by Hiromi Goto
“The door must be opened once, closed, then opened a second time.” White Cat’s voice was urgent. “Open it only a little the first time.”
“Why—” Gee began.
“Just do it!” White Cat hissed, glancing back at Ilanna and Karu.
Cracker, eyes stunned, had her hands clamped over her ears again so that she wouldn’t be compelled by the siren voice once more.
Gee pried at the simple swing latch until it popped up. He grabbed the sticky handle. The door hung from a metal track; he just had to slide it sideways.
He pulled.
The door was stuck.
White Cat began to swear. Behind them, a din was rising. A staccato of cloven hooves pounding the concrete. The raucous cries of a bird. The keening cry of the empathy monster. “Help me,” the little-girl voice cried. “Don’t leave me. I’m frightened!”
“Stop it!” Ilanna shouted at the bird man. “Leave that thing! They’re getting away!”
Cracker, wide-eyed, placed her hands next to Gee’s on the wooden slats of the door.
“Push!” Gee cried.
The door, shrieking on its pulleys, slid open about twenty centimetres.
They stood, staring stupidly at the strip of darkness.
A vast roar— A great vacuum yanked them toward the open space, White Cat screaming as he clung desperately to the rough surface of the concrete with his claws. His hindquarters were becoming airborne, and his yellow-green eyes bulged with terror.
The force of the vacuum sucked Gee’s dark hair toward the opening, his clothes flapping. But his peril was not as great as that of the cat’s. Maybe the wind had sucked away all his feelings, Gee thought, as he watched emotionlessly. How many more seconds could White Cat hold on? Would the tipping point come with the snapping of one claw, or two?
The sucking wind dragged the cat toward the open gap, his claws leaving eight ragged lines across the cement. Gee began counting: one one thousand, two one thousand….
Slam!
Cracker had kicked the door shut. She stood, panting, staring at the cat who had fallen flat atop the concrete ledge, his tail puffed with terror. Cracker glared at Gee. “Do something! What’s wrong with you?”
He shook his head slowly. What had he been thinking? Why was he standing there? White Cat. He had told him what to do—
Gee grabbed the metal handle and wrenched it open for a second time.
Chapter Eleven
They stood, tensed, waiting for the great sucking wind to return.
The stillness was heavy. Unsettling. An odd grey light shone into the darkness of the tunnel.
“Go through.” White Cat’s voice was hoarse. He still lay weakly on the ground. His claws had retracted.
Cracker bent down, grunting as she raised him up. She stepped through the portal. Gee followed.
The dull grey light blinded for a moment. The air was silent, slightly metallic. Chill. The sound of grinding stone. They spun around. The portal was closing.
On the Half World side the door wasn’t made of wooden slats. It was as if a great grey circular stone was being rolled back into place. Impossible to stop, they watched as their only exit shrank into an ever-thinning crescent.
Gee’s flat dark eyes were expressionless as he watched the passageway disappear. All that remained was a smooth granite cliff face. As he shifted something crunched, disintegrated beneath his shoe. They were standing on a rock ledge, three metres wide, its surface littered with little white sticks. Mounds of the debris were heaped along the ledge where it met the granite wall.
Crump. Crump.
It sounded as if they were stepping on dried pretzel sticks.
Cracker raised one foot, disgust twisting her lips. “Gross,” she muttered.
White Cat was strangely subdued. He didn’t twist out of Cracker’s arms. “Indeed.” His voice was small. “You are standing upon the finger bones of those who came before you.”
“Ugghhh!” Cracker exclaimed, hopping from one foot to the other, crushing ever more bones to powder beneath the heavy treads of her boots.
Gee fought the urge to titter. It wasn’t funny. Wasn’t funny at all. Why did he want to laugh?
Cracker’s boot toppled a heaped mound of bones.
Something long and black erupted, flip-flopping wildly. The writhing, spasmodic movement drew it ever closer to Cracker’s feet. She shrieked, leaping backward, one heel landing on the edge of the ledge, the sudden gaping pull of empty space.
Gee was too far away.
Cracker’s eyes wide. One arm still clutching the cat. One arm reaching. Empty space. She slowly began to tip….
White elastic whipped faster than the eye could follow. Splattered around Cracker’s wrist. And yanked her back with so much force that she was thrown to her knees, White Cat leaping aside at the last moment.
Gee stared numbly down the length of his white arm. It had elongated, easily two metres, and was almost as thin as a garden hose.
That is not me, he thought. That is someone else.
Cracker, shocked and relieved, was panting on her hands and knees. She didn’t see Gee slowly unclasping her wrist and retracting his arm back to his side.
Gee didn’t know how he did it. He could feel White Cat’s eyes upon him. Gee could not meet his gaze.
“Thank you,” Cracker croaked.
Gee said nothing. He opened and closed his hand. It didn’t feel evil…. It was the same hand that had almost killed Winston Chang, but this time he’d used it to save his friend. He could control it. He would! He clenched his hand into a fist as he carefully made his way to the edge to peer into the abyss.
The bottom was so far he couldn’t see it. The sky seemed to fall forever.
If you fall forever, Gee thought, would it stop feeling like falling?
Gosa, gosa, gosa.
The snakey black thing, almost a metre long, was trying to writhe itself under another mound of bones.
Gee’s eyes narrowed. Something about it…. He moved closer.
Sensing his approach, the thing reared up into an S-shaped curve. Hsssssssssss!
Sharp needle teeth glinted in its wide jaws. The dark body, dusty from the desiccated bones, was taut. Readying for attack.
It was an eel. Missing the lower half of its body.
Gee stared at the ragged edge of flesh, the white jagged remnants of its spine where it had been ripped away…. Ilanna’s amputated eel arm, the one who’d been sacrificed for the toll.
Rilla, she’d called the eel on her right. What had she called the left one?
“Lilla?” Gee whispered hoarsely.
The eel became still. It tipped its head to the side before slowly stretching upward to stare at Gee’s face. Its jaws dropped open into a great eel grin, exposing its array of gleaming needle teeth. It began to weave slowly from side to side, like a cobra.
“Be careful!” Cracker, still on her hands and knees, cried out. “It might be poisonous.”
The mountain ledge began to shake. Groaning beneath the colossal weight, the cliff face began raining bits of granite. Gee covered the back of his head with his arms while White Cat crawled beneath the shelter of Cracker’s belly. A sudden lurch had Gee slamming against the rock wall, his back, his palms pressed against the flat surface. He closed his eyes as the mountain vibrated through his body.
The rock wall bulged outward, pushing against Gee’s back. He stepped to the middle of the ledge, legs apart, as he rode out the heaving of the mountain. He stared up, up at the rock face as a stone giant creaked out of her prison wall.
Made entirely of the grey granite, she was easily over four metres tall. The creaking groan of her weight filled the air. “You must pay the toll,” the Gatekeeper’s deep, low voice intoned.
Gee stared. The toll. That’s right, he thought. They had to pay a toll.
“I have money,” Cracker quavered. She began stuffing her hands in her pockets. Her eyes lit up as she pulled out a twenty-dollar bill. “See!” she
said happily. “We can pay!”
White Cat shook his head. He lifted his paw and stared sourly at his dirty pads.
“The toll,” the Gatekeeper thundered, “is the smallest finger of your hand. The finger must be bitten off.”
Cracker’s mouth dropped open. When she finally saw the desiccated bones littering the cliff ledge she turned her head to the side and retched.
White Cat leapt away. Then calmly resettled his tail around his paws. He sighed and his tail lashed, only once. “I will pay the toll, Gatekeeper.” He made it sound as if he were offering, slightly begrudgingly, to pay for everyone’s lunch.
Gee’s palms felt sticky. The terrible bulging feeling in his throat began to grow.
“The bridge draws near,” the Gatekeeper intoned. She stared across the great abyss.
What had been emptiness was no longer. A hundred metres away was another mountain.
And what bridges the gap? Gee wondered.
The air was suddenly filled with the raucous cries of crows. Thousands, hundreds of thousands—the skies were splintered with their voices.
Gee raised his left hand to his mouth. He did it without thinking. He placed the base of his pinkie against the edge of his teeth. Eyes staring blankly, he bit down.
His teeth should have met the resistance of bone. But they did not.
They cut through his finger as if it were made of Plasticine. His mouth dropped open. The digit fell to his feet. Gee stared at his hand. No blood. No pain. His flesh was white all the way through—as though his matter was not flesh, was not human….
Before his very eyes, his skin, his flesh began to bulge and stretch, rippling his soft matter toward the missing place and pouring a new pinkie into existence.
Gee slowly opened and closed his hand. His new pinkie was no different from the one he’d bitten off. He stared at the white little lump on the rock ledge.
“Gee…?” Cracker’s voice quavered.
The Gatekeeper swung out an enormous arm. The cawing of crows drowned the air and a torrent of black birds flew across the divide, so many that the sky was solid with them.
“The crows are the living bridge between the Realm of Flesh and Half World,” the Gatekeeper intoned. “Speed is of the essence.”
The black bridge wobbled and fluttered.
Gee glanced at Cracker’s face. She closed her eyes. “I’m scared,” she mouthed. Tears streamed down her cheeks.
“Run!” White Cat hissed. “There’s no other way. Don’t stop. Don’t look down. Run!”
Cracker leapt off the ledge and began running across the backs of the crows with her eyes closed. White Cat bounded after, a ball of white fur leaping across a steady stream of glinting black feathers, overtaking the girl.
Gee cursed beneath his breath. That Cracker! She was beginning to list to one side…. What kind of idiot ran across a bridge with their eyes closed?
Gee sprinted onto the roaring blackness. It was as if they ran atop a swift dark river, their feet slipping on the sleek feathers, the crows dipping beneath their weight. Taking ever-longer strides, Gee’s legs began stretching and he quickly caught up to Cracker. He clamped his sticky arm around her waist, propelling her faster, and they dashed the final metres in tandem.
White Cat reached the little plateau a few seconds before they did. Cracker was gasping, whooping for air. Her eyes were still squeezed shut.
Gee was utterly calm. He stared down at the girl—did she even know they were no longer on the bridge? He could see her racing pulse beneath the thin skin of her neck. The two spots of colour on her pale cheeks.
White Cat’s eyes were no longer yellow-green. They were grey. His nose had turned grey as well. The cat, unblinking, looked him up and down. He opened his mouth to speak—stopped. He turned slightly around so that most of his back curved toward Gee.
They were on a craggy mountain. Little plants grew in crevasses, tiny pockets of soil. The wind smelled slightly bitter. Gee blinked. The plants were all in various shades of grey.
No colours, he realized. Half World looked like an old-fashioned black-and-white film.
Except for Cracker.
There was a wheezing rattle to her gasps. She sat down abruptly and forced herself to breathe more slowly. After several minutes colour returned to her face. Her skin glowed, almost obscenely, as if she were a piece of meat.
Gee stared down at his hands. The pale skin and dark eyes that made him stand out back home weren’t remarkable here. Back home. What did that mean? Gee wasn’t sure anymore.
Half World….
Cracker caught Gee’s gaze. Her eyes, shining like amber in sunlight, widened with alarm. “You look different,” she said. “Or it’s me.” She sounded dubious. She took in the cat, the mountain crag on which they stood. “No,” she decided. “We’re the same. Half World is colourless. And it’s affected the cat.”
A tiny frown marred Gee’s brow. He shrugged carelessly and turned to White Cat, who was rubbing his front paw in a patch of small grey leaves. “What do we do now?”
The cat, finished with his front paws, found a new patch of foliage and began working on his back paws.
“I’m talking to you, White Cat!” Gee seethed.
The cat slowly looked up at him. “How should I know?”
Gee stared, incredulous. “You’re joking! You’re the one who said I had to come here. Well, I’m here. Now what?”
“All I said was that you needed to discover the nature of your connection to Half World. The Half Worlders who pursue us want you for a reason. They know more about you than you know yourself. I don’t know what you’re meant to discover here. That’s for you to learn. What do you want to do?” White Cat asked. “I hope your wits didn’t fall into the abyss when we ran across the bridge.” His tail flicked erratically, as if he were dislodging fleas.
Gee’s throat plugged with rage. He choked the mass down, his eyes bulging with the effort.
Cracker backed away.
“I didn’t want to come here!” Gee hissed. “You told me that I had something to do. So what is it?”
Kill the cat, the dark voice inside him whispered. He’s not Popo’s companion. He’s something evil. Come to trick you. What do you know about him? What has he done for you?
Gee’s hands shook. “I don’t want to be here. I just want everything to be back to normal….” His voice faded. Normal…. What was he that he could bite off his finger so painlessly? That his limbs stretched as easily as elastic. What about his bones!
Something hot burned in his eyes. A tightness in his chest. Gee spun around quickly, fearful that Cracker and White Cat would see beads of wax dripping down his face instead of normal tears. He swallowed and swallowed. The taste of something sour, bitter, in the back of his throat.
Popo, he beseeched. You should have told me more. Popo, are you still alive….
“Ughhh!” Cracker stumbled away from him, her voice filled with disgust.
A weary resignation filled his chest. So it has begun, he thought. Emotionlessly, he turned to face Cracker’s loathing.
Her expressive eyes were directed at his feet.
A black, sinuous head poked out of the hem of his pant leg. The eel writhed outward, its body pressing close to the ground. The faintest glint of teeth in its upward curving jaw…. Lilla had hitched a ride back with him. And he hadn’t even felt it.
“Kick it out!” Cracker screamed. “Kick it over the side!”
The eel reared up, hissing.
The distant sound of crows, the whirring rush of wings. The birds were regrouping across the divide for a second passage.
“Curious,” White Cat muttered. His cool gaze was fixed on the eel. He looked up at Gee. “What now?”
Gee closed his eyes to think. He had no proof that White Cat was who he said he was, but he hadn’t tried to harm them. Despite the creature’s dubious traits, he’d saved Cracker from the empathy vampire in the tunnel, and also from Karu…. Gee could overpower the cat if
it came to that. He could not overpower Ilanna and the bird man.
He looked around. There was a faint trail in the rough ground—it had to lead somewhere. There was no returning to the gate across the abyss from where they stood. And Ilanna and Karu were drawing ever closer. He couldn’t face them. At least not yet.
You cannot flee from your past, White Cat had said. Discover your ties to Half World.
Knowledge is power, the dark voice whispered.
Power, Gee thought. Power would mean he wouldn’t have to feel fear…. “I’m going to climb down this mountain,” he said. Even if he could return to the Realm of Flesh, he’d only be leading danger toward his popo … if she was even still alive…. He couldn’t think about that! “I’m going to find my parents. And Cracker’s going to find her sister.”
The eel sidled back into his pant leg, curling several times around his ankle.
“That thing is not coming with us!” Cracker spat.
A faint frown whispered across Gee’s pale brow. The hank of dark hair covered his eyes.
Sssssssssssssssssssss, the eel sighed.
Gee crouched down and wrapped his fingers around the eel’s body. The long hard muscles instinctively struggled against his grip, flapping wildly back and forth, but Gee clung fast.
“Gross,” Cracker groaned.
Gee raised the torn creature up to his face and stared into the eel’s bright, glinting eye. “Be good,” he commanded.
Lilla dropped open her jaw and revealed her needle teeth in a great eel grin. She nodded her head with sincerity.
White Cat snorted. “Eels are good”—he began trotting on the faint path—“glazed with teriyaki sauce and served on hot rice.”
Cracker, unable to help herself, giggled.
Gee glared after the cat. Tail raised, his puckered cat anus was his last word.
The eel slicked powerfully around Gee’s wrist. A thick black bracelet.
“I’m keeping her for now,” he told Cracker. “She might be useful. And we can dump her if she’s trouble.”
“I think you’re making a mistake,” Cracker said through gritted teeth.
The distant roar of wings grew louder as the bridge of crows flew toward them, the sound swelling, thunderous.
