The Keepers (53 page)

They fell through the dumin. It blew through them both like a knife-thin wave of liquid metal, threatening to tear them apart. Horace screamed. They toppled into the sightless gray of the humour, and just before Horace went, he glimpsed Dr. Jericho, trapped inside the dumin, his face rigid with shock.

They dropped to the floor and tumbled apart. Chloe's flesh slipped out of him, leaving him cold and empty. But even as they parted, the box fell loose and clattered to a stop at Horace's feet. He rolled and reached for it, finding it easily in the humour. He cradled it against his chest.

“Come,” said Gabriel. A strong hand took hold of Horace's arm, tugging at him. “The dumin will not last.” Dr. Jericho, trapped inside the dumin, blind and deaf within the humour—how he must be raging. Horace slid the Fel'Daera into its pouch and reached out for Chloe. He found her hand already grasping for his. He took it, and together they got to their feet. Gabriel pulled them several steps forward and then paused. “Reach for him, Chloe. He's just beside you,” he said, and Horace understood: Chloe's father.

After that they ran, Horace's left hand in Gabriel's and his right wrapped around Chloe's. Gabriel led them through
the halls, unrelenting. He half dragged them up two flights of stairs. They stumbled again and again, but no one spoke. Chloe's hand in Horace's felt like a fragile, sleeping animal. He held on to it as hard as he dared. He imagined she was spending all the strength she had left holding on to her father at the end of the procession. They ran and ran, three more turns and then a hundred steps in a straight line. The golem crossed his mind once—vaguely and distantly, as if it were a memory he wasn't sure was authentic—but he knew they would not encounter it. The nest was finished. Nothing would stop them now. Two hundred steps. Three hundred. At last Gabriel slowed and released him. Chloe's hand left Horace's. The humour rustled out of existence.

Cool night air. Darkness and sky. Crisp city smells and the electric glow of the scrap-yard lights. Horace drank it all in. He turned and saw the theater far behind them, two long blocks back, dark and hulking. High overhead, the vast night sky was clear and shadowed. Dimly he spotted Lyra, the harp, and remembered seeing it through the box just the night before, crisp and sharp. How long ago it seemed now, the past as much a fantasy as any future he could foresee.

A few feet away, Gabriel was bent over, rubbing his chest with one hand and breathing hard. Neptune stood beside him, speaking low. Chloe's father had already sunk to the ground. Chloe had draped one arm around him, and the other—the arm she'd thrown into the crucible—tucked limply against her side.

“The house is burning,” Chloe's father said abruptly. “Did Chloe get out? The house is burning.”

Chloe looked over at Horace and pressed her lips together, all the worry she'd let show. The dragonfly gleamed in the dark. “I'm right here, Dad. I got out.”

“But did Chloe get out? The house is burning.”

“I'm Chloe. I'm safe. The house isn't burning anymore.”

Her father fell silent. Chloe went on watching Horace, her eyes still and sure and soft. “You okay?” Horace asked after a while.

“I have no idea. You?”

“I guess. I think I'm . . .” And how was he? Relieved. Clean. Empty. Cut loose. Right now he stood beyond the farthest reaches of what the box could show him—he hadn't seen this moment or anything past it, and the sensation was a little like falling. Or shrinking. Whatever threads he'd been wrangling for the last twenty-seven hours, there was only one now: life being lived, the universe following its own reasonable rules. “I'm here now,” he said.

“Well, hell, Horace,” she said. “That's nothing new.”

They sat and waited. No one seemed worried. No one suggested they get farther away. Horace held the Fel'Daera in his lap, watching Chloe and her father and listening to Neptune talk quietly to Gabriel. After a long time, a cab approached. They all turned their heads. The cab stopped, and a small figure got out, trim and neat, and began walking toward them. White hair shone, and a pair of glasses glinted
in the yellow light from the scrap yard. Behind him, the cab idled at the curb like a waiting pet. Mr. Meister came close and stopped. He looked around at them all, nodding.

“Just so,” he said. “Just so.”

T
HE CAB WAS CROWDED AND QUIET
. N
O ONE ASKED ANYONE
about anything. Gabriel and Neptune sat in the front seat beside Beck, Gabriel sagging with exhaustion. Chloe was pressed close between Horace and her father in the back, with Mr. Meister on Horace's other side. There was water, miraculously, and Horace drank until his stomach wouldn't let him anymore.

“Horace's house,” Mr. Meister had said to Beck as they first piled in, and not a word since then. Horace could practically feel the old man's mind working.

Halfway home, Chloe's father stirred. “I'm sorry, everyone,” he said. “I'm sorry.” He turned to Chloe and gently took her tiny hand, examining her arm closely. His face was pained and worried. “Your arm. We need to get you to the hospital.”

“I don't need a hospital. It's not broken.”

“You shouldn't have done that. You shouldn't have come for me.”

“You're not thinking straight.”

“You should have left me.” Horace realized the man was crying.

Chloe said, “I don't leave people.” The cab fell silent again.

After several blocks, Mr. Meister spoke. “This night has cast long shadows,” he said. “But remember, the sun moves.”

Minutes later, Beck pulled up in front of Horace's house. Without turning around, Gabriel reached his hand over the backseat. Horace took it awkwardly and tried to return Gabriel's firm squeeze. Neptune gave him a peek and a nod. They seemed thin and far away.

Mr. Meister looked across at him and cleared his throat. “I can only begin to imagine what has transpired during this long day, Keeper. I would hear the full tale, in time, but for now let me just say thank you.”

Horace nodded. “I didn't do it for you,” he said, “but you're welcome.” He glanced at Chloe. She was looking at her father. Her father caught Horace's eye and nodded grimly, his cheeks wet. Horace opened the door and got out alone. As he stood at the foot of the drive looking up at his house—it was his house, wasn't it?—Chloe stole out behind him. She stepped close, cradling her wounded arm. They looked up at the dark windows together. “So, this is where you live, huh?” she said.

“Still hilarious.”

“How's it going to go for you in there? Your parents must be freaking out by now.”

“Yeah,” Horace agreed, but he found he couldn't even conjure up their faces, the sounds of their voices.

“You could probably use a mint. Do you want a mint?”

“Do you have a mint?”

“No.” They stood silent for a while. There was no sign of daylight yet, but birds were singing anyway.

“How's your dad doing?” Horace said. “Speaking of freaked.”

“Honestly? This is about as real as he's been in a while. I'd cry too, you know?”

“Yeah.”

Chloe gently kicked Horace's shoe, thinking. “So anyway, I guess I'm not stupid,” she said.

Horace laughed. “No. You're about as far from stupid as anyone. You were the hero today. You were—” He shook his head. “How's your arm?”

She held it up. It looked ghastly in the streetlight, swollen and streaked. Long bolts of black skin ran down either side, from her elbow onto her hand, front and back. “It's not pretty, but it'll be okay.”

Horace gazed at the black streaks, like rippling tattoos. “And you pulled me through the dumin,” he said. “I hoped you would save the Fel'Daera, but you took me, too.
And
you went underground. You told me you couldn't do that.”

Chloe took a long breath and let it out slow. “I know. I wasn't lying about that, but . . . a lot of new things have been happening lately. Since I met you, or whatever. I let the golem go through me. I took the Vora through the dumin without even thinking. And grabbing you like that, inside the dumin tonight, that was . . .”

“Amazing.”

“Yes. I don't even know how I did it. I don't know if I could do it again. I was just so angry, so confident, so . . . determined. I had to make sure that the future you'd seen wasn't for nothing.”

“And what about going underground?”

She shivered. “It's happened before. Twice. Once when I was little. And once in the fire.”

Horace finally understood. “That's how you got out of the fire without being seen. That's what you wouldn't tell us. But why?”

“I don't like to talk about it. It's . . .” She glanced back at the cab, then thrust a finger in Horace's face. “Don't tell anyone.” He nodded, and she gestured to the ground all around them. “When I go thin, this is like the sea. Can you imagine that? The earth itself—everything—is an ocean to me. An ocean as deep as the world. And I'm just a speck, floating on the surface.” She held up the Alvalaithen. “But I can go under if I want, if I can stand the thought of it—a bottomless sea with nothing to cling to, no shore. It's scary as hell down there, dark and buried—what if I run out of breath, or lose my
way? When I was a kid I almost—what's the word? Drowned? I don't think there is a word for what almost happened to me.” Horace squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, trying not to imagine it. “But I'm learning to move under there. It's like swimming, or flying. The Earthwing, get it?” The dragonfly whirred to life, and she let herself sink into the ground up to her ankles. Then she rose back up again, her feet reemerging. The dragonfly went still. Horace looked down at his own feet, at the earth beneath them, thousands of miles deep. He felt a sudden sweep of vertigo and another hard tug of panic in his chest. “So now you know what I'm afraid of,” Chloe said.

Horace shrugged as if all of this were nothing. “I don't know,” he said casually. “It seems like you should get over it. Could come in handy.”

“Says the claustrophobe who belongs to a secret band that lives in tunnels.”

Horace laughed again, and just then the front porch light blazed to life, blinding them. Chloe threw her good arm over her eyes and backed away.

“Looks like you're up. You'll let me know what happens, right?”

“That's what I'm here for.”

She smiled. “Sometimes I think you're smarter than me.”

“Well, Chloe, sometimes I am.”

She slid into the cab, eyes on him. She yanked the door closed, and the cab pulled away. Horace watched until the taillights were figments. He checked his feet again, picturing
the earth beneath him, deep and deadly. He started up the drive.

Inside, his mother's arms, firm and warm and endless, endless. Her hands on his hair, her fingers strong. He waited for her questions, her anger, unable to imagine what he could possibly say to her, what tale he could tell her about where he'd been and why. He wasn't even sure, exactly, how to name what he'd done wrong. But his mother mentioned no wrongs. Her anger didn't come. All she asked was how he was, and only once.

“I'm okay,” Horace told her. “I'm sorry.”

“Okay,” his mother echoed. “Okay.” She took him to the kitchen. She fussed wordlessly with his hair, his clothes, wiping the ash from everywhere. She dabbed the cut on his forehead with a wet paper towel. There was a shocking moment, like plunging into a pool in September, where she reached down and slipped the Fel'Daera from its pouch, laying it on the table. She did it as easily as if she were folding socks. Horace had to kick-start his breathing after it was done, but before long even this gesture seemed natural, the thing a mother would do. And having the box away from himself, sitting there in plain sight, seemed to help settle the absence he'd been feeling, the knowledge that no known moments lay ahead of him, the painfully simple fact that no outstanding promises now stood between him and the box. This was just life, unfolding however it would.

His mother made him a salami sandwich and he plowed
through it. She made him another. He drank glass after glass of orange juice. She sat across from him, watching him silently. At last he slowed and looked her in the eye.

“I'm really sorry,” he said again.

She didn't reply. Instead, she laid a piece of paper on the table, pushing it toward him. It was the note Horace had left—so long ago—one corner worried into a curl by a restless hand.

“Oh, that,” Horace said stupidly. He took another bite of his sandwich, even though he was full.

“You could have left it where I'd find it sooner.”

“You didn't try to look for that place, did you? Those people?”

“I did not try, no.”

“Good, because I was just goofing.”