4

Alex ran out of the attic without bothering to close the door. Mallory quickly turned and blew out the flame of the old lamp, and the room went black. As an afterthought, she grabbed the book Alex had read from, and then Mallory was chasing her friend in the dark, moving slowly trying to piece together the layout of the attic from memory and her touch. Her shin rammed into the makeshift coffee table, and then she fell onto Caleb’s couch. She inhaled the dust plume as she tried to free herself from the stench of the teenage boy’s domain and coughed uncontrollably for a time.  Her eyes burned and watered, and she held them tightly closed. The attic was too dark to see anything anyway. When her breathing had calmed and her eyes had stopped burning so much, she slowly pulled herself to her feet. She could hear Alex still shouting downstairs, and there was the sound of breaking glass and splintering wood.

Mallory called down to her as she felt her way to the staircase, “Alex, are you okay? Stay still; I’m coming.” She pulled the door closed behind her, and the door’s lock clicked into place. There was a faint reflection from the lights outside that made it so Mallory could make out the outlines of the stairs as she descended. “Alex? Alex? Talk to me, Alex!”

Alex was still screaming, but Mallory could hear her were words now: “Dikaió lights on, Dikaió music play, Dikaió vacuum sprite clean, Dikaió kitchen sprites cook, Dikaió water pump, Dikaió door open.” The house remained silent and indifferent to her voice.

Mallory stepped gingerly over the pictures of the Administrators that Alex had pulled down from the hallway walls and picked her way carefully toward her friend—then she heard glass shattering in the kitchen. She turned the corner to find Alex standing on the counter throwing dishes at the kitchen sprites hurrying to clean up the broken bits of glass. “Listen to me! I am the Dikaió Administrator Alex Nelson. Stop cleaning up! Stop!” The sprites busily ignored her, vacuuming up each plate or cup as soon as it was thrown.

“Alex!” Mallory yelled.

Alex paused and looked at Mallory; there was no recognition in her eyes, just an emptiness that unnerved Mallory. Then Alex seemed to come to her senses, and her face contorted in grief. She sat down on the counter, crossed her legs, buried her face in her hands, and wept deep anguishing sobs. “What did I do? Oh, Mallory, what did I do?”

Mallory weaved through the kitchen sprites as they dumped glass shards in the waste receptacle. “Alex . . . Alex . . .” Mallory wanted desperately to comfort her friend, tell her that everything was going to be okay, but she had always been the one being comforted by others; it seemed to her such a worthless exercise because no matter how hard anyone tried, no one’s words ever made her feel any better: Emotions could not be ordered by the Dikaió. Most of the time people’s attempts at comfort just intensified whatever passion had control of her at the moment. The only thing that had ever been of any use was when her parents would hug her and stroke her hair. Sometimes they would hum the melodies of old hymns whose lyrics had long been lost, and that would at least calm the storm inside her.

Mallory climbed up on the counter and sat next to Alex. She set the book down and enveloped her friend in her arms and hummed a wordless song to the rhythm of Alex’s breath, quickly at first and then slower and slower. Alex’s breath kept time with Mallory’s song, and soon, Alex was breathing normally, just weeping softly into Mallory’s shoulder.

“Alex, we need help. We need to get our parents.” She picked up the book and waved it.

Alex nodded into Mallory’s shirt, wiping at her tears as she did. “I know . . . but what if they can’t do anything? What if they won’t do anything? Oh, Mallory . . . what if I? What if I?” Alex’s breath was growing shallower as she spoke.

Mallory pressed Alex’s shoulder warmly. “No,” she said. “We’re not going there until we know. Do you understand?”

Alex’s eyes were starting to dart wildly around the room as the kitchen sprites whirred in the dark. But she nodded in silent agreement, and both girls climbed down from the counter. Alex immediately laid her head back on Mallory’s shoulder and stood there for a moment, as if she were on a ship amidst the waves, and she was unsure her feet would hold her. “It’s okay,” Mallory said. “I’ve got you.” Mallory tried to link her arm with Alex’s, but Alex clutched tightly to her waist, so they stumbled haphazardly to the door.

Alex called out, “Dikaió door unlock.” Nothing happened, and Alex looked helplessly at Mallory, “What do we do?”

“It’s okay, Alex. This door knows you. Let’s try walking up to it and see what happens.” The girls took a step forward, and when they got near, the door unlocked and opened. The girls stumbled awkwardly over the threshold and down the back stoop because Alex was still leaning her head on Mallory’s shoulder and wiping her nose on her shirt.

“Listen, Alex. I love you like a sister, but you’re going to have to walk. I don’t think we’ll make it to my house like this. And honestly, that’s just gross,” Mallory said as she edged away gently.

Alex laughed a little mouse laugh, sniffled hard, and pulled herself up. She gestured confidently and said, “Right, sorry,” but her voice was quavering. She looked ready to burst into tears again.

Mallory handed her the book and said, “Here, put this under your jacket, so it doesn’t get too wet out here.” Then she smiled and held out her hand, which Alex took and squeezed tight.

The way back to the Matriarch’s home was filled with as much dread as the way to the Administrator’s house had been filled with excitement and intrigue. Heavy rain pelted the light above, and pink lightning shone like a spider’s web over the entire city. Some of the rain was immediately vaporized by the light, but much of it was dripping through, dampening them with warm droplets. The rain had not soaked into the ground enough to turn the dirt on the road into mud, so the wind was whipping sand and bits of debris into their eyes and mouths. On the way to the Administrator’s house the wind had been at their back pushing them onward, but now it was pushing hard against them like a defender repelling invading hordes from the castle walls. If the girls had not had a tight hold of each other’s hands, they would have fallen several times.

A blue shard of lightning struck hard against the light of the city; the entire light flashed bright blue. For an instant the city was lit up like it was the middle of the day. Mallory could see the green of the Dikaió Secretariat’s hedges, and the red shutters of her house just as vividly as the brightest day. There were two small rabbits crouching below them, and when the flash lit the city, they both stood up and stared in wonder around the city. Mallory wondered how much the tiny creatures really understood about what had caused the night to become day without a sunrise, and she realized that she probably did not know much more than they did. The light had been constructed long before anyone who was currently living could remember, and every record of its construction had been lost. In that moment of ignorance, Mallory felt a deep connection to the rabbits below the hedge. She felt like a helpless creature living in a world impossible to understand, just trying to survive, and now Alex may be just like her with no Dikaió to rely on to make that life any easier. They did not know anymore than a rabbit what the future was going to bring for them, but here they were standing in the brilliance of the night; all their troubles momentarily suspended by fear and awe.

No more than a fraction of a moment later, thunder chased away the light, and darkness hit the city with a wall of sound. The ground shook, the trees wobbled, birds flushed from their nests into the sky, screaming in protest. Both Mallory and Alex dropped down, their hands remaining tightly bound, their voices too terrified to do more than mirror the birds with sharp chirps mostly stuck in their throats. Mallory had felt the sound in her chest; her heart trembled with its power. When her head cleared enough to think again, Mallory wondered if the lightning had done something to the Dikaió lights in the city because everything was pitch black, but then she realized that her eyes were still tightly closed. She opened them and found the city much the way it had been before the lightning strike, except that the rabbits were no longer beneath the Secretariat’s hedges. They had vanished back to wherever it was that rabbits lived within the city.

Mallory wished she were home already, too: cozy and close to her mother and father. This was not the first time that lightning had struck the light above the city, and ever since she was little, her parents would surround her in their embrace when it did. When she was little, she thought that it was for her comfort, but now that she was older, she could recognize the fear in their eyes and feel their rapid heartbeats next to hers. She knew now that being a grownup did not take away the fear as much as help you become familiar with it, but in moments of extreme fright, everyone becomes a child that needs a hug. And she relished being with her parents in those moments to give each other mutual support. However, as she pulled Alex up and started walking, she knew that now her parents would have noticed that she was not at home, and she wondered if they would ever embrace her again once they found out what she and Alex had done.

The dust on the sidewalks and the roadways was turning to mud now, and Alex’s feet were starting to drag as they got closer to the Matriarch’s house, leaving long streaks behind the girls as they shuffled slowly forward. Mallory was all but dragging her by the hand.

“Mallory, stop! I don’t want to go any farther,” Alex said, bringing her feet to an immovable station on the sidewalk. Mallory slowed and turned slightly to look at her. Alex was soaked, her black bob now discombobulated and hanging in wet strands down her face. She was absently blowing at her hair, trying to clear it away, but it clung to her skin like wet wisps of misery.

“We’re almost there, Alex. Just a little farther.” Mallory tugged on her friend’s hand, but Alex stood firm.

“No, I don’t want to go. Let’s just go back to the attic.”

“Alex, they might be able to help.”

“Like they helped you? I doubt it. Besides in all the crazy schemes you’ve dragged us through, I’ve managed to never get into trouble. My father was just saying that he was proud of me for avoiding trouble my whole life, like a good Administrator ought to. This will kill him, Mallory, and then what? Would the city be stuck with a Dikaió Chorus for a Matriarch and an Administrator who can’t administrate? No, I can’t bear to see the look on his face when he finds out. I just can’t. Not tonight.”

Mallory had not considered how Alex would feel about getting into trouble. That was the place where she spent most of her waking hours, causing trouble and disappointing those she loved with her actions. And Alex was right—for their whole lives, Mallory had been the receiver of discipline, and Alex had been the practice of discipline: the perfect example of city civic-mindedness. She was always ready if there was ever a call for help when one of the citizens was in trouble. For example, when the Dikaió Piper had gotten himself and his plumbing sprite wedged in the crawl space under City Hall, Alex had jumped right in with her father, Mallory’s mother, and the Governor, passing along orders and calling for the City Services Manager to bring earth-moving equipment to dig him out. Even Caleb had been interested enough to join in the work of a high-profile rescue, using the city’s construction sprites to add concrete block piers along the back of the building as support while the machines dug. It was slow going for fear that too much excavation would cause irreparable damage to the old building, which had relied on old magic to construct it. Thus, the knowledge of how to repair a major problem in the old structure was, much like the knowledge of how the light worked, lost generations ago.

Being the useless citizen she was, Mallory stood back, watching and pacing. She wondered why they didn’t just open the small door behind the second shelf in the City Hall basement to let the Piper into the building—but when she tried to suggest that alternative, she was promptly shushed and told to go home and let the leaders work. As the sun began to set, and it looked like they were not going to be able to get the Piper out before nightfall, Mallory went inside. She tiptoed down the stairs into the dark and slightly musty basement where the records of the city were stored.

The second shelf was not really all that remarkable on its own, just an oak shelf stuffed full of old binders. However, when Mallory was young, she had brought her ball into the basement to play, while the adults were upstairs handling city business. When she rolled the ball straight, it kept running off course directly into the corner of the shelf. She laid down flat on the floor to examine the stones and was surprised to find a curved rut that looked like it was carved into the floor. Then she began to examine the shelf and found that there was a tiny metal lever on the side. It seemed perfectly obvious to her that if someone had taken the time and effort to construct a tiny metal lever on the side of a shelf, that whoever had done such a crafty thing intended that the lever ought to be pressed and would probably be horribly disappointed if the finder had not pressed it, so she decided to make that creator happy and pressed the lever firmly. There was a small click, and the shelf pulled away from the wall. She slid her fingers behind it and pulled. The bookcase did not move at first, but then with a tiny creak it swung out from the wall: its corner tracing the curve in the floor.

Behind the shelf, there was a doorway that opened into a small empty room full of benches set along the walls. When Mallory walked through the doorway to explore the room, Dikaió torches sprang to life, lighting up the space. The only other thing in the room beyond the benches and the torches was another small wooden door at the far end that was bolted shut. Of course, Mallory had a similar thought about the small wooden door as she did about the lever behind the bookcase, if someone had built a door in a hidden room then it was intended to be opened.

Behind the small wooden door was a dark space with dirt floors and a mess of cobwebs. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she could make out brick pillars about two feet high, and there were wooden beams crisscrossing over them, acting as a foundation for the old building. She realized she was in the crawlspace under City Hall. She got down on her hands and knees and explored under the building for a time, but it was quite dark, and she could swear that she saw pairs of small red eyes peering out at her from the shadows, so she got out quickly, closed the doors tightly, and pretty much forgot about the room until the Piper got stuck.

Now, she did not really look forward to crawling under the dark space again, but if she could conquer her fears, she could at least provide some usefulness to the city. She made her way through the doors and crawled into the maze of pillars and beams. She could see the setting sun shining down through the small hole the excavation crew had made some ways away. The silhouette of the Dikaió Piper was kneeling in the pool of light, yelling up at the digging crew, pleading with them not to leave him there overnight.

Mallory dropped to her hands and knees and began crawling in the direction of the light. Suddenly a movement to her left made her freeze in panic. She tried to track whatever it was as it darted between the piers. It was heading toward the Piper. Mallory tried to call out but found herself frozen in fear. The light hit the moving object then, and she saw a glint of silver. It was the plumbing sprite going about its tasks servicing the pipes. She sighed and began to crawl toward the Piper again. Just as she was about to call out, the Piper turned and fell back against the collapsed dirt with a heavy sigh. He closed his eyes, covered them with his hand, and lowered his head. “Well, that’s that. I guess we’re stuck down here.”

“Sir?” Mallory called.

The Piper startled and fell over in the dirt. “What, what? Who’s there?”

“It’s me, sir. Mallory Knenne. I’ve come to rescue you.”

“What? Knenne? The Matriarch’s daughter?  But how are you here?” The piper picked himself up onto one elbow.

“I found a door, sir. It’s just behind me.” Mallory motioned with her head as best she could, indicating the direction of the door.

The Piper strained his neck and looked past her. He did not say anything but nodded. “C’mon, plumber; we’re leaving.” The plumbing sprite rushed up beside its master, and they slowly followed Mallory back to the door.  They crawled into the room with the benches and walked out through the door behind the shelf. The Piper examined the mechanism that opened the door, and then ducked back into the bench room. He called out, “Dikaió torches off.” The lights in the room immediately went dark. Then he pushed the shelf closed and started up the stairs with Mallory and the plumber sprite climbing behind him.

When they exited City Hall, they could see the workers cleaning up a bit and the city’s leaders were standing in a circle busily discussing something—probably what would need to be done tomorrow to get the Piper out. Mallory started to walk toward the group to let them know that the Piper was free, but the Piper caught her arm. “Wait a moment, child. I’m still angry that they were just going to leave me there overnight. They wanted to go home and sleep in their nice, cozy beds, while I slept on the cold, hard earth. I’d hate to say something I ought not. You know how dangerous words can be.”

Mallory nodded, “Well, if you’d like, I could say the words for you.”

The Piper bobbed his head back and forth, looking up at the sky. He moved his cupped hands up and down as if they were a balancing scale, weighing her words. Finally, he said, “No, I think it’s better to let this wait until tomorrow. Maybe the day after? Let them dig as long as they have the heart to. I’m tired. I think I’d just like to go home, shower, get some supper, and go to bed.”

“But what will happen when they get under City Hall and find you gone?”

The Piper smiled wide and shrugged his shoulders. “I’d like to be in my nice, cozy bed by that time.” Then he winked and turned around, walking away wearily. Mallory looked back at her mother and the other leaders, and for a moment thought about walking over and telling them anyway, but they would probably just dismiss her as a useless Chorus anyway, and so she raised her hands like a scale in imitation of the Piper, shrugged, and then walked home.

The day the crew finally got into the crawl space safely, her mother had burst into the house brimming with rage; her lips were so tight and narrow they became invisible on her face. She ripped open the kitchen cupboards and slammed them closed again, looking for nothing in particular. When Mallory’s father asked what had happened, her mother just said, “the Piper got out three days ago and didn’t bother to tell anyone.”

Her father laughed uneasily the way he always did when he sensed danger was imminent but still foolishly asked, “but however did he do that?”

Her mother groaned, “I don’t know. He won’t tell anyone how.”

Mallory looked up from her homework and said, “Oh, I let him out.”

Both her parents’ heads whipped her direction like a stretched rubber band let loose. Her mother looked like steam was going to boil her brain, and her father looked perplexed. “But how, Mallory?”

“I tried to tell them three days ago. There’s a door behind the second shelf in the basement that leads to the crawlspace, but no one would listen to me, so I just went and let him out myself.” Her mother grounded her for three days to her room for that, and even after she got out, Alex and Caleb had refused to talk to her for a week, and the other city leaders still gave her dirty looks whenever they passed by her. They had even banned her from City Hall until she came of age. The Council members would literally bar her path into the building and physically force her out if she slipped by them, although she’d found she could still slip through the hole they’d dug for the Piper and down into the secret room behind the shelf. It was not much of a victory, but she did enjoy spiting the leaders, so she would often sneak into City Hall and sit in the secret room, relishing in rebellion. She’d even brought Alex down into the room once, but Alex was so uncomfortable breaking rules that she barely lasted thirty seconds in the space before fleeing back out into the open.

But now Alex had lost her Dikaió, and the city leaders would feel more than spited by Mallory’s rebellious spirit. What she and Alex had done made the Piper incident seem mild, and Mallory could completely understand why Alex would be hesitant to face off with the city leaders. However, this was also a problem far outside their ability to address, and they needed the experience of adults to help them. “What should we do then, Alex? Run? Hide? Where would we go that they wouldn’t find us? The city’s just not that big.”

Alex was trembling and tears were threatening again. “I don’t know, Mallory. I don’t know. I don’t like not knowing what to do next. Maybe we should go back and look at the book again—we could see if there’s a way to undo what I did?”

“Well, maybe there is? But we should let the leaders look and see. We’re in over our heads!”

“Oh, no! When you say that, it always gets worse.”

Mallory chose to ignore the insult and said, “I’m not sure it can get worse, Alex. C’mon. We’re getting soaked standing here arguing about it. Let’s go face the music . . . together.”

Alex shook her head, “It can get worse, Mallory. According to the laws of the city, if we did harm to another citizen even accidently, we could be . . ..” She hesitated to finish the sentence, but Mallory had been training as a city leader her whole life as well. She knew very well that harming another citizen in any way could lead to the ultimate punishment, death.

Mallory threw up her hands. “That’s all the more reason to go in and get control over the situation before someone gets hurt. Don’t you think?”

Alex looked uncertain, but then she nodded. The two girls began to move forward again.

The Matriarch’s house was well lit, and despite the trouble looming inside, Mallory felt an incredible sense of peace when she got into her own yard. The familiar old house was always a place of refuge, and at times inside its walls when no one else was around to remind her, she forgot that she lacked the basic abilities of magic that the rest of the city enjoyed. Surrounded by the walls of her youth, she could escape into her imagination where her grandmother’s prophecies were true, and she was the most powerful Matriarch the city had ever known, and she was able to save the city from danger using the old magic that she had learned in books.

 

Tonight, there was not going to be any escape from reality, and Mallory knew as they trudged slowly up the brick stairs to the front door that she and Alex would be in the biggest trouble of their lives. Mallory turned to her friend when they reached the front door: “Okay, whatever happens after this point, we stay friends, right?”

 

Alex started crying and nearly toppled Mallory backwards down the stairs in an embrace. They stood there for a long while, and then Alex sighed deeply and said, “I’m ready.” She called out, “Dikaió open.”

 

Nothing happened, and Alex’s shoulders drooped.

 

Mallory smiled soothingly, “Here, let me.” She reached up and touched the door. Recognizing her as an occupant of the house, the door unlatched and swung open.

 

When Mallory opened the door, she expected to find her mother’s dinner party in full swing, with adults talking loudly about politics and gossip. They would be eating daintily, picking at the selections of food, so that their mouth would be ready to engage in a question or call for explanation. In the city’s high society, it would be considered rude to have one’s mouth full when asked a question, and the adults seemed to take great delight in trying to catch the other adults with a full mouth by asking them questions mid-bite. It was also considered impolite to address a question to an heir to a Dikaió when the master was at the table, so those lucky few heirs that got dragged along on these sorts of get-togethers would be stuffing their faces or sitting sullenly, waiting for the masters to finish, so they could escape the doldrum social engagement. However, that expectation was not what Mallory and Alex found on the other side of the door to the Matriarch’s house.

 

Instead, they found the dinner party’s guests standing on the table swinging knives and throwing the Matriarch’s fine china at a pack of kitchen sprites that were busily whirring around the table, trying desperately to collect the silverware and china from the guests’ hands. Mallory’s mother and the other city leaders were calling over the din, “Stop! I command you to stop!” But the sprites kept on moving as if the most powerful leaders of the city were just as ordinary as Mallory had always been. Then, while trying desperately to hold on to her fork with a kitchen sprite pulling at it, the tall lanky wife of the Dikaió Smith Guild lost her balance and fell from the table with a grand tinkling of jewelry on top of the sprite. The woman rolled off the sprite onto her back. She reached up, clutched her chest, and groaned. Then she pulled her hand away and stared at it with confusion.

Whether it was the cutlery or the precious stones and sharp pins of her jewelry, the woman was bleeding. She sat there, blinking at the red stain on her hand, and her husband looked down at her, gaping with sweat dripping from the corners of his mustache. The sprite she landed on picked itself up and promptly grabbed the fork from her hand, which made the woman shriek in fright. The whole dinner party turned and saw the sprite holding a bloody fork, hovering over the injured woman.

Mallory looked at Caleb, who was staring at the bleeding woman in shock. She felt a twinge of some emotion that she could not quite name: guilt, fear, shame? It felt like a crushing tightness in her chest and made her want to cry, especially when Caleb’s expression of shock morphed into rage. He looked to his father, who also looked angry, and in unison the pair grabbed the silver candelabras from the table and leapt in twin arcs of destruction upon the sprite as it wheeled away to continue its kitchen duties. Metal crashed down on the silvery sprite in heavy blows as the two warriors meted out vengeance. The sprite wheeled back from the onslaught and tried to circumvent the pair of attackers into the kitchen, but the two men blocked its path with strike after strike.

The rest of the dinner party stood motionless on top of the table watching the Governor and his son pound on the kitchen sprite. Even Mallory and Alex stood transfixed in the doorway watching the mêlée transpire. But despite the combined strength of the two men, the sprite seemed relatively indifferent to their strikes, its shiny silver surface not registering so much as a scratch. It just kept trying to make its way past its adversaries so that it could continue its duties in cleaning up the party. Eventually, the two men slumped in exhaustion, and whatever spell had overcome the room was broken.

Mallory looked at the table and found that the other sprites had taken advantage of the distraction and cleared away every trace of the dinner party, except the guests standing on the table. Mallory’s mother looked down at the injured woman on her floor and jumped down to attend to her wounds, which were gory but seemed to be superficial. The other guests began to cautiously disembark from the perch, and it was at that point that the Smith Guild leader saw Mallory.

“You! You did this. I’m not sure how, but you did it.” His arms and jaw were tense as he glared at her across the room.

Every eye in the room turned to Mallory. The Smith Guild leader turned to Alex’s father and yelled, “Chief Magistrate Nelson, I demand that you summon the magistrates and take this girl into custody!” Mallory was used to this sort of attention, but her thoughts were immediately directed with worry toward her friend. She reached back to take Alex’s hand and found empty air. Her head whipped back, and Mallory found that she was standing in the doorway alone.

Alex had disappeared.