When the man reached their table, he bowed awkwardly. “Good . . . day,” he said very slowly, taking time to carefully pronounce each word. “I . . . welcome . . . you . . . to . . . our . . . city.”
He bowed again, then turned to walk away. As he took his first step, he reached into his pocket, pulled out a slip of paper, and let it fall to the floor. It was such an obvious act that none of them called it to the man’s attention. He kept moving, continuing in his halting gait until he’d left the restaurant, never once turning around to look back.
Paul practically jumped onto the floor to pick up the paper, then unfolded it on the table. Tick and Sofia scooted their chairs around to see the message:
DO NOT READ THIS ALOUD!
I’m a friend of Master George.
Meet me in Tick’s room at 9:00.
Don’t say a word to me.
We must communicate in writing.
People are listening.
~
The first thing Sato felt was frigid air, gusting in short bursts of wind that bit through his clothes, pricking his skin like dagger points. Feeling as if he’d just plunged into an icy lake, he gasped for air as he swung off his backpack and searched for the thick down coat within. As he pulled it out and stuffed his arms inside the soft, warm lining, he gaped at the place George had decided to send him.
The highest reaches of an enormous mountain, blanketed in snow.
He stood near the edge of a rocky outcropping which overlooked an infinite expanse of clouds, thin peaks of smaller mountains thrusting through the cottony layer here and there, black stone frosted in white. Above him, the sky was deep and dark and blue, like an ocean hanging impossibly over him. Realizing how high up he was, Sato stumbled backward, falling into the soft snow. The world seemed to sway around him.
He scrambled up and turned his back to the cliff, brushing the snow off before the cold stuff melted and soaked through. To his left, a steep path led up the mountain, the barely visible steps of roughly cut stone glistening with ice. If that was the way he needed to go, it would be a treacherous journey. Other than a sparse bush and a few dead trees, he saw no sign of life anywhere—just endless rock and ice and snow.
Sato took a few steps to the right, hoping to see a more reasonable trail he could follow, but the jutting slice of rock ended in a sheer, knife-edge cliff, as if a recent earthquake had sent a huge chunk of the mountain falling to its splitting, crumpled death far below.
There was only one way to go.
Securing his pack, he started up the ancient stairway. He placed his feet very carefully, bracing them against the small vertical slab of stone marking the next step. Just when he thought he had the hang of it, his left foot slid backward, throwing his whole body forward; his chest slammed into a jutting edge of rock. Holding back a cry of pain, he chastised himself and took more care, leaning forward to grip the stairs above him with his hands, as if he were climbing a ladder.
The wind picked up, throwing spurts of snow into his face like cold, rough sand. The sun, though unhindered by clouds above him, failed to provide even a spark of warmth. He had to stop every few minutes to blow warm air into his cupped hands, rubbing them together to create friction. His ears and face grew numb. He looked up, hoping to see signs of life, a building, anything. Nothing.
He kept going, step by frigid step.
A half-hour went by. Sato started to worry that George had made a serious mistake, sent him to an abandoned nowhere by accident.
“George,” he spoke aloud, though the wind seemed to snap his words out of the air and whisk them away. “If you can hear me through the nanolocator—what’s going on? I’m freezing to death!”
Half-hoping he’d be winked away, Sato kept moving up the stairs.
Forty or fifty steps later, he finally saw the end of the staircase—a place where the stone stopped and all was white, a wall of snow and ice reaching for the sky. His heart sank at the thought that he might’ve reached a dead end.
Legs burning, limbs aching, skin frozen, he reached the uppermost step, which led out onto a small landing that faced a solid wall of dark granite, crystalline icicles hanging from the brief canopy of rock that protected it. In the middle of the wall was an iron door, ridges of rusty bolts lined around its outer edges. On the door was a sign, faded letters barely legible in the awful weather conditions.
Sato took a few steps forward to read the sign, his eyes squinted. They widened when he realized what it said:
End of the Road Insane Asylum
Mountaintop Exit
To Be Used for the Execution
of Inmates Only
Chapter
25
~
Cotton Ears