Ali did not like being mocked. “Being human has taught me a lot. The elementals cannot win this war. Humanity has jet fighters, machine guns, huge tanks, atomic bombs. The elementals will be wiped out in a matter of days.”
Radrine laughed softly. “You are mistaken, the end will not come in days. The war will be long and bloody. Humanity has physical weapons, true, but lacks magical powers. Both sides are equally matched. But in the end we want the dwarves and elves to be destroyed, as much as we want humanity wiped out. Did you not know? The whole world can glow with radioactive dust and we will be happy. Because it is then we will move fully into the third dimension, and take over, and make all who have survived our slaves.”
The third dimension?
The yellow door had been the third door. And it had been open.
Radrine’s words stunned Ali. She understood now why Paddy had said everyone hated the dark fairies. “You’ll need the power of the Yanti to take over the whole planet,” she said, making another guess. “I don’t think Lord Vak’s going to just give it to you.”
“He cannot hold onto it if he has no hands!”
“You’re not strong enough to kill him,” Ali said, not sure how strong anybody in this upcoming war was, least of all herself. Yet she felt she had to continue to play the role, see what she could learn. Radrine took her insult in stride.
“Perhaps. That is why I will let the humans destroy him.”
“They’ll destroy you as well!”
“Really? How will they find me on this side of the red door?”
“They’ll find you,” Ali said, feeling the hopelessness of her words.
Radrine came near. Ali felt her breath on her cheek, so cold, even with the torture chamber so hot. The fairy raised a nail and traced the outline of Ali’s eyebrows. She spoke in her ear, a hissing whisper that recalled to Ali nightmares she had never known she’d had.
“I used to admire your eyes. So much power in them, such beauty. I am pleased to see that even as a human they are powerful.” Radrine’s nail came lower and brushed her lashes. “But what if I were to pluck one out? Eat it in front of you? Would you still be beautiful, Geea?”
Ali had to fight to stay calm. “I would still be who I am,” she said.
“You are brave. You were always brave. I grant you that.”
“Thank you.”
“Tell me the code you placed on the Yanti?”
“No.” Ali turned her head so her eyes met Radrine’s. To her surprise she saw that there were still traces of green in the fairy’s eyes, hints of beauty in what were now largely holes into horror. Yes, a part of her did remember Radrine as much different than the foul creature who stood before her. She also remembered that she had sworn to herself that she would never bow to the monster. Ali added, “You waste your time and mine.”
Radrine lost her smile and suddenly reached up with her sharp nail and cut Ali’s knotted hair close to her skull. It was like being scalped—her hair swung from the hook and Ali swung upside down. The dark fairy stared down at her and spoke in a quiet voice that no longer hissed.
“There is a difference between us. I have time to waste . . . you have none.” She moved toward the opening, her dark wings slowly unfolding like the black thoughts of people who have been born bad. But she glanced back once more and Ali was surprised to see a trace of sorrow on her otherwise cruel face. Radrine spoke. “You should have listened to me long ago, Geea. I asked you to join the Shaktra then but you said no. Now it is too late for that, don’t you think?”
Ali did not know what to say. She still did not know what the Shaktra was, although it was clear it was not the queen of the dark fairies. It appeared that Radrine worked for it.
Radrine’s regret quickly vanished and was replaced by a fangy grin. “I will let you hang for an hour. Then I will return, for dinner. Maybe you will be unconscious by then, maybe not.” She added, “I look forward to the meal. I’ve always wondered what royal meat tastes like.”
Radrine turned and flew away.
“If I’m awake, I’ll be sure to spit in your face,” Ali muttered, to no one.
This was it, the test of time. She understood that. It had not come before and it was not going to come later. Because there would be no later, that was the nature of the test. Nemi had not told her but she should have guessed. The test of time was the test of death, when all time would grind to a halt.
Ali felt bad she had not passed the test of air. The test of space had been painful enough, crossing over the gorge with only a rope to keep her from falling, and then having to watch her friends die. But cornering Paddy on his little lies had been nothing—she had never discovered the big lie hidden inside the group. Now she never would. That was the problem with failing the test of time, class was dismissed. Plus she still didn’t know who she was. That bothered her more than she would have imagined. To die and not even know what her secret name meant. How sad.
Ali swung up and grabbed the hook beside her. The one she had tied her hair to. The one with the bony foot of the kid who had died before her. Her arms were weaker than they had been before Radrine’s visit. Talking with the dark fairy had exhausted her. The creatures were like vampire bats. Just being around Radrine had sucked the life out of her. Ali could only hold on a few minutes before she had to let go. Of course then all her blood went straight to her head and she thought she would pass out.
So she swung up again, up and down.
It could not go on long.
She thought of her father, alone on the long roads—and how he would be even more alone when he returned home. She thought of her friends’ parents, how they would search for their children and never find them. Even Paddy and Farble—they must have had someone who would miss them. So much pain, she thought, and all because of her single lousy decision—the red door instead of the yellow door.
So much for her intuition.
Ali stared at the wooden buttons on her green shirt. She had chosen the shirt at the start of their adventure because she had thought the color would help her hide in the woods if they were attacked. The shirt had been cheap. She had bought it at a small store in town when they were having a half-off sale. But she remembered distinctly that the shirt had had seven black buttons. Now there were six, she could count them even hanging upside down. The number made no sense. She had dropped two buttons, one at each of the doors they had passed through. That was a fact, she could have sworn to it.
Yet the shirt had six buttons. Not five, not seven.
She studied it closer. Only one button had been torn off.
What did it mean?
Why did her watch now read exactly five o’clock?
More questions. They would have annoyed Paddy, if he had been alive to answer them. They probably would have annoyed the skeletons who hung beside her. Questions were for the living. Why did she keep asking them now? She would be dead soon, they could not help her escape.
Still, it bothered her, the extra button, her confused watch.
Ali tried swinging up again. She had stayed down longer than she had planned and the blood in her brain felt like it would burst her eardrums. Only this time she could not get up, she did not have the strength. Telling herself not to panic, to rest a minute, she took a few deep breaths and tried again. No luck, her back was too weak, the muscles of her arms too tired. It looked like she would have to stay upside down.
The pressure grew swiftly inside her head. Her heart pounded in her ears, even in her eyes—they felt as if they would pop. Her breathing grew hoarse—her lungs sounded like they were filling with fluids. She felt pain, everywhere, in every joint and bone.
Radrine would have to eat alone.
She was going to black out.
Then maybe she did pass out, she wasn’t sure. When she woke up the pain was less. It had not stopped, but it felt far away, as if it were happening to a friend and not to her. But she could still hear her breathing, it sounded awful. It could have belonged to an animal th
at had caught a disease and was now being put to sleep. The noise was louder than her heartbeat. In fact, she couldn’t hear her heart in her ears anymore. She could not even feel it in her chest.
Ali opened her eyes and got a surprise. She was sitting at the edge of the torture chamber, staring out at the endless legions of dark fairies, as they flew in their mindless circles around the immense hive. She saw the boiling lava far below, and the stinking red gases that whirled like tornadoes lit by fires that should have burned out long ago. The scene was a wonder, she thought, but it was far from wonderful.
Her attention was drawn upward, and she saw a cave on the roof of the cavern. She wondered if it went all the way to the top of the mountain, if the dark fairies had not taken it when they had come here, to this place, where nightmares were more real than scary stories and demons lived and breathed and plotted in darkness. Yet suddenly she could not remember how she had come to be there.
She turned and saw a girl hanging upside down beside a bunch of skeletons. The girl’s hair was a deep maroon—most of it swung from another hook on the ceiling. The girl swayed as she hung, slightly, back and forth, and Ali could hear her labored breathing, but even that seemed to be slowing down, growing quiet. It was only after staring at the girl for several minutes that she realized it was her.
“No,” she said, to no one. Because there was no one there.
She felt afraid, and terribly alone.
Again, she thought she blacked out.
Then she was on the black sand beach in Hawaii with her mother. They were lying halfway in the water, halfway on the sand, and they were having a wonderful time. Their position was scary, but that only added to the fun. Because if a wave came in too strong, it would wash over their heads, and they would have to close their eyes and hold their noses until it retreated. But the warm water felt like joy, she would not have cared if it had carried them both out to sea.
She looked over at her mother and caught her mother staring at her. Her mother had such beautiful red hair, it lit up the black sand. Smiling, her mother reached out and clasped her hand.
“You have magic, Ali. Did I ever tell you?” she said.
Ali laughed and asked her what that was supposed to mean.
“You will see,” was all her mother said.
Then she was in the car with her mother, the opening night of the play, her twelfth birthday. They were driving home and she was telling her mother how much fun it had been to play Princess Wartly, the heroine of Frogs and Freaks.
“It was so neat to have the stage lights on my face. I never knew how hot they were. And I couldn’t see anybody past the first row. It was like the audience was hardly there. At the same time I felt them all the time. Like they were in love with my character. Do you know what I mean?”
“I know exactly what you mean, Ali. I felt that way.”
She laughed. “You just say that because you’re my mom.”
Her mother shook her head. “I think everyone was wild about you tonight. I could feel the love in the audience.” She added, “I’m going to go to every one of your performances.”
“You don’t want to do that,” Ali said. “You’ve seen it—you know what’s going to happen next. You’ll get bored.”
Her mother took her eyes off the road, glanced her way. “Nothing you do bores me,” she said.
Ali snorted. “Yeah, sure. What about when I scream at you?”
“When do you scream at me?”
“All the time, in my head. I’m just too polite to do it out loud.”
Her mother reached over and took her hand. “You are more than polite.”
“I’m also a great actress? A better liar?”
Her mother chuckled. “No, I’m talking about something else.”
“What?”
Her mother reached over and tugged gently on her left ear. “You’re my daughter, Ali. You always will be. And you have magic.”
Then there was a burst of intense red light and the night went crazy. The light came from every direction at once and flooded the inside of the car, and seemed to be made of fire, only worse. Turning to her mother, feeling pain in her right arm, Ali tried to scream. But before the cry could leave her throat a bright green creature smashed through the window and grabbed her by the arms, and lifted her up high, into the night air, where she caught a glimpse of the burning car below, a dark figure beside it, and the white moon above.
Then they were flying, away from the street a short distance, behind a row of trees. There the creature set her on the ground, on a lawn, although it continued to support her from behind. Ali realized her head was bleeding and that her arm had been burned. She tried to turn around to see who had saved her.
“Stop!” the creature commanded, in a soft musical voice. “Do not turn around.”
“Who are you?” Ali asked. Through the trees she could see the car engulfed in flames, the red smoke pouring into the sky. Yet all around her, cooling green and blue lights played. They were coming from the creature at her back.
“You do not know,” it said.
“I know that.” Ali tried to turn again. Its grip tightened, stopping her. Ali felt as if she was not being held by physical hands, but by some type of force field. “Why can’t I see you?” she demanded.
“You will, in time.”
“When?”
“When you understand the mystery of time. Then you may turn and look upon me and know who I am.”
On the other side of the trees, the gasoline tank exploded and the fire grew more intense. Ali felt panic. “Is my mother all right? Can you save her?”
The creature came closer and spoke in her ear. “It is a mystery.”
She wanted to weep; she felt so scared. “I don’t understand.”
The creature hugged her, and for a moment it felt completely human. “That’s because you’re sleeping. You’re dreaming about the past and the future. All you have to do is wake up.” The creature seemed to speak inside her head. “Wake up, Alosha. And turn around.”
Ali awoke with a painful breath. The air that entered her lungs was filled with fumes and heat, and her entire body ached, especially her head, which pounded with blood. For several seconds she didn’t know where she was. Then she saw the dry skeletons swinging beside her, and the open door that led into the cavern where the fairy hive stood, and the red glow beyond. She was not dead, she realized, not yet, but she would be soon if she didn’t come up with a plan.
Yet she had hope now.
She had listened to the one behind her.
The bonds that held her feet to the hook had not changed since her last inspection. The fairies were not fools—they knew how to tie up their prey. She could well imagine all those who had come before her trying desperately to undo their bonds. But had any of them tried to unscrew the hook itself? Looking up, Ali saw that it had definitely been screwed into the ceiling. . . .
What had been screwed in, she thought, could be screwed out.
Ali began to twist herself right and left, using her outstretched arms as levers, clockwise and counterclockwise, trying to build up some momentum in either direction. But she noticed that when she went clockwise, the hook turned slightly. Leave it to the dark fairies to put their screws in backward.
Ali stopped and concentrated on trying to spin clockwise. The screw at the end of the meat hook twisted some more. She spun it around once, all the way, twice. A crack appeared in the stone beside it and black dust rained down on her eyes. Excited at her progress, she practically yanked her body into a pretzel shape. For a moment she forgot all about the fumes in her lungs and the blood in her head. She just kept turning, and the hook kept turning.
Then she fell to the floor, which fortunately was not too far away. Rolling on her side, she felt such incredible relief not to be hanging upside down that she burst out laughing. She had to remind herself that she was not free yet.
Ali checked her watch. Four-thirty; it was over an hour before her friends would rea
ch the gorge. The truth hit her like a laser bolt. On the other side of the red door—the side she was on now!—time flowed backward. She was amazed she had not realized that sooner, and what it meant.
She could still rescue her friends!
She had an immediate problem, however. Even sitting upright with a clear brain, she could not get free of the sticky rope that tied her to the hook. Rolling several times over on her side, she tried scraping the material against the rough stone edges of the wall. It took her several minutes of hacking, but eventually the rope snapped and she was able to pull off the stuff and stand. That brought another wave of relief, to actually stretch toward the ceiling and get her blood moving in the right direction.
Ali stepped to the opening and peered out. The cave she had entered the cavern through was about two miles away, and between her and it were a thousand dark fairies and a mile-deep volcanic fissure. Okay, she thought, those were not small obstacles.
What to do? She could not fly, and even if she could, she was not going to be able to fly past so many of the enemy. It was not like the dark fairies wouldn’t notice. What she needed was to bum a piggyback ride off someone who knew the hive inside out.
“Radrine,” Ali said aloud, and smiled. She was glad the evil queen was returning for dinner. Especially when she studied the space above the stony entrance and found a perfect place to hide. Picking up the hook and wiping off more of the sticky goo, she climbed into position. She could hardly wait to see the surprise on Radrine’s face.
The wait felt long. She spent the time thinking about the bright green being that had rescued her from the burning car. Time was indeed a mystery. She wondered what it would be like to run down the tunnel and warn herself not to take the red door. She just hoped she got that far.
Ali heard a noise below. A dark shape entered the torture chamber. Ali watched as Radrine stepped farther inside and then froze when she saw the cracks on the ceiling where the hook had come unscrewed—not to mention her missing dinner. Ali didn’t give her time to shout for help. Leaping from her hiding space, she landed on the fairy’s back and shoved Radrine forward onto the floor.