alone?

  As soon as I thought it, he turned to me and smiled. I took a few halting steps toward him and then stopped, unsure.

  “You can hug me if you want to,” he said gently.

  If I wanted to. I walked over to him. He smiled and opened his arms. My heart pounded so hard, it was probably audible as I put my arms hesitantly around his neck. He pulled me to his chest and wrapped his arms tightly around me. I squeezed his neck and closed my eyes.

  After a moment, he released me and smiled down at me.

  “So,” he said.

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “Do you still want to be my Gatekeeper?”

  “Yes,” I answered immediately.

  “Because you do have a choice, you know. You can stay in my world of magic and gatekeeping, or you could just visit for a little while…”

  “I want to stay.”

  He nodded slowly. “OK.”

  He closed his eyes, and soft gold light descended around him, then swirled outwards and enveloped me. It was warm and silent.

  He opened his eyes.

  “What was the last key I gave you, do you know?”

  I hadn’t even thought about it. The key to the Gold dimension—why had I been able to get through this time?

  “I don’t know—you were there, Vala, that’s all I remember, you pulled me up this time.”

  “Up how?” he asked curiously.

  Had that been him or not? Was I hallucinating? Didn’t he remember?

  “I was doing a few different things at once—multitasking, you know how it is,” he grinned. “Help me remember what I was doing there.”

  “Well, before in that dimension, I felt like I was dissolving the higher I went, and I got scared because I didn’t want to disappear. But this time, you kept pulling me upwards, and after a while, I realized that the stuff that was dissolving…maybe it wasn’t really me after all. It’s like there was something else behind it all along…that I could just let everything go, and it would be OK…” I wasn’t explaining this well.