Jane and the Raven King

by Stephen Chambers

  “Like a genie or something?” Jane said. “Then I wish to have the Name of the World and kill the Raven King.”

  “It doesn’t work like that, Jane. I’m strong, not all-powerful.”

  “Is everyone frozen like my parents? How much longer can they live like that?”

  “Not long,” Rachel said. “Civilization is forgetting itself. But clearly not everyone is standing still—hence the smoke. Soon everything is going to get much worse. In another day, maybe two or three, the Dark One will win. You are part of a very small group that was not seduced by technology.”

  I won’t panic, Jane thought. I need to think about what I have to do—there isn’t much time. “So you can’t tell me anything,” she said. “But you can help me. Okay, my grandmother was the last person to use the Name of the World, right? When was that?”

  “In 1945.”

  Grandma Diana was my age back then, Jane thought. “Can we go to London?” she asked Rachel. “How long will that take?”

  “Yes, of course we can. As I fly, it will take several hours,” Rachel said.

  But I can’t waste several hours, Jane thought. Michael is dying, everyone is in danger, and for all I know, the Raven King could be waiting for me at Grandma Diana’s apartment now. I wish Thomas was the champion, and I didn’t have to do this. What if the Name of the World isn’t at Grandma Diana’s apartment anymore? And if she did still have the Name of the World there, why didn’t she bring it with her to America when she came to visit? She didn’t know the Raven King would show up, that’s why.

  What if I’m wrong?

  “We have to go,” Jane said. “I guess I don’t have a choice.” And in her best Grandma Diana voice, she said, “Take us across the pond, dear.”

  Before reaching the Atlantic Ocean, they stopped in New York City to get food. Jane had never been to Manhattan before, but she had seen it enough times on television and in movies that she expected to see a massive metropolis. It should have looked like a grid of office buildings with a square slice of trees, Central Park, at the center. Now the city was buried under brown smoke that made Jane’s eyes water. She tasted hot cinders that burned the back of her throat.

  As they dropped lower, the soupy air cleared, and Rachel brought them down on the sidewalk of a wide avenue of glass buildings with banks, clothing stores, and all-night convenience shops on their bottom floors. Everywhere there was broken glass, and bodies cluttered the sidewalk, as if there had been a stampede or a riot. The streets were jammed with yellow taxicabs, blue sedans, buses, and cars—all motionless and empty. Some of the cars were just burnt-out shells. Black smoke rose from sewer grates and open manholes. Fires raged inside nearby buildings. Jane heard a man screaming in the distance and a random popping sound, like firecrackers. The traffic lights at a nearby intersection changed from red to green; the red Don’t Walk hand turned into a white Walk person.

  “Be quick,” Rachel said. “I’ll watch from that rooftop. Call my name when you’re ready.” She flew onto the roof of an office tower.

  Michael said, “It looks like a war.” He pointed past the carnage. “Is that Times Square?”

  A few blocks away, Jane saw the flashing lights and restaurants of Times Square, just like on television on New Year’s Eve. The intersections were crowded with crashed cars, and she saw more bodies. Jane spotted people walking through the square with long sticks—spears or rifles, maybe—in their hands.

  “Yes,” Jane said. “I’ll be right back. Do you want roasted peanuts for the flight?”

  Michael was already asleep again. His poison wound made him groggy and confused. When Jane checked under his shirt, the blackness had almost spread to the top of Michael’s stomach.

  In a nearby convenience store, a balding man slouched behind the counter. His shirt was covered in blood. A woman was waiting to pay for sandwiches and soft drinks, which she’d placed on the checkout counter. She was staring at the static on a television above the door and holding a tiny pistol in her left hand. In her right hand, she held a dark blue smartphone just like the one Jane’s mother used to have.

  The woman didn’t look down. It’s all right, Jane told herself as she stepped quietly past the woman to the refrigerators to get sodas and prepackaged sandwiches. There were bloody smears on one of the refrigerator doors. The only way I can help them is to stop the Raven King, Jane thought. When she had filled a paper bag with food, she turned for the exit. The woman was staring at her.

  “Why won’t he call me back?” the woman said. She shook the phone. “I can’t check my email.” She started to cry and tapped the gun against the side of her head.

  Jane’s pulse was loud in her ears. “I’ll fix it,” she said. “Please, don’t do that.”

  “I just want to hurt someone,” the woman said, and she cocked the gun.

  “Rachel!”

  The woman aimed the gun at Jane.

  Jane shouted, “Wait—!”

  The pistol clicked. It was empty.

  Rachel was standing in the doorway behind the woman. “We have to go,” she said. “Right now.”

  “That woman…”

  Rachel grabbed Jane and picked up Michael, and they took off in a sharp rush of air that almost made Jane drop her bag of food. Below, the smoke thinned, and they flew fast over more houses and towers on their way to the ocean.

  Rachel said, “You’re safe. Be quiet and try to rest.”

  But Jane kept looking at the empty sky behind them. Soon they were rushing over water with sailboats and barges lolling on the low waves. The water darkened, the air got colder, and the land faded behind them. Jane drifted to sleep.

  She dreamt of fire.

  When she woke, Jane was hanging in Rachel’s arms, her sack of deli food clenched in one hand. They were still over the ocean, but there was land on the horizon.

  Rachel said, “Jane? You were screaming.”

  “I’m fine,” Jane said. “Is that England?”

  “Almost,” Rachel said. “That’s Ireland. We’ll be there soon.”

  “How is Michael?”

  “Worse.”

  What if I’m wrong? Jane thought. What if the Name of the World isn’t here and I brought us all the way across the ocean for nothing?

  “I can beat the Raven King, right?” Jane said. “If I find the Name of the World, I can do it, can’t I?”

  “You have to try,” Rachel said. “Sometimes you must fight even when you know you can’t win. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” Jane said, but she thought to herself, I’d call that answer a big no.

  London was the same as New York.

  Jane had hoped that here—all the way on the other side of the ocean—things might be different. But as they approached the towers and sprawl of London’s suburbs and followed a train line—past train cars that were stopped in a neighborhood of red warehouses—into the center of the city, Jane saw black clouds. Below the smoke, the streets were burning and full of bodies; every car was stopped. London was old, with low buildings in a disorganized scramble of parks, statues, museums, churches, and stores, but Jane knew where she was going. They had visited Grandma Diana here two years ago. On that trip, Grandma Diana had explained in great detail how to find her apartment. Flat, Jane reminded herself. Grandma always called it a flat, not an apartment.

  “That dome is Saint Paul’s Cathedral, Jane,” Grandma Diana had said. “Do you see it there? Good, now watch how those buildings—that white one and that ugly green tower—form a triangle with my flat at the third point. Do you see it, Jane? That’s how you’ll remember where I live. The triangle.”

  Now that she thought about it, Jane wondered if Grandma Diana had somehow known that this would happen and that someday Jane would have to return to London on her own. The directions made the most sense looking down from the sky. No, Jane thought. How could Grandma Diana have known this would happen? And if she did know, why didn’t she warn me? Then Jane realized, She did warn me. She gave me the
Wishing Stone, and she sent me a letter with three spells. And now all three spells are gone, and I’m on my own.

  Jane instructed Rachel to follow the massive dome of Saint Paul’s Cathedral north, using the white and green buildings as guideposts to find Grandma’s apartment. Soon they landed on cobblestones in front of 45 Dialer Street. It was a simple, tree-lined block, and here too, the buildings’ windows were cracked or smashed out and spewing filthy smoke. Jane heard people shouting, and far away, she heard sirens. Wind thrashed the tree branches. There were buzzers under the intercom with a list of the last names of the people who lived in the apartments, but when Jane tried the buzzers, nothing happened. The door was heavy and locked.

  “I didn’t think about this,” Jane said. “We don’t have a key, and no one is going to answer. What are we supposed to do now?”

  Rachel touched the doorknob. It turned by itself, and the door opened. “It’s just a door, Jane,” she said. “I’ve handled much tougher situations.”

  Grandma Diana lived in 3G on the ground floor. They walked through a lobby of flowery wallpaper and found Grandma Diana’s door at the end of a dark hall.

  “Can you do that again?” Jane asked, and Rachel opened the door. “Thanks.” But they didn’t go inside.

  If this is a trap, Jane thought, now would be the time for the Raven King to appear. The apartment hall looked just like Jane remembered it: The left wall was lined with overflowing bookshelves; photographs—including two of Jane—hung on the right wall. The hall led to a parlor with old couches covered in plastic, and Jane knew that the door on the left went into a small kitchen. The doorway on the right would take them to a living room and then another hall with two bedrooms and a bathroom.

  They waited in silence until finally Jane stepped in. Rachel is right behind me, she thought. If anything happens, she’ll protect me. Michael blinked awake in Rachel’s arms.

  “Where are we?” he asked.

  “Grandma’s apartment,” Jane said.

  “What’s wrong?”

  A floorboard creaked around the left corner in the kitchen. They stopped.

  “It’s all right,” Rachel said.

  Jane looked in. Grandma Diana’s tortoise cat, Sammy, was perched over a gigantic, open bag of cat food. Sammy meowed and rubbed against Jane’s leg. The faucet was dripping. They walked through the apartment slowly. Jane examined ceramic lamps, a wooden mask hanging on the bathroom wall, expensive dishes, photographs, and paintings, and she finally said, “This is hopeless.”

  Grandma Diana used her second bedroom as an office with a desk heaped with papers, folders, and notebooks. The office walls were a chaotic jumble of bookshelves. Nothing was neatly stacked; most of the books were piled on top of things, ready to fall at any minute. Beside a fern under the street-side window, there were locked filing cabinets and a wastebasket full of crumpled tissue, wadded papers, and empty fountain pens. Grandma Diana had been a teacher and then a librarian before she retired, and Jane’s mother usually referred to her as a writer, although as far as Jane knew, her grandmother had never written a book. Now Jane wasn’t so sure. There might be a book—there might be seventeen books—buried in this office.

  The Name of the World is probably in here, Jane thought. But there are so many interesting little things—a Dutch model ship, a ring with a yellow skull on it, finger bones in a glass case—and any one of them could be the Name of the World. How am I supposed to know?

  Grandma Diana’s bedroom was less intimidating. There was a small, carefully made bed, a cross on the wall, more framed photographs, and folded clothes. Unfortunately some of the office clutter seemed to have jumped across the hall carpet: books, cassette tapes, pens, and notepads covered both bedside tables and the blue chair in the corner. No wonder the Raven King had hounded Grandma Diana for the location of the Name of the World. Hunting for it in this apartment would be like looking for a needle…

  Jane sat on a couch in the parlor. The plastic crinkled and stuck to her legs. Sammy jumped onto her lap and purred.

  “I need your help,” Jane told Rachel. “Please.”

  “Sorry, Jane,” Rachel said. “Even if I could tell you, I don’t know where the Name of the World is now. I can tell you that you’re running out of time.”

  “Thanks.”

  Grandma Diana grew up in this flat as an only child, Jane thought. What was it like back then? After she beat the Raven King, where would she hide the Name afterward? Under a floorboard or in a crack in the wall? This is impossible.

  Back in the office, Jane picked through the pages on the desk, careful to remember where everything went so she could put it back. Why? Grandma Diana wasn’t coming home. Rachel watched from the doorway, still holding Michael.

  “It’s not here,” Jane said at last. “Or if it is, I don’t know where…I give up.” She kicked the desk and slumped into the chair. It was the only clear place in the room. “I can’t believe we came all the way here for nothing.”

  Michael pointed to a picture hanging behind Jane. “Who is that?”

  Jane turned in the swivel chair. It was a black-and-white photograph of a dark-skinned man in a suit seated under a big umbrella at a table in a garden. A young woman in a stiff Victorian dress sat across from him, squinting in the sunlight, a teacup and saucer in her hands. The outdoor table was set with blurry tea shapes. A servant stood in the background, and behind him, Jane saw thin trees and a wall. Huh. On the table, beside the teapot and a black knife that looked like a fancy letter opener, there was a handheld mirror. In the photograph, the mirror was dark and ornate. The longer Jane stared at it, the more out of place the mirror seemed, as if it had fallen out of the sky. It didn’t fit.

  In the bottom right-hand corner, someone had scrawled ’03, In Deepest Need and an illegible name that started with T. Below those words in newer ink, someone had written a long string of numbers. Like a code, Jane thought.

  “Why did you notice that picture?” Jane asked Michael.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “My chest started to hurt when I looked at it.”

  “What do these numbers mean?” Jane asked, and she read them aloud. There were fourteen digits. “In deepest need. That’s not Grandma Diana in the picture. That must be her mother—or maybe even her grandmother.”

  “Our family has been doing this for a long time?” Michael said. “Maybe it’s a message, like coordinates or something…” He winced. “This really hurts. I have to leave this room please…”

  As Rachel carried him back into the parlor, Jane frowned at the numbers. This is it, she thought. This is something important—maybe the combination to a safe…? She checked behind the picture: nothing. I am close. What can you use numbers for? Birthdays, ATM codes…

  She moved the papers off one end of the desk and lifted the receiver of an antique rotary dial phone. There was no sound.

  “Rachel…?” Jane called.

  Rachel came back and touched the phone. When Jane raised the receiver again, there was a dial tone. Jane pulled the circular dial all the way around with each number, and when she finished, the line was quiet. It clicked. And then it rang. Jane’s heart caught in her chest. It rang again.

  A girl answered. “Hello?”

  “Hello, I’m sorry to call like this,” Jane said. “But I found this number, and if anyone there knows my grandmother or maybe someone knew my great-great grandmother—I’m trying to find an old black hand mirror…” Silence. “Hello?”

  The girl on the other end cleared her throat and said, “Jane…?”

  Jane’s hand tightened on the phone. “Hi, Manali.”

  Jane, how did you get my telephone number? Where are you—you’re still in America, yeah? Or are you here? Have you seen what’s happening? It’s crazy, like anarchy, yeah? Me and my cousins are here eating noodles, but the television and the radio—nothing works, you know? I didn’t think this phone worked.” Manali was talking fast, as if she’d been underwater and was releasing a mouthful of
words as she came up for air. “Gosh, it’s good to hear from you. You said you’re here in Mumbai?”

  “No, I’m not in India,” Jane said. “I’m in London.”

  “What are you doing there? People are running wild in the streets, and nobody has eaten for days—the Raven King is doing this, yeah? I wish Thomas would hurry up and stop him. Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

  “Manali, I’m at my grandmother’s apartment. Remember I told you she stopped the Raven King a long time ago? There’s a picture on her wall with a woman and an Indian man having tea. There’s a mirror on the table in that picture. I think that mirror is the Name of the World.”

  “I don’t understand. I thought Gaius sent Thomas to deal with him.”

  Jane told Manali what had happened. Manali said, “Wow. But how could a mirror be a weapon? And this is my uncle’s phone I’m talking on now—how did you know to call this number?”

  “The number is written on my grandmother’s photograph.”

  “Really? How is that possible?”

  “I think maybe our families helped each other a long time ago,” Jane said. “Does this make any sense to you?”

  “I don’t know,” Manali said. “What’s the guy in the photo look like?”

  Jane went for a closer look. “He has short hair, a beard, very dark eyes…”

  Manali laughed. “That could be any man in my family, Jane!”

  “In the photograph, they’re in a garden. The man isn’t smiling, but he’s not as serious as most of the people you see in old pictures.” Jane rubbed a smudge from the picture frame. “Well…”

  “What? Is something wrong?”

  “The man doesn’t have a left arm.” Manali was silent, and Jane said, “You can see by the way he’s sitting—when you look closely—the sleeve is just hanging there. I think he’s only got one arm. Manali…?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you hear me? I said I think he’s missing his left—”

  “Yeah, I heard. My mother used to tell me stories—that’s my great-great-great-grandfather, Turim.”