Fire in the Wall

by S G Dunster

  “We’re landing?” Arapahoe gave me a bald glare. “When were you going to tell your first officer this?”

  “Right now.” I tried to imbue my tone with extra authority and came off more snappy and disrespectful. “We’ve found the place we’re looking for. I haven’t had much notice either. We came in here first thing to tell you.”

  Arapahoe gave me a long, steady stare as he walked out of the salon. Selah bit her lip and gave me the stink eye. She rose, too, hoisting her ruched skirt, flashing a tantalizing glimpse of her fleur-de-lis-embroidered fishnets.

  “See,” I said to Eap, yanking my gaze away from the thighs of my second officer. “I told you it won’t work, your being Second Mate. All right. Dane . . .”

  She rose from her place at the table. The sky blue of her silk vest made her eyes into effervescent pools. “Yes, sir?” There was a bit of tease in the last word.

  I smiled and leaned in. “Do you think your diplomatic skills are up to a trip on the ground? I could really . . . use you.”

  Lil, beside me, made an outraged noise.

  Dane grinned, her eyes wrinkling up at the corners. “Fit as a fiddle.” She wiggled over, grabbed my chin, and planted a kiss on my nose. “See you down there.” She left with a deft little wave over her shoulder.

  “Ugh,” Lil said.

  I turned and gave her a cool stare.

  Her face blanked out. She returned my stare with her own icy disdain.

  “Children,” Eap said.

  “We’re fine,” Lil replied. She flounced out, flipping her braids over her shoulders as she did. “Let’s go get the Grey Man.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” I said, exactly matching her dry tone.

  We came out on deck. The sky was turning dark, and the moon was beginning to rise—a tiny sliver peeping up over the horizon.

  “Ah,” Eap said. “The skies are changing.”

  I stared. He was right. Why would they change it? Does it mean they know we’re here? What we’re doing?”

  “Possible. It will make it much harder to find Hans. A quick landing would be ideal.”

  “Go tell Marco it’s time to land,” I said to a coal boy who scurried past us. He gave me a nod and veered toward the pilot’s room.

  A moment later the ship began its steep descent, fast enough that there was a thrill and swoop in my belly. I clung to the edge and watched the ground’s rapid approach.

  “Now.” Lil pinched my shoulder, and I closed my eyes.

  A tower—not far off the ground, just enough to keep the ship above tree-level—with a platform to tie off.

  I opened my eyes. It was rising: brown timbers, the rough, unrefined trunks of trees forming a regular structure that reached up toward us.

  “Clever,” Eap said. “The least intrusion possible. You’re learning fast.”

  “I try.”

  The ship was almost to the edge of the platform. “Tie off!” I called out. Immediately the hatch opened, and a stream of coal boys emerged. They ran to the side, tossed out coils of rope, and flung themselves over. Their tiny little bodies shimmied down the spindly ropes, landed on the platforms, and tied the ropes to mooring posts that stuck up along the platform’s edge. Then they were hand-over-handing themselves back up to the ship.

  Arapahoe, Dane, and Selah came to the stern with us. Selah lowered the massive gate centered in the stern’s thick wood.

  We stood at the edge of empty space. I helped Selah unfurl the rope-and-mahogany ladders. They jumbled down into the darkness.

  “This is slow,” Lil said. “Ladders. I bet we could fly down.”

  “We shall climb down,” Eap said. “We should not do anything unnecessary. As few new tellings as possible.”

  Selah gave him an odd look.

  “He’s drunk,” I said.

  She dropped over the edge. The rest of us followed. I had another moment of vertigo just before I climbed off the edge, the dark forest swimming under me.

  The sky was quickly getting dark. And I didn’t see any stars.

  The forest under us looked black—I couldn’t distinguish trees from trees except for the one we were headed for, its thick dead silver trunk, branchless, effervescent in the dimming light. A pillar meant to hold up the sky.

  We touched down on the platform. There were more ladders there, rolls of them piled on the edges that, when dropped, would reach from the platform to the ground.

  Arapahoe and Selah got there first. They unrolled a ladder. We all watched as the pale glimmer of rope streamed down into the darkness.

  I took a deep breath. I needed to be the first one. Captain, and all that.

  I went to the edge, put my foot on the first rung, and then the second, then the third, clinging to the first rung with my hands, hanging off the platform’s edge. I took a moment to steady myself and moved down it as quickly as I could. Eap followed me, then Lil, Arapahoe, Selah, and Dane.

  The tree canopy closed in around us, but I could still see the vague shimmer of the Whippoorwill with its mirror-cloaks, hovering above us. I took a breath and stepped onto the ground.

  The darkness was oppressive. The shadows in the trees seemed strange and solid, like if I breathed them in, I’d choke.

  Eap was unsettled, too. I could tell by the way he missed the last rung and tumbled, landing on his back. “Aack,” he muttered, brushing himself off as he got back on his feet. He glanced up at the sky and gestured impatiently toward the silver lodge pole tree, which now towered above us. (If it could be called a tree, without any real branches. It was really just a trunk. A great, reaching trunk, thick as a house, pointing straight up into the sky like an accusatory finger.)

  We walked carefully through tangled vines, trying not to touch anything; trying not to rustle, keeping sight of the great, silver pillar until we came to it.

  It was grown all over with vines as high up and higher than any of us could reach. But the silver wood gleamed through. I touched it. Smooth. Dead.

  There was no sign of any Grey Man, anywhere. We walked around it, trying to find a footprint. A scrap of tattered grey fabric. Anything.

  Finally, Eap knocked on the trunk. I jumped a little—the knock was loud, and made a deep, hollow noise that echoed.

  We waited for a few minutes.

  “Are you sure you have the right . . . tree?” Dane gave me a look that asked why we were humoring him.

  I almost laughed. It was nice, a break in tension. I slid my arm around her shoulders and squeezed. “Yeah, it’s the right one,” I said. “Eap, what do we do now?”

  “This fugitive,” Selah said. “It seems he’s fled. Maybe he knew we were coming.”

  “Or she,” Arapahoe pointed out.

  “Or she,” Selah said, giving him a look.

  Lil was just standing there, eyes wide, face reflecting an emotion I don’t often see there.

  She looked . . . bereft.

  Worried.

  “Oh, come on,” she groaned softly. She reached out and rapped too. It echoed around us, louder this time. “Hans,” she hissed. “Hans!” she shouted, her voice shrieking echoes back. “It’s Lil. Open up.”

  It was like she’d said a magic word. Instantly, the outline of a door appeared on the trunk’s broad silver side, and it opened inward.

  “Wait!” Eap whispered sharply as Lil moved toward it. “Wait.” He dug in his pockets and brought out a match. He lit it with a flick of his fingers, then tossed it into the deep blackness inside the tree. It flared, casting light on walls lined with neat bookshelves, a couple of overstuffed, prim-looking chairs, and a delicate, dangling chandelier. The fiery contrast lasted a brief second and went out.

  “It’s just shadow,” Eap breathed. “Come. He’s gone, but he may have left some clue. Our Hans enjoys the dramatic.”

  I let Dane go ahead of me, and she gave me an eyebrow lift for my gallantry.

  Eap waited for us all to enter and shut the door behind us. When it closed, it was very, very dark. I couldn’t see
anything. Not even my hand in front of my face. The shadows here were less solid, though. Thinner. Like regular shadows. It was a relief that had me breathing deeply.

  A hiss, a crackle, and Eap was, again, holding that strange flue lamp in his hand. The light was rosy, comforting. “Well, look around, chums,” he said, a note of impatience in his voice, gesturing the walls. “We don’t have much time.”

  “Look for what?” I asked.

  “Any sign of where the old windbag’s gone off to. Anything. A note, a message scrawled on the ceiling, an arrow constructed of pebbles. A line of breadcrumbs.”

  Lil’s shriek ended his sarcastic tirade. We all turned to face her.

  She was shivering and clutching something to her chest. She brought it away from her body, showing us.

  It was Satie. Not Satie Satie. Not the alive Satie, but Satie the way Lil had made her. Satie before she came alive. The clay figure. Cold, grey. The evil, slitted eyes completely lifeless.

  Eap held a hand out for it.

  Reluctantly, Lil let him take it, watching with slightly widened eyes as he turned it over, examining it. “He’s neutralized it,” Eap said. “Made it what it was, so that it couldn’t be found. This. This is his sign.”

  “A sign. What?” Dane asked.

  Arapahoe and Selah were both looking at me, too. I shrugged. “A sign of what?” I asked Eap.

  “It’s a sign,” Eap said, handing the clay figure back to Lil, “that he bears you no ill will, but you’re on your own.” His lips were thin. His eyes, murderous. “He’s fled.” The last two words came out in a growl.

  Lil stared at the thing in her hands. Her eyes glistened, like they were welling up with moisture, but it had to be a trick of the lamplight. Lil never cried.

  Eap was pacing now, around and around the inside of the hollow trunk room. “No, he’s not going to get away with it this time.” He took a large tome off the shelf and flung it across the room, pages fluttering. Arapahoe followed the book’s flight with his eyes. “Fleeing in the face of the disasters he creates,” Eap continued, his voice rising to a roar. “That is his habit. We shall break him of it right now.” He thumped his fist two times on the door, then flung it open.

  “Hans!” He shouted into the darkness, waving his pale, meaty fist. “You have drunk your last drop of selfish ineptitude! I have a stronger spirit for you, here!” He waved the fist again and stalked out, gesturing shortly for us to follow.

  I nodded at my crew, and they went out as well. Lil and I came last. Lil actually stood there, frozen, until I tweaked her elbow. She walked out with me, her gait strange, almost marionette-like.

  “Why do we need him?” I asked Eap, after catching up to him. “Let’s just go back to where we’re safe. Do we need him? Didn’t you say he was useless?”

  “Irrevocably, we need him,” Eap replied. “He has skills and powers we can’t afford to lose.” He turned to me. “And, he doesn’t know Grandeur’s been destroyed. He doesn’t know that everything is now at stake. If a burnt ship doesn’t give a fellow courage, nothing will.”

  “He doesn’t live in Grandeur anymore.” Lil said flatly. “He doesn’t care about Grandeur.”

  “But he will care, now. Grandeur, it was an anchor. A place he could go back to. Now, there is nothing but the Grimwoods. Now, ingestion by them is inevitable. Slow, but it will happen. Unless we fight.” He bared his teeth on the last word and flailed his fist again. “He’s made a run for it. There’s only one way to let him know that the end’s come.”

  “Should we stay here?” Selah interjected carefully. “Could he come back?”

  “No,” Eap said. “I looked over the shelves. His two prized possessions are gone. He’s left.”

  “What are those?” I asked.

  Eap shrugged. “A bird. And a picture of a caught bird.”

  “How do we find him?” Lil’s voice was a little hoarse. Her face, when I turned to look at her, had that scary, burning blank look that usually preceded a fit. I took a step toward her. She scooted back. “Don’t touch me,” she said, so dead-calm that I knew not to even try.

  Eap knelt down and touched the cat, stroking it between the ears. He took a piece of paper from his pocket, a pen, and scrawled something on it. He tucked it into the cat’s collar.

  “No.” Blank face notwithstanding, Lil was clutching the clay gecko so tightly, the veins on the back of her hands were bulging. “Don’t send it . . . him. Your cat.”

  “Shoo, Monty,” Eap said. “Stay in the shadows. Bring him to me. Bring me that infernal nightingale’s severed head if you have to. Keep close to the shadows, but avoid those that move.” He gestured gracefully, and the cat sat on its haunches, gazed at him for a long moment with acid green eyes, and then turned and oozed into the darkness of the woods.

  “If the blyks take it, they could maybe take you,” Lil said as we climbed back onto the platform.

  “There are so many routes to blykhood these days, it won’t make any difference one way or another,” Eap responded lightly. “Climb faster, if you please.”

  “But—”

  “Faster.”

  The dark shapes, the long black fingers of shadow cast by the trees were following us. One by one, they were detaching from the tree trunks and drifting toward us.

  “Faster!” Eap hissed, pounding on my foot, and I grabbed the next rung and swung myself up as quickly as I could.

  A howl rose.

  A spine-chilling, hollow, human-scream howl.

  I didn’t look down, but I could feel them—the shadows. It was a pressure. Electricity. That feeling of a coming storm, or just before someone charged with static touches you.

  The smell rolled in—wet fur and the stink of dog.

  The howl concentrated, then multiplied. A chorus. My ears were ringing, my skin prickled.

  A scream shattered the air, rising above even the howl of the pack.

  I scrambled onto the platform and looked down.

  Dane—a pale gleam of skin and hair. She was on the ground. Lying down. Like she’d fallen. Rapidly advancing on her were shadows shaped like wolves.

  Arapahoe, on the third rung up, hesitated.

  “Climb,” Eap said sharply. “There’s no time.”

  Arapahoe pushed hard on Selah’s rear, hovering above him. “Get up,” he said harshly. “Dane,” he called down. “Run! Run, girl!”

  I stood on the platform, watching, frozen.

  Dane shrieked. She was trying desperately to reach the platform, but she was limping.

  A shadow leapt, knocking her to the ground. I got a brief glimpse of shadowy jaws closing over her shoulder, her pale eyes widening with horror, mouth opening to scream, when rest of them piled on top of her.

  She screamed and screamed, a free, pale arm reached out of the ragged mass, clutching at air, at nothing. With an awful gurgle, the screaming stopped and the arm went limp.

  Chapter 14

  I yelled her name. I didn’t mean to. It escaped my body along with my breath.

  “Logan,” Eap said urgently. “Up. Up.” He grabbed onto one of the ladders dangling above us that would take us back up to the Whippoorwill.

  One of the creatures raised its head and looked at me with icy, laughing eyes.

  Selah gasped. She said Dane’s name, too, her voice breaking around it as she grasped the lowest rung of a ladder and began climbing as fast as she could, her lean, dark body graceful and powerful, like an Olympic swimmer doing a crawl. Arapahoe, breathing hard, pulled himself up after her.

  “Up, up,” Eap repeated, tugging at my arm from above. “We must keep on. Sirens like these are not limited to the ground as usual wolves are.”

  I grabbed a bottom rung, and scrambled up a rope ladder as fast as I could, heart beating out of my chest, muscles in my arms and shoulders and back and stomach burning.

  It seemed like forever. Selah and Arapahoe, even Lil and Eap, got there long before I did. Finally, I came up into the stern and collapsed on the woo
den deck, gasping. “Keep going.” Eap hauled me to my feet. “Make your ship fly its turbines off.”

  “Fly! Fly!” I roared. “Engines at full steam! Push it!”

  The deck rumbled as the engine roared, and we began to move faster.

  Not fast enough. Below us, the shadows were circling the platform, a dark maelstrom rising up toward us, suddenly towering over us. I saw faces in it—shapes. Wolves. And people.

  “Go, go!” Lil shouted. She’d snapped out of her daze, and now she was swatting people left and right. A coal boy, one of my kitchen girls. “We have to go faster!”

  The dark mass moved up. Tendrils of shadow arced into the deck and twisted around the mass of whirring paddles. Like a great, grasping hand, it tore them off with a sickening crunch. The deck shook, and the world swung wildly.

  Shadow tendrils all along the deck grew with a terrifying speed, dark vines eating the wood. My coal boys were running everywhere trying to shift anchors, to release the weights. A tendril caught one and tore it off the deck’s bare, splintered stern edge and brought him plummeting down to the ground. I reached for it—I’m not sure why, to grab it away, to stop it somehow—and there was a sear of pain in my finger like a sharp knife-cut. Blood spattered the deck. I backed away as the shadows advanced, clutching my hand to my chest, leaving a trail of blood. A stream of shadow took in the blood. The bright specks swirled up into the darkness. There was a face. A face, forming in the shadow.

  “No.” Eap’s voice, soft but resonant enough to make my marrow buzz, called out. And suddenly, the world was silent. Still.

  I thought my heart slowed way down, and my breathing, too. Eap stood, facing the cloud, his dark curls torn by the wind but waving in slow motion.

  He raised his hand. He groaned, and blood spattered to the ground on the deck in front of him. He was holding something. Blood was dripping from it, between his fingers, dripping onto the deck. He grunted and hurled it—a round, pale object—into the air.

  As the object dropped off the back of the ship, then down toward the forest floor, the darkness coiled and converged on it like a cyclone.