Alive (2 page)

T
he light blinds me, makes my eyes water. Grainy dust on my tongue, coating my raw throat, so deep in my lungs it makes me cough again and again. The noise might bring the people who did this to me, but I can’t stop. I can’t see, I’m too weak to move.

I am helpless.

The coughing fit eases. My body relaxes enough for me to sit up. I pull my knees to my chest, wrap my arms tight around my legs. I rub my wrists; the rough bars ripped my skin raw.

My coffin was warm. I broke it open, hatched from it, and now I’m in this cold room. I’m shivering. I’m out, yes, but alone, exhausted and terrified.

Where are my mom and dad? Why aren’t they here? Where is
here,
anyway?

I smell things I don’t fully recognize. Dry odors, stale scents. This place smells…dead.

The light still stings, but not as much. I can finally see a little.

Gray. The dust is gray. It blankets everything, hangs in the air, floating specks that spin with my every breath.

My neck throbs where that thing bit me. I reach for the spot. A shirt. I’m wearing a shirt, and a tie. I slide my hand inside the collar, feel the wound…my fingers come away with a pasty mix of dust and blood.

I look at what I’m wearing: white button-down shirt, the short skirt—which is red and black plaid—black socks that end a bit below my knee, no shoes. My shirt feels tight. The sleeves end halfway between my elbow and wrist. The tie is red, embroidered with a yellow and black circle of tiny images. White thread in the middle of that circle spells a word:
MICTLAN
.

I have no idea what that means. And these clothes…are they mine?

My vision is blurry; I can’t see anything but my coffin. Sitting on the dusty floor, I’m too low to look inside it. The lid split evenly down the middle, from top to bottom. The half closest to me slid neatly against the side. The far half sticks straight up. Maybe I broke that half, bent something so it can’t move like it’s supposed to.

Parts of the lid gleam under the lights—bloody finger streaks, I realize, from where I grabbed it, wiping away the thin layer of dust that clings to the surface.

Why won’t someone come and help me?

The thing that bit my neck…what if it’s still alive? What if it’s in the coffin, coiling, getting ready to slither out and attack me again? I don’t want to look inside, but no one else is here and I need to know it’s dead.

If I don’t, it could hunt me.

I reach for the coffin’s edge, use it to pull myself up. My legs don’t want to work. They tremble and twitch as I rise and look inside.

White fabric, torn in many places, smeared with long streaks of wet red and a few light spots of powdery crimson. Loose padding shows beneath the rips.

A bloody, white pillow. Next to it, a limp, white snake.

No, not a snake: a
tube
.

A tube that ends in a long, glistening needle. Its white skin is torn where I bit it, showing some kind of black fibers beneath.

I watch the tube for a little while. It doesn’t move. It’s dead, because I killed it.

I pick up a piece of the bar that held my waist. The surface is deeply pitted, crumbly with that crimson powder…rust, maybe? Rust that ate away much of the metal, making the bar thin and brittle. Had it been solid, there is no way I could have broken free.

My eyes aren’t stinging anymore. They’ve stopped watering. I can see the rest of the room.

There are eleven more coffins. Two parallel rows of six, lined up end to end. A wide aisle filled with a flat sea of untouched gray separates the rows. The thick dust coats the coffins, makes hard edges look like soft curves.

I was in the last one in the left-hand row. I can see it clearly now, see all the detail. It is decorated with intricate carvings: cartoonish people with big noses and huge, wild headdresses; squat pyramids with lots of steps; simple versions of the sun; big cats with exaggerated eyes and tooth-filled snarls.

This room is long and narrow, like it was made specifically to hold these coffins. It doesn’t seem that bright in here now that my eyes have gotten used to it—the arched ceiling has only a few lights that work, barely enough to illuminate stone walls that are covered with gray-coated carvings.

At the far end of the room, I see an archway. In that archway…doors, maybe? They look heavy and solid, but I don’t see any handles.

Something at the foot of my coffin catches my eye. A flat area, about the size of my hand, surrounded by dozens of small bumps, all of it hazed in puffy gray.

I reach out, trembling, and brush dust from one of the small shapes. It’s a jewel: deep orange, glowing like frozen fire.

I wipe clear the flat area. It’s engraved with seven letters and one period.

M. Savage

Is that my name?

I hear something. A small sound. Very quiet, very faint. It makes me think of being trapped in the dark, and then I realize why.

It’s a girl’s scream, coming from inside another coffin.

M
y wobbly legs still can’t quite support me. I lean on the coffins to stay on my feet, stumble my way toward the scream.

Each step kicks up a small cloud of dust, as if I am the first person ever to set foot here.

The noisy coffin is halfway up the left-hand row. As I get closer, I can make out faint words coming from within.

“Help me! Mommy, get me out of here!”

I put my hand on the dust-caked lid. I feel tiny vibrations: the girl inside is struggling. I think of that long, bloody needle jutting from the white tube.

With big swipes, I brush the dust from her coffin, accidentally creating a brief fog. The polished carvings gleam under the lights.

I rap my knuckles on the lid; her screaming stops.

“Calm down,” I say. “I’ll try and get you out.”

There is a pause. Then she speaks, the coffin cutting the volume of her words but not the desperation they carry.

“Who are you?”

Who am I?
No idea. Somehow, I don’t think telling her
I’m Savage
is going to make her less afraid. I don’t even have a first name, only an initial, but maybe that will work.

“My name is
Em.
What’s yours?”

“I…I don’t know.”

A feeling of relief explodes inside of me, so intense I almost fall down again:
I’m not the only one.

I have to get this girl out.

“Are there bars holding you down?”

“Something is,” she says. “I don’t know what, I can’t see anything. I can’t move. It’s so dark in here, please help me!”

“I told you to
stay calm
.” My voice echoes off the stone walls, and I hear how harsh it sounds. She’s afraid, she’s trapped; yelling at her isn’t going to help.

“It’s okay,” I say in a softer tone. “Listen, you have to break those bars.”

“Break them?” Her voice cracks. “I tried, they’re too thick!”

“Try harder. I broke mine.”

Another pause. I listen to her grunting and struggling, then hear the raw terror carried on her words.

“I
can’t
break them, I told you I’m not strong enough. Get me out, please
get me out!
”

I slap the lid, hard.

“Be quiet,” I say. “I’ll find a way to open it.”

Why can’t she get out like I did? Is she weaker than I am? Her fear is contagious, radiating from the coffin and coiling inside my chest. At first I was afraid I would die in the dark, but if this girl dies, I will be alone—somehow, that is even worse.

Not knowing what else to do, I push against the lid. Nothing happens. I slide my fingertips under what feels like the edge and I lift—gently at first, then with what little strength I have. Still nothing. I feel the long seam that runs down the middle, that separates the lid halves…too tight to get my fingers in there.

I look around the room. Across the aisle, I see something leaning against a coffin, a fuzzy gray shape maybe as long as my forearm and hand together. Five steps take me to it. I reach down, grab the shape, lift it and shake free the dust.

I hold a golden bar. Jewels of different colors and sizes dot its length. At the end is a C shape: the stubby prongs are silver, not gold. The bar is heavy and solid.

A weapon. I have a weapon
.

Suddenly I am not quite as afraid.

I start to turn back to the girl’s coffin when something catches my eye…the lid of this one, it’s as dusty as the others, but it’s not sealed tight like hers. It’s slightly open, showing a thin line of deep shadow no wider than my pinkie.

I can’t look away.

My right hand holds the weapon. My left hand reaches out. I slide my fingers through the there-but-not-there dust, into that shadow, curl them under the lid-half closest to me. The polished wood feels cool against my skin. I grip tight and pull. It moves a tiny amount, then resists. I broke my lid and when I did it opened; maybe if I can wedge the golden bar in that space, I can—

“Em, are you there?” The muffled voice comes from across the aisle, from the girl. Then, bordering on panic: “Did you leave me?”

I rush back to her coffin.

“Sorry, I’m here. I found something I can use. I’m going to try and break the lid and get you out. It will be loud. Hold on, okay?”

“Okay. Just please hurry.”

I lift the weapon over my head, then smash it against the lid. It makes a dull thud when it hits, denting the dark material, making the whole lid vibrate off a hovering sheen of dust.

It feels good to hit something. Really good. I swing again, harder this time, feel my lip curl into a snarl as the metal strikes home. Again and again, each time harder than the last, smashing a carving of a big cat, crushing a stepped pyramid, chipping away the polished surface to reveal white wood beneath.

Finally, something breaks: the lid splits down the middle. The long halves slide to the coffin’s sides, revealing an older girl with long, thick, curly red hair spilled across her face. Her eyes squeeze shut against the light. Crimson bars pin her down. She’s wearing a white shirt that’s too small for her, an embroidered red tie, and a short plaid skirt.

She’s breathing fast. Her face is wrinkled up and her head is twitching a little, like she thinks someone is about to hit her but she can’t see the blow coming and can’t run away.

“Em? Is that you?”

I take her hand in mine. Her grip is weak, but her skin is warm and soft.

“It’s me,” I say. “It’s okay.”

“Thank you, Em, oh,
thank you
. Can you undo these bars?”

“I can. Stay very still.”

A couple of carefully aimed strikes from my weapon are all it takes to shatter the brittle old metal.

She lifts her hands to her chest, rubs at her wrists. The skin there is barely scuffed at all—did she even
try
to fight her way free?

“Hold on,” I say, “let me help you out of there.”

I set the weapon down.

I help her sit up, help her ease out of the coffin. It’s a challenge, because she’s so weak and I’m barely stronger than she is. She puts one foot down to stand, but her legs won’t support her—she falls into me, sending us both tumbling. We land in a dust-puffing heap, still holding each other.

We don’t move. We lie there for a moment, shivering, clinging together, coughing slightly. She holds me tight, so tight that I know we feel the same way: neither of us understands what’s happening, but we are not alone, and for that we are deeply grateful.

T
he red-haired girl squints tightly, making the bridge of her nose wrinkle. So much hair, still draped over her face as if it can shield her from our strange reality. She’s trying hard to make her watering eyes adjust. She trembles in my arms, terrified and confused.

“We’re safe,” I say, trying to comfort her. “We’re alone here. Take it easy.”

She nods, holds me tighter, but I feel her relax a little. Her hand seeks out mine. And we lock fingers.

I look at our clasped hands: our skin is not the same. Hers is pale, a pinkish tan. Mine is much darker; mine is brown.

Our hands are about the same size. That strikes me as strange—she looks older than I do, almost old enough to leave school. Girls that age are usually so much taller.

School…these clothes, did we wear things like this in school? I can’t remember. I have a vague image of a few girls looking beautiful and perfect while I looked ugly and stupid, even though we all wore the exact same thing.

Her short plaid skirt shows almost all of her legs. They are long and shapely, not knobby-kneed twigs like mine. Maybe someday I will have legs like hers. The sleeves of her white shirt end just past her elbows. At her chest, the top two buttons are missing, showing the curve of her breasts. She’s probably embarrassed by that. I’m embarrassed for her; it makes me uncomfortable.

We lie there, unmoving, dust motes swirling in the air.

Her hair is so long. I reach to my own head, feel that my hair is tied back in a heavy braid. I pull it around and look at it—it’s black and thick. The braid hangs down to my waist. It feels so silky, like it was recently brushed.

Someone put me in a coffin and fixed my hair? A shiver slides across my skin.

Maybe it’s okay. Maybe Mom brushed it. Or Dad. But if it was them, did they do that right before they sealed me in and left me to die?

The red-haired girl finally opens her eyes a little, blinking slits that show me their color: a deep green.

She blinks away tears. She sniffs, wipes at her nose.

“You saved me,” she says. “You set me free. Thank you, Em.”

She sits up. She brushes her thick hair behind her left ear, then her right. When she does, I see something on her forehead.

A black circle, as wide as the distance between her eyes, made of a material that clearly isn’t her and yet is also a
part
of her at the same time. The dark color stands in stark contrast against her white-pink skin. The outside of the circle is smooth. The inside is kind of jagged, with stubby points sticking inward. Eight of them, evenly spaced apart. Stubby points…kind of like…

Like
teeth
.

She’s a tooth-girl.

I feel a surge of emotion. Tooth-girls…they made fun of me in school…didn’t they? I can’t remember my school. And I can’t remember why the tooth-girls ridiculed me, only how their words and glares and jokes made me feel: small, unimportant, worthless.

I
hate
her.

No…I don’t even know this girl. At least I don’t think I do. We’re in this together. I will not hate her because of some decoration on her skin.

Wait—do
I
have one?

My free hand flies to my forehead. I feel something embedded there. A circle, like hers, but smooth, both inside and out. There are no stubby points, no
teeth
.

Our fingers remain locked. Her skin is warm, the only warm thing in this cold room.

“I’m afraid,” she says. “What is this place?”

“I don’t know.”

My fingertips lightly trace the shape that marks my skin.

She sees me doing that, reaches to her forehead. Her eyes widen with discovery.

“I have one, too,” she says. “Yours is a plain circle, but mine feels different on the inside. Bumps or something…what are they?”

Teeth,
I want to say,
because you’re a tooth-girl
.

But I don’t say that. I like her, and she seems to like me. I don’t want her to know that phrase in case it makes her remember something and not like me anymore.

“They look like stubby bits,” I say.

She waits for me to keep going, but I don’t know any other way to describe what I see.

She thinks for a moment. She shrugs. “We both have symbols. I don’t know what they mean.”

“Neither do I.”

She looks around the room, taking it all in.

“This isn’t the birthday I was hoping for,” she says.

“It’s your birthday, too?”

She looks at me, doubtful, like I’m playing some kind of trick on her.

“Yes,” she says. “I’m twelve.”

She’s the one who is playing tricks. My instincts were right: the tooth-girl, whatever that is, is already making fun of me. I lean away from her.

“I’m not dumb, you know,” I say.

She blinks, confused. “I…of course you’re not. I didn’t say you were.” She blushes and looks away, like she knows she said something wrong but doesn’t know what that something was.

“Em, I would never be rude to my elders like that.”

Elders? What is she talking about?

“You’re not twelve,” I say. I point at her legs, her breasts. “Look at you. You think I’d be so stupid that I’d believe you’re the same age as me?”

Her expression of embarrassed confusion changes to one of total disbelief. She holds out her arms, looks at them, then down at herself.

“I don’t understand,” she says.

She pulls at the bottom of her shirt, but the material doesn’t stretch. Her belly—flat, pale—is exposed. This, too, makes me uncomfortable.

My belly is cold.

I look down at my blood-speckled shirt and realize, for the first time, that it’s too small for me. The bottom of it leaves my stomach open to the cold air. My sleeves end halfway up my forearms. No wonder it feels freezing in here: I’m half-naked.

I touch my belly, suddenly self-conscious. This seems…
wrong,
like showing bare skin is a bad thing.

The shirt is too tight against my breasts.

Or…are my breasts too big for my shirt? I feel them. They weren’t this size before…were they? No, they weren’t. I’m sure of it. I can’t remember anything, but I know my body has changed.

The red-haired girl stares at me intensely. I realize I’m touching myself right in front of her. I look away, put my hands in my lap.

She feels her own chest—her eyes widen with surprise. “What happened? They weren’t like this before.”

I shake my head. “Same with me.”

“So, you say you’re twelve,” she says. “You look nineteen, maybe twenty. You look like a grown woman.”

“So do you.”

She nods slightly. She looks off, glancing at nothing in particular. Her lips twitch, like she’s saying half-words that I can’t hear.

“It doesn’t make sense,” she says finally. “We need more information. Until then, we have to believe what our eyes show us.”

She again cups her breasts. She isn’t ashamed at all; she’s measuring, thinking.

The corners of her mouth curve up in a small grin.

“I can’t recall what I asked for, but I’m pretty sure I wasn’t expecting
these
as a present,” she says. “Maybe it’s a good birthday after all. I mean, other than being locked up in the dark.”

Her fascination and delight with her body’s unexpected change hasn’t completely taken the fear out of her eyes. She reaches up, touches one of the carvings on her coffin lid. A jaguar, I think it is, one eye smashed and splintered from where I hit it.

“Some of these images seem familiar,” she says. “I can’t place them, but…well, they’re familiar.”

“My coffin has them, too.”

The red-haired girl wrinkles her nose, shakes her head. “
Coffins
are for dead people. We’re clearly not dead.”

She stares at my forehead. Her eyes narrow—she’s trying to work something out—then she looks away. Does she remember what my circle means? If so, she doesn’t share.

She points to the jewel-encrusted rod lying on the ground beside me.

“I think I know what that is,” she says.

I pick it up and wipe dust off the metal. I move it closer to her so she can see it better. “Maybe you used a weapon like this before?”

For the first time, the red-haired girl smiles wide. It lights up her whole face. She looks
amazing
. Her eyes gleam with delight. I’m not sure it’s possible for a person to be more beautiful than she is right now.

“It’s not a weapon,” she says. “I think it’s a
tool
.”

A tool? That never crossed my mind.

She starts to nod, like she’s sure she’s right, then stops. Her smile fades. She’s not sure. She isn’t sure about anything.

“Em…do you know my name?”

“No. Let’s find out what it is.”

I stand, take her hand and help her up.

She seemed so tall at first, but I’m only a tiny bit shorter than she is.

I lead her to the foot of her coffin. Just like with mine, there is a flat area surrounded by dust-covered jewels. I brush it clean. Blue jewels frame the engraved letters
T. Spingate
.

“That’s you,” I say. “I think. Your name is Spingate. Does that make you remember anything?”

She frowns. Her lower lip quivers. Her eyes water, and this time it’s not from the light. Her eyelashes are long and dark. I suddenly have a desperate urge to find a mirror. Do I have green eyes like hers?

Spingate shakes her head. “I can’t remember anything. I remember my mom…sort of. But I can’t remember her face.”

As soon as she says that, I realize I have no idea what my parents actually look like. Mom and Dad, they’re blank spaces. I know the concept of my parents, I know they loved me and I loved them, but their faces, their names…nothing.

Spingate sniffs, wipes away tears. She nods slowly, as if accepting things for what they are. She studies our surroundings, taking in the walls, the ceiling, the door-arch.

“Em, do you know what’s outside this room?”

“No idea.”

She looks at the coffin across the aisle, where I found the weapon.

“That lid isn’t shut all the way. Was that one yours?”

I point to my right, to the last coffin in our row. I see my path of footsteps through the dust.

“I was in that one,” I say.

Spingate stares down the aisle for a few moments. Her mouth moves a little again. When she does that, it’s like she doesn’t even know I’m there.

She looks me up and down.

“How did you get all bloody?”

Other than smears of dust, her shirt is clean and white.

“There was a tube in my coffin,” I say. “It stabbed me with a needle. That’s what woke me up.”

Her expression darkens. Maybe she realizes that if I hadn’t broken out of my coffin, she would still be in hers.

“But how did you get out? There’s no one else here.”

I shrug. “I got myself out.”

She gives me a strange look, as if the concept is unthinkable.

Spingate’s hands reach to her shoulders, rub slowly up and down like she’s hugging herself against the chill. She walks across the aisle, wobbling a bit but standing on her own, then kneels at the foot of the coffin with the slightly open lid. She brushes off the nameplate.

“It says
B. Brewer
. The stones are purple. Maybe we can use the tool to open it and see if someone is inside?”

We’ve been sitting here talking, and I never thought that there might be others trapped like Spingate was, like I was. All these coffins…maybe one of them holds a person who knows what this place is and how we got here.

I walk across the aisle and jam the heavy bar’s forked end into the small crack, the lid closest to me under the bar, the forked end under the lid farthest away. I push down.

The lid doesn’t budge.

I rise to my toes, put all my weight on the bar.

“Em, I can help with—”

“I’ve got it,”
I say, my effort turning the words into grunts. I hear a slow creaking coming from the lid. I rise up a little more, then push down as hard as I can, all at once—there is a loud
bang
from the coffin as something gives way.

The lid halves suddenly tilt up, hum as they slide to the sides. Sheets of gray spill off their smooth, carved surfaces.

We look inside: a wave of fear pushes my body a step backward.

Spingate reacts differently—instead of stepping away, she leans forward.

“Maybe you were right,” she says. “If that’s B. Brewer, I guess in his case it really is a coffin.”