Firebreak, page 14
Professor Kamaka was her co-pilot. She hadn’t learned the chants, yet so he spoke them for her, one palm flush to the door, fingers splayed, as he sang them under his breath. The syllables twisted and pulled, their meaning too layered for the island’s translation-enchantment to turn them into English, but Amy knew a sea-shanty when she heard one. She felt the lift of the boat, the turn of the tide with the lilt of his voice, the creak of old rope and the snap of billowing canvas sails. The classroom windows were all closed, but she still smelled salt on the air. A gust of cold autumn wind ruffled her hair and her collar.
She harnessed her self-discipline, using the focus techniques she’d been taught to narrow the world. She stood in a tunnel with the lecture hall door at the end and nothing else, nothing but the shanty in her ears and the cards in her hand. They pulsed with purpose, throbbing, leaving an itch in her bones that jolted all the way down to her toes.
She waited for her cue. Kamaka’s chant spun a cat’s cradle of ocean-blue string that glowed in her second sight. She watched it tighten, stretch, reach the breaking point — and Amy spat a single word of magic as she slapped the three cards in her hand against the door.
The blurry lights on the other side of the pebbled glass spun away. Darkness flooded in behind them.
“Go ahead.” Kamaka breathed hard, spent from the effort, but he grinned. “Open it.”
The brass doorknob was cold against her palm. She turned it, pushed the door wide, and stepped across the threshold.
Her ears popped, the sudden change in pressure making her dizzy. Light snow crunched under her shoe. Amy’s breath left curlicues of vapor in the air that drifted away as her mouth hung wide.
She stood in a redwood forest in the dead of winter. Trees towered around her, stretching as far as the eye could see, as she slowly turned in place. The door was behind her. Just a door, in a frame attached to nothing, the classroom on the other side.
It was night here, silent, and fluffy flakes drifted down from a sky filled with strange constellations. They dotted her upturned face and melted against her skin.
On the horizon, an aurora danced for her. It shifted like the facets of a jewel, painting the sky in hues of green and violet, vast and warm in the frozen dark. Amy had only ever seen one on television before.
That hadn’t been real. This was real. This was true.
A distant hammering sound turned her head. Not from the woods. It was muffled, strangely sideways, like two planes struggling to intersect.
“C’mon back,” Kamaka said, holding the door on the other side. “Don’t worry, you’ll see it again. I know that first-time feeling.”
Reluctantly, as the hammering grew louder, she returned to the Academy, to the island, to the world she’d started thinking of as home. Once she crossed the threshold, Kamaka shut the door behind her. Instantly, the lights spun back behind the pebbled glass and an angry silhouette loomed, fist banging on the frame.
Kamaka opened the door again. No forest world on the other side — just a dusty hallway and a very irritated-looking headmistress.
“What did we do?” Chen Lan demanded.
Kamaka sighed. “Opened a Door.”
“And what did we not do first?”
He sighed again, more theatrically this time. “File a travel plan with the front office and ask for permission.”
She glared and flapped her open hands at him.
“It’s my fault,” Amy said.
“Miss Nettle,” the headmistress said, “you get into quite enough trouble on your own without borrowing any of his.”
She turned and floated off in a huff, her final muttered words hanging in the hallway behind her.
“Surrounded by children, I swear.”
Kamaka shut the door and gave Amy a sheepish smile.
“It’s not that I deliberately don’t fill out paperwork ‘cause I want to cause trouble or anything like that,” he confided, “it’s just that…I don’t like doing it. Anyway, I’d say that was a pretty solid first session. Pack up and we’ll do it again in a couple of days. I’m gonna send you back to the dorms with some light reading. The sooner you memorize the chants and evocations, the sooner you can start opening Doors all by yourself.”
“After I file the paperwork,” Amy said.
“Definitely after.”
As she gathered up her notebook and pens, something occurred to her.
“Hey, Professor? Do you know anything about the coastal caves on the west side of the island?”
He glanced up and to one side, searching his memory. “Eh, vaguely? We argued about checking ‘em out, a long time ago, but the smart people in the room — myself included, naturally — won. There’s signs of a mermaid breeding pool in there, and nobody’s crazy enough to go looking for that kind of trouble.”
“Theoretically, though, you could get in there at low tide, right?”
“Theoretically, you could do a whole lot of things that should never happen, and go anywhere near that water is right near the top of the list.” Kamaka eyed her, curious now. “Where’s this coming from?”
“I read about it in a survey report, in the library,” Amy said. “I mean, desperate people do crazy things sometimes. Do we know that Elmer and Shaddock aren’t holing up in there?”
“Without turning into mermaid chow? Doubtful. Besides, remember when they tested our picket line?”
Amy’s head bobbed.
“I think they’re on the north face of the island, and here’s why. We already cleared out those old sub pens to the south, so that’s been checked off the list. Meanwhile, they hit us from the west and the east, at the same time,” the professor said. “If they were hiding in those caves over by Gadfly Beach, someone would have had to tromp inland and go all the way to the far edges of the island, around and back again, circling the pickets the entire way. That’s a heck of a hike.”
Not too much work for a dry run, if there’s a bigger plan in motion, Amy thought.
Not if they thought they’d get something they could use out of it.
***
“So we decided maybe we were just…too close for the Serpent Rhythm to work.”
Amy felt like a traitor, seeking support from outside the castaways. But she needed to talk about herself and Vail — nothing bad, just honest — and anything she said to the others had a good chance of shooting straight back to Vail’s ears. She was on thin ice as it was. She needed an outside opinion.
Kinzie walked at her side. The elder Coin pushed her lime-green Lennon glasses up her nose with the tip of her middle finger.
“Too close? You know that’s not a thing, right?”
“Yeah,” Amy sighed. “I know.”
A brisk wind rolled across the quad, ruffling the wild grass. They were walking the back paths behind the school gymnasium. Some older students were training in the fighting ring, and a sweaty pack of third-years huffed as they jogged along the curling, overgrown trail. Amy and Kinzie stepped aside to let them pass.
“Makes me wonder what Professor Kamaka’s going to do to us this year, seeing as he can’t set up his obstacle course down on the beach,” Amy said.
“Probably make us rappel off the Academy roof.”
Amy started to chuckle — then stopped. Her smile faded.
“You’re serious,” Amy said.
“What? Rappelling is fun.”
“I’m afraid of heights.”
“Heights can’t kill you,” Kinzie said. “It’s sudden contact with the ground at high velocity that kills you. Anyway, you’re changing the subject.”
They strolled in silence for a bit. Kinzie gave her the space to find her words.
“I’m doing everything wrong,” Amy said.
There was more, unspoken. Kinzie held her silence.
“I’m doing everything wrong and I have no idea why. Like I’m throwing rakes out in front of myself, then stepping on them. I keep thinking about…”
Amy stopped. She swept one hand out ahead of them, gesturing at the far horizon, the untamed wilds beyond the Academy walls.
“…them. They’re out there, trying to get in, and everybody’s on edge. But the stuff that’s going wrong in my life right now…as much as I’d love to, as easy as it would make things, I can’t blame Mr. Shaddock and the Jangly-Man for any of it. There’s only one villain in this story. Me. I’m the bad guy.”
Kinzie gave her a sidelong glance. “Do you think you’re a villain?”
“I think I’m a dumbass,” Amy said. “And I don’t know why. Vail is amazing. She’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”
“Better than getting to attend magic school?”
Kinzie raised one eyebrow behind her tinted glasses. She curled her hand. A tiny flicker of lightning danced across her palm before winking out. Amy thought for a second.
“Better than that. She’s…she’s cool, and she’s tough, and she’s so much smarter than she thinks she is, and she cares, she cares so deeply, all the time—”
“Are you in love with her?” Kinzie asked.
Amy froze mid-word. She blinked. When she spoke again, her voice was softer.
“I love her so much it scares me,” she said.
“I have to ask.” Kinzie put one hand on Amy’s shoulder while they walked. “Is this your first time?”
Amy’s cheeks turned pink. “You mean, am I a, um…”
“Relationship.” The older Coin laughed. “Is Vail your first ‘special friend’?”
“Yeah,” Amy admitted. “I’m kind of a late bloomer. In a lot of ways.”
“Nah, that’s entirely subjective and cultural. You’ll see once you get out more. On Emile’s world, people don’t date until they’re twenty-five.”
Amy gaped. “What do they do until then?”
“They take cold showers and write a lot of bad poetry. So what I’m hearing is, you don’t know what you’re doing because you’ve never established any kind of a benchmark for what a good, healthy relationship actually looks like. I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that your parents aren’t together anymore.”
Amy’s childhood memories were like a box of old photographs, and her mother had been gone for so long that her face had started to fade in every image. Amy wasn’t sure if she actually remembered her mother’s voice, or if she’d invented one to fill the gaps. Most of her memories as a little girl, when her mom and dad were still together, involved shouting or crying or both.
“Mom left,” she said, summing up her childhood in two little words that weren’t anywhere near up to the task.
And she didn’t take me with her.
“Hey.”
Kinzie stopped her. They turned to face each other.
“Have you ever seen a demon?” Kinzie asked.
Amy blinked. “Those are real?”
Kinzie wriggled her hand from side to side. “Eh. Lots of things on different worlds that like to call themselves demons, at least. Don’t read any theology into it. Small monsters just like to latch onto big, scary words because if they can make you believe that they’re big and scary too, then half their job is already done. But you know the old saying, right? Naming a demon gives you power over it.”
Kinzie stepped closer. The lanky girl was a good head taller than Amy, and she gazed down with…not pity, Amy thought. Just confidence.
“You have a demon on you, Amy. You know it. So name it, and take its power away.”
Amy knew. She supposed she always had. Small wonder. Vail wasn’t just her first girlfriend, she was the only intimate friend Amy had ever known. She thought about her childhood, the role models she’d grown up with in a broken town filled with broken people. At home, love was a thin sheen of heartless ice over a pot of boiling water, threatening to crack and erupt at any moment. Love was tears behind a closed bedroom door.
Love was an open-handed slap, if he was in a good enough mood, instead of a closed fist.
“I’m afraid—” Amy started to say. Her voice cracked. She had to take a second and breathe. Kinzie waited.
“I’m afraid that I’m going to hurt her. And that’s the last thing I ever want to do. So I think maybe…maybe I’m sabotaging myself. Like some part of me is trying to ruin things on purpose before I can ruin them by accident.”
“There you go.”
“It’s about trust,” Amy said. “I don’t mean trusting her. Trusting her is easy. It’s me. I’m the problem, because I’m making myself the problem. I just have to…trust myself enough to stop.”
“There you go. Now get practical: how are you going to make that happen?”
“Well, I can start by making sure I’m there for her when she needs me, which—” Amy froze, catching the dip of the sun in the afternoon sky. “Oh no.”
“Prior appointment?”
Amy backpedaled, plotting the quickest way to the dorms from here.
“I promised I’d meet with my roomies to work on our big semester-long project. Uh, thanks, Kinzie. I gotta run. Literally.”
Kinzie waved a half-hearted gesture of benediction, a flip of two fingers that turned into a victory sign.
“Go and be healed,” she laughed, as Amy sprinted across the quad.
Chapter twenty
In a world of inhuman monsters and dark occult secrets, a world of grotesqueries and nightmares, three words had the unmatched power to fill even the bravest hearts with dread.
Some assembly required.
Or in the case of the Tillinghast Resonator, all assembly required. The castaways gathered in the girls’ dorm, where they sat around a jumbled pile of parts from two burlap sacks while Colin struggled to take inventory. There were rods and rivets and flanges and hinged iron boxes clearly meant to hold…something, and that wasn’t even getting into the old TV-style vacuum tubes, electronic capacitors, and loose switches that ended in dangling copper wire.
“One complete interdimensional radio,” Dalton said. “Just add logic and sanity.”
Colin flipped a fold-out sheet of directions upside-down, shook the page, then turned it again. “Logic and sanity not included. Okay, there’s supposed to be a bunch of foot-long steel struts, nine total. The diagram makes them look like they’ve got little holes all along their length for screws.”
Amy spotted one in the jumble of parts and reached for it. Vail did the same. Their hands met in the middle and they both paused, looking up, meeting each other’s eyes.
Vail smiled first.
Amy squeezed her hand before rummaging for another strut, wearing her own tiny smile like a badge of honor. Maybe things are going to be all right, she thought.
As Olivia leaned over and tugged a third strut from the bottom of the pile, a silver talisman slithered free from under her blouse, dangling on a cheap, thin chain. She quickly tugged it back into hiding, but not before Bahati got a look at it.
“No,” Bahati said. “Uh-uh. What is that?”
“What’s what?” Colin asked, looking up from the inventory list.
“It’s not a big deal,” Olivia said, ducking her head.
“Oh, I think it is.” Bahati looked to the others. “She’s still wearing that stupid ‘magic concentration amulet’ she got from Elmer at the Night Market.”
“Olivia,” Amy said, gently, “you know it doesn’t actually do anything, right? Everything he gave out that night was either cursed or fake.”
Bahati crossed her arms, glaring at Olivia. “I’m not even concerned about that part. More wondering why she’s wearing a present from a man who tried to kill us all. Girl, you’ve got a four-inch scar on your arm from where he stabbed you with that shard of glass. If he’d driven it in any deeper, you might not even be here right now.”
“I know,” Olivia said, sheepish. “I just…don’t laugh at me.”
“Believe me, I’m not laughing,” Bahati said.
“It just makes me feel like…”
Olivia touched her breastbone, feeling the worthless trinket under her blouse.
“…it reminds me that we won. So when I get scared, I just touch it, and I remember: we won once, and we can do it again.”
The dorm fell silent. Bahati nodded slowly, taking that in.
“Okay,” she said. “Still weird, but I respect it. Colin, what’s next on the list?”
“Forty-eight quarter-inch flathead screws,” he said.
When all was said and done, they had exactly forty-one.
“This is like assembling IKEA furniture,” Amy muttered. Catching herself, she added, “On my world, IKEA is a big furniture store—”
“We have those,” Colin said.
Vail tilted her head. “So do we.”
Uncertain glances circled the mountain of loose parts.
“Does anyone else find that—” Amy started to say.
“Concerning,” Bahati said.
“Super weird,” Vail said at the same time. “We should probably bring it up to the faculty and make sure somebody’s looking into this IKEA thing.”
***
An hour later the mountain of parts had become an encampment of discrete piles scattered across the dormitory floor. Amy thought of doing jigsaw puzzles as a child — she’d always started by separating the edge pieces from the middles, piece by tiny piece. Of course, once you did that, it was just the beginning of the challenge.
It would help if they had anywhere near all the parts they needed. Colin’s inventory sheet was a mess of red pen, erroneous numbers scratched out and the right ones scribbled in.
“There’s ten times more cameras on the streets than there are employees in the ISB,” Dalton was saying as he threaded a screw into the tip of a long steel rod, “but that works in their favor, weirdly enough. You never know if anyone’s watching any given camera or not, but you know what’s at stake if you step out of line, so people generally act like they’re being watched every minute of the day.”
“I’d go crazy,” Vail said.
“Some people do. But remember, for most folks on my world, it’s just…the way things have always been. It’s not weird if that’s how you grew up and you never knew anything different. At the end of a long day at the factory, your average working Joe isn’t in any mood to fight the power. He just wants to kick back with a Triumph beer and watch Sexy Nurses in Danger.”
