The Midnight Gate (28 page)

This was followed by silence, some scrabbling, the grind of shooting bolts, and a scraping sound as the door slid slowly open. But instead of finding themselves facing three reptilian creatures, Belladonna and Steve were face-to-face with one reptile and three heads.

The creature tumbled out of the door in a cascade of coils the size of tree trunks and came to a halt about two meters in front of them. The heads eyed their backpacks expectantly before turning their attention to Belladonna and Steve themselves.

“Did you bring a present?” said the middle head.

The other two heads looked irritated and swung themselves around in such a fashion that they managed to push the offending head into the background.

“Sorry about that,” said the left-hand head. “Rude.”

“Are you alive?” asked the right-hand head.

“Yes,” said Steve. “We're alive.”

The reptile heads looked impressed, and the left-hand one adopted an I-told-you-so expression.

“I knew you were,” he said. “I told them so, but they wouldn't believe me.”

“Only because live people would have to be madder than leverets on a hot day to come anywhere near the House of Ashes,” said the right-hand head.

“No offense,” he added.

“None taken,” said Belladonna, trying to remain serious as Steve did his best to stifle a giggle.

“What is your gift?” asked the left-hand head.

“Present! Present! Present!” enthused the middle head, bursting between the other two and eyeing the backpacks.

“Something edible would be nice,” said the right-hand head quietly.

Belladonna nodded, rummaged through her pockets, and emerged with the Parma Violets.

“What is that?” asked the middle head suspiciously.

“Sweets,” said Belladonna. “They're violet flavored. There are twelve in a pack, so you get four each.”

The heads looked at each other, then nodded.

“Alright,” said the left-hand head, “you may pass.”

“Thank you,” said Belladonna, picking up her backpack and beginning to move toward the door.

“Just a moment,” said the middle head. “Could you unwrap them, please? We don't have any fingers.”

Steve smiled and picked up the packet. He opened it carefully and set the sweets out in three piles of four each. The reptile looked pleased, so far as reptiles can, and began to sniff the sweets expectantly.

Belladonna and Steve walked quickly to the door and through the opening, past coil after coil of the reptile's body. The only sound from the creature now was the crunch of Parma Violets and the occasional wet click of a happily flicking tongue. The coils curled around the doorjamb almost at right angles and down a passageway that ran parallel with the outer walls. A perfect lair for a snake, thought Belladonna.

“Which way?” she said, looking down the passages on either side.

“Neither,” said Steve. “I think it's this way.”

He stepped forward and lifted the latch on a small wooden door directly in front of them. Belladonna couldn't understand why she hadn't noticed it right away, but she was prepared to believe that he was right and followed close behind as he cautiously pushed on the roughly hewn timber. The door swung inward to reveal almost complete darkness—they could just make out the first three steps of a steep staircase leading upward.

“Oh, great,” said Steve. “More stairs.”

“At least they're going in the right direction,” said Belladonna. “Up is definitely the way we need to go, after all.”

Steve sighed.

“Three down,” he muttered, “and four to go.”

Belladonna peered up the stairs. It looked dark. And steep.

“Oh, well,” she sighed, “if we don't start, we'll never get there.”

She began to climb with Steve slogging along close behind her.

The stairs were bounded on each side by stone walls, roughly hewn from granite. Belladonna felt that they were inside the island rather than in a building on top of it. She reached a hand out to feel the wall—it was dry and cold, with the sort of deep chill that struck right to the bone. She shoved her hand into her pocket to try to get it warm again and noticed something else: She always seemed to be able to see three steps ahead.

“Are you using your flashlight?”

“What?” said Steve.

“Your flashlight. On the key chain. To light the way.”

“No. It's not dark. I can see where we're going.”

“I know. Weird, isn't it? It ought to be dark.”

There was light, but from where?

They kept climbing and after a few moments Belladonna heard a dull groan from behind. She stopped and turned around.

“Don't stop!” Steve pushed her forward, his voice tense. “Keep moving!”

“What? What is it?”

“Look up.”

She looked up and at first saw nothing. Then a movement. And another one. Something was up there.

It was an insect. No, insects. There were lots of them. She strained to see and was gradually able to make them out. There was a small ledge above their heads and there were white insects, like crickets or grasshoppers but with extremely long legs and no eyes at all. As they passed, the insects scuttled to the edge of the ledges and crevices where they lived and lit up, casting a sickly yellow light down into the stone corridor.

“Amazing.”

“You
would
say that,” said Steve, shuddering. “Have you seen how long their legs are?”

“They're only insects,” said Belladonna, loving the idea that Steve was more scared of them than she was. “What do you think makes them glow? Maybe it's our breath.”

“This is me not caring,” he grumbled. “Would you get a move on?”

After about half an hour of slogging up the stairs, they came to a large wrought-iron gate with rusty hinges and a broken lock. Was this one of the gates? She looked around for any sign of a guardian, but no one spoke or barred their way, so she reached forward and pushed at the gate. It creaked loudly and swung inward.

“At last!” said Steve.

They stepped inside. Above their heads was a domed iron grille that was open to the sky, casting weird checkerboard shadows over roughly constructed stone terraces. On closer inspection, she realized that the terraces had actually been thrown together from odd bits of poorly painted concrete stacked into imitation rocky outcroppings.

“What is this?” she whispered.

“It's like an enclosure in a zoo,” said Steve.

He was right, but if it was a zoo, it was a rather run-down one. The replica rocky outcroppings were gray and striped from years of rain, and the dirt floor was littered with large bones that Belladonna really hoped weren't human.

She took one glance around and knew that this wasn't the sort of place where you should linger if you had any common sense at all.

“Let's get out of here,” she whispered, and led the way toward a dark opening in the far wall.

“Not so fast!” said a cracked, high-pitched voice.

Belladonna and Steve stopped and peered around for the source of the voice, but all they could see was dark concrete and the barred roof. Steve took an exploratory step forward, keeping his eyes on the gray terraces.

“Stop!” said the voice.

This time Belladonna knew exactly where it was coming from: There was some sort of cave halfway up the wall. She didn't say anything but pointed out the spot to Steve. They both shaded their eyes and peered into the space, but all they could see was the faint sparkle of eyes.

“Oh,” said the voice, “so you want to see me, is that it? You want to
stare
.”

“No,” said Belladonna quickly. “That is…”

“Well, have a good look, then! You've paid your admission. It's your right, I suppose!”

Belladonna was about to protest that they had no desire to stare and that they hadn't paid any admission for anything, but the words died on her tongue as the creature stepped out of the shadows.

“Oh, wow,” muttered Steve, his eyes like saucers.

The first thing Belladonna noticed was the feet. They were the talons of a bird of prey but easily a hundred times larger than any hawk or eagle she'd ever heard of. The ribbed toes and curling claws were designed to cling to branches and to grab and rip flesh. Belladonna shuddered.

“Yes, horrible, aren't they?” said the creature.

“No … I mean…” Belladonna looked up as she spoke and found herself face-to-face with a creature she couldn't even begin to identify. She glanced at Steve, hoping for assistance, but he was just staring, his mouth slightly open.

Which was quite an understated response when you considered what they were both looking at.

The feet and body were those of a bird of prey, that was certain, but the head was human. An old lady, in fact. All yellowing skin and cascading wrinkles. She looked fed up and angry at the world and, given her situation, Belladonna couldn't blame her one bit.

“Hello,” she said, hoping that she could start again.

The creature looked at them, cocked her head sideways, and fluttered down.

“We brought a gift.”

The bird-woman turned around. She was half in shadow now and Belladonna was able to see that the bird part of her really was spectacularly beautiful. The feathers were golden brown and tan and shone in the moonlight like satin.

“What are you thinking?” snapped the woman.

“That your feathers are really beautiful,” answered Belladonna truthfully.

The creature paused for a moment, then preened a wayward feather before returning to Belladonna.

“My name is Aello,” she said, ignoring Steve entirely. “Have you heard of me?”

Belladonna shook her head.

“No,” said Aello sadly. “All is forgotten. There were three of us. Sisters, you know. I'm all that's left. I don't know what's happened to the others. That's families for you.”

“I'm sure if they knew—”

“They'd laugh. That's what they'd do if they knew. Laugh. Pathetic, isn't it? People used to live in fear of our approach, quake at the sound of our wings, and now look at me—a glorified porter!”

The bird-woman looked at her feet sadly and scratched small circles in the sand with a claw.

“Why were they scared of you?” asked Steve.

“You're joking, right?”

“Well, I can see that you don't look … that the way you … but that's just a first impression, and—”

“We're
harpies,
” said Aello irritably. “We stole their food, ripped the unsuspecting from their beds, and dragged them here to the Land of the Dead. There were no
first impressions,
only final ones.”

Steve stepped backward in surprise at the venom in her voice, and Belladonna began to realize that she'd probably made a mistake in trying to chat with Aello and that perhaps the time was right to ease the conversation back to the gift.

“I was wondering—” she began, but the harpy had already fixed her with a hungry, gimlet eye.

“You understand that I'm going to have to eat you both,” she said in a resigned tone of voice that implied a sort of bored regret. “No offense.”

“We'd prefer that you didn't,” said Belladonna, backing slowly away.

The harpy sighed, walked slowly toward her, and examined her closely.

“I'll tell you what,” she said finally. “If the present is good, if it's something pretty, maybe I'll let you go.”

Belladonna's heart sank. She didn't have anything even remotely pretty.

The harpy looked at her expectantly and cocked her head on one side again. Belladonna swung her backpack onto the ground and unzipped it. She stared into it, as if something might just materialize through sheer strength of will, then reached in and took out half a packet of ginger snaps.

“What's that?” snapped Aello.

“Ginger snaps,” said Belladonna, who was sort of hoping that the orange packaging might qualify as “pretty” in the Land of the Dead.

It didn't. Aello shook her head and peered over the bag.

“What else?” she asked, turning to Steve.

Steve opened his backpack and showed the harpy the contents. She glanced in without much interest and was about to turn her attention back to Belladonna when something caught her eye.

“What's that? There's something shiny.”

“Um…” Steve reached into the bag. “House keys.”

“Show me.”

He removed his massive key ring, loaded down with the keys to his house, the shop, his Dad's storage unit, and the tiny pen light.

“Oh!” gushed the harpy. “Lovely! Put it around my neck!”

Steve looked at the keys and then Belladonna, who nodded eagerly.

Steve reached into a pocket and extracted a small bundle of string from the collection of random objects that he'd shoved into his pocket over the previous week. He untangled it and looped the keys onto it. Aello grinned with delight as he tied the keys around her feathered throat, revealing a mouth that had barely half its full complement of teeth. Then she scurried away to gaze at the effect in a small puddle near the middle of the enclosure. Belladonna watched as she preened, smiling and muttering to herself.

“Can we go?” she asked finally.

“What?” Aello looked up, surprised to see that they were still there. “Yes! Yes! Go.”

They didn't need telling twice. They both scooped up their backpacks and ran for the dark opening beneath the concrete outcroppings. This led into a dank tunnel, which quickly revealed a narrow hallway that, in turn, opened into a large room with windows that looked across Grendelmere.

Belladonna realized that they must finally be in the actual House of Ashes. Steve ran to one of the windows and looked outside.

“What can you see?”

“Nothing. The lake, the trees. Walls.”

She joined him by the window and for a moment they stood, gazing over the labyrinthine streets far below and reveling in the feeling of the soft night breeze against their faces.