SHE HEADED DIRECTLY INTO the pre-dawn gloom to find Deller, pausing only to pack the blue-robed statue of the Goddess into her knapsack. Outside, the early morning air breathed in sleepy gusts and the sky drowsed, sluggish and heavy-lidded, above the trees. Just over the horizon hovered two ghostly smudges, the twin moons. Nellie trudged quickly toward them, passing bushes that hunched deep in shadow and the occasional wickawoo’s waking cheep. Wet grass flicked her bare legs, and she brushed furiously at insects hitching a ride on her arms, trying to ignore the strange trembling that kept sweeping her body.
It was just that it was too big, the whole thing gone wild-crazy, over the edge, and she no longer knew how to fit everything into a recognizable pattern. Before last night, she’d never thought much about the relationship between the levels. She’d traveled enough to know they weren’t stacked next to each other like a deck of cards, and she couldn’t expect to find them organized spatially like doors in a hallway. Levels were more like notes in a song, she’d eventually decided, as long as you understood that when flux was active both the singer and the song could change with each note. But until last night, those notes had all been reasonably familiar, even when flux was playing its tricks. Sure, she had to keep on her toes for small changes, like a double with a knife, but no mysterious gate had ever appeared out of thin air and opened onto a room of children with wires running into their bodies, white rooms filled with children being held hostage for experiments ...
The strange trembling swept her again and Nellie bent over, gagging until her body gave up trying to eject the nothingness of an empty stomach. Straightening, she wiped her mouth and leaned shakily against a doogden tree. She was cold, her skin rippling with goosebumps. Why had that gate appeared to her? Had Ivana sent it, or was it simply one of those flukes that happened during the month of Lulunar? She’d only been traveling for seven months, and so had no previous experience with the month of the twins and the chaos it could spawn among the levels. A year ago she hadn’t even believed the levels existed, dismissing them as erva-spawned conjecture and fantasy.
Tightening her knapsack straps, she trudged on toward Dorniver. This early, traffic was infrequent and she felt safe sticking to the main road. A dog barked from a nearby shack, running the full length of its chain, and she glanced speculatively at the next few houses she passed. They seemed quiet, their curtains drawn, with no dogs prowling the yard. Hunger bellowed in her gut and she paused, pondering a raid on a backyard garden, but the rattling of an unseen dog chain convinced her otherwise. Tightening her stomach, she slapped it a few times to quell its queasy growl, then broke into a trot that soon brought the city into view, stroked with the easy pastel light of dawn.
She didn’t know where Deller lived, if he had a family, or if he fended for himself in the streets. There was little chance he attended school and he could be anywhere in the city, running with the Skulls or trying to sniff out his brother’s dead-cold trail. If only, Nellie thought, cursing her stupidity, she’d thought to ask his last name.
Heading toward the river, she soon found the deserted warehouse that housed the Skulls’ headquarters. Located in an area that had been slotted for demolition, the warehouse squatted on a long street of ramshackle buildings. A few doors down a small factory seemed to be in operation, but the buildings to either side were obviously empty, their windows smashed and graffiti festooning their walls. The warehouse had several entrances, but Nellie remembered exiting through an alcove on the west side, next to a lopsided black skull that had been spray-painted on the wall. Approaching the building, she found the skull leering ominously in the gloom. The small entranceway was in shadow, but she immediately spotted a large padlock hanging above the doorknob. With a groan she slumped against the wall and took a disgusted swing at the lock. Creaking, it gave. So the padlock was a disguise, just like most of the Skulls’ blustering.
Tentatively she removed the padlock and pushed open the door. Warnings tiptoed along her skin and breathed down the back of her neck. Careful, she had to be careful. No one could catch her inside this place, not even Deller. Her plan was to locate a suitable hiding spot nearby, head Deller off when she saw him coming, and tell him about his brother. And then? Nellie shrugged off the thought. Then she would be alone with what she’d seen, and so would he.
But first she had to see this place on her own terms and beat the ugly hold it had on her thoughts. Peering through the open doorway, she scanned the small shadowy room with its sagging table and three-legged chairs. Cobwebs draped everywhere, and a scurry of mice and spiders greeted her entrance. The place had probably been a lunchroom once, or some kind of an office. Cupboards lined one wall, and a dusty sink stood under the cardboard-covered window. On the table splayed several magazines, some half-eaten doughnuts, and a jelly sandwich minus a large bite. Without hesitation Nellie wolfed the food, then chugged the remains of a bottle of nevva juice. Gradually the roar in her stomach abated, her shivering stopped, and the steady kick of fear at the base of her brain let up. Slumping to the floor, she wrapped her arms around her knees and stared dully at the sliver of light cutting through the two pieces of cardboard taped over the window.
So the sun was up and another day had officially begun. What would tonight bring, what was she going to do when the sun went down and the twin moons took over the sky? She couldn’t go back to the shack, not after her experience with the strange new gate. If it had opened there once it could open again, and who knew what other gates it might attract? Only an utter madman would continue living in such a place. And, Nellie thought, fighting off a yawn, there was always the chance the thief who’d stolen her remembering dress and money would return, intending to take up permanent residence.
She snapped out of a murky doze to hear footsteps approaching the door. Scrambling to her feet, she scanned frantically for a hiding place. The bathroom was the obvious option, but any advantage she might gain there was lost to the open outer door—a dead giveaway to her presence. Backed against the wall, she watched a shadow ooze across the entrance. A shoulder edged the doorjamb and feet shuffled nervously.
“What d’you want?” she yelled, hurling her terror at the door in loud angry sound.
A thin face topped in a tangle of black hair peeked around the doorjamb, and Snakebite began an agitated dance in and out of the entrance. “What d’you want?” he whined, openmouthed.
“I want Deller!” Nellie bellowed. “Get him now, or I’ll blow the whole street with my brains. Like this.” With a crazy-man leer, she leaned forward and snapped her fingers.
Instantly Snakebite withdrew, and she listened to the thud of his feet racing down the sidewalk. Edging to the doorway, she peered into the street. It appeared deserted, with only Snakebite’s rapidly retreating butt in sight. Who knew if he actually intended to carry out her order, but regardless, she wasn’t fool enough to get caught in the same trap twice. Scouting out the back of the building, she found the rusty frame of an old truck parked against the wall. A grunting jump took her from the top of the cab onto the warehouse roof. From here she had a clear view of the city rooftops and the brass hands that crowned every church spire, reaching toward the heavens. Quickly she sent a prayer toward them, her heart beating like wickawoo’s wings. Then she squatted in the shadow of a heating vent, fixed her eyes in the direction Snakebite had taken, and waited.
It was mid-morning before she saw Deller, several of the Skulls in his wake as he came striding down the street toward the warehouse. Two paces ahead, Snakebite flickered like a nervous insect across his path, running backward and talking in an eager high-pitched voice. Hunched behind the heating vent, Nellie observed the approaching group through narrowed eyes. Now that she was consciously studying them, it was obvious none of them lived wild, fending for themselves in the streets. Each was too well dressed, his hair recently washed. Even at this distance she could smell the scent of shampoo and laundry soap pouring off them. It was the smell of a mother, and the thought sent an electric knife singing through Nellie’s heart. All of the boys coming toward her saw the sun rise and set in a mother’s face every day, and didn’t even notice it.
Pullo was the tallest and probably the strongest, but even at a distance, Deller’s command of the group was evident, his head turning to one boy then another as they clamored for his attention. Coming to a halt outside the warehouse, he nodded tersely to one of Pullo’s remarks, then cut off Snakebite’s yapping with a wave of his good hand. Overnight he’d discarded the tensor bandage from his other hand, and the absence of his third finger was marked by a beige bandage that curved over the stump.
“I wanna touch her scars.” Snakebite danced about, babbling eagerly. “Let’s get her down and touch her scars.”
“Go get her then,” Deller said, his face expressionless. “I’ll wait here and see if she blows your brains out.”
“She wouldn’t.” Pullo scratched nervously at his neck. “Not if she sent Snakebite to fetch you.”
Deller shrugged, then watched the rest of the group sidle into the entrance. Fierce whispering drifted out of the alcove. “You go first. No, you.” A tiny grin played across Deller’s lips as the Skulls finally stumbled, a congealed mass of arms and legs, into their headquarters. Silence descended onto the street, the overheated air shimmering like a raw nerve. Nellie shifted, her butt cooking on the warehouse roof. Hooding his eyes with his good hand, Deller turned to scan the rooftops. His gaze paused on the heating vent and he came quickly toward it, stopping directly opposite.
“Bunny?” he called softly, his voice carrying clearly in the stillness of the street.
Slowly she crawled out from behind the vent and sat looking down at him. “How’d you guess?” she asked finally.
“Not dumb enough to wait inside, are you?” he shrugged.
The warehouse roof reverberated slightly as Snakebite came ricocheting through the entrance, bumping into the doorjamb. “She’s not here!” he shouted, rubbing his shoulder. “She took off.”
“Did you check the can?” asked Deller. “
Yeah,” grimaced Snakebite.
“Check again,” said Deller, “you might’ve missed her,” and the other boy darted back inside. A butterfly fluttered around Deller’s head, then landed on his wrist. He cupped it with his hand.
“I saw your brother,” Nellie said, her heart suddenly pounding. “Last night.” She watched Deller’s head snap up, the sunlight smashing against his face, splintering like glass. Slowly his hand lifted, releasing the butterfly. “Come up and I’ll tell you,” she croaked, hugging herself and rocking. “There’s a truck out back.”
“I know,” said Deller, and vanished around the side of the building. A moment later the roof quivered slightly and she turned to see him working his way quietly toward her. “Wait,” he said, settling beside her. “Until they’ve gone.”
As if in response, the rest of the Skulls poured through the entrance. For several minutes they spilled about the street, shouting for Deller and arguing among themselves. Then without once looking up they headed off, still wrangling, in the direction they’d come. Hunched against the vent Nellie stared after them, running after them in her head. Why was she here? She didn’t want to be here, didn’t want to say what she was going to have to say. Deller was so close, she could feel the heat humming in his body. Chancing a glance in his direction, she saw the fierce press of his lips as he pulled a nevva fruit from his pocket and skinned it, tossing the peel into the street. If she hadn’t known to look for it, she would have missed the slight shake in his hands as he split the peeled fruit and handed her half.
The sweet scent came at her like a punch to the gut. Without a word she inhaled the nevva fruit, spitting the seeds over her knees and watching them bounce off the edge of the roof. Silently Deller handed her the other half and she forced herself to slow down, eating it piece by piece. Her eyes kept darting toward Deller’s left knee, angled casually one inch from her own. It had been a year and a half since she’d let anyone come this close.
“It was another gate,” she said finally.
Deller’s face shot round and he stared. “He’s in another level?”
“I think so,” Nellie said slowly. “It was a different kind of gate, not like I’m used to.”
“How d’you know it wasn’t his double?” Deller asked cautiously.
“There were no doubles.” She said it with surprise, realizing she hadn’t seen her own double anywhere, in the hallway or any of the cubicles. “I think the gate came out of Lulunar. It wasn’t like any level I’ve seen. Nothing was the way it should’ve been.”
Quickly she explained, watching tiny flickers come and go in Deller’s face. “I couldn’t get him out,” she said fervently when she finished. “I looked and looked for a switch to open it, but there wasn’t one, I swear.”
Deller nodded, blew out a gulping sigh, and buried his face in his knees. Silence descended, the late-morning heat hovering on heavy wings. A fly settled on Nellie’s arm and she shook it off. From her position on the warehouse roof, the sun appeared to be resting in the hands that sat atop the downtown spire of the Goddess’s largest and wealthiest church, the Temple of the Blessed Heart. Again the fly landed on her arm, and again she shook it off. Beside her Deller continued to sit motionless, his face buried in his knees. Uneasily she picked up a piece of discarded nevva peel and tore it to shreds.
“Can you get through the gate again?” Deller asked abruptly, his voice muffled by his knees.
“I don’t know.” She’d expected this question and had practiced various refusals, but now none of them seemed to fit her mouth. “I’ve never seen a gate like that. I didn’t go looking for it. It just showed up, already open.”
“Then it was looking for you.” Raising his head, Deller stared across the city. Knee prints reddened his forehead. “It’ll come back,” he said grimly, “looking for you again. And this time, I’ll be there to help you.”
Fear undulated through Nellie. “Maybe it was just Lulunar,” she said quickly. “You know—the two-moon craziness thing?”
“D’you really think that?” Deller stared at her, a tear sliding down one cheek. He blinked and another followed. Nellie swallowed, feeling her own sadness pour through her like a river.
“I guess not,” she said helplessly, and stared determinedly at the brass hands rising from the Temple of the Blessed Heart. If she didn’t look at Deller, he would stop crying. He would get it together and go back to being the tough leader of the Skulls. Then the hole that was threatening to tear open the inside of her head would fade away and leave her alone. She wasn’t going to think about her mother, she wasn’t going to think about what they must have done to her before she died, she wasn’t ...
“Is it far?” asked Deller. “We’ll get my bike and I’ll double-ride you there. Then we’ll wait for the gate.”
“It might not come.” If she brought Deller to the shack, she would be well and truly homeless. Once the Skulls knew about her secret place, her sanctuary, she would never be able to live there again. But after the mysterious gate and the stolen remembering dress, she couldn’t live there anyway. The fine lines holding Nellie’s mind together finally broke, and her head sank to her chest. “It’s not like it’s got a name and comes when you call it,” she mumbled.
“I’m not asking you to call it,” said Deller, and she lifted her head to find him looking at her, really looking—as if he saw her, more than just a ghost of hunger and need. “You already put yourself out for me,” he said softly. “It’s not your brother. If the gate shows up again, I’ll go through it by myself. You can wait for me in this level. If I don’t come back ... “ He shrugged. “Close it, I guess.”
Nellie nodded, ducking the warm search of his eyes. She’d forgotten eyes could do this, open the places she kept shut tight inside and make them ooze together in a sad-happy mix. “Let’s go then,” she said gruffly, scrambling to her feet. “Before it gets hotter than it already is.”
THE BIKE WAS STORED in a shed behind Deller’s house, a gloomy three-story clapboard with peeling gray paint that leaned slightly, as if following the wind. Wheeling the bike along a weedy walkway, Deller propped it against the sagging front porch, then ducked inside and emerged a minute later with a hastily slapped-together cheese sandwich.
“Here,” he said sheepishly, handing it to Nellie; then he grabbed the bike and wheeled it to the curb. She stood riveted, staring at the sandwich in her hand, an oddness resonating through her head. Since her mother had disappeared, she’d rarely been offered food and had had to steal almost every bite she’d swallowed. A shaky breath lifted through her and she glanced carefully at the boy sitting on his bike and staring fixedly down the street.
Don’t think this is going to make me love you, she thought at him fiercely. Just don’t think anyone’s going to make me love them ever again.
Biting savagely into the sandwich, Nellie swung onto the bike behind him and gripped the back of the seat with one hand while she ate from the other. As Deller pulled out awkwardly from the curb, she settled her right foot onto the chain guard and concentrated on keeping her balance. She would not, she told herself furiously, she definitely would not hold onto Deller. She’d seen the magazines he read, she knew what kind of thoughts filled his head. Munching the dry cheese sandwich, she rode out the bike’s wobbly movements and watched the city go by. Occasionally she jabbed a finger over Deller’s shoulder, delivering a terse set of directions, but otherwise they stuck to a mutual silence, traveling a tangled route of back alleys to the edge of the city, then taking the main road to the quarry. Except for the odd honk of a car horn no one bothered them, and gradually Nellie began to enjoy the warm breeze, the quiet whir of the bike, and the blur of passing shrubbery. This sure beat walking. Maybe she could figure out how to filch a bike. Nothing brand new—just a dumpy-looking one like Deller’s, so no one would think of filching it off her. Across the road, a barking dog lunged the full length of its chain and she stuck her tongue out at it. In a minute they would arrive at her regular turn-off point.
“Here,” she shouted at the back of Deller’s head.“Turn right.”
He veered into the tall blond grass and Nellie dismounted, grunting at the ache in her butt. “You can leave your bike there,” she said, pointing to a bush. “No one comes out here much, except me.”
As he slid the bike into the foliage, she turned toward a small hill that sat a short ways off, hiding the shack and the copse that surrounded it. Usually she waited until she’d passed the hill to turn in toward the copse, but after last night’s events she wanted to get a fix on the shack before she got too close. Somewhere high up, looking down on it would be best. Dashing up the hill, Nellie tore through the whiplash of dengleberry bushes, the sensation of riding the bike still with her. “C’mon,” she called, but Deller had already caught up to her and was pulling slightly ahead.
“You live out here?” he asked, throwing her a confused look, his thoughts written all over his face: What are your parents, moonshine derelicts? You some trash barrel kid they dumped at the side of the road? Lightning shame forked through Nellie. Putting on a burst of speed, she crested the hill ahead of him.
She saw, gave a hoarse cry, and fell to her knees.
“What is it, Bunny? What—?” Pulling up beside her, Deller went abruptly quiet. Earthquakes of silence filled the air, deep soundless apocalypses. No birds sang, the wind had gone utterly still. From the highway came the hum of a single car passing. Huddled against the ground, Nellie pulled up handful after handful of long blond grass, ripping the quiet to shreds.
“Was that your house, Bunny?” asked Deller in a bewildered voice. “Is that where you lived?”
She opened the absolute soundlessness that was her mouth, and nodded. For a long moment Deller’s face seemed about to slide into separate pieces, and then he turned to stare again at the wreck of the place that had housed her shack. Where the copse had stood that morning there was now only a large gash, torn deep in the ground. Trees lay every which way, some flung as far as fifty feet. A thick scent of burning hung in the air, and the trees and surrounding grass had been badly singed, but there was no sign of the shack, not even a charred board or shingle. The site looked as if a fist of fire had erupted from the ground, uprooting everything in its path.
“That was your house?” Deller asked again, as if he couldn’t make sense of what he was seeing. “That’s where the gate showed itself to you?”
“Yeah,” Nellie finally managed, the effort exhausting her.
Deller stood shuddering in the silence, being eaten by small gusts of wind. “What about your mom and dad?” he asked finally.
“It was just me,” she mumbled, and they remained as they were a while longer, staring at the ravaged pocket of earth.
“Well,” said Deller heavily, “I guess we should get going then.”
“Yeah,” said Nellie. “Okay.” Staggering to her feet, she followed him down the side of the hill.