Leonard and the freed prisoners carried the Warden on their shoulders like marching ants from a picnic bonanza. Out the door, onto the island, over the bridge. Some chanted, some cheered, and some just stuck to vague, celebratory howls.
On the other side, Tera found the group of children huddled in a dark alcove; she gathered them to her. Then she looked up at Leonard. “All right, let’s get out of here,” she said. “If anyone gives us trouble…”
“They won’t,” Leonard interrupted. He looked, for once, like he might be happy to kick down a few doors. Or people.
The scruffy men and women grunted their agreement and then they were off—heading down the dark hallway for the nearest exit. Ollie didn’t worry that the ragtag group would find their way out. He watched Tera as she reassured the frightened children. Then he fingered the heavy key ring, which now rested in his pocket. He still heard the humming, like a song playing on a speaker far, far away.
Tera threw her arm over a little girl’s shoulder. Then she called out to the group: “Okay, everybody, let’s go. It’s going to be all right. Stay together now. C’mon, this way. Good job.”
They shuffled as one into the hallway. Tera paused in her herding to look back at Ollie. He hadn’t moved.
“C’mon!” she said.
He didn’t respond.
“Ollie? Let’s go!”
“Can you do it?” he asked.
“Can I do what?”
“Can you take them? By yourself?”
“Why would I have to do that?” she asked, her eyes closing to slits.
“I’m…not finished,” he said. The words seemed to come out of nowhere, as if someone else was speaking them. “I have to stay.”
“Stay?” Tera looked at him like he was deranged, which he knew might be an accurate reading of the situation. “What the hell are you talking about? We have to get these kids out of here. We have to get us out of here.”
“I know,” he nodded. “I’ll meet you. Can you get them out?”
“Well, Krite, I guess so,” she said, flummoxed. “I mean, yes. Of course, I can. But why?”
“I… I don’t know,” he admitted. An idea was growing like a beanstalk in the back of his mind, but he didn’t quite know how to share it. Not without looking even nuttier. “I won’t be long. I promise.”
Tera’s lips pursed. He didn’t want to know what she was thinking. She looked down at the two small boys flanking her legs, then back at Ollie. “Fine,” she sighed. “Fine. But…be careful.”
“I will. You, too.”
“I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“Probably not,” he admitted.
“But you’re going to do it anyway?”
He shrugged helplessly in reply.
What was the matter with him? Was he certifiable? He should just go with her, now. Leave this wretched place. Get these poor kids to safety. Ollie’s vision swam. Suddenly, he saw not her face, but her paintings: Hundreds of them, splayed out in a riot of technicolor. He saw toothy grins. Heart, and happiness, and courage. He saw what she wanted for herself, and for her found family. All the things he wanted to give her.
Ollie looked at Tera and he saw what was missing. He saw where he had to go. And he knew, with sudden, unmistakable certainty, what would be waiting on the other side.
The gathered children watched as he kissed her. A few of them giggled; one of them gasped.
Tera pulled away. “Maybe save that for later,” she said. Even in the darkness, he could see that her cheeks had turned pink.
“Right,” he said with a grin.
“See you on the outside, then?” she asked.
He squeezed her hand, the lump in his throat making speech impossible. He was infinitely glad she hadn’t used the word “goodbye.”
Tera gave him one last penetrating look before turning, reluctantly, to leave. The children fell into a neat line behind her. As Ollie watched them go, he couldn’t help but think of the famous Mrs. Mallard and her eight obedient ducklings back up on the Brickside—bronze statues waddling in perpetuity inside Boston’s Public Garden. People liked to dress them up throughout the year: bunny ears at Easter; Santa hats at Christmas; tiny yellow raincoats in June. But mostly they stayed the same. Dependable. Determined. Never wavering from their course, with Mrs. Mallard always leading the way.
A mama protecting her ducklings, and the whole damn city protecting her. Not that she realized it, of course. Poor Mrs. Mallard thought she was all alone.
Alone.
He felt the weight of it, there in the empty tunnel, but not in the way he had felt it before. Alone by choice. Alone with purpose. Not lonely, for once, but simply alone.
Ollie pulled his sleeves down past his wrists and started walking.
Left, left, right, straight. Around the corner. One flight of stairs, left, straight. Muscle memory dictated the route. He moved at a steady pace, not stopping to think. When doubts appeared, he ignored them.
Two guards approached; Ollie ducked behind a corner until they were gone, suddenly realizing he was standing close to the spot where he had first laid eyes on the Warden. Step aside! Warden coming through! Arrogance and vanity. Sauntering around the corner with a troop of zombified, weaponized children. A yellow fog, reducing a man’s arm to pulp on the ground.
Then Ollie passed the infirmary, where he had nearly collided with a giant man he had known only as The Mallet. A shared moment, passing between them. An understanding, over almost as soon as it had begun.
He passed the tunnel that led to the water trough, where a girl, a stranger, had appeared out of nowhere. Turning a miserable, torturous day into an extraordinary adventure. Giving wholly of herself and asking nothing in return. Risking everything. Deserving revenge, yet choosing forgiveness. Seeing beauty where others saw only pain.
He passed the bend in the tunnel where a cellmate named Dozer had answered his whispered questions. Carried him through the darkest of days. Shown kindness, in his own gruff way, in a place where no kindness could be reasonably expected.
He passed the off-limits tunnel, pitch-dark. The place where, it was said, “top-level,” worst-of-the-worst inmates were housed. Where even the cleaning crew was forbidden from entering. The “solitary” wing. One crime is worse than all the rest, Dozer had told him: Pissing off the Warden.
The hallway vanished into nothing. A black hole of emptiness.
Ollie stopped. He pictured George Herrick’s ancient, flaking skin. Saw his mouth fall open like a broken hinge. Heard his final words: The rightful ones tarry in the place that is not a place.
The key ring was in his hand, though he could not remember taking it out of his pocket. It vibrated against his skin. The sensation made Ollie think of that long-ago day on Henchman Street, when he had first set out to look for Nell. He had stopped at the Women’s Resource Center, only to be turned away. Then he had walked back up the hill to find that the street sign was fading, swirling. Letters, rearranging themselves. Disappearing, and reappearing. Vibrating in the air around him. At the time, he had not believed his own eyes.
Now, he looked at the inaccessible tunnel with the same hesitancy. It was barricaded by a steel gate. A gate with a lock. Ollie stepped closer to find that the lock was marked with a picture. He squinted: He couldn’t be sure, but it looked like a rudimentary drawing of a sun.
Ollie lifted the key ring and noticed that each key, too, was adorned with a picture. About two dozen in total. Had there been that many keys on the ring when he first picked it up? He could swear they seemed to be…multiplying. He searched through them for a matching sun but found none. He saw a frog, a square, something that looked like a baseball or basketball, a flame, a flower, a little house, and lots of others. But no sun.
Ollie frowned. Maybe these were the wrong keys. Maybe he was in the wrong place. Maybe the pictures had nothing to do with anything. If that was the case, then he should just try all of them in the hole and see which one, if any, fit.
He chose a key at random and lifted it. But before he could reach the keyhole, the entire ring flew from his hand and landed on the ground with a clatter.
What the…?
He tried once more. Again, something prevented him from making the attempt. A blast of air, or energy, or…something. As before, the ring fell to the ground.
Ollie gritted his teeth. What the holy hell? He couldn’t even try the keys? How was he supposed to find the right one if he couldn’t get near the damn thing? He stared in frustration at the crude drawing of the sun, wavy lines emanating from a central circle. Then he looked back down at the pictures on the keys.
One of them was similar to the sun, at least: The flower. Fat petals emanating from an oval-shaped middle.
He looked at both pictures again and chewed the inside of his cheek.
Sun, flower.
Sunflower.
A compound word. Two individual words combining to make one new one.
Tera had called him a sunflower, back at Blackstone Park. A flower so nice, they named it twice, she had said.
Compound words? Could it be that simple? It wasn’t a particularly clever cipher, as these things go. Then again, the Warden wasn’t a particularly clever man.
Pressing his lips together, Ollie lifted the key emblazoned with the picture of the flower. As he got closer, he waited for the ring to fly from his hand. But nothing happened. Instead, Ollie gently inserted the key into the lock, turned it, and removed it. He held his breath. A quiet buzzer sounded, and the gate began to lift.
The heavy barrier disappeared all the way into the ceiling, accompanied by the steady clatter of moving chains hidden somewhere in the wall. Moments later, the path into the tunnel was clear. Ollie looked over his shoulder, saw nothing and no one, and stepped inside.
He was only ten or twenty feet down when the darkness became almost total; soon, Ollie was reduced to feeling his way along the rough walls. The hallway bent to the right, then the left, before he saw a distant, flickering torch.
When he reached it, he found another gate, and another lock. He held up the flame to get a closer look and discovered that this one featured a tiny picture of an eye.
He flipped through the keys and stopped at the circle with hatched lines. A ball?
Eye, ball.
He inserted the key, turned it, and removed it. The gate began to rise.
The pattern prevailed through more gates and locks. Five, then ten, then eighteen. Sail, boat. Cave, man. Bull, frog. Rain, bow. Candle, stick. Fish, bowl. Light, house. And on and on. The keys continued to multiply on the ring, making it harder to find a match as he went along.
Finally, only one barrier remained. This one was not a gate like the others, but a door. A massive, hulking, metal door. Its keyhole featured the unmistakable image of a fire-breathing dragon.
Ollie looked down at the keyring and searched through the etchings. The original six or so keys had replicated into four or five dozen; at that point, the ring was so heavy that he struggled to hold it. He searched picture after picture, sweating. Trying to make sense of the scribbles. Finally, he stopped at an image that looked like a bird, flapping its wings.
Dragon, fly. Dragonfly.
Ollie inserted the key. A series of popping and whizzing sounds echoed in the darkness around him. He took a step back and watched as the door swung inward with a groan.
Slowly, the scene beyond began to reveal itself. It was a cell, not unlike so many others at Herrick’s End, lit by the glow of several small torches. The room was round, with scattered, tattered furnishings. Three people sat cross-legged near the center. As the door creaked open, they climbed to their feet. Two women, one man. The man had a beard that stretched all the way to the floor; the women’s hair was almost as long. They all appeared to be middle-aged. Or old. Or possibly ageless. From this distance, and in this dim light, Ollie couldn’t say for sure.
The door finished its loud, sluggish journey and stopped against the cell wall. For just a moment, the silence was absolute.
The three witches looked at each other. Then one of the women smiled. Her teeth were stained, but intact. “Hello, Ollie,” she said. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
“You have?”
“We have.”
“Oh,” Ollie nodded. Of course, they had. That made perfect, Neath-like sense. Before he could say anything else, he became aware of a pressure in his chest. It slithered in like a snake, wrapping around his lungs and squeezing until all the air was expelled. He tried to cough, then tried to gasp, failing at both attempts. No air. He fell, landing hard on his back.
The witches surrounded him, three faces looking down from above. Ollie could read the concern, and the understanding, in their eyes. They knew already, like he did.
It was over. He was out of time.
* * *
Ollie slipped in and out of consciousness like a wave lapping and retreating from the shore. There, and gone. There, and gone again.
He heard things, occasionally. Mostly muffled words.
“…have to get him to the…”
“Is it…?”
“…all waiting…”
Was he flying? Yes, definitely flying. The fact didn’t interest him, particularly. Nothing did. The questions fell away. The flying, and all the movement, seemed to stop for a while. He smelled familiar scents. Fish in a pan. Burning wood. He heard more voices. Tera’s voice? Yes, Tera. The sound of it woke him, if only for a moment.
“…exit pass,” he heard her say. He forced his eyes open, saw the flash of yellow. “Take him. Please, hurry!” She kissed his cheek. No! he wanted to scream. I need to say goodbye! I can’t go like this! But it was no use. His eyes wouldn’t open. Every breath was a ragged, torturous effort. Other voices, the witches, talking around him. Someone breathed air straight into his mouth, like a resuscitation. And then, suddenly, the pain was lighter. His chest expanded. The relief flooded him, making the waves of consciousness retreat once again.
He was flying, as before. Away. Definitely flying. Over the green lake, over the smoke curls rising from tiny houses. A patch of brown, hard and grainy. That’s where they landed, setting him down gently on his feet. Ollie struggled to keep his balance. To keep his vision from spinning. He saw a round door, in a cavern wall. An attendant in a blue suit. Ollie swooned, swayed. The witches held him up. Carried him to the blue-suited man. Moving, moving, moving. No! he wanted to yell. Not like this!
But it was too late. His body was too weak. He was merely a prop on this stage. Soon, he’d be shoved through the porthole-shaped door and he’d have to—what? Climb? Levitate? Ride another death-defying chairlift, this time going up instead of down? The thought of it exhausted him. Any thought, about anything, exhausted him. His body was shedding itself. And all he wanted to do was give in.
“Ollie?”
The voice was familiar, but far.
“Ollie? Jesus, is that you? What are they doing to you? What are you doing to him?”
He focused his eyes in the direction of the voice. He saw, vaguely, a shape. No, a girl. Long brown hair. Hands on hips. His eyes widened as he struggled to put the various pieces together. It couldn’t be. He was seeing things.
“Nell?” he croaked.
“Yeah, Oll, it’s me,” she said, rushing forward to grab his arm.
“Wh—what are you still here?” He wasn’t making any sense. He knew that. But the garbled sentence was the best he could do.
“They won’t let me go, Ollie. Can you believe that?” Nell’s voice was pained, desperate. “They said I stayed here too long. I waited too long. But I’m fine! Look at me, I’m fine. I can breathe, and talk, and all that. I told them, it’s different for everyone! Some people can last a little longer, that’s all. That’s what they told me, back up top. They said it’s different for everyone. About three weeks, that’s what they said. About. But they took away my pass! They took it, and now I can’t get out. I’ll never get out of here. Please, Ollie, tell them! Tell them! I’m fine! I need to go home! I can’t stay here, Oll. I’ll die. I swear it, I’ll die.”
Her words continued to hammer, pummeling his dim consciousness. He grasped the basics of what she was telling him, but not much more.
“I’m so sorry!” she continued. “I’m sorry you got stuck down here, because of me. Because of what I did. It’s all my fault. Jesus, Oll, this is all my fault! I’m sorry!”
He heard his mother’s voice in his head: Forgive me, Bambino.
There is nothing to forgive.
The witches were pulling him away. Moving him further from Nell and closer to the hatch.
He saw her more clearly now: Her hair hung heavy and thick. Her black tank top was stained with…something powdery. Her hazel eyes blinked in rapid-fire desperation. “What are you people doing to him? Let go of him!” Someone was holding her back.
They had reached the blue-suited attendant.
“Number for exit?” he asked.
“One,” someone said. It was the long-bearded witch. Warlock? Ollie turned to look at him, noticing with hazy, detached interest that part of the man’s beard was tangled in Ollie’s sleeve.
The attendant glanced up. “Exit pass?”
“Right here,” another witch said. One of the women. She handed the blank, yellow card to Ollie. He took it from her and stared at it, thinking about lemon méringue pie. And canaries in coal mines.
The attendant extended his hand.
Still, Ollie didn’t move.
“Oliver, dear,” the third witch said kindly. “I’m afraid it’s now or never.”
She was right. The tightening in his chest had returned. The temporary breath, or whatever it was they had given him, was running out. His body was transforming. If he didn’t make it through that hatch and up to the Brickside in the next few minutes, he’d never see the North End again. He’d never hear Mr. Bonfiglio singing Arrivederci Roma as he folded bakery boxes. Never lay pink carnations on his mother’s grave. Never feel the rumble and the majesty of the Pops concert on the Fourth of July. He’d never again see the falling snow, or the procession of St. Lucia, or the workaday boats chugging in and out of the harbor. The images swam like a nebulous fairy tale. A vision of timeless, abstract perfection.
“Dear one, you know what you have to do,” the middle witch said.
Did he?
Ollie looked at the exit pass, and he felt a sharp pain in his heart. Tears stung like campfire smoke in his eyes. He did know what he had to do.
He had to go home.