OR DIE TRYING

Perry wasn’t sure how long he’d been climbing. The daylight seemed a little different now—or was he imagining it? That deep blue sound still rang everywhere, but its pitch had shifted—it seemed higher. Was it because of the altitude? Eventually, he’d have to look to his left—over the drop-off. He wasn’t particularly afraid of heights, but he’d read about the Imp of the Perverse, and the idea of his body urging him to plunge to his death made him think twice about taking a look.

He felt a weary sort of relief as he came to another stone landing—this was the sixth he’d seen so far, and by his reckoning, the landings were a hundred or so yards apart. This one was different from the others in that it included a marble bench to each side—one tucked up against the mountain, and the other near the edge of the cliff—about eight feet apart. They looked as if they’d been carved from the living rock rather than fashioned and set here. The legs went straight down into the stone below.

Perry took a seat on the mountainside bench. Now he felt a tingle in his legs, almost like they wanted to twitch. He wished he’d put on shorts instead of jeans… wherever he’d come from. Why couldn’t he remember where his journey had begun? He frowned as he tried to recall the faces of his family. He saw them clearly enough in his mind’s eye, but he couldn’t remember their names. The forgetfulness didn’t alarm him, and he thought that must be a function of the quest—because he felt sure he was on a quest, though for what, he had no idea. Someone must have told him at some point, but either he hadn’t listened or the quest had dulled that memory, too.

Maybe, Denkine’s voice sounded close to Perry’s right ear—as if she sat on his shoulder whispering. Perry was too tired to look round for her. It could be you never knew and finding out is part of the mission.

“What is this place?” Perry asked. “Where am I?”

I’ll explain, but you gotta keep climbing. Low tide is no joke.

Perry couldn’t think what else to do, so he rose and resumed climbing. “Will you tell me who you are?”

That part is kind of hard to explain. I used to be a lot of people. I used to be a god. I am still, but I used to be, too.

“Which god?”

Tanit, Denkine said. Of the Phoenicians. Ever heard of me?

“Sorry, no,” Perry said, embarrassed. “I know the Phoenicians, though. From the Bible and from Hannibal and the elephants.”

Hannibal, Denkine said. Now, there’s a name I haven’t heard in ages. Anyway. You probably have the Canary Islands on your Earth? Or you think you do—and they’re just islands.

“We think—?” Perry stopped short. That sounded like another trick. “They’re islands,” he said. “In the Mediterranean.”

Okay, well, sometimes an island has an up side and a down side, and the two sides are in two different worlds. Because there are worlds and worlds and worlds.

“Then what are these Canaries?”

Eggs of the World Serpent. She left them here forgotten, so they’re just floating in the sea. Most of the time, the eggs are about two thirds out of the water, and people live and work on them and do their thing—like run an inn or an airport or whatever.

Finally, Perry looked out to sea. The water was heartbreakingly blue. Away in the distance, he saw what must be an airport resting beneath the waves. He saw its control tower, its runways, and its main terminal—even an empty parking lot, airplane hangars, and runways. In size, it was midway between Armstrong International and the Lakeside Airports. Perry stopped walking to stare.

Oh, no you don’t, Denkine said. No time: run run run run!

Perry broke into a run, and his legs seemed to carry him impossibly fast. The stairs blurred beneath him, and he wasn’t sure his feet touched them at all. He understood now that there was a serious chance that he wouldn’t make it through this quest alive. He was impossibly far from his home, from everything and everyone he knew, streaking up a set of stone steps carved into—into what sounded like a colossal dragon egg while a goddess spoke directly into his mind.

Perry tripped on a stone and tumbled into grass, breathing hard from exertion. Had Denkine given him super-speed? He rolled onto his butt and took a look around. He sat on a grassy circular lawn bisected by a marble pathway, which led up another short flight of stone stairs to a sprawling villa surrounded by a covered porch.

I was a little worried about you for a second there, Denkine—or was it Tanit?—admitted. I thought maybe they sent a normal human.

“I am, though.”

You’re what?

“A regular human,” Perry said. “I’m smart, I guess, but there’s nothing special about me.”

Perry, Denkine said, exasperated. I got news for you…

Perry scowled. “Oh, come on.”

As Perry watched, the mountain rumbled, almost as if it had indigestion. The sound built and built until the air was full of it—and Perry wouldn’t have been able to make himself heard above it even screaming at the top of his lungs. He climbed to his feet, bone weary, but ready to run again if he had to.

It wasn’t until the mountain began to sink that Perry knew he had climbed to safety after all. Within no more than five minutes, it had descended into the sea. Very carefully, Perry walked to the edge of the path and looked down. He could see the mountain down there, resting beneath the waves. His stomach turned over.

Perry glanced back at the villa as Denkine opened the front door and stepped out. How had he mistaken her for human? Her physique still seemed compact, if a little skinny, but she was roughly eight feet tall, and she wore a circlet of flame around her head. Her tunic—Perry wasn’t sure it was made of fabric, the way it shone and billowed in the wind—stretched down to her hips, where she wore what Perry thought at first must be a layered skirt, until he realized that it was actually broad-legged pants.

Perry, she said. Her “voice” brimmed with kindness, with patience, as she closed the distance between them. Some things aren’t worth holding on to. Why do you wish so fervently to be normal?

“I don’t know!”

Do you think Peaches could love a normal boy?

Perry couldn’t answer. He couldn’t say the word. He bowed his head and pressed his left fist against his forehead, struggling. Fat tears rolled down his face.

“Hey. Hey, now.”

Perry opened his eyes to find that Denkine had become human again. Her small right hand rested lightly on his shoulder.

“We can’t just give you things,” she said. “Your minds are too small. Too brittle. You have to stretch your understanding to wield these weapons.”

Perry opened his eyes. “I’m just—I don’t think I can,” Perry said. “I’m a human boy.”

“You’re stretching, though,” she said. “You could have died back there.”

“Would you have let me?”

“Doesn’t matter,” she said. “You didn’t. Now. Come.”

Together they ascended the steps and crossed the verandah to the villa’s circular wooden front door. Denkine opened the door, gestured with her chin.

Perry had read once about the quietest room in the world. It was in Minnesota, and it was so quiet, so still, that humans could hear nothing but the workings of their own body. The villa’s interior was hushed this way. Perry heard the ticking of his heart, the soft hiss of his own breathing, the noise of his own blood.

Should I take off my shoes? he thought.

Yes, Denkine answered. Where you’re going, they’ll only weigh you down.

“I know how this looks,” Scander said as he unlocked the driver’s side door of a car that looked to Brendy like a baby shoe. “But nobody here seems to mind me driving. Anyway, I’m good at it, so don’t worry.”

He unlocked Brendy’s door, and she didn’t hesitate to slide into the passenger seat. She rarely got to ride up front in a car, as those seats were usually reserved for her parents. Now it crossed her mind that she was entering a stranger’s car, but the thought didn’t worry her as much as she thought it normally would.

“How you got your own car when you just a kid?” she asked. She was impressed, but didn’t intend to let on.

“I seem like a kid to you?” he asked. “I figured if you were magic enough to cross the Water, you’d probably have the Sight.”

“I see sumpthin’, but I dunno,” Brendy said. “I’m not magic.”

“Oh,” Scander said. “You’re one of those.”

“One of what?”

Scander shrugged as he turned the key in the ignition. “Look, it’s none of my business, but in my experience, it’s not a good idea to resist the Call.”

Brendy wrinkled her nose. “No wonder they lets you drive,” she said. “You sound like a grown-up.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“Grown-ups are dumb,” Brendy said. “But maybe you one of the good ones. Seems like you helpin’ me out, anyways.”

It was clear now that even in this little baby-shoe car, Brendy was too small to see over the dash. The situation frustrated her, but she resolved not to let on about that, either. Even if he was a man that looked like a boy, Scander carried himself with grace and dignity, and she didn’t want to seem like a baby in his eyes.

“So where we going?” she asked, wiggling her legs as Scander turned on the heat.

“I’m not sure what you’re after, and I don’t think you are, either, so we’re headed to the Asking Tree. It’ll give you a riddle, at least, and if we can solve it, we can get you your talisman or whatever.”

“‘Tha Asking Tree,’” Brendy repeated. She bugged out her eyes and rolled them.

“Yeah, it’s… I mean, it won’t be as easy as it sounds.”

“Why not?”

“Well, it’s Bacchus Sunday and it’s after noon, so she’s almost certainly drunk.”

When Brendy got out of the car, she felt like the wind was trying to blow right through her. She hugged herself and shivered. She hoped she could finish up fast and go back… somewhere.

A strange voice slanted through the cold of the afternoon:

I cry inside to know you’re gone

Don’t know where you went or for how long

Come back come back come back to me doll

You done me wrong

I’m passing small.

The voice was deep and rich, but to Brendy, it sounded like a woman—maybe even someone she’d recognize if her head wasn’t so fuzzy. As she searched her dim memories, she nearly forgot the chill.

“Hey,” Scander said, interrupting her musing. “Take this.” He had pulled off his crimson-colored hooded sweatshirt and now handed it to Brendy.

She thought about refusing to take the fleece, or at least asking if he’d be too cold, but instead pulled it over her head. It was a little big, but only by a couple sizes. “Thank you, Scandy,” she said, and batted her eyelashes at him.

Scander seemed caught off guard. He reddened and inclined his head a little, searching Brendy’s face. As they regarded each other Brendy understood that the brightness in Scander’s eyes was a raw red sadness.

“So…” she said quietly. “You gone tell me how you a kid and grown at the same time?”

Scander shook his curly head. “That would bore us both to death. Just… listen. When I was your age, I crossed worlds. I had grand adventures. It’s hard to know until the traveling and fighting and magic are done how much they change you. So hold on to yourself.”

“Don’t you worry none bout that,” Brendy said, and hugged herself again. “I always got me, ya heard?”

Scander smirked in spite of himself. “Come on,” he said. “She’s in here.”

The house was circular, built from big stone bricks of varying sizes. Once they passed down the little curved alleyway leading to the oblong front door, Brendy got the impression that this structure had been here far longer than the rest of the city. An ageless weariness baked from its surfaces, but there was something sweet about it that made Brendy feel a swirl of emotions similar to the ones she’d felt looking into Scander’s sad, haunted eyes.

Inside the house, the singing was louder, clearer, but Brendy couldn’t parse lyrics. The whole house was constructed around an enormous live oak whose trunk was broader than most of the houses on the block. Its branches reached this way and that like dancing limbs. It reminded her of the octopi she’d seen at the aquarium, but instead of eight tentacles, it had arms and arms and arms that sprouted stiff paddle-shaped leaves in a riot of colors. Some were black with an iridescent oil-slick sheen, others were a truly metallic gold, some a gleaming silver, and some colors seemed like only hints to Brendy, as if their frequency lay beyond human sight. It was still winter outside, but in here there was a breathy warmth, and the air smelled sticky and green, like pine sap.

To Brendy’s right stood a short staircase leading up to another curved platform, and to her left, a wooden ladder bridged a longer gap between floors. It was almost as if, instead of being built, the house had been gathered against the tree the way Brendy gathered dresses against her body. A keen understanding pierced her heart: She would remember this place only in dreams because the knowledge of it didn’t belong in her world.

The voice had finished singing and now spoke a little too carefully, its Ts and Gs like little pinpricks of sound… That one? That’s a favorite. Willie “The Lion” Smith wrote it in his sleep and forgot by morning. I always hoped he’d come see me so I could sing it back to him.

“Come with me,” Scander said, and took Brendy’s hand again to lead her up the stairs. “Tree!” he called as they walked. “I’m back, and I’ve brought a friend. She has questions!”

Questions? said the disembodied voice, but as it did, the light pulsed and the tree’s branches flexed slightly. It’s Bacchus Sunday, my baby. This my off day.

“This is a special case,” Scander said. By now, he and Brendy had climbed to the next floor and crossed another broad landing. Instead of curving past the tree’s trunk, this one had a jutting platform leading directly to a carved smiling wooden face as wide as a garbage truck was long. Its eyes were closed, and when the tree spoke the carved mouth didn’t move. “She crossed the Water to meet you.”

Fine, fine. Show her to me, at least.

Scander nudged Brendy from behind. She stepped forward and curtsied at the tree’s sleeping face.

The tree gasped, and now its face grew animated. Its eyes flew open and its mouth formed a perfect O of surprise. Why, it’s you!

“Yessss!” Brendy hissed. “Wait. Who I’m is?”

Brendolyn Wayminute Aubergine Tangeriffic Timbuktu Hot Cheetos Liberry Whispers Graves!

Brendy giggled. “Guuuurl! Where we met?”

One of my flowers made its way to you, and you cared for them beautifully! Ask away! Shoot!

The tree’s face settled back to sleep, but it seemed different from Brendy’s own. Brendy used her face all the time, for talking and looking, showing emotion. The Asking Tree must use hers only when she was especially excited. That made sense, in Brendy’s estimation, since trees must not need faces—she didn’t remember ever seeing a tree who had one.

“Well, okay,” Brendy said. “Let… me… think.”

What you want to know?

“Ah. Okay. Um,” Brendy said. She struggled to phrase the question in a way that wouldn’t make her sound stupid. But she wasn’t stupid, she was just young. Daddy Deke always said, Ain’t nothing wrong with not knowing long as you willing to learn. “What I’m doing here, anyhow?”

Great! Grand! Wonderful! Superb! Do you want a big answer or a small one?

“Big, then little?” Brendy said. “Or no: little, then big.”

You are here to retrieve a weapon that will aid you in your quest to save your city.

Now it was Brendy’s turn to form her mouth into an O. “Thaaaaaat’s right!” she said. “Yay! Yes! Now what’s the big answer?”

Inside you lives a light that your loved ones will need if they are to save your city. They don’t just love you, they need your cheer, your warmth, and your humor to meet their trials.

“Oh,” Brendy said.

Have I disappointed you?

“Naw,” Brendy said. “It’s just… I mean, I been knowing that. Scandy said you’d have a riddle for me.”

As it happens, I do have a riddle for you, but it’s not the kind you’re expecting.

“Oh, word?”

The tree laughed low and throaty. Yes, she said. Word.

“What you got for me, then?”

Hold out your hand.

Brendy thrust out her right hand and clapped her left over her eyes. “And close my eyes?”

You don’t have to close your eyes.

“They’re closed! They’re closed!”

Something small and hard dropped into Brendy’s palm. She opened her eyes to see a pebble about the size of a marble and shaped like a kidney bean resting on her hand’s wrinkle. “What…? What this is?”

That’s the riddle, my baby.

“But it’s a rock, though.”

It was passed down in your family from Wise Woman to Wise Woman until Nola was born and it was brought to me for safekeeping. I knew someday one of you would return to collect it.

She tried to speak calmly but she heard herself shout the question. “I’m a Wise Woman?”

I don’t know, the tree said. You have a Way about you, but you might be something greater still.

“Oh,” Brendy said. She sucked her teeth. “Well, damn. Uh. So this rock what I came for?”

Yes.

“Then how I get home?”

The tree shivered and opened her mouth. Instead of forming an O, it stretched open wider and wider until Brendy saw the corridor of its throat stretching and stretching toward a distant glow. The tunnel seemed even longer than the tree was wide.

Brendy laughed, nervous, and took a closer look at the tree’s lips. One thing she didn’t see was teeth. Maybe that meant the Asking Tree wasn’t offering to eat her up. Wait. A question. She should ask a question.

“It’s safe for me to go in there, right?”

In the way that you mean, yes, but very very difficult.

“And that’s the way back… where I came from?”

Yes.

“She’s telling the truth,” Scander said. “If she takes questions, she always tells the truth.”

“Ohhhhkay,” Brendy said slowly, then brightened. “Wait. Tree!”

Yes?

“How you get all drunk?”

Every Bacchus Sunday morning, citizens come into my house and take turns pouring beer wine and spirits into my soil. I spend the day drinking it and singing and it is the best thing.

Brendy raised her eyebrows. She didn’t know what to say to that.

“Another satisfied customer,” Scander said, and held up his hand for a high five that never came.

“All right, all right,” Brendy said. “I gotta hurry. Can’t waste time.”

Scander frowned, then seemed to decide against mentioning whatever was bothering him.

“Boy, what?” Brendy asked.

“Time doesn’t pass where you live,” Scander said. “So, really, you have all eternity.”

Brendy felt hot and cold all over. “What?”

A caught look appeared on Scander’s face, and then he laughed hard. “Psych, you’re mine,” he said. “I got you good! Look at your face!”

The hot-cold feeling didn’t recede. Brendy wanted to ask Scander what he’d meant, but she had the feeling she’d been gone a long time, that she’d better get back… wherever.

She pushed her worry aside. Of course time passed there. She dimly remembered being younger, smaller—but only as dimly as she remembered everything else about her life.

Slowly, she approached the Asking Tree’s open wooden mouth, her rock—just a rock? Really?—held tight in her fist. She looked back at Scander one last time. He looked smaller, and even sadder, than he had before. What if he hadn’t been kidding…? Then she could always come back and ask him later.

“Okay,” she said. “All right. Sing me a song and I’ll go, Tree.”

Boyyyy I knew I knew when we first met

Always gonna love you don’tcha never forget

You got me runnin’ and a-hidin’. Got me hidin’ and a peepin’!

But I’ll always come home

Always come home to ya, yeah!

The tree went on singing as Brendy climbed over her wooden bottom lip and started down her throat.

Denkine led Perry through a large, high-ceilinged kitchen and touched a disguised panel on the wall beside the stainless-steel refrigerator. The appliance glided out of its stall and rolled silently to the left. Now a doorway stood revealed. Perry followed her through it and down a short flight of steps where a dormant torch stood nestled in a sconce on the wall. She grabbed the torch and it flared to life. Then they started down, down again.

“Perry, you’re so smart,” Denkine said. “You’ve such a curious mind. What you need to understand is that there are situations where orderly, rational thought won’t help you. When you won’t be able to ask the right questions because the answers can only come in the language of spirits.”

Perry hoped Denkine wouldn’t see him shake his head at the idea. Now the smooth walls had given way to rougher stone as the stairway curved down the rocky wall. Perry smelled stone, moss, lichen, and far below, water…?

What was the point of climbing so high only to descend again? And hadn’t Denkine said these islands were eggs from the World Serpent? Shouldn’t there be a titanic fossilized embryo in here?

“Perry,” Denkine groaned. “We came up the mountain but we’re not going down inside it. We’re somewhere else.”

“Do you have to read my mind all the time?”

“I’m trying to help you, munchkin.”

Perry swallowed and walked silently for a time as he turned her words over in his mind. He looked over his shoulder again to tell Denkine her words made no sense. Instead of a woman or a giant following behind him, Perry saw a six-foot pillar of holy, blazing fire. The light abraded his mind, threatened to scour his consciousness away.

Perry barked a shout and pressed his hands over his eyes. He still saw the fire this way, but maybe it wouldn’t kill him. Maybe—!

Perry blinked, disoriented. Denkine was grasping his shoulder tightly with her free hand and shaking him as she held her torch in the other. “Hey. Hey!”

“What what what what?”

When she saw he had returned to himself, Denkine stopped shaking him.

“I don’t know where I am,” Perry said. “I don’t know where I am, and I’m going to die here.”

“Yes,” Denkine said darkly. “You very much will—unless you get it together!”

They resumed their descent, but Perry wasn’t sure for how long. It felt like forever—Forever and a day make a month of Sundays, some dear remembered voice sounded in his mind, but Perry couldn’t remember its owner. Eventually they came to a smooth-edged grotto whose walls and ceiling dripped with slime and mineral deposits. The stone platform on which they stood slanted abruptly down into a kidney-shaped pool of wine-dark water. Perry kept looking from the pool to Denkine’s face as she held the torch, waiting. If she was fire herself, why did she need the torch? Was it for Perry’s benefit?

He suspected what was supposed to happen next, but he couldn’t bring himself to believe it. “Are there… animals in there?”

Denkine’s face softened. “I know this is hard for you, bibi,” she said. “I’m sorry I snapped. Of course you’re afraid. Fear is useful most of the time, but people like you—”

“People—? What—?”

“Heroes, Perry. Heroes are the ones who push past their fear and do what needs doing!”

“… How?”

Denkine sighed. “I don’t… I don’t know. There must be as many ways as there are heroes.”

Like Hannibal. Perry clamped down on his worry and his fear. Before he could change his mind, he turned and ran for the water. He peeled off his polo shirt in what felt like a single motion. He took a big breath, pressed his hands together, bent, dove.

Breaking the water sent an electric shock rattling through him, but it was warm—at first. Eyes closed, Perry swam down until directions stopped making sense to his body. He opened his eyes and saw a glow far below him. Was the light purple, or was its color neutral and the purple from the water through which he swam?

Something brushed against Perry’s thigh, bringing with it a terrible cold. Perry swam faster. It seemed a bad idea to look around for whatever had touched him. In books and movies, it was always a bad idea. He kicked his legs and imagined he was Prince Namor swimming toward a sunken kingdom. A moment, then another. Another, and Perry’s lungs began to burn. The cold was worse now, and the Imp of the Perverse was with him. It was a little tickling voice at the back of his mind saying, You’re not cut out for this, boy. You’re no hero. Just breathe in. Breathe in as deep as you can and drown. Save yourself the misery…

Perry gritted his teeth and swam on. The dark voice changed tactics.

How far have you come by now, do you think…? Maybe you can make it down to that treasure or whatever it is, but ain’t no way you’ll be able to swim back up. Why not just… drown? Better to drown than let the dead hands take you…

That last thought terrified him. He was as frightened as he’d ever been. Beneath the waters of an alien world, swimming for his life with no idea how he’d survive.

The glow below had intensified, and Perry wished it hadn’t. The water around him was alive with severed arms, hands, fingers writhing and whipping like swarming fish. Higher up, only one or two had come close to him, but now they closed in. They grabbed at his shorts, snatched at his ankles. For every one that fell away, two others found purchase and kept it. They pulled at him, slowing Perry’s swimming to a crawl. Every touch sent cold needles lancing into Perry’s flesh.

Terror was a bright black globe at the center of his skull. The more Perry fought to ignore it, the larger it grew. He swallowed, forcing the terror out of his braincase and down his throat to his belly. That stilled his panic some, allowed him to think again.

Perry frowned and cocked his head, the grabbing hands and limbs momentarily forgotten. He’d drawn close enough now to see that the thing he swam toward was not a treasure chest but a steamer trunk. He’d seen it before, he felt sure. He considered everything that had happened since he appeared on the beach. Had he walked past it in the inn somewhere?

No. It was from Before. He’d seen it in his own world.

Perry’s spirits buoyed. He swam harder. The dead still grabbed at him, but now that he thought about it, Perry realized that none of them had kept hold of his wrists, his ankles, his actual body. He considered struggling out of his shorts, but there wasn’t time. He swam harder, faster.

Perry reached the trunk and struggled to pry it open. He didn’t think how badly he needed to breathe. He didn’t think about the constrictive pain in his chest begging to be replaced by anything, if not air, then water.

The trunk refused to open. Perry’s vision had begun to dim even in the trunk’s glowing light. Don’t breathe in don’t breathe in don’t breathe in there’s no air.

Or, you know… do. Just let it happen…

Perry tried to scream. Water rushed into his open mouth. The fingers pulled at his hair now. At his skin. Enraged, Perry punched the trunk’s lock as hard as he could. Before he knew what was happening, a powerful suction took hold of him. Perry fought to swim the other way, but when he turned his head, he saw that the disembodied limbs had gathered together to form a leering compound face whose eyes rolled madly in their sockets. Its jaws worked silently, laughing its triumph.

A rush of frothy water carried Perry swiftly away, and without meaning to, he breathed in, whooping, knowing he’d failed, knowing that this was what it meant to die trying.

He hadn’t even found the talisman, the weapon, he’d come here to retrieve.