Fire in the Wall

by S G Dunster

  I wondered. There wasn’t any sign on her face, not anything that might tell me what had gone down in the chokey.

  She frowned at me, blinked. That was all. Then she turned back to the view.

  I cleared my throat. “How’s Hans?” I asked, venturing in.

  “Hans,” Lil said. “I don’t know. Haven’t checked.”

  “Okay.”

  “So, are we going into the city today, to start firming?” Lil asked, clearly trying to change the subject.

  “Lil.”

  “Shut up,” she snapped, giving me the side of her face, one glaring eye. “There’s nothing we can do about him, so.” Her hand was in her overall pocket. She was holding Satie. Clutching her, it looked like.

  “We aren’t going to let Hans stay out of it,” Eap said. “Not by any means. He needs to own up to this.”

  “You said he was useless.”

  “He’s frightened,” Eap replied. “You don’t know what that’s like, Lil.”

  Lil met his eyes. “He should come with us today. He can’t just sit there in a cell, can he? We could use his help, couldn’t we?”

  Eap sighed, shrugging slightly. “Go try.”

  She ran to the prow.

  “Wait,” I said, running after her, catching the hatch before it fell. “Lil, hang on!” Lil had already shimmied down the ladder and landed in the hold. I climbed down as fast as I could and ran after her.

  I did not want her alone with Hans.

  I’d been too tired to protest before, but I had to think she was not safe with him. And she didn’t realize it. That was the problem. Lil was so sure she was right about everything, and she’d followed Hans down here to the Caldera. Brought me with her. And she still hadn’t realized what she’d done. Hadn’t realized what it meant. That we were probably stuck here. That this . . . world, delusion, whatever it was . . . would never end.

  Lil banged on the door. “Hans.”

  There wasn’t any answer. She peered at it, and touched the slick surface. Nothing changed. She couldn’t tell it open.

  I think it was because I wanted the door to be shut tight, to be locked. And I’d made the door, so. We were fighting, her and I. And I was winning. My desire to keep her safe was winning over her desire to see Hans. I don’t know exactly what it meant, but I was glad.

  “Hans,” she repeated.

  Silence.

  She turned to me. “Do you have the key?”

  I shrugged. “He can open it if he wants to.”

  She scowled and pounded again. “Hans,” she shouted, standing on her tiptoes, trying to see into the barred opening. “Open the door. Please!”

  “Leave me alone.” It was a rasp, not a voice. A wheeze.

  “We’re going to make firmament, Hans.” Lil was straining, trying to talk through the opening. “Come with us. We’ll make a new home for you. You’ll be— “

  “I said leave me alone!” Hans thundered. “Leave me here. It’s where I belong. Leave me to rot. I don’t want firmament. I only want death. A true death; not the lingering half-existence of blykhood. Because, count my words, that’s what we are sailing into.”

  Lil was quiet. Several expressions flickered across her face—confusion, disbelief. Then anger. “Why are you doing this?” she said flatly. “You can fight.”

  “Certainly I can. But I do not desire to fight any longer.”

  “You could help us fight. We . . . we need to . . . . I came down here, Hans, because you—”

  “Do not blame me for your foolishness. You came to the Caldera on your own wind. I told you not to come. I begged you not to come. Yet here you are. Another reminder of my selfishness. I’ve paid enough penance for seven lifetimes. Leave me, Lil. I do not wish to see you.”

  And with that, the opening in the door shrunk, the bars melted away, and it was a shiny metal surface.

  Lil pounded again. Tried to dig her fingernails into the door crack. Kicked it twice. Pummeled it with her fists. And sank to the ground, holding her head.

  I couldn’t stand it.

  I wanted to wring his wrinkled, bony neck.

  I entertained the thought of blasting the door open with plastic explosives—something Hans couldn’t have ever heard of—or sending a hundred tiny robot spiders skittering under the door to skin him. Or heating up the walls so he cooked like it was an oven.

  I touched the steely metal surface he’d blocked us with, dug in with my fingertips. It got hot and they sunk in, burning.

  No. He wasn’t worth it.

  I grabbed Lil by the shoulder. Hauled her up. “Lil,” I said. “Come on.”

  She didn’t resist me. That was the most troubling thing. She allowed me to pull her up the ladder, began climbing herself when we were halfway up. When we got back on deck she just stood, arms folded tightly over her chest, staring at nothing.

  “He won’t come, eh?” Eap was waiting for us. The wry expression he wore made me want to punch him, too. I considered it, then decided I’d feel guilty punching a one-eyed man. Plus, he might set a whole flock of ravens on me, or a spiteful cat.

  “He wants to die,” Lil stated, like she was talking about the weather.

  “Of course he does. The ultimate in cowardly acts. Shut yourself away. Shut the world out. Then leave it behind. Where he thinks he’ll go after this, how he thinks his problems will be any less if he simply waits for them,” he sighed. “Death is not possible in the Caldera.”

  “Shut up,” Lil growled, her face suddenly fierce.

  His eyebrows arched, mouth pursed. His eyes lost their malicious gleam. “The two of you don’t understand,” he said. “Hans is broken. We all need to forgive him and let him choose. It’s not for us to say whether he fades in misery.”

  “Like Jenny,” I murmured. Eap gave me a curt nod.

  “Okay,” I said, after a long silence. “Why have you changed your mind all of a sudden? You’ve said all along you’re not letting him get away with being a coward. Staying away.”

  “I hurl insults at him because that used to rouse him,” Eap said. “It used to bring the blood back to his skin. But now,” he shook his head. “He’s had his heart taken. Ripped from his bosom. Then tortured in front of him. I . . . know this pain.”

  “He’s lost his heart,” Lil said blandly. “Hearts are so stupid.” She banged her closed fist on the rail. Her eyes widened, and she looked up at me.

  “What, hurt yourself?” I asked.

  “Hearts,” she said, ignoring my jibe. “That’s what we’ll do.”

  “What?”

  “It’s so much like one of his stories.” The bleakness was fading from her face, replaced by determination, a squint of speculation. “A missing heart. He’ll understand that.”

  “The tin solider,” Eap murmured. “It might do something.”

  Lil was nodding ferociously now, pacing along the deck like a tiger. “We’ll go and get something to make him better. To give him back his . . . himself. Courage. Will. Desire to live. If we tell it, its’ real, right?” She turned to Eap, her face flushed, eyes anxious. “Can we make that a firmament, too? A medicine to help Hans with his heart? At the same time as we make a place firmament?”

  His eyes softened. “We can certainly try,” he said. A corner of his mouth curled. “You won’t allow us not to.”

  She didn’t smile at his words. Just sank, cross-legged, to the deck. I imagined I could see gears shifting and knitting in her brain. “A potion,” she finally said. “That’s the sort of thing the Grey Man would tell. Something to drink, to bring back health.”

  “Witches.” Eap’s brows lowered and a smile snaked across his face.

  “You and your witches,” I said.

  “If we’re going to get a spell,” Lil continued, ignoring me, “we’ll have to have something to trade. Most witches in stories don’t work for free.” She paused. “But we don’t want to have to give them anything, like, gross. Or that we can’t lose.”

  “Like an eye,” I said.


  Eap shrugged. “We’re born with two. Rather redundant. Nevertheless, I agree. We need something in trade, if our potion is to be worth anything. A powerful object. Something dark, ancient, mystical. Something we are not happy to give up.”

  Lil turned around, paused for a moment, and turned back, holding something in her hands. She held it up for us to see. It was a medallion, gold, about the size of her palm. A coiled snake—a python.

  I took it, turning it so I could see it better. Coiled around and around, its fanged mouth spread wide, with the small tail-tip raised just there, as if the snake were about to bite it. It had wings. That was the oddity. With Lil, there is always an oddity.

  This snake’s wings emerged on either side of its thick, sinuous body. One arced up to complete the long outer curve, and the inner wing swirled through the center to make the last of the spiral there. The eyes were glittering, milk-white chips of stone. Moonstones, probably.

  “There should be some inscription,” I said. “It’s totally weird—in a good way—but still maybe a little too plain?”

  Lil held it up to the light, turning it, and a line of roughly-cut letters marched along the outer wing: Commotio cordis.

  “Death of the heart,” Eap said approvingly. “Vicious. Shall we say that whomever places this pendant over their heart will stop its beats instantly?”

  “Why not,” I sighed.

  Lil touched it again. The edge weathered a bit, worn smooth in spots, and the whole thing darkened like it was tarnished with age.

  “Perfect.” She nearly stuffed it in her front pocket—both Eap and I reached to stop her—then rolled her eyes and transferred it to a side pocket instead.

  “The witches,” Eap said, dark eyes sparking, leaning his chin on his fist, elbow propped on the rail, “live in an old, broken-down dome full of atrocities.” He turned to me. “What sort of atrocities, Logan?”

  I was taken completely by surprise. “I—uh . . . spiders? Snakes?”

  “Bah,” Eap turned to Lil.

  “Wraiths,” Lil gave me a superior look.

  “Wraiths,” Eap repeated. “Meaning what? A picture of one shortly dead? Ghosts?”

  “No. These wraiths are made by the witches. They serve the witches—they used to be people, but they’ve been twisted. Mangled. Remade into monsters.”

  “Sounds familiar,” Eap said dryly.

  “You said to use things that we’ll remember,” Lil pointed out. “The things we’re most worried about right now seem likely.”

  Eap grinned terribly at this and chuckled low in his throat. “Perfect. That will do quite well.” He grabbed me suddenly by the collar and brought my face close to his. His skin gleamed with a light sheen of sweat, and I saw my own drawn features reflected in the deepness of his pupil. “Logan,” he breathed, singeing the hairs on my face with a burn of bacteria and alcohol, “what are you most worried about? What shames you most?”

  My heart was beating rapidly, unsteadily. Before I could stop myself, things came into my head. Awful things.

  People I loved hurt, dying. Every innocent creature I’d know in my life, torn by me. Pets. Children. My mother, hurt. My father and his chair. His chair. The world rising up in one great warp and enveloping me with choking sea, smothering earth. Trapped. Being trapped.

  A great rift opened in the sky, pouring out dark things—shapes I thought I recognized, things I did not want to look at. They gusted over me, dim and terrifying, and swirled around a globe—dark, cracked, with a sheen of smoke damage creeping up its curved surface.

  “Excellent,” Eap whispered, tickling the hair on my cheek again.

  Lil was ready when he grabbed for her. She stepped back and regarded him coolly. She flicked her gaze to the cut in the sky.

  “It must be everything,” Eap told her. “You must empty your mind of the very dregs it carries. Things you think about when you’re not thinking. Burdens you carry around you like those wraiths you were speaking of. Fears, Lil. Losses. The worst you can offer.”

  Lil nodded, and more shapes crawled out. I caught a glimpse of claws and pitted eyes flashing past us.

  The dark globe was covered now with vines. Plants dangled down from the plinth it rested on, climbing up its sides, angling toward the top where, instead of a spire, a strange bulge of metal protruded, warped as if it had been burned.

  “That,” Eap said, “will be where our witches rule. At the top, of course. And we, children, must make our way through it, clear from the bottom to the top, leaving no dark thing unexamined, no terror unexplored. This will make anything firm. We will want to look away, but will be unable. The Grimms know well the power of fear in tellings. The power of shame. Of seduction.” He shifted his gaze, staring at the crack, and raised both hands above his head.

  I felt it before anything came. It was like the whole world trembled, trying to give birth to something huge and awful, and a dark tide emerged . . . countless twisted things, clawing their way across the sky toward our dome. There was a fog of dread as they passed. It paralyzed me. Eap’s fears. I didn’t want to know what they were. I definitely didn’t want to go anywhere close to them.

  “I don’t want to go over there.” I stared at the distant sky-globe, a black eye, gazing. A great raven’s eye, pupil-less, staring at us with malevolence.

  “Nor do I,” a voice behind me agreed.

  I turned.

  Golden skin, with hair like black silk, eyes brown and liquid. The ruched, red gown falling over her curved arms, gathering at her small waist. Spangled netted hose hugging the slim lines of her legs, running to high-button boots. The tip of an iron dagger tucked behind her ear, holding up the heavy weight of her hair.

  “Selah,” I said weakly.

  Arapahoe stood beside her, long dark braid gleaming over his shoulder. I nodded at him, unable to make my voice work.

  “Fear,” Eap breathed, close behind me, “and shame.”

  “Great,” I muttered. Selah tilted a brow.

  “The more, the merrier,” Lil’s tone said just the opposite. She gave Selah a look; I’d almost call it catty if I didn’t know better. “Gear up. Pantaloons and petticoats aren’t going to be very useful in there.” She turned back to the rail, and we all gazed at the dark orb, growing slowly larger as our ship drifted toward it.

  Chapter 21

  The sun gleamed off the dome’s glass, but it was dark inside because of the mass of things growing, grasping out toward the glass, looking for light, and because the whole thing was singed with smoke.

  Mr. Smiley took us in—all five of us—Me, Lil. Eap, Arapahoe, and Selah. No, seven, counting Monty and Satie. The moth dropped us on top of one of the glassed-in walkways that spiraled away from the dome. It, too, was filled with vines, trees, and was smoky on the outside. We stood on top of it, hugging the slight curve with our feet, steadying ourselves against the vast slope of the dome. The glass was cool to the touch. Cool and slimy with condensation. It smelled like intense mildew and the compost pile my grandmother kept next to her backyard garden—beyond rotting; rich and dirty.

  Ravens shrieked, a whole flock of them rising from the tangle as we walked around touching spots on the glass, trying to find a likely place to break in. Mr. Smiley, hovering above us, dove toward them.

  “They’re not gnats,” Lil muttered to herself, watching her pet make a ferocious meal of the cawing, wheeling birds; wings buzzing, abdomen tensing as he took dives, feathers and dark blood dripping from his feathery jaws.

  “Moths aren’t carnivorous, either,” I said.

  She gave me a brow-arch. “What is normal here, Logan?”

  Arapahoe rasped at this. I looked over my shoulder and was surprised to see he was laughing.

  “Ha,” I offered weakly, and turned my attention back to the walkway where it touched the great globe we were trying to enter.

  The vines had worked their way out of the joint where globe and walkway met, but it wasn’t enough space for any of us to climb thr
ough. I touched it, thinking of widening it just further so we could slip in.

  It wouldn’t budge. I tried again, and it shifted slightly, the metal supports groaning like a dying person.

  “Stop!” Eap shouted. He trotted along the walkway nimbly, apparently not bothered at all about the height.

  “What?” I called back to him.

  “You mustn’t change it. We must work with it as if it is solid. Changing things,” he gestured to the dome, “will make it less real for all of us.”

  “We can’t get in,” I said dryly.

  “Yes, Logan. How would we get in, if we couldn’t change it?” Lil spoke slowly as if I were a kindergartner learning to read.

  I glared at her. “We didn’t bring any glass cutters with us.”

  Eap shrugged. “This is the Caldera. Make one.”

  “But you said— “

  “Don’t change the dome. That doesn’t mean we can’t use what’s at hand: our tellings. Our imagination. Tools,” he added, seeing that I was still confused. “We can make tools. That is absolutely allowed.”

  “Allowed,” I repeated. “Rules now, huh?”

  “A barrier is all rules. Categorizations. Divisions.”

  I looked at Lil. “You hate rules.”

  She shrugged. “Sometimes they’re useful. You can’t draw a moth,” she gestured with her hand and Mr. Smiley came humming back, slathered with drool and black feathers, hovering over all of us like a great, furry helicopter, “without following the rules of moth-ness. Or else it isn’t recognizably a moth. Even if it likes eating ravens, you can see it’s a moth.” She paused, watching my face. “Right?”

  “Shut up, Lil. I’m not a moron.”

  “Hm.”

  Giving her another dose of glare, I conceptualized a glass cutter. A blade that was hard. Harder than glass. What cuts glass?

  Diamond. A diamond blade.

  I pictured my mother’s tiny diamond, glittering on her third finger. Hard, cold, faceted. A blade of it, with a superheated tip to melt the glass.