Jane Doe and the Key of All Souls

by Jeremy Lachlan

  It was a mistake to admit this. Roth towers over the pitiful man. He will not read him. Will not subject himself to mundane thoughts and empty promises. He remembers men like this from long ago. They are all the same. Sycophants. Cowards. Fools.

  ‘I beg you,’ Masaru stammers. ‘Do not kill me. All I have ever wanted was to serve you.’

  And you will, Roth thinks.

  He will throw Masaru from the bridge in a moment.

  First, he needs the old man’s clothes.

  THE DOOR TO NOWHERE

  Our new ride putters down the corridor, belching black smoke. Violet and Yaku got her going while Hickory dragged the dead Leatherhead clear. Aki kicked out the shot-up windshield and helped me tuck Dad safely aboard. We left before the rest of Roth’s army showed up, but we know the score: unless I can work my magic, they’ll find us soon enough.

  One door. One measly door. Easier said than done.

  Seems all the doors in this maze of twisting corridors were either smashed by Leatherheads, burned by lava or rotted away by Roth long ago. No doors, no shifting rooms. No shifting rooms, no escape.

  Everyone’s on the lookout, peering through the gaps Yaku sliced in the cloth-top. Violet’s leaning over the steering wheel as far as she can. She can only just reach the pedals, I realise now. The thing was built for Leatherheads, after all. ‘See anything back there?’ she asks, gunning the truck over another bridge. The molten river below blasts us with heat. There are lavafalls everywhere, flowing from balconies, oozing down stairs. ‘Hickory?’

  ‘It’s not like I’m gonna keep it to myself if I do,’ he says. ‘Just drive.’

  I wanna help them look, but I have a task of my own. ‘Dad.’ I squeeze his hand. ‘Hey, I know you’re in a lot of pain, but we need your help. I need you to wake up.’

  He moans a little. Squeezes my hand back.

  ‘That’s it,’ I say. ‘We did it, Dad.’ I hold up the two Cradle keys, give them a jangle. ‘See? We got the keys. Everything goes to plan, we’ll be at the spike pit soon, but El–’ I can’t even say her name. She’s gone, she’s gone, she’s gone. She’s gone, and Dad never got to say goodbye. ‘There are hundreds of doors around the pit, right? We need to know which one leads to the Cradle, and what we’re gonna find at the entrance.’ I dab the sweat from his brow. Wipe the dried blood from under his nose. ‘We were told there’s some kind of final test. A booby trap. Dad? Hey …’ I tap his cheek, but he’s already slipped away again, gone back to sleep. We’re gonna have to figure it out ourselves – assuming I can get us there in the first place.

  Violet swings us around another bend and slams on the brakes. Hickory swears.

  I scramble to my feet. ‘What’s – oh …’

  The end of the corridor. The end of the road. The end of Roth’s domain. We’re parked in front of a thin archway with nothing but darkness beyond. The truck’s too big to fit through.

  ‘We walk from here,’ Violet says.

  ‘I say we run,’ Yaku says. ‘Listen.’

  There’s that distant rumble of trucks again, getting louder by the second.

  ‘Aki.’ I point at Dad. ‘Can you carry him, please?’

  Candles and torches flicker to life the moment we step through the archway, illuminating a vast – thankfully lava-free – pillared hall. The walls are bare. No doors. No passageways. The chamber’s so wide, we can’t see either end.

  ‘Which way?’ Violet asks.

  ‘Let’s just get to the other side,’ I say.

  We jog, keep a steady pace, and the archway shrinks behind us, lost in the forest of pillars. No-one utters a word. We huff and puff, look this way and that. Violet tries to give me an encouraging nod, but I know she’s scared. If we don’t find a door soon –

  ‘Jane,’ Yaku shouts, ‘there!’

  On the far wall dead ahead, emerging from the gloom like a gift from the bloody gods: a small dark rectangle. A regular, run-of-the-mill Manor door.

  ‘About damn time,’ I say, and bolt for it.

  I try the handle. ‘Locked.’ Fumble the chain from around my neck, shove one of the keys into the lock and turn it. It clicks, and I yank the door open, only to be blasted by a wall of heat.

  There’s no floor on the other side. No bridge or balcony. The stone has crumbled away. There’s just a short drop to another molten river oozing down a deep corridor. We’re trapped.

  I slam the door shut. ‘Damn it.’

  ‘Focus, Jane,’ Hickory says, stepping by my side. ‘You can do this.’

  ‘Okay.’ I grip the handle and close my eyes. ‘The snow. I’ll focus on the snow.’

  Violet gasps. ‘The Cradle entrance is in the snow?’

  ‘What is snow?’ Yaku asks.

  ‘Fluffy frozen water,’ Hickory says. ‘Far away from here. It’s where me and Jane first met, actually. I shoved a bag over her head. Saved her life, though. She was about to freeze to –’

  ‘Bit of shush, please?’ I shout. Everyone zips it. ‘Thank you.’

  I grip the door handle – picture that grand, frozen hall – and open the door as quickly as I can with a triumphant, ‘This time!’ But no. Nothing but lava.

  ‘Damn it!’

  I slam the door again, and that’s when we hear it. A metallic squeal, back the way we came. A deep, rolling rumble, and – just like in Roth’s fortress – the sound of a thousand stomping boots.

  The Leatherheads have found us.

  ‘Keep trying, Jane,’ Violet says, backing off to the right. ‘I’ll check down here. Try to find another door. Yaku, you take the other side. Hickory, Aki, stay and guard Jane.’

  Violet and Yaku turn and bolt. Aki tightens his grip on Dad, stands guard at my back.

  ‘The Manor’s all messed up, Jane,’ Hickory says. ‘It can’t help you – not in the way you want. You have to control it. Command it. Just take a breath. Relax. And reach out.’

  The Leatherheads are chanting, their click-clack-clicks echoing closer and closer.

  ‘Relax.’ I grab the handle. ‘Sure, no worries.’

  I focus on the frozen hall again. Picture the buried doors, the frosted balconies, the icicles twinkling in the candlelight and my puffing-chimney breaths. But just as I’m about to open the door I see the Spectres, too, waiting for me, reaching out to Grip me with those white-fire tendrils of light. ‘No …’ I whisper. Just like in my nightmare, they can see I’m gonna fail. They’re trying to scare me away. ‘Leave me alone. We’re on the same side.’

  ‘Um, I know,’ Hickory says behind me. ‘Why do you think I’m trying to –’

  ‘Not you,’ I say, ‘the Spec– ugh, never mind.’

  I try the door again and again, shifting my stance, taking deep breaths, focusing on the hall and banishing the Spectres. I pretend I’m back there, sinking knee-deep in the snow. I remember the suffocating silence, try to chatter my teeth, but nothing works. Because the Leatherheads have fired a few warning shots across the hall. Because I can’t stop thinking about Elsa. Because Roth would’ve clawed his way out of the lava by now, and he’s coming. Because I’m sure the Spectres are waiting for me, and I’m afraid.

  ‘Jane,’ Hickory says. ‘Hurry.’

  Open, shut. Open, shut. Always fire, never ice. I open the door with my good hand and my bad, with the bandage and without, but it just won’t work.

  Violet runs back. ‘No doors down that way.’

  Yaku’s here, too. ‘Nothing.’

  A warning shot blasts the wall above the door, showering us in stones. We can see the Leatherheads now, a whole battalion marching in formation, stalking between the pillars.

  ‘Come on, come on.’

  Open, lava, shut. Open, lava, shut.

  ‘Maybe all the doors around the hall you’re trying to shift to are busted or blocked up with snow,’ Hickory says. ‘Focus on a different room. The booby trap with the crushing columns. Or what about where I found you – the balcony near the snowy gateway.’

  ‘I can’t do tha
t.’

  Another gunshot blasts the pillar to our right.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I was lost, okay?’ I’m panicking, sweating, about to bloody cry. ‘Wandering around for hours. We could trek through the snow for days and never find the frozen hall. We have to head straight there. I can see it so clearly. There are loads of doors and balconies, and the spike pit’s buried under the snow. It was the first big hall I entered after I left –’

  I freeze. My heart skips a beat. I turn around and stare at the others. ‘Bluehaven.’

  Return, the voice said in my dream.

  Violet grins. She knows exactly what I’m thinking. ‘Do it, Jane.’

  I turn back to the door. Close my eyes, take a deep breath and grip the handle once more, but this time, I don’t focus on the snow. This time, I focus on the Sacred Stairs, Outset Square, White Rock Cove and the Museum of Otherworldly Antiquities.

  This time, I picture home, and there isn’t a Spectre in sight.

  ‘Return,’ I whisper, and when I open the door, the lava has disappeared.

  There are people – hundreds of them – packed into a Manor chamber, armed with guns, swords and pitchforks, bathed in golden sunlight shining through an open gateway. And leading the crowd, standing right in front of me with a crossbow in hand –

  ‘Winifred?’

  ‘You’re late,’ she says. And to the crowd behind her: ‘Bluehaven … attack.’

  THE BATTLE OF BLUEHAVEN

  The townsfolk stream around us, screaming at the top of their lungs, gushing through the door like water through a burst dam, rushing headlong at the Leatherheads with their shields and weapons raised. The Leatherheads charge to meet them, screeching up a storm, and the two sides clash, filling the pillared hall with the clang of blades and the echo of battle cries.

  We’re ushered into the sunlit chamber. The remaining townsfolk gawk at me and gasp at Aki. Someone grabs Yaku’s hand and shakes it, and he snatches it back. Looks like he’s about to pummel them.

  ‘Team A,’ Winifred shouts, ‘storm the fortress. Mind the lava, free the prisoners and bring them back to Bluehaven. Eric Junior!’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’ A white guy in his twenties steps forward. Takes me a second to realise it’s him. No snot-nosed little turd, but an actual man with an almost-beard and all. ‘Hey, Jane.’

  ‘Um … hi?’

  ‘You’re in charge, Eric,’ Winifred tells him. ‘You know what to do.’

  He clenches his square, stubbled jaw, nods at Winifred and pats my shoulder as he squeezes by, like we’re old pals. ‘Good luck, kid. You really haven’t aged a day, huh? Violet, good to see you. Hang in there, John. Hey, wow, Hickory Dawes. Sir …’

  Hickory gives him an awkward salute.

  Eric Junior’s eyes light up. ‘I literally have a thousand questions for you.’ Is he blushing? ‘But first, I’ve gotta form the stortress – I mean, storm the … yeah, I’ll just … excuse me.’ He hurries from the chamber with the rest of ‘Team A’, red as a goddamn rambutan.

  ‘That was weird,’ Hickory says.

  Violet hugs Winifred tight. Winifred hugs her back, tears swimming in her eyes. I just stand here like a chump, watching them, slack-jawed and speechless.

  ‘How long has it been?’ Violet asks.

  ‘Since you left? Four very long years, my dear girl,’ Winifred says. ‘Alas, the battle has only just begun, and we don’t have much time.’ She straightens up and turns to me. ‘Jane.’

  I nod hello. Narrow my eyes. ‘Hali-gabera.’ I leave her hanging for a moment, but I can’t deny I’m relieved. I shake my head and smile. ‘I can honestly say I’m glad to see you.’

  Winifred smiles back. ‘Then let’s go, shall we? Team B, you’re with us. Move it!’

  ‘That is Hali-gabera,’ I hear Yaku mutter to Violet. ‘I thought she would be taller …’

  Gunshots echo through the pillared hall. Something explodes and the chamber rumbles, raining dust and debris. The townsfolk rally, ushering us towards the golden light of the open Manor gateway, the top of the Sacred Stairs. They hug Violet and welcome her home. They point at Hickory and whisper to each other: the legend of old returned at last. One of them tries to take Dad from Aki and shies away when he snarls.

  ‘Winifred,’ I shout over another volley of rifle-fire, ‘we have to get to –’

  ‘The tunnel beneath the crypt,’ she says, ‘I know. We’ve cleared the path. The second gateway’s ready and waiting.’ She nods at a group of men and women standing guard nearby. ‘Signal the retreat in ten. Roth’s on his way.’

  A stiff sea breeze swirls around us as we rush outside. It’s blessedly cool, the mid-morning sky clear. I’ve never been up here before – not since I was a baby, anyway, when me and Dad first came to Bluehaven. I take in the sparkling ocean, the steep hillside and the terraced farms. The town lying in ruin around the shore, and the crumbling Sacred Stairs.

  The island seems so small.

  ‘There’s a view I never thought I’d see again,’ Hickory says, staring at the ocean.

  Violet shoves him. ‘Get a move on or it’ll be the last thing you see.’

  We scramble down the steep Stairs, leaping over missing chunks, keeping as far from the edges as we can. It’s a deadly drop to the fields below. I see what Violet meant when she said Bluehaven was dying. The crops are barren. The coconut palms look like tall, swaying sticks, the fruit trees like skeletons. The Manor’s been sucking the life out of the island.

  Winifred pulls alongside me. ‘I’m sorry I kept so many secrets from you, Jane. I don’t expect forgiveness, but I want you to know you’ve done remarkably well.’

  Another explosion from inside the Manor rumbles down the Stairs. A portion of stone breaks away just after we’ve passed it, plummeting to the mango orchard far below.

  ‘How about we save the kudos till we finish this, huh?’ I shoot Winifred a sharp glance. ‘We are gonna finish this, right? We are gonna win? I mean, you saw it, right? Back when you touched the symbol under the catacombs. You know what’s gonna happen …’

  ‘Jane –’

  ‘Before we went to Arakaan, Violet told me you’d only do all of this if you saw something good – if you saw a happy ending – so tell me. No more lies. What did you see?’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Winifred says, ‘everything is proceeding as Nabu-kai planned.’

  ‘That isn’t an answer,’ I say. ‘What happens next?’

  ‘I can’t tell you, Jane.’

  ‘But if you know how this ends –’

  ‘That’s just it, Jane,’ Winifred says, ‘I don’t.’

  I nearly stop in my tracks. ‘What? How can you not know?’

  ‘Because my part in this story is about to come to an end.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘You know what it means. I’m an old woman with a score to settle and debts to repay.’ She glances back at Violet and Hickory. ‘You cannot tell the others, but my journey will come to an end where so many have begun. I will face Roth in Outset Square.’

  ‘And what? Let him kill you?’

  ‘I will die, yes,’ Winifred says, matter-of-factly, ‘and take him with me. When we reach the square, you will hand me the arrow and continue to the Cradle with Violet and Hickory. That is the path Nabu-kai laid out for us – laid out for me. We cannot stray from it now.’

  ‘Screw Nabu-kai,’ I shout. ‘Screw the path –’

  A volley of gunfire. A chorus of screams. Some of the townsfolk are retreating from the Manor, following us down to Outset Square. A Leatherhead leaps through the gateway and tackles a man over the edge of the landing. A Tin-skin howls at the top of the Stairs.

  ‘It’s okay, Jane,’ Winifred says. ‘It’s my time.’

  We reach the bottom of the Stairs. There’s a small crowd gathered in the square. Mayor Atlas. Peg. Old Barnaby Twigg, and some others. Everyone’s older, skinnier, wrinklier. They ogle Aki as he gently lays Dad on the cobblestones, b
ut they also look at me. Stare in a way they never have before. There’s no fear, no loathing. They actually look happy to see me.

  Very disturbing.

  ‘Hullo,’ I say.

  Violet scans the crowd, looking for her parents, but they’re not here. Predictable, really. She holds her head high, like she doesn’t care, but I can tell she does.

  It’s heartbreaking.

  ‘Welcome back, Doe.’ Eric bloody Atlas strides up to me, a shotgun resting on his shoulder. Aki snarls at him. Atlas hesitates but pushes on. ‘Seems you’ve had quite the adventure, Jane.’ No insults. No threats. He actually wants to shake my hand. ‘Truce?’

  The nerve of this guy.

  ‘Truce?’ I say. ‘You threw me in a cage and tried to kill me. Right over there on the Stairs.’

  Atlas clears his throat. ‘Yes, well, I apologise. That was … a long time ago.’

  ‘Not for me, it wasn’t.’ I leave the guy hanging, turn back to Winifred. ‘There must be another way.’

  ‘Another way to what?’ Violet asks.

  Winifred ignores her. ‘Give me the arrow, Jane.’

  I take it from my sleeve. The battle’s spilling down the Sacred Stairs now. Townsfolk. Leatherheads. Tin-skins. It’s all-out war, but there’s no way I’m giving Winifred the arrow. No way, no how.

  ‘Jane,’ she says, ‘we don’t have time for this. Roth is going to charge through the gateway any moment now. Give me the arrow and run. The way is clear.’

  ‘Listen to her, Jane,’ Hickory says. ‘We have to go.’

  ‘It’s my destiny,’ Winifred says, fiercely, demanding – no, pleading – reaching out. ‘Everything has been leading to this. Please, you have to let me do this.’

  Life is a series of sacrifices.

  Maybe Elsa was right. But it isn’t Winifred’s sacrifice to make. It isn’t the townsfolk’s. It shouldn’t have been hers. This is my fight. My battle. My goddamn quest.

  ‘Okay, then,’ I say. ‘I know when I’m beat.’ I hand Winifred the arrow. ‘Give him hell.’