7

UNDERGROUND

In great need may ye return to the Sunlit Lands,
for ye are our cousins and neighbors.

FROM “THE ORDERING OF THE WORLD,” AN ELENIL STORY

Jason had never followed a hummingbird into a disgusting sewer before, and so far he did not like it. He suspected he would pass on future opportunities. It stank like something had died, then been eaten, digested, and expelled, and then died again. The stench climbed right up into your nose and just lay there.

The pipe narrowed. Crawling became difficult. “I feel like a snake,” Jason said and immediately regretted it. Please let there not be snakes in here. His arms were folded under his chest, and he moved himself along with his fingers and toes. He felt like he was having trouble breathing, but it was just good old-fashioned panic.

“You’ll be okay,” Madeline said. “Pretend it’s a waterslide.”

“I’m afraid of waterslides,” Jason said.

Madeline scooted ahead of him, also on her belly. All he could see were her sneakers as she pushed forward bit by bit with her toes. All he could hear were Madeline’s muffled sounds of exertion and the sucking sound of their bodies moving through the sludge. He bumped into her now and then, or even gave her a push, a process which involved putting his forehead on her heels and wedging forward. She didn’t seem to mind. His arms and legs felt like gelatin. He wished someone was shoving him from behind. He wished he wasn’t in a pipe at all.

He hoped the name Sunlit Lands was not a euphemism. If they popped out of this tube into a giant sewage factory and Hanali expected them to fight giant sludge monsters or something, he would . . . Well, he didn’t know what he would do. Throw a mud ball at Hanali, maybe.

The stench got worse.

“I don’t know what you’re doing up there,” he said. “But it stinks.”

Madeline didn’t answer. No doubt keeping her mouth shut to prevent anything getting in there. Smart. With every hard-earned inch forward the light intensified, as did the smell of the mud.

“There’s a turn in the pipe here,” Madeline said. “It’s a little tight. Wait —don’t push yet.”

Jason stopped. He lay his head down at the bottom of the pipe, trying to conserve his strength. Bad choice —now he had mud on his face. Great. C’mon, Madeline. Keep moving. He didn’t think he could go back the way they’d come. He hoped the pipe didn’t narrow any farther, or their year in the Sunlit Lands might be spent in this pipe. Stupid hummingbird.

“I can see the exit,” Madeline said. “The pipe slopes down from here. I’m going to lie sideways, and when I say to push, push.”

The mud slurped as she wiggled around trying to find a better angle to get herself through the kink in the pipe. “Okay,” she said. “Push, but not very —”

Jason pushed with everything he could, his muddy forehead connecting with her muddy sneakers, and there was a slurping pop followed by a high-pitched scream of terror or maybe joy from Madeline. Jason reached for her, but he missed, and he stuck his head around the corner in time to see a blazing circle of light and Madeline sloshing toward it in a river of mud and water.

The pipe widened below (finally!), and Madeline managed to get her arms and legs against the sides of the pipe and stop herself from shooting out the end. “It’s the exit!” she called. Her head was silhouetted against the light. “It’s a big cave,” she said. “Really big, with lots of pipes everywhere. They’re all gushing water into a pool below. I can’t tell how deep it is, but it looks like it’s maybe twenty-five feet down.”

Desperately worried he wouldn’t be able to get himself around the corner without Madeline’s help, and certain that she couldn’t get back up the pipe, Jason twisted once, violently, and found himself careening down the pipe on his back, screaming and —as the pipe widened —flailing his limbs. He slid down at roughly the speed of a bowling ball covered in olive oil. He had time to shout half of Madeline’s name before knocking into her and carrying them both flying out of the pipe and into the cavern in a confused tangle of limbs.

This is the end of our adventure, he thought. He was glad no one else was there to see him die by barreling down a mudslide out a sewage pipe and into a runoff pond. He felt sorry for the coroner because they both stank so bad.

The water clapped shut over them, and they sank, fast. The water was half mud and revealed little when he opened his eyes. In the thick darkness he saw a white shape nearby —Madeline? He kicked over to her.

What turned its face toward him was not Madeline.

It was a face he might have said was a woman’s if not for the sickly white color and the sharp, protruding teeth. The flat, black, pupil-less eyes were another giveaway. She reached for him as he tried to swim away, kicking with all his might.

Her hands were webbed, with black claws where fingernails should be.

His head broke the surface just as the creature’s hands closed around his ankle. He shouted for Madeline, who was pulling herself up onto a long metal walkway, then he descended, struggling, toward the bottom of the murky pool. He heard a distant splash, but all he could see was the mermaid thing pulling his face toward its gleaming shark’s teeth.

Madeline’s fists barreled into the creature with the full force of her dive behind them. It shrieked and lost its grip on him. Jason thrashed, trying to get away, then Madeline kicked off from the creature’s midsection, grabbing Jason under the arms as she rocketed upward.

They broke into the air, and Jason drew an enormous, gasping breath. Madeline dragged him out of the water onto the walkway.

“Mermaids,” Jason gasped. “I am now afraid of mermaids.”

“We should get away from the water as quickly as we can,” Madeline said and started across the narrow walkway.

“That was a scary mermaid,” Jason said. “Not the nice kind who sings to sailors and then murders them. The mean kind that gets murdery without the music.”

Madeline shivered. “Maybe that was a Scim.”

“We should have brought some dynamite to throw in all the lakes, then,” Jason said. He imagined telling his parents about this when he got home, not that they would want to talk to him. He could practically see the skepticism on his father’s face. One thing Jason never understood was how often people assumed he was lying. Since he had started telling the truth about everything, he felt like people should always believe him. Which was funny, because when he’d told lies in the old days, he had always assumed he had to convince people things were true. Now he just expected them to recognize it. But whatever. People were slow to believe in scary mermaids. Fine.

“I don’t think we’re going to be able to get back up to that pipe,” Madeline said. “So I guess we follow this walkway.”

The walkway wound through a tunnel large enough for a car. It was a relief not to crawl. No obvious source of light lit the tunnel, but it wasn’t dark. After a while the tunnel walls changed from concrete to brick and then from brick to very old brick: hand mortared and brown with age, half the size of a regular brick, thin and long.

Madeline walked in front, her fingers running along the bricks.

“Hey,” Jason said. “Something’s written on there.”

They paused to look. Chinese characters were scratched into some of the bricks. “That’s strange,” Madeline said. “Can you read them?”

“Well, it’s complex characters, not the simplified ones. But yeah, I can read a lot of them. It’s people’s names. Maybe the people who laid the bricks?”

Madeline ran her fingers across one of the names. “How old do you think these are?”

Jason grinned. “I’d say these come from sometime between 1850 and 1882.”

Madeline’s eyes widened. “How can you be so certain?”

They started to walk again, side by side now. “Chinese immigration to the US started mostly in the 1850s . . . people trying to get in on the gold rush. Then they stuck around to do whatever made money: farming, construction, stuff like that. Chinese Americans built most of the railroads, you know.”

“I knew that, more or less,” Madeline said. “But why 1882?”

“You never heard this before? That’s the year of the Chinese Exclusion Act, when the US government made it illegal for Chinese people to immigrate to the United States.”

Madeline stopped. “When they what?”

Jason shrugged. “Yeah. It was a mess. My great-grandpa, he got separated from his family. They couldn’t come to the United States . . . They thought the ban would lift and they could get back together, but, well, it didn’t.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Madeline said. “So it was only the Chinese —”

“People were worried they were taking jobs away. You know, like laying steel for the railroads or laying bricks in creepy underground magical sewers. The kind of work no one else wanted anyway.”

Madeline stopped, hands on her hips. “Maybe you heard the story wrong. It’s just . . . it’s un-American. What about the poem on the Statue of Liberty about the —how does it go? Bring the weary to me?”

Jason kicked a stone, and it went skittering ahead of them down the tunnel. “The Chinese didn’t come in past the Statue of Liberty. Or not many of them. Most of them came in through Angel Island, in California. It was a different experience.”

“I’m sure Ellis Island wasn’t exactly fun,” Madeline said. “Lots of people came through with their names misspelled, or had harsh things said to them.”

“That’s actually a myth about the name-change thing,” Jason said. “But anyway, the average person made it through Ellis in a few hours. A quick physical exam, a couple questions, and you were on your way. People were commonly at Angel Island at least a few days. The longest recorded time someone was held there was twenty-two months. Only direct family members of US citizens were allowed in. And unlike all the English and Polish and Irish and whoever coming in through Ellis, they actually checked the answers of the Chinese and other Asian immigrants against the answers given by their family in the US. If they couldn’t track them down, you had to stay until they could. If your answer looked like it might not be quite the same, they’d send you back. People were packed into small barracks with no mattresses, or kept in cells, while they waited to find out if they’d be allowed entry. I’m not saying everyone who went through Ellis had an amazing time, but on average they had it better than anyone going through Angel Island.”

“I’ve never heard of this.”

Jason shrugged. “A lot of people haven’t.”

Madeline started to say something, then closed her mouth. It was fine. He didn’t expect her to know this sort of thing. It’s not like they talked about it at school. Where would she learn about it? He wondered if he would have learned about it if it hadn’t affected his own family, once upon a time. He wasn’t surprised she didn’t believe it at first, either. He remembered the day he had learned that it had been illegal for Chinese people to come into the United States all the way until 1943, and they changed that only because of World War II, and then it was only like a hundred Chinese people a year. That didn’t change until the sixties . . . Eighty years of few or no Chinese people allowed into the States.

“Hopefully the immigration rules in the Sunlit Lands are a little nicer to Chinese Americans,” Jason said, trying for a joke.

But Madeline didn’t laugh. She seemed troubled.

Eventually the old bricks gave way to natural stone, as if someone had carved the tunnel through a mountain. Madeline stopped and put her hand on the last of the carved names. “I’m glad they came,” she said.

Jason grinned at her. “Yeah, otherwise you’d be covered in stinky mud and walking through a tunnel alone.”

She punched him in the arm, and they kept walking. It’s fine she didn’t know, he said to himself again. It was fine, but it made him sad.

The tunnel spilled out into a forest. Green light filtered through the trees, but they could still see patches of the cavern ceiling above them, a bright-grey sky illuminated by some unseen source. “Impossible,” Madeline said, turning to take in all of this underground forest. A dark canopy of leaves overhead blocked most of the ceiling. Vines snaked up the trees, enormous leaves turned toward the canopy. Thick brush obscured the ground. A narrow path forced its way forward, making a round tunnel through the branches which arced over the packed dirt. Roots burst through the soil, piling over each other, wrapping each other, intertwining across the dirt path.

“They’re making it hard enough to get to the Sunlit Lands,” Madeline said. “I thought we’d just step into a magic painting or something.”

“Instead we have to go hiking.”

“I hope Darius is okay.”

Jason snorted. “At least there aren’t any evil mermaids where he is.”

She stepped onto the path. “I don’t think we should wander off the trail,” she said.

“Me neither,” Jason said. The sudden change from tunnel to underground forest creeped him out. He was standing much too close to Madeline. She gave him a look. He shrugged. “I get clingy when I’m scared, so sue me.”

“Come on, you big baby,” she said, holding out her hand. He took it without comment, and they stepped onto the trail.

Soon the path got too narrow for them to hold hands. They hiked in silence for an hour. At one point, something crashed through the underbrush to their left.

“That sounded big,” Madeline said.

“Probably just an old refrigerator,” Jason said. That was the safest big thing that jumped to mind. Yup, just an old refrigerator, wandering the underground forest, looking for someone to open it so they could have some refreshments. That’s the kind of magical creature Jason could get on board with. Whatever it was, they never saw it. No birds sang in this forest, though once or twice Jason thought he saw the hummingbird ahead of them, flitting among the branches.

By the time they came to the clearing, the forest had begun to darken. A bonfire burned in the center of the open space, casting strange shadows on the enormous trees. Trails radiated out into the forest, like spokes centered around the fire, trees lining them like columns.

Madeline gasped and grabbed Jason’s forearm, pointing to some people near the fire. She gestured for him to be silent. Made sense to Jason. Might be wise to check these people out, in case they were crazy land mermaids or something. They crouched behind a bush and studied the clearing.

Five people hunched around the fire, three adults and two children. Humans, as far as Jason could tell. All five of them had tan skin, with blonde hair that hung in greasy knots from their heads. The man wore only a pair of jeans. He held a long hand-cut walking stick. The women wore shorts and loose sleeveless shirts. One of the women wore shoes, a pair of muddy white sneakers, but none of the others did.

As for the children, the girl’s hair was combed down over her face. The boy wore nothing but filthy shorts and a featureless wooden mask made of bark. Two small holes had been cut out for his eyes. He carried a long stick in one hand. Jason shuddered. Something about the kid was unsettling. Probably the bark mask. Definitely the bark mask.

The girl didn’t look up or uncover her face, but in a dull monotone she asked, “What are your names?”

Jason winced. “Maybe they’re not talking to us,” he whispered.

Madeline hesitated, then said, “I’m Madeline Oliver.”

“Stand here beside the fire,” the girl said, still in a monotone.

Madeline stood and stepped into the clearing. Jason stayed at her elbow. His gaze flickered among the strange collection of people around the fire. “I think I’d rather fight the mermaid.”

The man’s attention snapped onto Jason. “You fought Malgwin?”

“Fight is a strong word,” Jason said. “More like . . . let her try to drown me? Madeline punched her, though.”

The man glanced at the boy in the mask. The boy said, “Go.” The man jumped to his feet, staff in hand, and hurried back the way Madeline and Jason had come.

“Your name,” the girl said again.

“Jason Wu.”

The girl nodded. “Madeline is expected. The boy must stay with us.”

Jason balled his hands into fists. “The boy?! I’m older than you.” He took two steps toward the fire. The women pulled small, silver knives from their belts. “Uh. I mean. You can call me boy if you want.”

“We go together,” Madeline said. “Hanali sent for us.”

One of the women spit into the fire. The girl shook her head. “Jason Wu is not a name we have been given. You must go ahead alone, or turn back together.”

Jason thought back to the Chinese names on the bricks. No one ever got his name right. Never. That’s the whole reason he went by Jason. So he said his real name. “I’m Wu Song.”

The women watched Jason carefully. “Why did you try to pass with a false name? Are you a Scim spy? This passage is only for allies of the Elenil.”

“Peace, Sister, he doesn’t have the look of the Scim.”

“There are magics for such things,” the first woman said.

“No matter,” said the girl, and they both fell silent. “Wu Song is expected. They may pass. My brother will show you the path you must take.”

The boy stood, his bark mask regarding them for a long moment. Then, without a word, he turned and walked into the forest. Madeline followed, with Jason close behind. One of the women took the final position in their procession. Jason wondered if she was there to keep them from running the other way.

The masked boy led them on a winding path that ended at a ten-foot-tall round metal door, which hung in front of them with no visible means of support. A spinner, like the wheel on a bank vault, jutted from the middle. “You have agreed to the terms,” the boy said. “One human year of service in exchange for what has been promised you. Do you enter into this agreement willingly and without coercion?”

“It’s too late to turn back,” Madeline said.

The bark mask tilted. “It is not too late. With this staff I can smash the jewel of your bracelet, undoing the agreement. If you wish to be free, only say the word.”

There wasn’t much choice here. Without the magic, Madeline wouldn’t be able to breathe. Part of Jason wanted to go back, because of the forest and especially because of this kid with the creepy mask. Madeline was looking at him, and he thought of his sister. If he walked away, he wouldn’t ever forgive himself. Again.

“I’m willing,” he said.

Madeline echoed him, a profoundly grateful look on her face.

Jason tapped the kid with the mask on the shoulder. Best way to hide your fear was a joke. At least, he always thought so. “I should have mentioned that I like my pudding cups slightly chilled. Is it too late to add that to the agreement?” The boy just stared at him from behind the bark mask. “Never mind,” Jason said.

The boy wedged his stick high into the wheel, jumped, and yanked it toward the ground. The wheel turned, and the metal door opened. “You have come to the Sunlit Lands,” the boy said.

A series of bright, slender trees greeted them. They had yellow, almost golden, leaves and shining white bark. Jason held up his hand to shield his eyes from the dazzling sunshine. Hanali stood there in resplendent white embroidered clothes shot through with gold thread, his hands covered in lace and resting on a small walking cane. The color of the roses in his clothes had changed —they were now a deep crimson. His walking cane had roses on it too, but these appeared to be actual roses, their vines curving in on themselves to form his cane.

Jason and Madeline stepped through the doorway and into the Sunlit Lands.

At Hanali’s feet was a gilded birdcage with two bright-plumed birds inside. They almost looked like parrots. Hanali motioned to the boy with the bark mask. “Two have entered, two may leave. If you wish.”

The boy with the mask turned and looked at the woman. She shook her head. “Together, or not at all. We have told you this many times.”

Hanali tipped open the door of the cage, and the two birds flew out joyously, through the round door and into the woods beneath the sewer. “So be it,” Hanali said. “Spin the wheel well when you lock the door.” The boy and the woman pulled the door, both of them leaning backward. It closed with a monstrous boom. Hanali took hold of the birdcage and shook it once, and it collapsed to the size of a matchbook. He slipped it into his coat pocket and looked them over. “You are both filthy, though you have all your limbs. All in all, a pleasant passage, it seems.”

Jason’s mouth fell open. “Was that mermaid going to eat our arms?”

Hanali cocked his head. “Mermaid?”

“Scary lady who lives underwater with green hair and shark teeth.”

The Elenil raised one eyebrow. “You can’t mean Malgwin, certainly.”

“That’s what they called her, yes,” Madeline said.

Hanali tapped his cane in the dirt. He didn’t look at them and spoke almost to himself, as if lost in thought. “Strange. She rarely leaves the Sea Beneath. She is not, however, a mermaid. She is half woman and half fish. It is strange indeed that she would show interest in the two of you.”

“Where we come from, a half-woman, half-fish person is called a mermaid,” Jason said.

Hanali pulled at the lace on his sleeves. “Is that so? An interesting bit of trivia from your world.”

“Why do you play with that lace all the time? Maybe you should trim it off.”

“A nervous habit,” Hanali said, dropping his hands. “Perhaps it was the mention of Malgwin that set me to arranging my cuffs.”

“Madeline punched her in the face and kicked her in the stomach,” Jason said.

A slight smile tugged at the edges of Hanali’s mouth. “I would have liked to have seen that. But no matter. You are both here now, and safe. Step over here, and I will show you something wonderful.”

Hanali walked through a small grove of trees which led to the edge of a cliff. He leaned against a white-barked tree and gestured with his gloved hand. Jason and Madeline came up to the edge, and Madeline gasped. Jason looked at her, then Hanali. Both of them were staring into the distance, smiling. He looked straight down and saw stones and bush scrub and a long fall. From there a wide, flat plain stretched away from the cliff. In the distance, Jason saw what had captivated Madeline.

It was a city unlike any Jason had ever seen. Tall white towers rose from the corners, with crimson flags flying in the breeze. A low wall, smooth and white, encircled the city, and behind the wall trees grew and fountains splashed and pastel-colored houses leaned together in unstudied camaraderie. A hill rose gently in the center of the city, streets festooned it like flowers, and beautiful alabaster buildings wound alongside the streets like precious jewels. A wide river flowed from the city and toward them, and Jason could see its clear, babbling water as it passed them and watered the wood. The central tower held a massive purple stone, easily visible from this distance, which radiated energy like a lighthouse.

“I’m awake,” Jason said. “I’m awake.” His whole life he had been told what the limits of possibility were, and he had just discovered that everything he had been told was a lie. This city, white and glorious, made him believe that there was good in the world. If this was the home of the Elenil, he didn’t need to make a deal to serve them. He wanted to protect a people who could make something so beautiful. He wanted to know about their art, their politics, their social structures, their belief systems. Because if they could make a city like this, they could do anything. He couldn’t wait to walk down those streets, to see those fountains, to put his hands against the white walls.

“It’s gorgeous,” Madeline said. Tears were running down her face. “It’s everything I ever imagined, in all the books I read, all the fantasy paintings, all the movies. It’s the most beautiful city I’ve ever seen.”

Hanali smiled. “The Court of Far Seeing. It is the capital and greatest work of the Elenil. It will be your home during your time with us. Within a fortnight it will be so deeply in your heart that you may not wish to leave. Do you see the symbol of our power atop the main tower? All that we have accomplished these several centuries has been made possible because of the Crescent Stone. Come. My carriage awaits. I will take you to your housing.” He took a deep breath, enjoying the view. “Truly, it is an unparalleled place.”

Jason cleared his throat. Things were getting a little too emotional. “Does it have indoor plumbing, though?” Hanali glared at him. “What? It’s a legitimate question.” They walked back toward the door that had brought them into the Sunlit Lands. A rounded carriage, pure white and carved with intricate patterns, arrived beside them. A human teen wearing a white wig drove the coach, and white horses pulled it, four of them, with not a spot of another color, not a single hair out of place.

The coachman opened the door and, with a flourish, invited them to climb aboard. “But the mud,” Madeline said, looking at the perfect white silk on the pillowed interior, then to her own disgusting hospital scrubs.

“The smell is unfortunate,” Hanali admitted, “but the mud itself is easily cleaned. Climb aboard and be at ease. I would usually have clothes and a bath waiting for you here, but we have been on an accelerated schedule. I didn’t expect to invite you so soon, but with your delicate health . . . In any case, my apologies for not being properly prepared to receive you.” Jason shrugged. The worst of the mud had washed away when they fell into the water under the pipe, and their clothes were dry after the long walk through the forest.

“It’s okay,” Madeline said. She stepped in first, facing forward, and Hanali sat beside her. Jason flopped onto the opposite side.

“Don’t you want to watch the city?” Madeline asked. She stuck her head out the window. “The trees! It’s like the sunshine is coming out through their leaves. It’s so beautiful!” She took a deep, deep breath.

A sudden fatigue washed over Jason. Was it only this morning he had carried her into the hospital? He looked down and saw that his hands were shaking. She could have died. She could have died right there on the floor of their chemistry room, and now here she was, her face kissed by the golden sun of another world. He shivered. If he hadn’t carried her to the car, if he hadn’t spoken up, if he hadn’t driven like a maniac bank robber, she would be —well, he knew how a story like that ended. He knew it all too well. A heavy cold seeped into his limbs, and he closed his eyes. “Wake me when we get there,” he said.

“Welcome to the Sunlit Lands,” Hanali said, but Jason pretended not to hear.