“Jeez,” I say, straining to take it in between coughing fits into Gamary’s hair. It looks like the farmers’ market in Union Square, except instead of just having beards and tribal earlobe inserts, the people are monsters—strange variants of the things I’ve read about in Creatures & Caverns.
Some look like Mortin, with red skin, yellow hair, and tails—and there are many who smoke pipes like him (although I don’t see any with tail lighters; maybe that was vintage). Some look like Ada and Ryu (“attenuates”?), with pale skin, blue hair, pointed ears, spindly bodies, and twinkling fingernails and toenails. Some are aqua blue with throbbing gill slits on their necks in large glass collars full of water.
Then there are the ingresses, the hybrids. Each is part human and part something else. I see okapicentaurs like Gamary; fish-men like the guard who strides beside me (who, although he looks fishy, seems fine breathing air); octopus-men like Officer Tendrile (who all appear to be cops); proper horse-bottom centaurs, who look tall and regal and (I admit) sexy; fauns with goat legs and human bodies; men with dog heads that slobber and bark at one another; and men with large, bumpy, moist-looking frog heads.
The ceiling, like the inside of the thakerak chamber, is a giant glass sheet under bright blue water, which makes the chamber feel like a bizarre aquarium where the creatures have escaped and decided to sell things. Different stands offer pottery, rugs, books, fruit, jewelry, weapons, and medicine. Everyone wears getmas or kilts or robes. I see no women. I see no shoes.
Creatures crowd Ada and me as we’re paraded through, smoking, spitting, blabbing in different languages, mostly English. Why English? I assumed before that everyone spoke English because this was happening in my head, or because it was a setup for a cruel psychological experiment, but no psychological experiment would involve construction of a set this elaborate, and when it comes to dreams … I was never this successful with women in my dreams. I know I haven’t succeeded with Ada in any way that a healthy heterosexual male would count, but she has looked at me, and I have given her a compliment, and she has touched my arm, and this is better than I usually do, even in my dreams.
Let’s assume that what Ada says is true: I’m in an alternate universe that split off from Earth and then reconnected after millions of years. Did the creatures learn English from us? Maybe they just like English. I wish they weren’t speaking it, though, because I can understand what they’re saying about Ada:
“—look at the little one—”
“—she’d fetch a good price—”
“—it’s tight like that—”
“—Officer Tendrile, let me sketch you, sir, twenty di—”
I hear this word di- a lot in the rattling conversation of the market. It’s the beginning of one of the words my brain can’t conceptualize, so every time I hear it, it remains an untended prefix, but it’s easy to tell from the context what it means.
“Dumplings! Fresh dumplings here! Two di-!”
“Taxes! Getchyer taxes done here! Don’t let the Appointees take your di-! Hai hillai!”
Among the many stalls in the market, the ones with the longest lines advertise, in plain English, “correspondence services.” I’m not sure what it means, but as the crowd mobs us, we slow down, and I find myself hanging next to two creatures on line. The first is an aqua man with neck gills under a glass collar; he has a row of gold and silver rings on each gill slit. The second has a frog head.
“Riggity buggle,” the frog-man says.
“We’re trying one more,” his companion says. “But if we can’t hack it, you’re going to have to settle the case.”
“Buggle!” the frog-man says.
“Whose fault is it, huh? Did I try and lick someone inappropriately?”
“Mr.... ah … Officer Tendrile?” I call out. “How come everyone’s speaking English?”
I’m hoping the question will flatter him. A certain type of cruel intelligence is flattered by questions. I’m right; he lights up. “The Appointees assigned English two hundred years ago. I never liked it. Dirty language. Too many words.”
“People just took it up?”
“We listen to the Appointees here. Who do you think makes this a males-only marketplace? That’s how you keep a society strong.”
“Where are you taking us?”
He smiles and slucks away. We pass coopers, tailors, and blacksmiths. One person reminds me of Pekker Cland—a red-skinned smith with a semicircle of axes spread out in front of him, negotiating with a dog-head. The dog-head sniffs at me as I pass; I sniff back. There’s a lot to smell, especially when we pass the food stalls, which sell a plethora of variations of meat on a stick. There’s meat on a stick dusted with pepper powder, meat on a stick drizzled with orange sauce, meat on a stick fried golden brown and contorted into long looping shapes.... The odors hit me in waves: barbecue, cardamom, cinnamon, onion, char.... Among them are smells I’ve never dealt with before: nasty impossible smells like peanut-butter shrimp and sautéed sour milk clump.
We come to the end of the market chamber. Gamary stops. I’ve gotten used to his harsh hair; my neck hurts from craning it to see everything. In front of us, I spy a gigantic wooden door.
“Pleasure doing business with you,” Officer Tendrile says to Gamary. His guard hoists me and Ada off the okapicentaur’s back and flings us on the ground, which is coated with the grunge of innumerable bare feet.
“Sorry,” Gamary says to me and Ada. “My daughter.”
“Shhh,” Officer Tendrile says. “Go.” He hands Gamary a pile of golden coins. Gamary heads back into the market with a regretful lope.
36
THE GIGANTIC WOODEN DOOR SWINGS open from the inside. An octopus-man nods at Officer Tendrile. Tendrile’s guard pulls Ada and me through the doorway. The door shuts with a hollow, echoing thud. The sounds of the market disappear.
In front of us, the ceiling dips precipitously and the passageway gets narrower and turns to the right, to a chamber filled with jail cells cut into opposing rock walls. Officer Tendrile leads us to it. Lanterns hang in the dank air. Octopusmen sit on stools drinking what smells like regular old coffee in clay cups. Fish creatures pace back and forth holding spears. Pleading faces—some dog-heads, some frog-heads, some centaurs—look out from the jail cells. Dirty hands grip the bars.
We’re pulled into an empty cell at the end of the chamber. The fish creature holds a bowl of water to my lips. It smells pondish but I sip some. Ada drinks it too, and I briefly recognize this as an intimate moment: sharing a drink with a girl. Officer Tendrile points at a trough on the floor behind us.
“When you need to relieve yourself, go there. This is one of the things I love about our world. Mr. Eckert, on Earth, you have pants, yes? Pants aren’t allowed here. The Appointees haven’t approved them. So people wear getmas, and I can leave my prisoners handcuffed, and they can still relieve themselves no problem!”
He secures the door with a lock as large as my head. It clangs against the bars. He steps out of view, leaving me alone with Ada. I sigh. I’m about to apologize for getting us into this mess, but then I remember Mortin and Sam telling me I apologize too much, so I shut up, and Ada speaks.
“Gamary. What a spineless bum. And that little snitch Ryu. I’m gonna kill them both.”
“You can take Gamary, but leave Ryu to me,” I say, trying to sound badass. “I have a beef against a different Ryu, and there has to be a connection.”
“There could be a correspondence.”
“What’s that? And what are correspondence services? I saw those in the market.”
“People in your world are connected to people here. The populations are identical. It has something to do with the way our universes came back together. Everyone in your world has a single correspondent here, and by doing something to a person’s correspondent in this world, you can affect them in your world. And vice versa.”
“So Ryu here corresponds to Ryu at camp?”
“Maybe. Sometimes people w
ho have the same name don’t correspond. Understanding it all is very complicated. That’s why it’s a high-paying job.”
“Which was what Mortin had.”
“Exactly: a correspondence consultant. But I want to go back to something. How would you ‘handle’ Ryu? You’re not skilled in physical violence, Peregrine.”
“Uh …” I think I’ve just been called a pussy. I decide to change the subject. “I’m glad they put us together.”
“It’s a sign of disrespect. They think we’re too stupid to figure a way out of here.”
“Are we?” I think we might be. Our hands are cuffed behind our backs. What’re we supposed to do? I never thought I was stupid, but now that I know this whole world exists, I do feel pretty dumb.... I need to learn more. In Creatures & Caverns, the more you read the books, the better you’re able to deal. “What were all those creatures out there?” I ask.
“Full of questions, are we?” Ada shuffles around the cell on her butt, looking at the walls and ceiling, scanning for weak points. “The highborn other normals come in three varieties: attenuate, like me and Ryu; saturate, the ones with the gill slits—you probably won’t see much of them; and ferrous, like Mortin Enaw.”
“Like ferrules in the game.”
“Yes, but don’t tell Mortin that; he’ll get insulted. He thinks that game is a hack job. Besides the highborns, you saw members of the seven ingress races: the okapicentaurs, the centaurs, the fauns, the hequets, the cynos, the celates, and the batracians.”
“The what and the what?”
“The hequets are the frog-heads; the cynos are the dog-heads; the celates have the tentacles like our friend Officer Tendrile; the batracians are the fish-men. The fauns—”
“I know what a faun is!”
“Well, clearly I can’t make assumptions. Didn’t you take biology?”
“Yes.”
“Then you should be able to figure out the word batracian.”
“I have specialized knowledge, okay?”
“Like what?”
“Creatures and Caverns.”
“Right, then, here you go! You’re in a certified cavern guarded by creatures. This is perfect.”
“No, it’s … in C and C you’ve got a party of adventurers, and weapons, and armor … and spells! Magic! Do you know magic?”
Ada shakes her head.
“Runecrafts? Special escape magic?”
“There’s no such thing as magic.”
“Well, crap. Where did they take Mortin?”
“Mortin’s got a record, so they took him to Granger. It’s a high-security prison on the other side of Penner.” She gives me a quick-and-dirty geography primer. “We are five hundred helms, or a quarter mile, underground. Penner is one market chamber out of dozens that make up Subbenia’s lower portion, which is full of prisons, brothels, bars, restaurants, criminals, adventure seekers, and earthpebble addicts. Most chambers are men only; some are women only; a few are coed. Up above is the Great Beniss Basin, which is as long as the Red Sea but totally devoid of life due to its unique chemical composition. It’s enclosed by mountains on either side. To the south is Laurentia, the capital, where the Appointees live.”
“Can’t we go plead our case to the Appointees? Like a trial?”
“Trial? What a cute Earth idea.”
“Maybe they haven’t been introduced to it. I can explain to them. I can be eloquent. I’ll say I was minding my business at camp....”
Ada shakes her head. “There’s no way out of this.” She turns her shoulders in. I recognize the posture. I do it in quiet moments of clarity when I realize my own worthlessness.
“Hey,” I tell her. “It’s okay. Don’t worry.” I shuffle on my butt next to her.
“You don’t understand,” she whispers. “They’ll hang Mortin, rape me, and kill you.”
“The Appointees?”
“Anyone who’s suspected of disagreeing with them can be branded a friend of Ophisa and … disappeared.”
“Because Ophisa captured the princess.”
“Yes. The crime of the century.”
“So she’s like the president’s daughter?”
“Imagine if your president were the president of the world, and his daughter got kidnapped. She’s like that.”
“What’s her name?”
“Princess Anemone Naru.”
“Really? Is she, like, part anemone?”
“No!” Ada laughs. She wipes a tear off on her shoulder. “She’s a highborn attenuate other normal like me. Beautiful, kind, and just. I have …” Ada tilts her hip toward me. “Inside the pack there I have something that will show you what she’s like. Can you open it?”
Ada is referring to the thing that I previously identified as her “animal-hide fanny pack.” Officer Tendrile really must think we’re stupid because he let us keep everything. I bend over and use my teeth to undo the button that holds the pack closed. Ada tells me to ignore a few personal items inside (that look like makeup) as I get my teeth around something cold and metal and fish out—
“Uh pewtuh mini!” I say with my mouth full.
I place the pewter miniature on the ground. It’s as good as the one of Pekker Cland—or Sam’s figure of Peter Powers. It shows a gorgeous, strong girl holding a torch—a bit like the Statue of Liberty, but this girl is younger, maybe Ada’s age, and instead of wearing robes she has a draped top that ends over her stomach. She herself ends not much farther below, where her hips turn into ragged unfinished metal. She has no legs.
“Pewter? Excuse me? That’s silver,” Ada corrects.
“Sorry—I mean, how was I supposed to know?”
“Because I’m not the kind of girl who carries around pewter.”
“What happened to her lower half?”
“Nothing. My mother gave this to me when I was a child.”
“So you broke it?”
“No! All depictions of the princess are like this. It’s improper to show her lower half. She’s the great figure of our time. She stands for truth and peace and fealty to the Appointees.”
I look at the figure’s silver eyes. They’re proud but scared. Save me, Perry, they say.
“How was she kidnapped?” I ask Ada.
“Ophisa stormed the Appointees’ palace and took her while she slept.”
“How’d he get in? Isn’t it guarded?”
“It’s not for human minds to comprehend the horror of Ophisa. No one who has seen him has lived, except for his perverted servants. He can see into the thoughts of anyone he turns his hundred-and-ten-eye gaze on, speaking to their deepest fears.”
“Where is he now?”
“He took the princess to the Badlands with his rebel hordes, where he holds her for ransom. He’s demanded that the Appointees step down and the world answer to his command.”
“And where are the Badlands?”
“South and ouest of Laurentia.”
“You mean south and west?”
“We say ouest. It’s French. It caught on.”
I like it. “But why did Mortin say I have something to do with the princess?”
“That’s our gambit, Peregrine. It’s why we’ve been watching you. Mortin did an analysis and determined that our princess”—Ada nods at the figure—“corresponds to a girl in your summer camp, Anna Margolis. He further deduced that if you kiss Anna, the princess will be freed.”
“What? Why? Ophisa will just let her go?”
“Maybe she’ll escape; maybe Ophisa will have a mutiny among his men; maybe we’ll all wake up tomorrow and it’ll never have happened. That’s how correspondences work—they’re fuzzy. But trust me: if you kiss Anna, the princess will go free—Mortin determined it, and he’s the best. But when he told his bosses about the connection, they fired him, and now somebody’s sent the authorities after us. Someone wants to make sure his plan fails.” She looks at the ground. “Poor Mortin. Off in Granger, without me, without his lighter …”
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey!” It’s the mention of the lighter that does it. It sets off a chain reaction in my brain, a batch of thoughts that for once, instead of curving around to nowhere, shoot straight out to form a plan. There’s more, too: Ada’s face, and her story, and the princess at the mercy of this unspeakable monster in somewhere bad enough to actually be called “the Badlands”—it’s a situation that requires direct action.
“We’re getting out of here,” I say.
“How? Magic?”
I tap my handcuffs against the ground behind me. The pieces of Mortin’s lighter, which were stuck to my skin with dried blood, fall off. I peek around to see: two of them are metal slivers, about a half inch long, that look great for picking locks.
37
ADA RAISES HER EYEBROWS AT ME. A shadow passes by the door to the cell. I stop moving. A fish creature—a batracian—looks in at us for a few terrifying moments, then moves on. I nod for Ada to give me her hands. With our backs to each other, using the tips of my fingers, working blind, I lift a metal sliver and ease it into the keyhole on her handcuffs.
I remember Jake’s words: Everything’s like sex. I close my eyes. I have a Creatures & Caverns book with pages and pages on lock picking. I can do this. In a game I would roll dice. In real life I just have to do it.
I press the metal sliver against the inside of the lock and try to turn it. This will be my tension wrench. To pick a lock, you have to first apply tension to it and then push the individual pins up one by one until the lock clicks and turns. I’ll have to hold one piece of metal steady while I explore with the other. The good thing is that, even though my wrists are shackled, I can freely move my fingers; I just can’t see them. I pinch the tension wrench against the lock while I insert the other piece: my pick.
I feel one of the pins. It sits in the shaft of the lock. I push it up with the pick as I turn with the tension wrench. Click. The pin settles on top of the turning shaft.
“Holy crap!”
“Shh! Did you get it?”