Speaking to Skull Kings

by Emily B. Cataneo

  Then she pointed at my palm. “You’ve been, haven’t you? You must have bought one downtown.”

  “Sure,” I said, thinking of the sketchy guy in my dorm at UMass who had sold me the key and coordinates. “So how do you plan on getting into a portal?”

  Olivia slurped her coffee. “I’ll figure it out,” she mumbled. I knew what she thought. She thought if she went through a portal she’d be reborn like a phoenix, no longer the girl who had to wear salt-stained boots, the girl whose father didn’t see her.

  You’re wrong, I thought. The portals will ruin you.

  If I had told her that, right then, then maybe she would have stayed far away from this whole mess.

  But instead, I interviewed her until the buses stopped running and hard sleet fell from the clouds outside.

  * * *

  Like I said, Lawrence, you’ve seen the brand on my palm. You know I went through a portal, one to other worlds hidden around this city, and on the way out, a bird with the face of a tiger branded my hand with its fire tongue and now I can never, ever go back. I mean, I physically can’t turn a key or pass over the threshold into another world ever again. Not sure if you know why it works that way: the tiger-birds and other creatures don’t want a whole bunch of humans flooding their worlds, so they put a limit on our time there and slap us with a magic brand when we leave so we can’t come back. Every person only gets one visit, for all of his or her life. And we have to take it, cause after all, those creatures are the ones who provide legitimate shops with the coordinates to the portal locations and keys to get through the them.

  Anyway, I was obsessed with portals my whole life. When Dad drove me around the city on his delivery truck, I used to wonder: could I get into another world if I knocked on that graffiti-covered cement panel along the train tracks? Did air that smelled different lurk on the other side of the faded bodega sign at the end of our block? Among the weeds in the parking lot behind the old coolant building?

  Now, I still wonder where the portals are as I barrel around the city, trying to fill up my life with my career. But I wish I didn’t wonder anymore. It makes my heart ache, Lawrence.

  When the creatures throw you out of the portal and you crash back into our world, at first, you think everything will be different in real life, too. But it fades and soon you’re wandering around the city, unable to remember if you’ve gotten off at this subway stop before or bought tomatoes at that Stop and Shop, even though you’ve lived here forever. You view the frost-heaved streets through the lens of that ephemeral time, aching for the smell of purple lemon groves.

  On long nights when you stare at the ceiling, you wish you’d never gone at all.

  I mean, you can relate, right? I know you’ve never been through a portal, but everyone gets a slice of their life when they’re really, truly happy. Maybe it only lasts a few seconds, a few heartbeats, the lifespan of a flea. Maybe it lasts years.

  But the thing is, it always ends, and we’re left looking back at a time knowing we would do anything to end up back there.

  * * *

  Olivia was the perfect subject for the article. But I couldn’t get excited about it. I didn’t sleep at all that night, and the next evening, I slumped in my office, slurping iced coffee to stay awake. I wondered when Olivia was going to have her second meeting with the dealer, or even if she’d already been arrested.

  Finally, I headed outside and dialed her number.

  “Hey, Olivia. It’s June, from the newspaper. I wanted to talk to you for…for the article. Where do you live?”

  “I’m actually out right now.” Her voice was muffled—she had one of those old flip phones. “You should come meet me in Harvard.”

  I left my car at the office and took the T to meet her. At that point, Lawrence, I really didn’t know what I was going to do, if I was going to use her…for the story, or if I saw too much of myself in this girl to ever do that. Anyway, I found her on an empty street of solemn brick buildings covered with ivy that was dead and stringy thanks to winter.

  “Hey June, what’s up?”

  “I was thinking more about what you said about portals. I was wondering if you had thought about what might happen if you go through.”

  “I know about the danger.” Olivia crossed her red-coated arms. “I Wikipediaed it. I know you can end up in a scary world, with beasts and all that, like that boy in Queens who ended up fighting a hydra-thing. Or when you’re about to go through someone could attack you after you’ve turned the key and throw you into…into the space between our world and the other world, trap you under there in the ether or whatever forever, to trick the portal into thinking that you’re the one who went through, so they can steal the trip through the portal from you. I also read that—”

  “I’m not even talking about all that,” I said.

  I told her about how I’d grown up without a mom, just like her. How I’d dreamed of going through a portal like the rich girls at school, whose parents bought them portal keys and new cars. How I scrounged money for a semester and bought an illegal key and a set of portal coordinates.

  I went through on a fall night, maple leaves skittering around, wind smarting like winter. I turned the key—the coordinates had led me to a portal on the railroad ties in the aboveground trolley tracks of the C-line—opened the door that appeared in the ground beneath me and leapt over the two-foot-wide gap of glistening ether, the gap between the worlds.

  The first thing I saw in the other world was a grove of trees covered in purple lemons, in a garden with rows of white statues and a greenhouse and a fountain and a lake.

  What do you do in the portal? It’s not what you do. It’s how you feel. Limitless. Expansive. As though June-as-she’s-been-her-whole-life isn’t the full capacity of June. As though when you get home, everything will be different, although maybe home doesn’t even exist anymore.

  When the creatures shove you out of the portal and your branded hand slams against the metal train tracks, it takes your breath away.

  And then it ruins you.

  Slowly but surely you realize what it really means to never, ever, ever go back. That was it. The end. Finished.

  After college, I started working at the paper hustling for stories that my higher-ups didn’t give two shits about, because work is the best way I know to chase that feeling, but I know, deep down where it matters, that it’s gone.

  And so I told Olivia, maybe it’s better to stay away from anything involving portals. Far, far away.

  “I don’t think that’s true,” Olivia said.

  “What?”

  “I guess if you didn’t know that things could be better…why would you work hard, you know? Besides, I bet there are plenty of people who go through portals and don’t feel the way you did, you know?”

  Well, Lawrence, maybe she’s right about that. I guess not everyone sees the world in gray after a portal.

  Maybe I’m just a shitty and weak person. Maybe that has nothing to do with the portals at all.

  “Look,” Olivia said. “I want to show you something.” I followed her through the Yard until we reached the steps of the Natural History Museum. We stood on our tiptoes, our breath fogging the panes, as we peered through a window. Inside, icy lights fell on cases of glass peonies, lilacs, tiger lilies, all tropical colors.

  “We came here on a field trip once,” Olivia said. “I sneak back here to look at them all the time. When Dad ignores me, when I think about Mom…I think about the glass flowers. That’s why I want the portal. I bet it’s like glass flowers. You can carry it around with you, the rest of your life.”

  My eyes ached as I thought of purple lemons, which I’d carried with me for the past ten years, but not in a good way. Just a memory wasn’t enough for me.

  But then, I thought, maybe Olivia was different from me, for all that she reminded me of my younger self. Maybe the memory of the portal wouldn’t ruin her. Maybe everyone deserves a chance to make that kind of memory.

  O
livia’s phone vibrated, and her face reddened as she studied the screen. “Oh. Hey, I have to go.”

  “Where? Where are you going?”

  “Um...Dad’s looking for me.” She said goodbye, not making eye contact, and jogged off towards the subway stop.

  I hesitated for a few minutes. I knew where she was really going. And, I thought, maybe I should let her get arrested. Maybe I should focus on why I got involved in this in the first place: the article.

  But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t let it happen, not to this girl who believed in glass flowers. I chased after her, Lawrence, because I couldn’t let O’Toole haul her off to the station.

  But that’s exactly what happened. I just missed an outbound train from Harvard, and I showed up at the warehouse as O’Toole’s lights fell over the scene—blue, empty, blue, empty, blue, empty. I couldn’t see Olivia’s face, but I saw how she scuffed those boots against the pavement as they shoved her into the cruiser. Then O’Toole pulled away from the curb and she was gone.

  I guess at that point, I could have returned to the office to get started on my article.

  Well, instead, I hurried towards the subway heading downtown.

  * * *

  As the train screeched into Park Street, I couldn’t stop thinking: would I stop myself from going through that portal, if I could go back in time? Knowing now that life is such a grand fucking disappointment? Would I take away those purple lemons?

  Downtown, I dodged around steam drifting like ghosts out of a manhole. I reached the door of the boutique, heaved a breath, stepped inside.

  Shaded green lamps cast a soft glow into the room. Keys and coordinates filled long glass cases. Faded travel guides lined bookshelves, and vintage travel posters covered the back wall.“Hi, can I help you?” A woman in a silk blouse stepped out from behind the counter.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’d like to buy a key.”

  “Great,” she said. “We have locations ranging from in the city proper—” she gestured at the cases to her left “—to the suburbs and more rural locales. We also import destination keys, for portals in other cities. Remember that portals usually assume the opposite quality of whatever city they’re located in, so a portal here would most likely be tropical, while a portal in, say, the American Southwest might appear like a quaint European—”

  “I want one here. On a beautiful street somewhere.”

  “Hmm.” The woman tapped on an iPad. “I can offer you one in Brookline, on a lovely, quiet street.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “Great. Is this for you?”

  I tugged my glove over my palm. “How much does it cost?”

  I split it over two credit cards. I headed back across the river, buzzing like I’d had too many iced coffees. I barged into the police station and demanded to see O’Toole. He emerged from a back room, his face creased.

  “June. We arrested the dealer, so if you want to set up an interview on that we—”

  “I understand you’ve arrested a girl, too,” I told him. “I want you to release her.”

  “Can’t. We’re keeping her overnight. These portals are dangerous, and—”

  “I’ll pay her bail,” I said. “It’s just possession of an illegal key, right?”

  “We still need to keep her overnight. That’s—”

  “We’ll call it even,” I whispered.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Our deal. You release her now, we’re even.”

  O’Toole squinted. “You know we won’t give you stories, if the deal’s off.”

  So that’s it, Lawrence. That’s why the cops won’t work with us anymore. I really am sorry, I am, but I wanted to help her. I mean, she was like a better version of me. You have to believe me: that’s all I ever intended—to help her.

  Anyway, O’Toole led her out. Her eyes were puffy behind >her glasses, and she stared at her boots as O’Toole launched into a speech about how she had gotten off easy this time. Then she followed me outside, where the mist had changed to fat flakes of snow.

  “Why did you get me out?” she asked, as she hesitated by my car door. “You don’t know me.”

  “I know.”

  “So?”

  “Because you remind me—oh, come on, forget it. Look, I was thinking about what you said. About the portal. About carrying good memories around with you.” I pulled out the silk pouch, containing a brass key and an embossed card with the coordinates on it.

  “Oh, no, I can’t,” Olivia said. “I can’t, June. I got arrested. I can’t believe I—” She pressed her hands against her eyes. “What if they find out about this at school? What if—”

  “Listen to me. I want you to go through the portal, and I want you to cherish every last fucking second of it.”

  She leveled a look at me. Skeptical, but she was trying hard not to smile. “Really?”

  “Yes, absolutely.”

  I plugged the GPS coordinates into my phone. Then I drove her across the snow-hushed bridge, past the spread-out skyline, then into the quiet streets on the other side, past brand new cars, posh elementary schools, weeping willows.

  The street with the portal on it sloped up a hillside. Lichen grew on a stone wall beneath a stone house, a single light glowing in a second-floor window.

  Olivia climbed out of the car. Snow stuck to the front of her red coat as we walked over to the wall.

  “Listen.” I grabbed her hands. “Be careful, all right?”

  She hugged me, and then she took the key. She pushed it between the ancient stones and a door opened up, a glistening black threshold appearing before her boots. Beyond that, the other world glowed; I had to shield my eyes against the light.

  I remembered that feeling too well, that scared-but-excited leap in your stomach when you’re about to slip into a world you haven’t begun to imagine. Suddenly I was twenty-one again, turning the key on those autumn trolley tracks, closing my eyes and plunging through to the smell of purple lemons. That moment I’d never win back again. Never.

  Anyway, she stepped over the threshold and her red coat disappeared into the stone wall. I don’t…I don’t know where she is now, why she hasn’t come back. I guess she’s still inside the portal. Is she all right? I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s my fault if she’s not.

  As for where I’ve been the past three weeks? I went on vacation, Lawrence. That’s where I was. I needed a break.

  I wish you wouldn’t look at me like that, Lawrence. I know what O’Toole suspects, but don’t you say it too.

  Is that what you think of me?

  Do you think I grabbed onto the back of her coat, shoved her into the ether between that world and ours, stole everything from her? Do you think I would do that?

  Do you?

  THE FIREBIRD

  Elena, bright rage twisting in her chest, felt her tail creak under her coat as she faced the man in the snow.

  “That’s not enough.” The man jabbed his fat fingers at the three gemstones pinned to burgundy velvet that Elena clenched in her gloved hand.

  Elena wished she could spit in this man’s face, watch cold spittle drip from his frozen whiskers. If only she could trade for the oil with someone else—as she had all autumn—but winter fell hard over Novgorod, and today he was the only merchant left in the market—all the other stalls stood shuttered in the long purple shadow cast by St. Sophia’s gold domes.

  “It’s more than enough.” Elena dangled the velvet between them; snowflakes pocked the fabric. Sell me the oil, you fat bastard. They had run out of oil more than a week ago, and Nina was fading away.

  “I’ll need twice as many. Price’s gone up.” The man cradled the glass bottle, black sludge sluicing inside.

  “Do you have any idea what these jewels are worth?” Elena’s tail creaked again, stretching the cold skin around her tailbone; she ground her teeth as the corroded feathers spread apart. She willed her tail to stay down, to stay hidden, but anger coursed through her and she felt the spreading fe
athers lifting her coat’s frayed hem. “The Empress Catherine gave this sapphire to my great-great grandmother, and this emerald—”

  “It don’t mean you get to tell me what to do no more.” The man stomped his feet as snow drifted around his boots. “Your kind aren’t even people. Commissar says so.”

  Elena hated the way his mouth twisted in a smile around the words. Once upon a time you would have ducked out of the road for our family’s motorcar. Where were you the night of the fire? Stealing vodka from our cellars or holding a torch?

  I can’t lose Nina too, the way I lost my parents.

  Sell me the oil.

  “Seven gemstones, or nothing,” he said.

  Her tail twitched, this time lifting her knee-length coat like a boat sail—she felt the wind bite her thighs. Wincing, she turned her head and out of the corner of her eye saw the rubies on her tail winking in the falling dusk.

  The man’s mouth spread into a smile of missing teeth and triumph. “Cout-ments. I see.”

  “They’re called accoutrement,” Elena snapped.

  “Wouldn’t the commissar like to know you’ve been hoarding the people’s property?”

  They ripped off accoutrement, without ether—Elena had heard men like this one talk about it in the market, about how some nobles died from the pain. She would make them shoot her before she let them take her tail, or take Nina’s lungs.

  “Wouldn’t the commissar like to know you’re bartering for jewels with a noblewoman instead of reporting me straight to him?” Elena’s tail was now fully lifted, the feathers spreading apart and bristling, visible under her coat, but she didn’t care, he already knew she had accoutrement.

  He shrugged. “You have nothing anymore. The commissar don’t care what you say.”

  Elena lunged forward and jammed her fingernails into his throat, wanting to hear him howl, because he wouldn’t sell her the oil she needed for Nina, because he was a face of the faceless millions who had risen up and destroyed her home, her family, everything.