A Mischief in the Woodwork

CHAPTER 46

Haven

Tanen was never retrieved, that day. He was gone – gone behind that door, wherever it led to, somewhere I was not authorized to follow. It was a hard thing to accept, after dragging him all that way, holding onto him for so long, past fire and avalanche, but there was nothing to be done. Absolutely nothing. My efforts were snuffed in an instant as some higher agenda intervened and took him away.

I went back to Manor Dorn, utterly spent, leaving the city to slide bit by bit into the fiery chasm that had opened up. I was left trembling as surely as the earth behind me from my endeavors. My burnt hand was radiant with agony, hanging limp at my side.

Numbly, I took down the cage that housed Modo, and took him out onto the porch, and opened the cage door for him. He looked at me a moment, cocking his head in thought, and chirped a quizzical chirp. And then he took his cue, and zipped all at once through the cage door, and out into the free air. A small dash of color, elated, gone from us. But him, in a dispersed current of joy. Alive and free to live out his life, as he ought to be able to.

For the second time, I retreated to my pallet during daylight, and lay there, weary and fatigued and absent from my own aching body. I fell into a deep sleep, pulled under and away, where I dreamed once again, at long last, of elephants.

*

They paraded through the city – slowly, this time, single-file and bobbing forward one leisurely, deliberate step at a time. And atop their backs, there were people. Whiteskins, darkskins... I recognized Letta, and Henry, and Dani and Viola, accompanied by their mother, Vandah. Farther up the line there was Lesleah, with Christopher nestled before her – and farther still, me. Leading the pack, winding through the rubble toward a bearing that rang with haunting familiarity. Once before, I had taken the same route, when events had led me to hunt down Bailin on Tanen's behalf, leading me to the great fortress that resonated with my doing.

We were going there, now; all of us. Countless that I couldn't name rode with us, joined from their own pockets of the mischief-stricken city. They were welcomed right along with the rest of us – welcomed on one condition, of course, for it could be no other way.

Together, we rode. United. United under the one thing everyone sought, now.

*

I awoke, and went upstairs. It was time for this to end. That was a surety in my bones – something deeper than the visions that had long sparked at my fingertips.

I stole to the end of the dark hall, and stood facing that closed, locked door. It stared me in the face like so many other times, thick and impenetrable. But something was different, this time. And closer inspection showed what.

Termites. They had eaten at the frame around the edges. They had eaten around the keyhole. A soft, subtle draft seeped through the door there.

The thing was no longer irrevocably sealed.

I raised a fist, gave a sound knock. And the door–

It fell open. There was no shucking of the latch of twisting of the knob; it just fell inward, creaking, and the draft strengthened to a full-body breath of stale air, finally released, wafting past me down the hall. I held my breath, peering into the dim interior. Was there anybody even left?

Vandah, at least, ought still to be there.

As my eyes combed the room, there was a shift in the shadows. I looked back, and found a face peering back at me, two glinting eyes framed by a dark face – Vandah, huddled at the edges of the room, and then another, smaller face unfolding itself from its resting place against her chest, peering out at me likewise. Christopher. He was snuggled in with her as fondly as if she were his own mother, and, in the wake of his parents disappearing into the woodwork, I imagined the care that Vandah was there to offer had only encouraged and reinforced that kind of a bond to develop between them. She was indeed the motherly figure of the room.

No oath-crying Felicity came hurtling at the door, and so I treaded in. Another stirring in the shadows unfolded itself into a girl I recognized as Lesleah – alive and well, it seemed, following her brush with the disease.

The rest of the room was still. It appeared empty, until my eyes landed on a twist of the floor that I realized was actually a form. Felicity's fair hair, tousled and filthy, spilled away from the head of the body.

"Avante?" came Vandah's tentative murmur from the shadows. It had been so long since I'd heard her voice; I could not help the elated smile that spread over my face as I turned back to those still showing signs of life in that prison of a master bedroom. It was a wonder the Serbaen recognized me, after all these years, but then – who else would I be? It wasn't as if the Dorns had been in the market for more slaves since holing themselves up in this room.

"Vandah," I returned the greeting fondly, confirming she'd gotten it right. "You're alright."

"Just us," Vandah said, indicating the three of them. "Felicity caught what Lesleah had. She left us last night."

My eyes took in the still form of the woman once more, recalling all of her madwoman antics. Such a fate could only be for the best.

"We couldn't get the door open," Vandah continued. "And none of us had the strength to pound on the walls. What little we could muster just seemed to get swallowed into the walls themselves."

Thank goodness the termites had come for Felicity, and eaten away at the sealant on that door. They were just a little late in coming, with the Ambassador elsewhere, now. What did the little devils do, after the fact of death? Carry the soul of a person out on their flurry of wings? I wondered.

"You can come out now," I said. How long had they been waiting for just such a declaration of deliverance? It did not ring with any epic conviction, spoken from my mouth, but it was exactly what they had been waiting to hear. They pulled themselves from their huddled vigil and trailed shakily out of the shadows, frail and filthy and haunted – but alive. Alive and en route to see the light of day, once again.

"Victoria–" Lesleah piped up, as she drew even with me on her way out, looking to me for news.

"She's fine," I smiled – hoping it was not weakly. For, fine though she may be, it was not without sacrifice; sacrifice that was still too fresh in my mind to shrug off.

Vandah ushered Christopher out of the room, and Lesleah followed. I drew up the rear as we all paraded downstairs, together again for the first time in years.

Letta, stirring the fire in the front room, drew herself up from the hearth in astonishment when she saw us, soot staining the knees of her skirt. The first thing that came to her, when it came, was;

"Dani! Viola!"

They plodded in from the kitchen, wondering what the older Serbaen wanted. It took a moment to register, and when it did – it was hard to say what passed over their faces. They had not seen their mother in as many years as I hadn't, and they had been much younger, only a scant few memories to remember her by. But Letta had taken special care to keep the memory of Vandah alive for them in whatever way she could, telling them stories of the woman, making sure they knew where their mother was, and that she could come back to them, one day. So there was recognition there, along with the uncertainty, the alienation. And something in them responded, urging them forward after the first few moments of hesitation. Some innate we-are-children-of-this-woman instinct kicked in, and they went to her in spite of the alienation that existed between them.

A lump built in my throat, seeing it, and I stood on the bottom step and watched as Vandah went to her knees as they reached her, and drew them to her where any hesitation might have seen them fall short of such an embrace. Lesleah drew Christopher to her where Vandah had momentarily broken from him, rubbing his back as the reunion took place.

We were joined by the others, presently, hearing the ruckus – all except Dashsund, who had to be called in from the fields. There was a similar reunion between Victoria and Lesleah, and I let the scene of elation play out before I dropped the other momentous article that I had come down the stairs with.

"If there is anything you're attached to, and can carry easily, pack it," I said to the room in general, and everyone turned quizzically to me. Only once all eyes were on me did I reveal the end game: "We're leaving."

"What do you mean by 'leaving', minda?" Letta asked quietly, voicing what we both knew everyone was thinking.

"We're going somewhere safe," I said. "With all but the last traces of the weedflowers trampled by the rain... We can't stay here. But there's somewhere else we can go."

Since I had never revealed the extent of what I'd done and seen and been through in the city, they all looked on with the inevitable amount of doubt. But, "Trust me," I said, and it seemed as though they did, or figured they could – or should.

We packed up camp in Manor Dorn that day, and for the first time I led them all down the road, and into the city, and over the rubble. I was careful to avoid the proximity of the Ravine, whose rent-open vibrations could be felt throughout the city, and blazed a new trail toward that fortress in the far east, whose location I could feel in my very bones.

I had had Letta mix up some of her trade-secret ink at last, and taken up the quill I had found in the city, and left a note at the door of Manor Dorn for Johnny. He may very well witness our procession through the city anyway – or one of his newsboys would – but I wanted him to read for himself the significance of this journey, to be privy to where we had gone, and why. And to spread the word, as was his specialty.

True to form, the papers erupted with it, after that. The story of the group that hailed from Manor Dorn, journeying through the city to a new and enduring fortress in the east – a fortress whose master offered asylum to those willing to cohabitate, while the city went wild and revamped itself. And by 'cohabitating', of course, I meant with the Serbaens, for they were a large part of that first group that I took there, and any other Serbaens who sought asylum were welcome. It was not a condition meant to force anyone's hand, in the matter of what they felt or believed, taunting them with the option of asylum and refusing if they could not comply to the terms, simply because I had authority in the place and the means to force them – it was simply a necessity. If they sought haven, there, they would have to cohabitate. There was no other way. It would not be a haven to anyone, if we could not even coexist beneath the same roof.

I know that the papers erupted with the story because I received a copy myself – delivered to the fortress door a scant few days after we arrived. Which meant Johnny – or whichever one it had been – had followed us there; proven when, upon finishing the article, I was advised in a newsboy's own words to 'follow the path of dominoes through the city', where finding one's way to the fortress was concerned. Dominoes I had not strewn. Either the city had conjured them itself, and the newsboy had taken note of the trail, or he had scattered them himself, in our wake.

And it was a good thing – I had not know how to advise anyone of the path myself. I knew it by instinct. I had left it up to fate – or the gods – to guide them, same as one of those two forces seemed to go about guiding everything, with or without my help.

But I would have known that the story made its way into the paper even if I had not had a copy delivered to our new, colossal doorstep, because it wasn't long before the people started to arrive. They came from far and wide, Darathian and Serbaen. Even the occasional halfbreed. They began to fill the halls of the fortress that I had built, responding to that article in the newspaper like it was the voice of deliverance they had all been hoping, and praying, and waiting for.

The only thing that didn't make it into the paper regarding the perks and quirks of the journey through city to fortress was the watching creature we encountered along the way. But in truth, I think I was the only one who saw it. Who saw her.

I glanced up, during the taxing trek, and saw that ashen Ambassador standing in the frame of another open, detached door at the top of a hill of rubble. She was watching in her gray, haggard way as we traveled past below, and she met my eyes, and smiled her red-streaked, ash-cracked smile down upon me, as if blessing us en route to that butterfly-effect-rendered fortress.

And that's when I knew I was right. She was Ambassador for the Great Butterfly, whom the Ambassador for the Angel of Death had said would be leaving this place. But not before bidding us farewell, and blessing our journey – seeing us off to the place it had helped craft for this purpose.

Then a wind drifted by, and the door slammed shut on the ashen woman, and she was gone.