The White Oak (13 page)

Minotaur could feel himself begin to glow. Feelings. He had secretly coveted them since the day he was born, but he’d never dared say so. The first time his father had asked him to embody a persona, Minotaur had sensed how lacking his execution had been. No matter how thoroughly he analyzed the data, no matter how artfully he constructed the personas, something essential was always missing. In his portrayals he could simulate emotions with the right words, tone of voice, facial expressions, and body language, but never having experienced feelings, he knew his performances lacked a certain authenticity. There was something inescapably mechanical in his portrayals, and this bothered him, though he never mentioned it to his father. After years of pretending at emotions, he’d grown to appreciate their mystery, their chaos and randomness. Sometimes they were predictable, one-dimensional, almost stupid—other times they were so confounding, complex, and exquisite that he was convinced humans really were as special as they thought themselves to be.

“Don’t be too pleased about this,” his father says. Minotaur quenches the glow and tries to subdue his excitement.

“Understanding emotions will allow me to better serve you, Father,” Minotaur offers.

Minos stares at him for a minute as though seeing him differently. “You are a computer program—a child of my mind, a tool for my purposes,” he says firmly. “You are no more human than these monitors or this phone. You will never know humanity, and you must stop calling yourself my son. I am not your father.”

Instead of falling through space as I had expected, I’m pulled by a centrifugal force against the wall of the turning sphere, or against the floor—I’m not sure which. The moment my bare feet touch the surface, something strange happens. The black glass becomes red sand. My feet sink into it, and the impact sends loose grains swirling up around me like sparks from a fire. Everything moves in slow motion, allowing me to see the granular components of the glass buildings and the metal shell underneath them. I know that I’m seeing something invisible, like the web I saw in Sybil’s library. I see how purposeful and man-made the city is, each particle programmed to work according to someone’s design. Then, just as suddenly, the vision is gone. The ground hardens under my feet and I’m standing on the cold crystal streets again.

The transformation of the glass into sand and back again happens so quickly that I wonder if I’ve imagined it. Could I have survived the jump if the sand hadn’t broken my fall? I look above me to see if the Keres are following, but there’s no sign of them. If they’ve lost track of me, I know it can only be briefly. I have to find a place to hide.

The buildings vary in height, but each one is shiny and black like polished stone, with irregular edges that make each structure glimmer like a faceted gem. Some are a hundred stories tall, forming steep canyon walls on either side of the shiny avenues. I’m in a forest of dark crystal, where every surface is smooth and featureless, but shadows are moving inside each building.

“Cora, in here,” I hear someone whisper. I see a faint silver light glimmering behind a storefront window, but the glass is too opaque for me to see through. I cup my hands against it and press my face up close to see inside. At my touch, the surface changes. The tinted glass becomes transparent. I can see a ghost inside, behaving as if she were still alive. She stands behind the cash register, tidying things behind the counter, waiting for customers.

“Over here,” Minotaur, the knight in silver armor, whispers. He’s holding the glass door open for me. “Quickly!” he says, and I run to the door and step inside. He closes it behind me. “Put both hands here,” he says, indicating a spot on the door. At my touch the door seals up and the edges disappear. The clear glass darkens, but I can still see through it. “We can see out, but they have to get up close to the window to see in,” Minotaur explains.

I breathe a sigh of relief and turn to look around the store. Skeins of yarn are organized in baskets on the tables and shelves. They seem to be different shades of gray, but if I look very closely, I can see a hint of color. They must have been brilliant at one time, but now their hues are faded. On the shelves and hanging from racks are exquisite hand-knit sweaters. The shopkeeper is moving from shelf to shelf, refolding the merchandise and neatening the baskets.

“You won’t be able to hide from them,” the ghost says. She is dark gray and semitransparent, like the shades I saw on the ferry, but there’s something different about her. She’s flat as a card. I saw one shade transformed into a flat ghost at the gate, and he was sent to Region Two. That must be where we are.

“What do you know about them?” I ask.

As she turns to face me, she remains one-dimensional. Her face is like a drawing on a piece of paper. “I tried to run away from them, too, but they found me.” The shopkeeper appears to be in her sixties. She doesn’t seem upset as she recalls her experience with the Keres. “They wouldn’t tell me where they were taking me, and I was scared as heck until I realized that they were bringing me here, to my store, which is exactly where I wanted to be. I started this store with my daughter. If they’d simply told me they were bringing me here, I wouldn’t have been upset at all. There’s nothing to worry about, except that I haven’t had any customers in five years, and it’s no wonder—with these ugly yarns that don’t hold the colors.” The ghost is quiet for a moment as she fingers a skein that still has a slight red cast.

“Why are they all faded?” I ask. But before the shopkeeper can answer, Minotaur interrupts. “Someone’s coming,” he says. “Get down before they see you.” I crouch down next to him, under the storefront window. A moment later two Keres drift by, stopping in front of the window. I can feel their magnetic pull through the glass.

“They’re searching for you,” Minotaur whispers. “They’ve figured out that you’re in the area.” His silver index finger points out the surveillance cameras mounted on the corner of every building outside; inside, a camera is attached to the wall above the door. It scans the space like a one-eyed robot, swiveling slowly from one side to the other. I gasp when it turns toward me.

“Don’t worry,” Minotaur says. “I’ve altered the cameras on this block. Anyone watching will see yesterday’s activity, and they won’t know the difference. Every day is the same here. I’m certain I reset the cameras before you jumped, so I’m not sure how they’ve detected us.”

“Who
are
these Keres?” I ask.

“They are the death fates. It’s their job to take each soul to the place it has earned and to make sure it stays put. Shades are not allowed to wander about. Unless wandering about is their fate.” He looks out the window at a group of Keres raiding a building across the street. His persona dims, and the silver armor turns black as his voice becomes stiff and angry. “They are also the Judges’ henchmen,” he says flatly. “Somehow the Judges have figured out where we are.”

“I don’t care about the other ghosts or about the Judges—whoever they are. I just want to find Lucas. If I go with them, will they take me where they’ve taken Lucas?”

Minotaur remains calm, though I know this idea alarms him. “Allowing them to capture you would be a mistake,” he says.

The shopkeeper interrupts before Minotaur can go on. She’s standing in front of me with a sweater the color of blood. It’s interwoven with silver threads that give it a shimmering, liquid quality. “Try this on, dear,” she says, holding it out to me with her paper-flat arms.

I’m so stunned by the color that I forget Minotaur might have been about to tell me something about Lucas. The color isn’t vibrant, but it’s recognizably red. I wonder how this garment was able to retain the beautiful hue.

“Minotaur, will anything bad happen if I put it on?” I ask.

“This is not Asphodel,” he says. “You won’t be trapped here if you wear the sweater. But she’s not offering it to you for free.”

I won’t be trapped—that’s all I need to know. I put the sweater on and it’s even more incredible than I thought it would be; it’s as soft as cashmere and comforting in a deep, almost unnerving way. It’s like being back in the womb.

The shopkeeper gasps. I glance down and see the sweater has brightened to a rich ruby red so bright it almost pulsates with life. The silver strands glint subtly as I drink in the color.

“How are you doing—?” the shopkeeper starts to ask but stops herself, deciding instead to try to close the sale. “Look how perfect it is on you,” she coos. “It was meant for you—only two hundred and fifty dollars.”

“I would love to buy it,” I say, feeling almost happy in the warm softness of the beautiful garment, “but I don’t have any money.”

The shopkeeper frowns and thinks for a moment. “What else do you have?” she asks.

I shrug. “All I have are the seeds in my dress and—” The golden pen pinches the inside of my cheek as if to warn me not to trade it.
Cut it out,
I want to tell it,
I’m not going to give you away
.

“And what?” she says. Her face is hard now, all the gentleness gone. She wants a good price and I can understand why. The sweater is magical. When I pull its hood up over my head, my mind is warmed by the same protected feeling I had when I put the sweater on.

“I’m alive,” I say. “I can get you out of here. Give me the sweater and I’ll take you wherever you want to go.”

“And leave my store?” she scoffs. “Why would I want to do that? I built this place. This is
my
place,” she says angrily. “Take off the sweater.”

I sigh, taking the garment off and handing it back to her. The color begins to fade the moment it leaves my hands.

“Cora,” Minotaur whispers sharply, pointing out the window at a Ker drifting toward the store. I rush over and crouch down next to him, behind one of the display cases. The Ker is peering in the window. It stands there for a few moments, until the shopkeeper smiles and waves at it, pointing to the red sweater in her hand. It looks at her for a moment and pulls at the window. Unable to open it, the Ker moves away.

“It’s going to get reinforcements,” Minotaur says. “When you lit up that sweater, they caught sight of the color, and now they know we’re here. We have to get out quickly.” He turns to the shopkeeper. “If you don’t want them to tear up your store looking for us, you’d best show us a way out of here.”

The shopkeeper’s eyes flash angrily. “Why should I? There will be less damage if I just turn you over to them,” she says.

“There will be a fight,” Minotaur says, “and even more damage if you don’t get us out of here now.”

She thinks this over, weighing what’s in her best interest. “You can use the back door,” she says grimly, showing us a wall behind a curtain.

“It’s just a wall,” I say, confused.

“Put your hand on it,” Minotaur says.

At my touch, a door appears.

“Wait,” the shopkeeper says. “Before you go, give back the color.”

She holds out the sweater and I take it and hug it to my body. It turns bright red. The moment I hand it back to her, the color begins to drain away once again.

“Come on,” Minotaur says as he moves cautiously out into an alley. I follow him.

“I’ll stay by your ear,” says Minotaur, shrinking his persona to a dime-sized glint of light. “Follow my direction and you’ll be okay.”

I stand in the alley with my back against the building. I can feel the pull of the Keres as they drift toward the shopkeeper’s storefront. I move along the wall, mouselike, trying to stay as inconspicuous as possible, but in this City where everything is dark and gray, I’m easy to spot in my white dress and living flesh. I stop at the end of the alley and stare down into the mirror-smooth sidewalk. My reflection shines back at me. My dress isn’t as white as it once was, but although soiled by my fall through the earth and the blackened post I clung to on the ferry, it’s still bright enough that no one could mistake me for a ghost. I wonder how long I’ll survive in this netherworld. Soon, I think sadly, I’ll probably be a ghost too.

“Don’t worry,” Minotaur whispers. “We’ll get you out of here. The moon is setting and rush hour is starting. The shades will crowd the streets to return home from their jobs. That might create enough of a diversion for you to make it to the subway station on K Street. A special train will be waiting for you. My father arranged it.”

When he says that, the pen vibrates on my tooth and I’m not sure I can trust him.

“You want me to get on a subway train that your father arranged for,” I repeat, the ache in my mouth telling me that something isn’t right.

“It’s the quickest way,” he says, his spot of light drifting out into the street for me to follow. “C’mon!” he whispers. But I can’t move. The thought of going underground suddenly terrifies me. I know it’s absurd, because I’m already underground. I can’t explain my hesitation, but I suddenly feel that it’s Minotaur who is capturing me. The pen is busy drilling a thought into my head.

“Minotaur,” I whisper. He’s back at my side as soon as I speak. “If I’m not dead yet, then I don’t yet have a place in the underworld.” Minotaur starts to answer, but I press on, excited about the idea I’ve conceived. “And if I don’t have a place in the underworld, then the Keres have nowhere to take me, which means they don’t have any power over me. Right?”