A Mischief in the Woodwork

by Harper Alexander

  The mounds and hills of rubble began to rattle, dislodging the smaller, looser pieces from the precarious balance. They tumbled down the jutting slopes – the first crumbs of what I could only hope was not the impending avalanche that felt as though was brewing underfoot.

  Some piece from behind me hurtled through the air and struck me in the back, and the wind went out of me, sending me to the ground next to Tanen.

  When I lifted my head, everything around me had begun to shift. It was all moving, all vibrating in a way that was hard to focus on. I shook my head, as if I could shake that kind of dizziness, but it was no use. The next few minutes were a violent haze of mayhem.

  I struggled to get to my feet, but kept getting downed by the unsteady, sliding ground beneath me. I felt like a baby, rising only to fall flat on my face, again and again and again.

  And then the real shift began.

  It took a moment to realize what was actually happening, but in a moment of clarity I saw it: the walls of the Ravine seemed to widen – and as the water level dropped, that proved it. A great sound like granite splitting cracked over the hum of the earth and tumble of rubble. What had been the relatively calm waters of the clogged river sloshed and slid, now, trying to account for its abrupt new boundaries.

  But the boundaries were widening still.

  All at once a sound so great that I was covering my ears rang out, and the Ravine was widening at an alarming, steady pace. The earth was cracking, opening up and gulping down the water. The river that had only just been restored bled out in instants, raining down the Ravine walls like so much cast-off rain from a drainpipe, and from the depths of the splitting earth came a great hissing sound as it began to turn to steam. Heat rose from the chasm, heat like I had never felt before. I struggled to distance myself from the lip of the spreading crack, alarmed at what was opening up there, but the shifts were working against me. As I pushed myself backward, they propelled me forward – until one threw me right up to the edge, my momentum very nearly spilling me in.

  I threw one hand out to skid vertically down the Ravine wall – the other to cling to the edge of ground that supported me. That's when, half dangling over the edge, I saw it: the great molten essence that was bared far below – the stuff that was turning the water to steam.

  My hand burned on the heated wall of the Ravine, and the steam that rose around it. I screamed, scrambling to pull it back, to push myself up away from the precarious position that demanded the contact. As soon as I could I recoiled, rolling onto my back and clutching my hand to me. The nerves of my palm and fingers sang, ravaged and angry.

  Visions popped and fizzled, blacking out.

  Larger blocks of rubble began to tumble down the mounds around us, gaining speed as they went, tripping past us in dangerous proximity and spilling into the hot, yawning Ravine. As soon as sense returned to me I was forcing myself to move, to crawl toward Tanen, to drag him up so we could get away from this violent shift.

  My muscles were screaming, at this point, but adrenaline threw that fact into disregard. I hauled Tanen's body over a good few paces of ground before being downed by another wave of unstable motion underfoot. But I drew myself back up, desperate and determined, and re-established my hold on Tanen's shoulders. The cloth of his shirt chaffed against the raw, burnt flesh of my hand, but it was the smallest distraction in the midst of the clamor that raged all around.

  I twisted my ankle on a jut of debris, tripping and carrying onward, dragging Tanen wide around the sharp piece of rubble. The Ravine cracked wider next to us, but I didn't dare detour to higher ground – the hills were coming down just as quickly as the chasm was splitting.

  It seemed an eternity that I towed Tanen one rickety step at a time over the shaking ground, as pieces of rubble tumbled past and steam hissed with greater viciousness from the gaping divide. The molten essence of the earth roiled and traveled along the boundary of the channel – a river itself, far below. A river of fire. It ate the rubble that fell into its current, melting it, carrying its liquid ashes out of the city much as the water had been doing. I tried to ignore the growing maw, the current of certain-molten-death that may or may not have been rising. It was just one foot in front of the other, for me – or rather, one foot behind the other, dragging Tanen backward as I was.

  I heaved, and twisted, and dug in, doing everything I could to achieve just one more inch, just one more precious margin of ground that would get us closer to some avenue of deliverance. Soon there would be a gap between mounds, something we could slip through before everything came down, or a hill of slabs large enough that they were not yet being disturbed by the quaking earth. Something sturdy enough to support us as we – I – climbed our way to safety.

  Margin after margin, however, no pocket presented itself. It was just the same tumbling hills, their discharge growing more frequent. Until, finally, a glance over my shoulder showed a faint beacon of hope in the distance – the bridge, hazy behind a pall of powder, but still intact, somehow preserved.

  And, after all, it was an enduring symbol of significance in all this mess, was it not? It could not just be toppled so swiftly after coming into fruition.

  With a renewed sense of hope, I heaved with more insistence at Tanen's deadweight. Every muscle in me screamed in protest, but I cared not for their comfort in those moments. I cared not for their well-being or even their capacity. I pushed them harder, refusing to take no for an answer.

  It must have been an eternity of close-calls before we reached that arcing platform, but reach it we did. I could no longer feel my hands – except the razed flesh of the one that ached like fire itself where I had been burned – and largely could not feel my arms, anymore, either. I felt it in my shoulders, though – the back-breaking strain of the arduous task I had been forcing on my body since the edge of the city.

  We were almost there. Just a little ways further.

  The smooth arch of the bridge was no doubt a forgiving change where Tanen himself was concerned, but the arch itself proved just as much of a strain as hauling him over debris. I cursed the incline, digging my back into just getting him to the peak. Then it would be downhill.

  My leg muscles took turns between feeling numb, and light – and burning, and heavy. I stumbled even on even ground.

  Steam rose past the bridge, hissing and ghostly and humid. Molten fire slid by far beneath, glowing and red, like an angry welt slashed deep into the earth.

  And then we were there, cresting the rise of the bridge, and the downward relief on the other side was like the ground falling out from beneath my feet. I fell backwards, my legs jelly, collapsing into a heap at Tanen's head. Dismay at my exhaustion swamped me; it was so much harder to pull myself back to my feet than it was to just keep going, when I managed to stay on my feet – and that, hard enough.

  Yet I climbed back up, staggering, and pulled my charge the rest of the way. The mounds of debris were less on this side, only a pile here and there across a plane-like expanse of refined rubble, most of it disintegrated to dusty fragments.

  There was one respectable mound that rose near us, vibrating only minimally, and I made the mistake of pausing to rest before we had surpassed it, exhausted and entirely too ready to trust its less impending grunts and groans. It was not to be underestimated, however, and only a moment of apparent peace passed before there was a jolt, and it flung some detached slab at us. I scrambled to get out of range, but Tanen, of course, was not so lucky.

  The slab – a disembodied door – sailed through the air and glanced across the ground, where it was sent into a rapid, head-over-heels tumble. It completed exactly three lengthwise revolutions, and then face-planted squarely over Tanen's body, framing him for a scant instant before the door itself slammed shut.

  I scrambled up as quickly as I had sought to get away, rushing back to Tanen's buried side. It seemed only natural to wrench open the door rather than overturning the whole slab, but when I did – I found nothing underneath it. Just the
dusty, ruinous ground, and an imprint that might have been where Tanen's body had lain.

  F o r t y – S I x –

  Haven

  Tanen was never retrieved, that day. He was gone – gone behind that door, wherever it led to, somewhere I was not authorized to follow. It was a hard thing to accept, after dragging him all that way, holding onto him for so long, past fire and avalanche, but there was nothing to be done. Absolutely nothing. My efforts were snuffed in an instant as some higher agenda intervened and took him away.

  I went back to Manor Dorn, utterly spent, leaving the city to slide bit by bit into the fiery chasm that had opened up. I was left trembling as surely as the earth behind me from my endeavors. My burnt hand was radiant with agony, hanging limp at my side.

  Numbly, I took down the cage that housed Modo, and took him out onto the porch, and opened the cage door for him. He looked at me a moment, cocking his head in thought, and chirped a quizzical chirp. And then he took his cue, and zipped all at once through the cage door, and out into the free air. A small dash of color, elated, gone from us. But him, in a dispersed current of joy. Alive and free to live out his life, as he ought to be able to.

  For the second time, I retreated to my pallet during daylight, and lay there, weary and fatigued and absent from my own aching body. I fell into a deep sleep, pulled under and away, where I dreamed once again, at long last, of elephants.

  *

  They paraded through the city – slowly, this time, single-file and bobbing forward one leisurely, deliberate step at a time. And atop their backs, there were people. Whiteskins, darkskins... I recognized Letta, and Henry, and Dani and Viola, accompanied by their mother, Vandah. Farther up the line there was Lesleah, with Christopher nestled before her – and farther still, me. Leading the pack, winding through the rubble toward a bearing that rang with haunting familiarity. Once before, I had taken the same route, when events had led me to hunt down Bailin on Tanen's behalf, leading me to the great fortress that resonated with my doing.

  We were going there, now; all of us. Countless that I couldn't name rode with us, joined from their own pockets of the mischief-stricken city. They were welcomed right along with the rest of us – welcomed on one condition, of course, for it could be no other way.

  Together, we rode. United. United under the one thing everyone sought, now.

  *

  I awoke, and went upstairs. It was time for this to end. That was a surety in my bones – something deeper than the visions that had long sparked at my fingertips.

  I stole to the end of the dark hall, and stood facing that closed, locked door. It stared me in the face like so many other times, thick and impenetrable. But something was different, this time. And closer inspection showed what.

  Termites. They had eaten at the frame around the edges. They had eaten around the keyhole. A soft, subtle draft seeped through the door there.

  The thing was no longer irrevocably sealed.

  I raised a fist, gave a sound knock. And the door–

  It fell open. There was no shucking of the latch of twisting of the knob; it just fell inward, creaking, and the draft strengthened to a full-body breath of stale air, finally released, wafting past me down the hall. I held my breath, peering into the dim interior. Was there anybody even left?

  Vandah, at least, ought still to be there.

  As my eyes combed the room, there was a shift in the shadows. I looked back, and found a face peering back at me, two glinting eyes framed by a dark face – Vandah, huddled at the edges of the room, and then another, smaller face unfolding itself from its resting place against her chest, peering out at me likewise. Christopher. He was snuggled in with her as fondly as if she were his own mother, and, in the wake of his parents disappearing into the woodwork, I imagined the care that Vandah was there to offer had only encouraged and reinforced that kind of a bond to develop between them. She was indeed the motherly figure of the room.

  No oath-crying Felicity came hurtling at the door, and so I treaded in. Another stirring in the shadows unfolded itself into a girl I recognized as Lesleah – alive and well, it seemed, following her brush with the disease.

  The rest of the room was still. It appeared empty, until my eyes landed on a twist of the floor that I realized was actually a form. Felicity's fair hair, tousled and filthy, spilled away from the head of the body.

  "Avante?" came Vandah's tentative murmur from the shadows. It had been so long since I'd heard her voice; I could not help the elated smile that spread over my face as I turned back to those still showing signs of life in that prison of a master bedroom. It was a wonder the Serbaen recognized me, after all these years, but then – who else would I be? It wasn't as if the Dorns had been in the market for more slaves since holing themselves up in this room.

  "Vandah," I returned the greeting fondly, confirming she'd gotten it right. "You're alright."

  "Just us," Vandah said, indicating the three of them. "Felicity caught what Lesleah had. She left us last night."

  My eyes took in the still form of the woman once more, recalling all of her madwoman antics. Such a fate could only be for the best.

  "We couldn't get the door open," Vandah continued. "And none of us had the strength to pound on the walls. What little we could muster just seemed to get swallowed into the walls themselves."

  Thank goodness the termites had come for Felicity, and eaten away at the sealant on that door. They were just a little late in coming, with the Ambassador elsewhere, now. What did the little devils do, after the fact of death? Carry the soul of a person out on their flurry of wings? I wondered.

  "You can come out now," I said. How long had they been waiting for just such a declaration of deliverance? It did not ring with any epic conviction, spoken from my mouth, but it was exactly what they had been waiting to hear. They pulled themselves from their huddled vigil and trailed shakily out of the shadows, frail and filthy and haunted – but alive. Alive and en route to see the light of day, once again.

  "Victoria–" Lesleah piped up, as she drew even with me on her way out, looking to me for news.

  "She's fine," I smiled – hoping it was not weakly. For, fine though she may be, it was not without sacrifice; sacrifice that was still too fresh in my mind to shrug off.

  Vandah ushered Christopher out of the room, and Lesleah followed. I drew up the rear as we all paraded downstairs, together again for the first time in years.

  Letta, stirring the fire in the front room, drew herself up from the hearth in astonishment when she saw us, soot staining the knees of her skirt. The first thing that came to her, when it came, was;

  "Dani! Viola!"

  They plodded in from the kitchen, wondering what the older Serbaen wanted. It took a moment to register, and when it did – it was hard to say what passed over their faces. They had not seen their mother in as many years as I hadn't, and they had been much younger, only a scant few memories to remember her by. But Letta had taken special care to keep the memory of Vandah alive for them in whatever way she could, telling them stories of the woman, making sure they knew where their mother was, and that she could come back to them, one day. So there was recognition there, along with the uncertainty, the alienation. And something in them responded, urging them forward after the first few moments of hesitation. Some innate we-are-children-of-this-woman instinct kicked in, and they went to her in spite of the alienation that existed between them.

  A lump built in my throat, seeing it, and I stood on the bottom step and watched as Vandah went to her knees as they reached her, and drew them to her where any hesitation might have seen them fall short of such an embrace. Lesleah drew Christopher to her where Vandah had momentarily broken from him, rubbing his back as the reunion took place.

  We were joined by the others, presently, hearing the ruckus – all except Dashsund, who had to be called in from the fields. There was a similar reunion between Victoria and Lesleah, and I let the scene of elation play out before I dropped the other moment
ous article that I had come down the stairs with.

  "If there is anything you're attached to, and can carry easily, pack it," I said to the room in general, and everyone turned quizzically to me. Only once all eyes were on me did I reveal the end game: "We're leaving."

  "What do you mean by 'leaving', minda?" Letta asked quietly, voicing what we both knew everyone was thinking.

  "We're going somewhere safe," I said. "With all but the last traces of the weedflowers trampled by the rain... We can't stay here. But there's somewhere else we can go."

  Since I had never revealed the extent of what I'd done and seen and been through in the city, they all looked on with the inevitable amount of doubt. But, "Trust me," I said, and it seemed as though they did, or figured they could – or should.

  We packed up camp in Manor Dorn that day, and for the first time I led them all down the road, and into the city, and over the rubble. I was careful to avoid the proximity of the Ravine, whose rent-open vibrations could be felt throughout the city, and blazed a new trail toward that fortress in the far east, whose location I could feel in my very bones.

  I had had Letta mix up some of her trade-secret ink at last, and taken up the quill I had found in the city, and left a note at the door of Manor Dorn for Johnny. He may very well witness our procession through the city anyway – or one of his newsboys would – but I wanted him to read for himself the significance of this journey, to be privy to where we had gone, and why. And to spread the word, as was his specialty.

  True to form, the papers erupted with it, after that. The story of the group that hailed from Manor Dorn, journeying through the city to a new and enduring fortress in the east – a fortress whose master offered asylum to those willing to cohabitate, while the city went wild and revamped itself. And by 'cohabitating', of course, I meant with the Serbaens, for they were a large part of that first group that I took there, and any other Serbaens who sought asylum were welcome. It was not a condition meant to force anyone's hand, in the matter of what they felt or believed, taunting them with the option of asylum and refusing if they could not comply to the terms, simply because I had authority in the place and the means to force them – it was simply a necessity. If they sought haven, there, they would have to cohabitate. There was no other way. It would not be a haven to anyone, if we could not even coexist beneath the same roof.