Jane and the Raven King

by Stephen Chambers

  Michael said, “Mom? Dad?”

  Both of their parents pounded their laptop keys. Their father cleared his throat into the phone and grunted, “Uh-huh. Um.”

  “Dad?” Michael said again.

  “…Residents are advised to avoid unnecessary travel and to stay tuned for further advisories. In the event a tornado is spotted, proceed immediately to the basement or to an interior, windowless room…”

  Thunder cracked, and rain battered the bedroom window. Jane held her brother’s hand.

  “Dad,” she said. “Are you okay?”

  He didn’t look up.

  Michael began to tremble. “Jane…”

  Jane stepped closer to the bed. “Mom?”

  “Uh-huh,” she said into her phone. “Okay.”

  When they still didn’t stop typing, Jane clapped her hands in front of her father’s computer screen—he was closer—and he frowned, as if she were a stranger. Slowly, he noticed them.

  “Jane, Michael,” he said and returned to his keyboard.

  “Mom, Dad, stop it,” Jane said.

  They didn’t look up.

  She slammed her father’s laptop shut and braced for his irritated shout. But he didn’t shout. Instead, he blinked at her, through her, his mind elsewhere.

  “…This is a severe weather alert for Harrison County,” the radio said. “A flash flood warning is in effect…”

  “We have to go,” Jane said.

  “I’m not leaving.” Before Jane could argue, Michael said, “If you want to, then go. I’m going to bed, and when I wake up, all this will be back to normal.”

  “Michael—”

  “Get away from me.” He ran downstairs to his room and slammed the door. Jane knew that when he was like this, it was pointless to argue—Michael was too stubborn. I can’t just leave him here, she thought and went downstairs.

  “Please Michael,” she called. “Don’t—”

  “Go away!”

  I have no idea where to go, Jane thought. But that wasn’t true, and she knew it.

  Still wearing a yellow poncho, Gaius met her in the street. “We don’t have much time,” he said. “Does your grandmother still live in England?”

  “She’s dead,” Jane said. “I saw it.” Jane’s voice twisted when she said this, and she felt tears behind her eyes. Talking about the horrible, impossible murder suddenly made it real. She lost her balance on a sewer grate, and Gaius caught her.

  “Be careful around pipes,” he said. “All pipes lead to Hotland.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s all right,” he said, but she could tell from the drop in his voice that it wasn’t.

  They went to Gaius’s RV. He opened the door and ushered her inside Like a bric-a-brac shop on wheels, the camper was crammed with junk: bicycle wheels; stone statues with lamps attached to their heads; afghan blankets of red, orange, and yellow-green; a pile of water-stained road maps; a tiny television with contorted antennae; jars of motionless butterflies; and mounds of ivory dice—some with the usual six sides Jane recognized from Monopoly and dozens more with intricate, tiny numbers and symbols. One die was as large as a tennis ball, divided into at least one hundred numbered sides. Painted model airplanes dangled from the ceiling, and the German shepherd, Finn, sprawled comfortably on a black couch matted with dog fur. There were snake skins, soccer balls, and a trash can overflowing with crumpled, used tissue.

  “Have a seat,” Gaius said. “Finn, get up. Make some room—you don’t need the whole couch to yourself. Up, up already!”

  Finn rose slowly, stretching his limbs until every joint—including those in his fluffy toes—popped. Then he sat, licked his lips, yawned, and farted. Finn hopped off the couch, and as he looked for a suitable place on the floor, Jane could’ve sworn she saw the dog smirk back over his shoulder. No, she told herself. Dogs do not smirk. Even stubborn, flatulent dogs forced to surrender comfy couches didn’t smirk.

  “He takes up a lot of space,” Jane said.

  “Yes, well.” Gaius glared as Finn thumped dramatically onto a pile of old coats in the corner. “Be grateful he’s only a dog.”

  “What does that mean?” Jane asked.

  “Sit,” Gaius said, and he went into the front cabin. “Your brother…?”

  “He wouldn’t come,” Jane said. “Will he be okay?”

  Gaius ignored the question. “Hold on to something,” he said. “I drive fast.”

  Wait a second, Jane thought. Isn’t he blind?

  There were no windows, but she could tell by the way the clutter-towers swayed that they were moving quickly. What was I thinking? she wondered. This is crazy! I’m going to get myself killed! We might crash at any—

  The RV stopped.

  Jane followed Gaius and Finn outside; they were parked near a dark stand of trees. The rain had stopped, and the air was thick, heavy, and silent.

  Jane said, “How did you drive without…?”

  “You don’t need your eyes to drive,” Gaius said. “You only need your hands for the steering wheel and your feet for the pedals.” “But—”

  “We’ll discuss this again when you have a driver’s license, Jane.” Finn lifted his leg on the nearest roots, and Gaius said, “Here, now—what kind of introduction is that, Finn? They’ll whisper about that for half a mile.”

  “Where are we?” Jane asked.

  “The park,” Gaius said. He pressed his hand to a tree trunk, closed his eyes, and then glared at Finn. “You couldn’t have used a bush?” They continued walking, and when Gaius stopped at another tree, he said, “We have to go underground to Hotland.”

  “By slapping trees? You’re talking to them,” Jane said, “aren’t you?”

  Gaius removed his hand. “Yes. Anyway, these trees have deep roots.”

  Jane stepped beside Gaius and placed her fingers on the rough bark. She closed her eyes and listened.

  “I don’t hear anything,” she said.

  Gaius resumed walking. “The trees don’t trust you.”

  “Why not?”

  Gaius frowned. “How many pieces of paper have you used? How many wooden chairs, tables, and bedposts have you used?”

  “They think I’m going to chop them down?” Jane said.

  Gaius said, “No, but they would like an occasional thank you. Written on recycled paper, I suppose.”

  Finn barked, his tail wagging.

  “Ah.” Gaius brightened. “He found one.”

  They hurried after Finn to a great, old oak tree. Gaius checked the trunk and nodded. Jane pressed her palm to the bark, but again, she didn’t hear anything.

  “Good.” Gaius pointed his cane at the tree. “We are off then.”

  The center of the trunk darkened, as if it had been covered by a black towel. The darkness looked just as solid as the bark.

  Gaius said, “I should warn you—we will have to cross the Keeper, but she hasn’t stopped anyone in a thousand years. The Keeper is neutral. She watches what goes in and what comes out in order to protect Hotland. Everyone who enters has to cross her once. After that, you’ll never see her again.”

  “What is she?” Jane asked.

  Gaius stepped closer to the darkness. “Wait and see.”

  Holding the flap of Gaius’s coat, Jane followed him into the tree. Breathing hard, she could hear their footsteps—was the floor made of stone?—but she was as blind as the old man. The moment they stepped into the tree, it was as though they had fallen into a cave or a tomb. Even the entry-hole behind them was gone.

  Jane heard Finn’s paw nails clicking to her right, and she concentrated on the reassuring jingle of his collar. The darkness thinned ahead. They entered a room of stone statues, with a block pyramid in the center. The room was big—at least twice as tall as her entire house—and the walls were the same white marble as the floor. Where was the door? There was no way out, and now when Jane turned, she saw a blank wall behind them.

  Still squeezing Gaius’s coat, Jane
followed him through the maze of statues. They passed a bearded man wearing some kind of loose dress and sandals, a stunted spear in his hands, then walked around a group of cowering Asiatic women with babies clutched in their robes and an ugly man in heavy armor with the legs of a goat. There were small men on horseback, bare-chested women chained in a line, and ape-men with high foreheads and stumpy noses.

  “Who are they?” Jane asked.

  Finn sprawled and licked himself.

  Gaius said, “They are the people she stopped.”

  “They’re real people?”

  “They were—a long time ago, when they tried to enter Hotland. They are stone now.”

  “I don’t like this,” Jane said.

  “Not so loud,” Gaius said.

  “Why, what…?”

  Finn jumped up. Something moved at the top of the pyramid: a thick silver shape like a beast climbing out of the pyramid’s bricks.

  Jane was trembling. She watched the muscular flank rise, saw a tuft of brilliant hair, and the creature shook itself and looked down at them. It was a horse—a horse the size of a school bus. Its skin shimmered like the moon; its mane was solid gold, and it stared with cruel eyes that glowed the hot white of a furnace fire. On its forehead was the broken stump of a horn. When the Keeper—the unicorn—shifted its weight, sparks snapped under its hooves. It spoke with a strained woman’s voice, as if it had been screaming: “What is your name?”

  “What do you—?”

  “Speak quickly,” the unicorn told Jane. “What is your name?”

  “Jane.”

  “Your grandmother, Diana Starlight, is gone?”

  Diana Starlight? Jane thought, but she said, “Yes.”

  The unicorn snorted and tossed her head, as if she were shaking away a fly. “How old are you?”

  “Almost thirteen.”

  “Do you believe there are such things as good and evil?”

  Jane swallowed, her palms clammy, her pulse jittery and fast. Answer—no, think: What do I believe? Do I really believe in good and evil? Although Jane had been baptized and her parents took the kids to church occasionally—usually on Christmas and Easter—she never thought of herself and certainly never considered her parents religious. There was right and wrong, wasn’t there? Was that the same thing?

  “Answer me, Jane,” the unicorn rumbled. “Do good and evil exist?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “What principle binds the world?”

  Gaius lowered his head and said, “Honored Keeper, she is only—”

  “I am not addressing you, Gaius Saebius.”

  “Please,” he said, “she is no threat to you—she is only a child.”

  “She is no child.” The unicorn’s eyes flashed. “Speak again unprompted, and it will be for the last time. There is more in her than there was in Diana Starlight or Applepatch Mary. I must know, Jane, what is the binding principle of existence?”

  “I don’t know that.”

  “Do not lie to me. How do you see the world—is it ruled by order or chaos?”

  Trembling, Jane thought, Michael was right—I shouldn’t have come here. This isn’t real.

  She said, “I’m sorry, I don’t—”

  “If you do not answer, you will join my gallery.”

  Jane said, “Please…” And she turned to run.

  “Stop!”

  She froze, struggled to catch her breath. “I don’t know the answer,” she said. “What do you want me to say?”

  The unicorn stepped down from the summit of the pyramid, and Finn hid behind Gaius. “How does the world appear to you? At its most basic level, is the universe made out of order or chaos? Are there patterns or anarchy?”

  There must be patterns, she thought. That’s the right answer, isn’t it? Good and evil; order and chaos—Gaius had mentioned those things too. What am I supposed to say?

  The unicorn waited.

  Jane said, “The universe—”

  Wait. She knew my grandmother. This thing—this Keeper or unicorn is here to stop people from hurting her home, Hotland. That’s what Gaius said, right? The Keeper is afraid of me. There isn’t a real answer, is there? It wants my answer so it has a better idea of who I am and whether or not I am a threat. So which is more dangerous: a person who believes there is a pattern or someone who thinks everything is random? Someone who believes in a pattern might have more of a reason to think Hotland shouldn’t be real. I don’t even know if I believe it. But if everything is chaos, Hotland can exist, right? If the world is crazy anyway, a talking unicorn doesn’t hurt anything.

  Jane said, “The universe is chaos.”

  Oh, no! she thought. What if that was the wrong answer…?

  The unicorn said, “You may all enter freely.” She went back to the top of the pyramid, and a doorway opened on the opposite wall, past statues frozen in mid-stride. “I will not see you again.”

  Gaius clicked his tongue. “Come on.”

  Jane followed Gaius and Finn around the statues and into another dark corridor. Behind them, the unicorn was gone.

  When an antique elevator came into view at the end of the hall, Jane asked Gaius, “Why didn’t you tell me she would ask those questions? Why did she ask me?”

  “I’m sorry, Jane,” Gaius said, and the way he lingered meant that he was lying. “I don’t know.”

  As it descended, the brass and iron elevator rattled like dice in a washing machine. The walls and ceiling were inlaid with Victorian curls and hooks of polished ivory and copper; the designs reminded Jane of the ornate balconies and latticework she’d seen on a trip to New Orleans two years ago. At the time, Michael had barely noticed the French Quarter, a pair of guidebooks clutched to his chest. Ghosts. He had been obsessed with seeing ghosts, Jane remembered. Unfortunately, all the ghosts had been on vacation too.

  The elevator banged and shook, and as they continued to drop, the gas lamp on the ceiling sputtered and dimmed until the white-blue flame cast only modest, upside-down shadows.

  “Is this safe?” Jane said.

  Gaius watched the dented iron door. “Good question. It could probably do with some repairs.”

  The gas lamp flicked out.

  “What’s wrong with the light?” Jane asked.

  Gaius said, “We are crossing over.”

  The elevator was dark. She listened to the pounding thumps of their descent, felt each jolt in her teeth, and thought, If I could face the unicorn, I can handle an elevator ride—even an uncomfortable, dangerous elevator ride.

  “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” Jane murmured.

  A new voice said, “Not yet, amiga, but there will be.”

  “Who said that?”

  The elevator stopped, and the light came on—lots of them. The brass and iron elevator had grown to the size of a gymnasium. The high ceiling was crowded with electric floodlights. A giant lizard with wings was watching her with red-black eyes. Green scales flowed along its flanks and ridged spine—sparkling purple and yellow on its belly. The dinosaur’s hind legs were thick with muscle; its front legs were longer and ended in five-fingered claws, each as long as Jane’s arm. Its head was as big as a car. The dinosaur sat up, its great wings fluttering in curls of translucent skin. She could see the joints of the bones inside—like a bat’s wings.

  A cat dressed in a brown robe adjusted his cane and said, “There is no need to frighten her, Finn.”

  Jane forced herself to look away from the dinosaur to the cat-man. The cat’s gray-black fur was striped like a tabby, and when she noticed his cane—Gaius’s cane—the cat-man nodded. His eyes were hazy white.

  Jane shook her head. “Am I…are you…?”

  “This is not a dream,” the cat-Gaius said as he started for a huge sliding door. “And we should get moving.”

  “You’re a cat!” Jane said. “I mean, how can you be a cat? I don’t—”

  “We are in Hotland now.” Gaius continued to the door. “It’s best if you s
top thinking like that.”

  Jane said, “Finn, you’re not a dog—you’re some kind of giant lizard, like a dinosaur!”

  The dinosaur chuckled with a low rumbling of its rib cage, like distant thunder. Gaius unhooked the heavy door, and Finn dropped back to all fours. When he spoke, she saw fangs the size of bowling pins.

  “They’re filling your head with oatmeal at that school,” Finn said. “A dinosaur? Don’t you know dinosaurs are extinct?”

  “If you’re not a dinosaur, then what are you?”

  “What do you think? I’m a dragon.”

  Jane said, “I thought dragons weren’t real.”

  “If we aren’t real, then we aren’t extinct either, are we?”

  Gaius slid open the door, and Jane stared, for the first time, at Hotland—the land at the center of the world.

  Jane said, “Wow.”

  The door opened from the side of a slate mountain to—animals. Lots and lots of animals. There are too many, Jane thought. This is impossible. A herd of wheat-colored antelope loitered beside a crowd of lions, ostriches, and sharp-horned rhinos, and a pack of rats mingled with clumps of pink-butt monkeys and disinterested gorillas. And birds—everywhere, there were birds. The constantly moving, constantly talking animals stood on rolling grass fields (Jane assumed it was grass; she couldn’t see with all the animals in the way) that stretched to the horizon. As Jane stared, a flock of silver birds burst into the sky. She froze. Wait a second. Talking?

  She listened. All the millions of animals (and yes, there had to be at least millions of them) were arguing, joking, complaining in perfect English. Finn stretched as he stepped out of the elevator, his toes and the joints in his great dragon tail popping like oversized knuckles. A group of grizzly bears scattered, calling, “Lizard! Giant lizard!” When Finn laughed, Jane felt the rumble in her own rib cage.

  “Dra-gon,” Finn said.