CharLoft Prompt: Apocalypse Now
May. 23rd, 2011 03:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kasihyaWORK IN PROGRESS. Saving said progress in this format, because it's more efficient than having a billion sub-categorized folders on my computer. This is a lot of fun to write, but also pretty depressing. I don't think that I'm adequately portraying how depressing it is, but I feel it, trust me. I don't want to jinx this by saying that it's something I'm going to go back and revise (definitely expand, a lot), but I'd like to finish it. I think it's interesting because I'm actually learning about the characters; I'm not writing what I know.
Also, I like apocalyptic stories. So much pathos to be had. I'm especially enjoying the role that language plays, and the added difficulty of, as Willow notes, having your house full of refugees when you yourself are shortly about to become a refugee, and more importantly, you cannot communicate efficiently with them.
Čhatma can understand and write English all right, but he can't for the life of him pronounce anything. I got the idea from a Japanese tutor my class had - she's nearly fluent in English, but because she has such a heavy accent, I didn't know that until I saw something she had written that was in perfect English. So that's what he's based on - the sounds and cadence in Samicze are so different that it's hard to understand him when he speaks.
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The pirates stop in Kattim next. Čhatma leaps to the rails of the ship, looking eagerly through the horde of people, carrying small bags on their backs.
'When's the ship leaving?' he asks Sailor Siobhan. 'I want to go down, find my family.'
Siobhan looks at his watch. 'Fifteen minutes. We can only afford to take on a couple dozen more passengers; we're strung out as it is. Don't get your hopes up.'
Čhatma beams at him. 'I don't give a damn if they're on this ship; more will come. I just want to see if they're still alive.'
Siobhan nods. 'Go ahead, but don't be surprised if we leave without you.'
Čhatma nods cheerfully. He waits until Siobhan has turned his back before shrugging off his university robes and shifting shape. As a dragon, his view of the world changes, as well. Suddenly his homing senses kick in, and he launches himself off the railing. He soars over the crowd, and starts making the signs for his family. 'Where? Czattim! Czattim, where?'
No response. He repeats for a few more minutes, growing increasingly panicked when there is no response. There are plenty of people looking up, noticing, talking amongst themselves about it; no one answers. Finally, a young woman shifts — not family, she's got the faintest of faint blue tinges to her scales — and soars upwards. Čhatma dives to greet her.
Rekshi! he signs.
Čhatma!
They avoid collision in midair, leveling out and beating their wings to stay even. Rekshi bows her head. Sorry.
Sorry what?
Your family.
Čhatma's heart drops like a stone in his chest. What?
Rekshi motions to the ground, and they land just to the side of the crowd. Briefly, she explains that in the storms of magic that had swept across Naien, their town had been one of those … affected.
'I would have been affected, too, if I hadn't gone to visit my sister-in-law,' she concludes.
Čhatma stares at her. He is simply not equipped to deal with this. He has gotten through this whole ordeal only by relying on his relentless optimism, his faith that his family is just as stubborn in their refusal to succumb as he is. He finds himself nodding his head slowly, which somehow turns into his whole body rocking back and forth on his heels. Rekshi takes his hands, which are curled into fists under his chin, and holds them.
'Čhatma?' she asks. They aren't close; they're members of neighboring tribes, so they see each other pretty regularly, and there was a good chance they'd end up marrying into each other's tribes. Still, she's not one of his.
'Yeah. Good to know. What's left?'
She shakes her head. 'No one can go near those areas. Jav opened their cities to us, so there are a lot of refugees there, but everyone knows that it's coming to Jav next. Everyone who's still left is trying to get out to Mamra, and those who can't go to the home world is trying to get to Sargasso.
Čhatma absently tries to flick a tail that isn't there. He kicks at the ground instead. 'I'm going there, too. I have a friend there from university — he and my other roommates,' — he swallows hard, and thinks about Diana and Ivishi, trying to rescue books from the library, and Eŋya, carrying his friend Alexander out of the dorms with half of his face on fire. They're on a boat to Sargasso now: all of his roommates save for Zorion, who has gone back to Avvya and will join him on the return journey; the girls from across the hall, except for Ivishi. The ways between the worlds were being closed, to prevent magical overflow seeping into their home worlds; most in Yyeørel had already gone.
'Yes?'
Čhatma realizes that he's doing it again — that flashing back thing, that happens to him all the time. 'I have a friend in Sargasso who has family on Earth, and they can take us in.' He tosses his head. 'There's no reason for me to go to Mamra.'
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When he sets foot on shore, Zorion barely recognizes Kafte. The magical storms that tore up Yyeørel have had entirely different effects in Avvya: everything that was built using the subtle magic of shaping has simply fallen apart, from the instruments that the panhandlers played in the streets to the high, spindly metal bridges connecting buildings. All of it lies in ruins. The earth itself has cracked, a tremendous great canyon running down the length of Main Street fifteen feet wide. Zorion hadn't known that such an earthquake was possible. There are still plenty of people alive, though none look to be in very good condition. The mass annihilation comes after the storms, he remembers numbly. It had sounded particularly funny when Phineas read it aloud: dan katzen kratzen im zoken zachten katzenkasten. The reality was much less amusing.
Zorion's family estate is half a mile out of the center of town. He walks quickly past the hospital, which sags so far in the middle that it could have been made of rotting wood, instead of fresh stone and concrete. There is no carnage, no outright destruction of any buildings, that's the worst part, he thinks. It's all just enough to make the city look like it's been destroyed, without actually knocking anything down. It tips people out of their windows, and leaves their mangled bodies on the sidewalks for him to step over; it leaves a velvet-covered sedan perched precariously, right on the edge of the jumble of cobblestones that used to make up Main Street. It leaves people wandering around in torn clothing, shying away from him in his well-kept clothing and Koeli, radiating a bronze aura of menace.
The house, as he had feared, is on the brink of collapse. It has been built up with magic, and sustained with magic, for so long, there should hardly be anything left. The wrought-iron gates have been crushed into a thick metal rope that arches up in waves around the property. He can duck in through one of the upward curves without any trouble at all. He abandons all traces of composure then and there, slinging Koeli onto his back and running up the hill to the wing of the house that used to contain all the bedrooms, and now curves upwards at a seventy-degree angle to the ground. The windows have been bent into hourglasses, the glass shattered.
'Mother! Father!' he shouts. 'Zakeli!'
The front door looks as though it has been blasted open by gunpowder; he dashes through onto a parquet floor melted into stalagmites.
'Koeli?' He spins on the spot, trying to locate his sister's voice. 'Up here!'
Leandai waves at him from the remains of the balcony overlooking the entrance hall. Her skirts are ripped and trailing, her hair is out of its cornrows and held back in a single puffy braid, and there is a bandage on her upper arm, but she is alive. 'I'm coming down. I have my suitcase, and I have Zakeli.' She disappears into a doorway.
'Where are Mother and Father?' Zorion asks her. 'Where is everyone? We need to leave, now.'
Leandai doesn't answer, but he can hear her swishing down the stairs out of his sight. She reappears through the parlor doors, which are the only thing about the house that is mostly intact. 'Cemetery. There was a revolution, about a month ago. I've been the only one here for ages, and even then, that was only because the architecture protects its own.' She hurries over to curtsy, glaive slung over her shoulder impeding the process.
Zorion does not react, as he has been brought up. He shuts the information down for later, and takes his sister's suitcase. 'There's a boat, coming for us in two days now that the pirates can use witchcraft. What revolution?'
'The one that Father sent you out of town to avoid,' she says. 'All the aristocracy's gone to country to get away, only of course the country was the worst hit.'
'How have you been faring?' he asks.
Leandai tilts her head to the side and looks up at the ceiling. Zorion follows her gaze, but there is nothing up there except ruined frescos. 'I've been managing. Well, actually, I recruited two dozen or so denizens to protect me. I promised them that I could bring them out of Avvya when my brother came back with a ship. The ways back have all closed, you see.'
Zorion lifts his chin ever so slightly. 'Where are these people now?'
Leandai smiles. 'Living in the West Wing. I've had ladders put in.'
'Zakeli, the ship is going to be full from Naien. I'm allowed to bring you back, and other than that, everyone will have to wait for the next ship to come through.' Zorion wants to sit down and rub his face — well, actually, he wants to go throw himself onto his bed, but his bedroom no longer exists and is probably occupied by desperate factory workers anyway — but resists, and settles for tracing the design on Koeli's blade.
Leandai gets this begging look on her face. 'There are no more ships coming; you must know that. Maybe yours will come, but it's the last one.'
'Then how do you intend to make good on your promises?' Zorion leans on Koeli.
Leandai shrugs. 'Maybe I'm wrong about the ships. It will take them a while to figure it out, in any case. When did you say that
your ship is coming?'
'Two days, in the harbor. I intend to travel back with you, and we will go to Sargasso together. My friends will meet us there.'
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Čhatma flew frantically over the ship for the next two days, despite warnings that he would get left behind by the speeding ship. Until he nearly did, he kept at it. Then the Avvyan coast came into view. A crew member, whose name slipped his mind, warns him that he would not be able to fly off into the harbor this time.
'We don't want a mass flight; it'll just cause confusion,' she says. And as eager as he is to see his friend safe again, he can't argue with the sense in that. Hive minds, they have in Naien. So he waits, although this doesn't stop him from pushing up to the front of the ship and clinging to the bow with dragon claws.
The closer they get, the more Čhatma is confused. The wreckage that he is seeing only vaguely resembles the grand descriptions that Zorion gave him, or the photos that he had hanging in their room. And though the docks are different, and twist up and around in all sorts of interesting ways, it's still fundamentally the same scene as in Kattim: dozens and dozens of raggedy-looking people, standing around with suitcases or hand bags, waiting to board the ship. Čhatma is no pirate, but he's pretty sure that the ship can't hold even a fraction of those people. Selfish as it is, he's hoping that Zorion's rank will let him get on the ship first, so that Čhatma can find him. He desperately wants to not be from Naien for a while.
The pirates instruct their passengers to go back to their rooms, and make sure that they are claimed, so that they'll know when to stop taking on more people. So Čhatma shakes himself and waits until the masses have cleared, before wandering back down to the cabin.
'Rooms' is a misleading word. The ship isn't meant for luxuries; it is a ferry-ship that originally sailed the northern waters and is going south for the first time. The rooms hold about fifteen people each, with a bed or a hammock, although the Naien people are more than willing to share beds in order to make room for more survivors. Čhatma has been keeping to himself, waiting for Zorion.
He waits anxiously, for what feels like hours. He occupies himself by playing games with a small group of children, who sit around in a semi-circle on his bed, while he perches in the nearest hammock and pulls faces. Their parents acknowledge this gratefully, sleeping as best as they can. Every few seconds, the door will be pulled open, and a few curious Avvyans will poke their heads in to see if there is any room for them there.
Čhatma decides that it's bad for his mental health to keep twisting his neck around every five seconds whenever someone opens the door, and drags himself around so that he has a clear view. 'I'm waiting for my friend to come,' he tells the children.
'You're a grown-up! You don't have friends,' scoffs a little girl.
This shuts Čhatma up, and after a second, he laughs. 'Sorry. My mistake. Holy shit ye gods, Zorion!' He leaps out of the hammock, which twists around his feet, so that he lands headfirst on the bed. He struggles to pull himself out, though by the time he succeeds, Zorion is already there and helping him to his feet. They embrace fiercely. 'You made it! Fuck yes, this is awesome. I saved a space for you in here unless you want to stay with your family?' He bounces on his heels, hands on Zorion's shoulders.
Zorion meets his eyes, and his hands twitch on Koeli. 'My sister will be finding accommodations with others,' he says.
Čhatma notices the lack of mention of parents, but considering what he himself met at Naien, he doesn't actually want to ask.
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Even with the magic now available to the pirates, it still takes two weeks to reach the Vespucci port — the storms have already hit Russia in the north, closing it off. They meet up with a boat coming from Trezam and northern Othiamba. Messengers go back and forth between the boats; from them, Čhatma learns that Trezam is almost completely gone.
'We were just waiting around to die,' says a young, tired-looking woman with skin almost the same color as Zorion, who is apparently the only one from Trezam who can speak Andoin with any proficiency. 'The New Order kept fussing around and talking about building our own boats, and we were like, 'You can't do that, even if we had the time no one knows how to build an ark.' And things were just getting worse all the time — no one was dying, but more and more loose magic kept coming up.'
'That's the same as it was in Yyeørel! Čhatma interrupts her. 'There'd be people studying witchcraft, and suddenly it would just get out of hand. Set fire to the dorms, it did.' If he can make light of it, then he won't keep thinking about it.
'Yeah, well, here it set fire to everything,' she says, achieving the incredible feat of making him feel about two feet shorter than her even though she barely came up to his nose. 'Masters turned out to be all right in the end, he tried to put out the fires, but then it turned out that only some of them were mage-fire; others were regular.'
'What happened?' asks Rekshi.
The woman's face is bleak. 'The only ones who managed to escape were either magicians, or people who happened to be around magicians at the time. And only in D'Sezan. There are about two hundred of us on board that ship right now, and that's all that's left.'
'Two hundred people … but you don't have a proper home world!' Čhatma exclaims. 'You'll go extinct!'
He gets a number of glares silencing elbows.
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By the time they reach Vespucci, there are five ships in their fleet. One comes from Vheɧnesɧ; another, from southern Othiamba. The last is a strange beast, one that was apparently a museum before someone willed it into a form that would float. Reed, the woman from D'Sezan, stares at the ship as it appears and pulls up alongside them. Her frown changes into a delighted laugh as a long, bright blue Chinese dragon spirals through the air and lands on the deck of the original ship.
'Somebody get me clothing!' she shouts. One of the Naien folks obligingly transforms and gives her his robe, which looks like nothing so much as a cross between a bathrobe and a kimono. She throws it over the dragon as it turns back into a tall, square-jawed man.
'Reed!' he gasps.
'Stephen!' She throw her arms around him. 'Oh my god, I thought you were dead.'
'Ha! I? Nonsense! Not even the fire of the abyss itself could separate me from my comrades!' He throws her a dazzlingly white grin.
'Should have known.' She punches him in the chest, and shakes her hand out ruefully. 'So can you tell me, what in the name of holy hell is that?' Reed points to the monstrosity that still bears the label, Museum of Natural History of Zannan.
Stephen puffs up and folds his arms across his chest. 'A clever plan, is it not? Therein are five hundred loyal citizens of Trezam, lying in a state of prolonged stasis until we reach our destination.'
Reed laughs, suddenly light-headed, and sits down. 'Oh, really? Whose idea was that?'
His grin falters a little. 'Not mine, my lady. It was, I confess, that of old Googley Eyes himself. He devised a most nefarious plan, to impose his shape-shifting will upon another receptacle into which he could safely secure a greater percentage of the population. It is meager, my lady, but it was the best he could do.' He throws out his arm dramatically to point at the ship. 'See, even now the Chameleon himself appears!'
Reed looks. A slim, ruffled man in sweatpants and a t-shirt has indeed balanced himself against the railing, and is waving a white flag against the grey skies.
'That's him? That's it?' she asks.
Stephen coughs. 'He designs to appear in a vulnerable state, so that more might be willing to forgive his reign of tyranny and come aboard his vessel. Do not trust to it, my lady.' He glares fiercely at the flag-waver.
'Is … is Jack on board?' Reed glances around to make sure that Galligan has been noticed by the pirates, and is pleased to see that they are already preparing to lower down a boat.
Stephen nods gravely. 'Indeed, as is Alan Black.'
'Good. I've got … well, all that was left of us to begin with, plus another hundred and seventy-three. They're on the other boat; I'm just the messenger for this one.' She stares at him for a moment more, and shakes his hand. 'Glad to see you made it.'
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The Liska house is absolutely chaotic. Will feels a constant, nagging sense of guilt; intellectually, he knows that it's not his fault, and that there are plenty of people volunteering to take refugees into their homes, but he still feels bad when he sees how hard his parents are working. Not only are they working on keeping up with the sudden flood of additions to the household, but they also have to work on trying to find a place to live in America. They're probably going to end up in New York, according to Maht. There's a town not too far from counterpart Gallows Hill, with a few houses that are, well, acceptable.
The problem is the timing. The government is giving families monetary help when it comes to relocating, but the real estate agents on Earth just don't get that. They don't understand that no, there is no time to go looking at houses, we just want whatever you have that's more or less big enough, thanks. It's not their fault. Maht may make faces and curse silently when she's put on hold, but that's for Will's benefit, and not the agents.
Then there is also the question of the refugees. At present, Willow is sharing his room with Kephri, Eŋya, Julian, and Dan; Professor Naois, his wife, and their two-year-old daughter Dara are sleeping in Violet's room, while Violet has moved into their parents' room. Only Julian speaks any English, although Dara has picked up a few words in the two weeks that they have been here. It is tiring, to say the least. Mama has been helping them look for a house; they're taking full advantage of the computer now; so close to the end of everything, the mental blocks have been lifted. It creeps Will out; more than ever, his thoughts have a tendency to go wandering now. And all the while, they wait for the storms to come.
One day, while Julian is playing with Dara, and Kephri and Eŋya are doing the dishes, and Willow is helping Erica confer with Naois and Oisin about a house down the street from the one that the Liskas will be moving into, and Violet is teaching Dan English upstairs, the doorbell rings.
'Can someone answer that?' Willow shouts, at his mother's behest. (It has got to be bizarre, suddenly having your house overrun by people you don't understand.) He gives a small groan when Kephri appears from the kitchen, a towel held in a curl of tail and pink rubber gloves contrasting oddly with his mottled greenish skin. People tended to back off quickly when they saw a Vheɧtˀ for the first time. He rushes over to the door, opens it, and sends the dish towel flying. Willow cranes back in his chair and nearly leaps out of his seat himself. Zorion and Čhatma stand in the doorway, backed by a girl carrying a glaive who has to be Zorion's sister.
'Sweeties, I'm home!' Čhatma sings in wildly accented English. Erica looks away from the phone, putting a finger to her lips. Her eyes widen as she sees the heavy, ornate weapons they carry.
'It's okay, they're just for show,' Willow explains quickly, seeing her face. 'They're kind of like the polar bears' armor in His Dark Materials.'
'The what?' Čhatma asks. 'Hey, are we allowed in the door?'
'Oh, yeah, yeah, come in and make yourselves comfortable. What was that, mom?' Willow tugs on his hair in frustration. 'Uh … the Joneses aren't willing to go any lower than $200,000,' he says to Naois. Naois and Oisin look at each other.
'It depends on who will be staying with us,' Oisin says carefully. 'We haven't decided yet.'
'Can you tell them that we'll call them back?' Willow asks Erica. She relays this message, exchanges pleasantries, and hangs up, rubbing her temples.
'I am so glad Maht is handling our own things,' she confides.
Willow hugs his mother. 'It'll be all right, I promise.'
She laughs. 'You shouldn't be reassuring me. Now, who are your friends? You know them, I presume?'
Willow follows her line of sight: all of his former roommates and Zorion's sister sitting on the floor in a circle, with Dara at the center tottering from one to the other. 'Yeah. Čhatma is the one sitting next to Eŋya, and the other guy is Zorion. The girl is Zorion's sister Leandai; I've never met her.'
'And they came on a later ship because they were going back to find their families,' Erica says.
'Yeah. I don't know what Čhatma is doing here; his family is huge, I assumed that he wouldn't want to be separated from them …' Willow walks over and sits down next to Kephri, who slides over to make room for him. 'Hey guys? This is my mom, Erica. My sister is upstairs, and my maht Cameron is at work right now.' He smiles when Zorion, Leandai, and Čhatma all offer their various forms of greeting at his mother.
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After spending two days in the house overflowing, Willow needs to escape. Julian wakes up as soon as he gets out of bed (his parents really have better things to be doing than worrying about their son sharing his bed when there are six other people in the room) and demands to know what's going on, but he says he's going out to meet a friend, and Julian falls back to sleep. However, he does somehow manage to leave his room without disturbing the various people distributed across his floor. Riley is waiting at the end of the driveway. He's unusually grim-looking; while he still refuses to get rid of his mohawk, he has let it fade to not-quite-black. 'Hey.' 'Hey.' Willow smiles at him in the pool of light from the street light across the road. 'Where do you want to go?' 'I don't want togo anywhere.' Riley shoves his hands into the pockets of his worn-out jeans. 'But let's head over to Anatol's. I think Felix is working the night there.' Willow nods. He's only seen his old friends once since he came back, although he's seen Matt a couple of times, running around on his bike to see if anyone needs a refugee taken off of their hands. 'How is your house doing?' Riley grunts. 'We've got our hands full of this one group from Othiamba in our apartment, and then another group from Trezam living downstairs. The downstairs group are all pretty young, but they're all freaking magicians. And one of them is fucking nuts; he thinks he's Don Quixote or something.' Something about that description rings familiar in Willow's head, but he remains silent and lets his friend rant. 'The people in our apartment, there's these two kids who should be in middle school, and a girl and a guy our age. I think the girl might be pregnant, which just sucks. And then there's a crazy-looking guy with scars all over the place.' 'Do you know their names or anything?' Willow asks. Riley shakes his head. 'I forget. The downstairs people are all right — they speak Welsh or something. Do we really have to talk about this?' 'What else do you want to talk about?' Will asks. 'Where are you going to live, you know, after everything?' 'After the end of the fucking world!' Riley shouts. He glances at Will. 'Sorry; I had to get it out of my system. I don't know. I don't give a fuck. It's the end of the world; shouldn't it just be the end of the world? It's like in all those apocalyptic movies, do you really even want to live after everyone else is dead?'
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The end of the world begins shortly after Willow gets back to his house. He just sliding back under the covers when there is a change in the air. Not the humidity, or the temperature, or the pressure; something indefinable that nonetheless has everyone in the room awake and gasping in under thirty seconds. 'It's happening,' Julian announces with perfect calm. 'Willow, where is the portal?' Will remains calm. He has his bag packed under the bed, although it's really just a backpack. New clothing can be bought; food can be bought. His bag has one set of clothing, a toothbrush, two photo albums, a teddy bear his grandparents gave him, and several Yyeørel books that wouldn't exist in America. He hauls it onto his back, as his friends get up and do the same with their own few remaining possessions. No one speaks. When he opens the door to the landing, Professor Naois and Oisin are there as well. Naois is carrying Dara, and Oisin has a small handbag. 'Let's go,' Willow says. Downstairs, they meet Leandai, Violet, his parents, and their dog, Charlie. Cameron nods. 'It's only a mile down the road. I'm going to take the car with Violet, Charlie, and the Professor's family. Erica and Willow will lead you all on foot.' Willow hesitates as he translates this, but no one makes a fuss. No one present actually trusts their car in the first place, which makes him giggle. Outside, the wind suddenly picks up, and there is a tremendous crack of thunder. It's so atmospheric that it's nearly funny, until Willow is reminded that the weather corresponds to the magic levels, and thunderstorms are perfect witching weather. He hopes Diana is happy, wherever she is. He hasn't seen her since they got off the boat. It's raining outside, pouring buckets and sheets so thick that they can hardly see one another. Willow takes hold of Erica's arm with one hand, and reaches behind him for Dan with the other. They walk along the sidewalk in a long chain, or at least, that's what Willow hopes; he can't see far enough behind him to check. The rain makes it slow going. Within the first five minutes, the water has risen out of the drains and is running over their feet. Meanwhile, the strangeness in the air grows ever stronger. It presses things in strange ways; although it is late at night, a flash of lightning illuminates the air enough for Willow to be able to see that the trees have been stripped of their leaves, and now loom menacingly over the streets. A dead cat washes across their paths; he steps out of the way. He looks up to make sure that there are no more coming his way, when another bolt of lightning cracks across the sky. Willow screams: as it does, it lights up a figure who has managed to get two feet away from him without his noticing. Everyone in the line stops. Erica whirls around. 'Help!' the figure shouts, in a light man's voice. 'Help! I can't control it!' 'What?' Willow shouts back. 'Who are you?' 'You're Violet's older brother!' the stranger shouts, and Willow thinks he recognizes him. 'Kai?' 'Yes. I can't stop it — everything is coming out of my head, and it hurts.' Erica leans in closer, praise her, to Kai. 'What's the matter?' she says loudly. 'This!' If Will squints, he can see Kai press his hands to the sides of his head. When he removes them, shimmering purple light comes away with them, like lightning reflected in water.
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Kephri immediately crouches into a defensive position as the portal opens and they all go spilling out the other side. There is no one out there, though — just more woods, like those behind Yggdrasil house. When he turns around, the portal is just a crack in a rock face. The ground under his bare feet (he flatly refused shoes, no matter what the conditions might be) is a packed dirt path. He makes room as Violet comes out of the portal, followed by Matt, Julian, Eŋya, and then a dozen people he doesn't recognize. After them, the golden animal named Charlie bounds out, tail wagging, and stops to shake itself. They gather around the crack and wait. And wait. 'Is there any room for error?' Julian asks Matt. 'Hell of a lot of it. I don't think it'll just keep them, though; they'll come out somewhere.' '"Somewhere,"' Julian repeats. Matt shivers.
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One of the others, a dark-skinned woman, claims to have photographic memory as part of her power set, and takes a mental picture of the rock and its surroundings. 'So we can come back and check,' she says.
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Kephri notices the Othiambians looking around in confusion, and walks over to them. 'Hi,' he says in Uzoma, the only language from that continent he knows. 'Hi,' says the very small, emaciated boy. They look at each other. Kephri is small compared to many other countries, he knows that, but this boy only reaches his chin. He starts speaking, but Kephri can't understand a word. He stands there helplessly until Matt seems to realize what is going on and comes over. He says some things to the boy, and then to the other three who are there. ☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠
At this point, I run out of steam. Or, rather, I run out of exciting apocalyptic scenes. Oh well. That can change. Yes, also, that is Nyali that Kephri is talking to at the end, and the black woman is Reed Henry.
Also, I like apocalyptic stories. So much pathos to be had. I'm especially enjoying the role that language plays, and the added difficulty of, as Willow notes, having your house full of refugees when you yourself are shortly about to become a refugee, and more importantly, you cannot communicate efficiently with them.
Čhatma can understand and write English all right, but he can't for the life of him pronounce anything. I got the idea from a Japanese tutor my class had - she's nearly fluent in English, but because she has such a heavy accent, I didn't know that until I saw something she had written that was in perfect English. So that's what he's based on - the sounds and cadence in Samicze are so different that it's hard to understand him when he speaks.
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The pirates stop in Kattim next. Čhatma leaps to the rails of the ship, looking eagerly through the horde of people, carrying small bags on their backs.
'When's the ship leaving?' he asks Sailor Siobhan. 'I want to go down, find my family.'
Siobhan looks at his watch. 'Fifteen minutes. We can only afford to take on a couple dozen more passengers; we're strung out as it is. Don't get your hopes up.'
Čhatma beams at him. 'I don't give a damn if they're on this ship; more will come. I just want to see if they're still alive.'
Siobhan nods. 'Go ahead, but don't be surprised if we leave without you.'
Čhatma nods cheerfully. He waits until Siobhan has turned his back before shrugging off his university robes and shifting shape. As a dragon, his view of the world changes, as well. Suddenly his homing senses kick in, and he launches himself off the railing. He soars over the crowd, and starts making the signs for his family. 'Where? Czattim! Czattim, where?'
No response. He repeats for a few more minutes, growing increasingly panicked when there is no response. There are plenty of people looking up, noticing, talking amongst themselves about it; no one answers. Finally, a young woman shifts — not family, she's got the faintest of faint blue tinges to her scales — and soars upwards. Čhatma dives to greet her.
Rekshi! he signs.
Čhatma!
They avoid collision in midair, leveling out and beating their wings to stay even. Rekshi bows her head. Sorry.
Sorry what?
Your family.
Čhatma's heart drops like a stone in his chest. What?
Rekshi motions to the ground, and they land just to the side of the crowd. Briefly, she explains that in the storms of magic that had swept across Naien, their town had been one of those … affected.
'I would have been affected, too, if I hadn't gone to visit my sister-in-law,' she concludes.
Čhatma stares at her. He is simply not equipped to deal with this. He has gotten through this whole ordeal only by relying on his relentless optimism, his faith that his family is just as stubborn in their refusal to succumb as he is. He finds himself nodding his head slowly, which somehow turns into his whole body rocking back and forth on his heels. Rekshi takes his hands, which are curled into fists under his chin, and holds them.
'Čhatma?' she asks. They aren't close; they're members of neighboring tribes, so they see each other pretty regularly, and there was a good chance they'd end up marrying into each other's tribes. Still, she's not one of his.
'Yeah. Good to know. What's left?'
She shakes her head. 'No one can go near those areas. Jav opened their cities to us, so there are a lot of refugees there, but everyone knows that it's coming to Jav next. Everyone who's still left is trying to get out to Mamra, and those who can't go to the home world is trying to get to Sargasso.
Čhatma absently tries to flick a tail that isn't there. He kicks at the ground instead. 'I'm going there, too. I have a friend there from university — he and my other roommates,' — he swallows hard, and thinks about Diana and Ivishi, trying to rescue books from the library, and Eŋya, carrying his friend Alexander out of the dorms with half of his face on fire. They're on a boat to Sargasso now: all of his roommates save for Zorion, who has gone back to Avvya and will join him on the return journey; the girls from across the hall, except for Ivishi. The ways between the worlds were being closed, to prevent magical overflow seeping into their home worlds; most in Yyeørel had already gone.
'Yes?'
Čhatma realizes that he's doing it again — that flashing back thing, that happens to him all the time. 'I have a friend in Sargasso who has family on Earth, and they can take us in.' He tosses his head. 'There's no reason for me to go to Mamra.'
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When he sets foot on shore, Zorion barely recognizes Kafte. The magical storms that tore up Yyeørel have had entirely different effects in Avvya: everything that was built using the subtle magic of shaping has simply fallen apart, from the instruments that the panhandlers played in the streets to the high, spindly metal bridges connecting buildings. All of it lies in ruins. The earth itself has cracked, a tremendous great canyon running down the length of Main Street fifteen feet wide. Zorion hadn't known that such an earthquake was possible. There are still plenty of people alive, though none look to be in very good condition. The mass annihilation comes after the storms, he remembers numbly. It had sounded particularly funny when Phineas read it aloud: dan katzen kratzen im zoken zachten katzenkasten. The reality was much less amusing.
Zorion's family estate is half a mile out of the center of town. He walks quickly past the hospital, which sags so far in the middle that it could have been made of rotting wood, instead of fresh stone and concrete. There is no carnage, no outright destruction of any buildings, that's the worst part, he thinks. It's all just enough to make the city look like it's been destroyed, without actually knocking anything down. It tips people out of their windows, and leaves their mangled bodies on the sidewalks for him to step over; it leaves a velvet-covered sedan perched precariously, right on the edge of the jumble of cobblestones that used to make up Main Street. It leaves people wandering around in torn clothing, shying away from him in his well-kept clothing and Koeli, radiating a bronze aura of menace.
The house, as he had feared, is on the brink of collapse. It has been built up with magic, and sustained with magic, for so long, there should hardly be anything left. The wrought-iron gates have been crushed into a thick metal rope that arches up in waves around the property. He can duck in through one of the upward curves without any trouble at all. He abandons all traces of composure then and there, slinging Koeli onto his back and running up the hill to the wing of the house that used to contain all the bedrooms, and now curves upwards at a seventy-degree angle to the ground. The windows have been bent into hourglasses, the glass shattered.
'Mother! Father!' he shouts. 'Zakeli!'
The front door looks as though it has been blasted open by gunpowder; he dashes through onto a parquet floor melted into stalagmites.
'Koeli?' He spins on the spot, trying to locate his sister's voice. 'Up here!'
Leandai waves at him from the remains of the balcony overlooking the entrance hall. Her skirts are ripped and trailing, her hair is out of its cornrows and held back in a single puffy braid, and there is a bandage on her upper arm, but she is alive. 'I'm coming down. I have my suitcase, and I have Zakeli.' She disappears into a doorway.
'Where are Mother and Father?' Zorion asks her. 'Where is everyone? We need to leave, now.'
Leandai doesn't answer, but he can hear her swishing down the stairs out of his sight. She reappears through the parlor doors, which are the only thing about the house that is mostly intact. 'Cemetery. There was a revolution, about a month ago. I've been the only one here for ages, and even then, that was only because the architecture protects its own.' She hurries over to curtsy, glaive slung over her shoulder impeding the process.
Zorion does not react, as he has been brought up. He shuts the information down for later, and takes his sister's suitcase. 'There's a boat, coming for us in two days now that the pirates can use witchcraft. What revolution?'
'The one that Father sent you out of town to avoid,' she says. 'All the aristocracy's gone to country to get away, only of course the country was the worst hit.'
'How have you been faring?' he asks.
Leandai tilts her head to the side and looks up at the ceiling. Zorion follows her gaze, but there is nothing up there except ruined frescos. 'I've been managing. Well, actually, I recruited two dozen or so denizens to protect me. I promised them that I could bring them out of Avvya when my brother came back with a ship. The ways back have all closed, you see.'
Zorion lifts his chin ever so slightly. 'Where are these people now?'
Leandai smiles. 'Living in the West Wing. I've had ladders put in.'
'Zakeli, the ship is going to be full from Naien. I'm allowed to bring you back, and other than that, everyone will have to wait for the next ship to come through.' Zorion wants to sit down and rub his face — well, actually, he wants to go throw himself onto his bed, but his bedroom no longer exists and is probably occupied by desperate factory workers anyway — but resists, and settles for tracing the design on Koeli's blade.
Leandai gets this begging look on her face. 'There are no more ships coming; you must know that. Maybe yours will come, but it's the last one.'
'Then how do you intend to make good on your promises?' Zorion leans on Koeli.
Leandai shrugs. 'Maybe I'm wrong about the ships. It will take them a while to figure it out, in any case. When did you say that
your ship is coming?'
'Two days, in the harbor. I intend to travel back with you, and we will go to Sargasso together. My friends will meet us there.'
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Čhatma flew frantically over the ship for the next two days, despite warnings that he would get left behind by the speeding ship. Until he nearly did, he kept at it. Then the Avvyan coast came into view. A crew member, whose name slipped his mind, warns him that he would not be able to fly off into the harbor this time.
'We don't want a mass flight; it'll just cause confusion,' she says. And as eager as he is to see his friend safe again, he can't argue with the sense in that. Hive minds, they have in Naien. So he waits, although this doesn't stop him from pushing up to the front of the ship and clinging to the bow with dragon claws.
The closer they get, the more Čhatma is confused. The wreckage that he is seeing only vaguely resembles the grand descriptions that Zorion gave him, or the photos that he had hanging in their room. And though the docks are different, and twist up and around in all sorts of interesting ways, it's still fundamentally the same scene as in Kattim: dozens and dozens of raggedy-looking people, standing around with suitcases or hand bags, waiting to board the ship. Čhatma is no pirate, but he's pretty sure that the ship can't hold even a fraction of those people. Selfish as it is, he's hoping that Zorion's rank will let him get on the ship first, so that Čhatma can find him. He desperately wants to not be from Naien for a while.
The pirates instruct their passengers to go back to their rooms, and make sure that they are claimed, so that they'll know when to stop taking on more people. So Čhatma shakes himself and waits until the masses have cleared, before wandering back down to the cabin.
'Rooms' is a misleading word. The ship isn't meant for luxuries; it is a ferry-ship that originally sailed the northern waters and is going south for the first time. The rooms hold about fifteen people each, with a bed or a hammock, although the Naien people are more than willing to share beds in order to make room for more survivors. Čhatma has been keeping to himself, waiting for Zorion.
He waits anxiously, for what feels like hours. He occupies himself by playing games with a small group of children, who sit around in a semi-circle on his bed, while he perches in the nearest hammock and pulls faces. Their parents acknowledge this gratefully, sleeping as best as they can. Every few seconds, the door will be pulled open, and a few curious Avvyans will poke their heads in to see if there is any room for them there.
Čhatma decides that it's bad for his mental health to keep twisting his neck around every five seconds whenever someone opens the door, and drags himself around so that he has a clear view. 'I'm waiting for my friend to come,' he tells the children.
'You're a grown-up! You don't have friends,' scoffs a little girl.
This shuts Čhatma up, and after a second, he laughs. 'Sorry. My mistake. Holy shit ye gods, Zorion!' He leaps out of the hammock, which twists around his feet, so that he lands headfirst on the bed. He struggles to pull himself out, though by the time he succeeds, Zorion is already there and helping him to his feet. They embrace fiercely. 'You made it! Fuck yes, this is awesome. I saved a space for you in here unless you want to stay with your family?' He bounces on his heels, hands on Zorion's shoulders.
Zorion meets his eyes, and his hands twitch on Koeli. 'My sister will be finding accommodations with others,' he says.
Čhatma notices the lack of mention of parents, but considering what he himself met at Naien, he doesn't actually want to ask.
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Even with the magic now available to the pirates, it still takes two weeks to reach the Vespucci port — the storms have already hit Russia in the north, closing it off. They meet up with a boat coming from Trezam and northern Othiamba. Messengers go back and forth between the boats; from them, Čhatma learns that Trezam is almost completely gone.
'We were just waiting around to die,' says a young, tired-looking woman with skin almost the same color as Zorion, who is apparently the only one from Trezam who can speak Andoin with any proficiency. 'The New Order kept fussing around and talking about building our own boats, and we were like, 'You can't do that, even if we had the time no one knows how to build an ark.' And things were just getting worse all the time — no one was dying, but more and more loose magic kept coming up.'
'That's the same as it was in Yyeørel! Čhatma interrupts her. 'There'd be people studying witchcraft, and suddenly it would just get out of hand. Set fire to the dorms, it did.' If he can make light of it, then he won't keep thinking about it.
'Yeah, well, here it set fire to everything,' she says, achieving the incredible feat of making him feel about two feet shorter than her even though she barely came up to his nose. 'Masters turned out to be all right in the end, he tried to put out the fires, but then it turned out that only some of them were mage-fire; others were regular.'
'What happened?' asks Rekshi.
The woman's face is bleak. 'The only ones who managed to escape were either magicians, or people who happened to be around magicians at the time. And only in D'Sezan. There are about two hundred of us on board that ship right now, and that's all that's left.'
'Two hundred people … but you don't have a proper home world!' Čhatma exclaims. 'You'll go extinct!'
He gets a number of glares silencing elbows.
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By the time they reach Vespucci, there are five ships in their fleet. One comes from Vheɧnesɧ; another, from southern Othiamba. The last is a strange beast, one that was apparently a museum before someone willed it into a form that would float. Reed, the woman from D'Sezan, stares at the ship as it appears and pulls up alongside them. Her frown changes into a delighted laugh as a long, bright blue Chinese dragon spirals through the air and lands on the deck of the original ship.
'Somebody get me clothing!' she shouts. One of the Naien folks obligingly transforms and gives her his robe, which looks like nothing so much as a cross between a bathrobe and a kimono. She throws it over the dragon as it turns back into a tall, square-jawed man.
'Reed!' he gasps.
'Stephen!' She throw her arms around him. 'Oh my god, I thought you were dead.'
'Ha! I? Nonsense! Not even the fire of the abyss itself could separate me from my comrades!' He throws her a dazzlingly white grin.
'Should have known.' She punches him in the chest, and shakes her hand out ruefully. 'So can you tell me, what in the name of holy hell is that?' Reed points to the monstrosity that still bears the label, Museum of Natural History of Zannan.
Stephen puffs up and folds his arms across his chest. 'A clever plan, is it not? Therein are five hundred loyal citizens of Trezam, lying in a state of prolonged stasis until we reach our destination.'
Reed laughs, suddenly light-headed, and sits down. 'Oh, really? Whose idea was that?'
His grin falters a little. 'Not mine, my lady. It was, I confess, that of old Googley Eyes himself. He devised a most nefarious plan, to impose his shape-shifting will upon another receptacle into which he could safely secure a greater percentage of the population. It is meager, my lady, but it was the best he could do.' He throws out his arm dramatically to point at the ship. 'See, even now the Chameleon himself appears!'
Reed looks. A slim, ruffled man in sweatpants and a t-shirt has indeed balanced himself against the railing, and is waving a white flag against the grey skies.
'That's him? That's it?' she asks.
Stephen coughs. 'He designs to appear in a vulnerable state, so that more might be willing to forgive his reign of tyranny and come aboard his vessel. Do not trust to it, my lady.' He glares fiercely at the flag-waver.
'Is … is Jack on board?' Reed glances around to make sure that Galligan has been noticed by the pirates, and is pleased to see that they are already preparing to lower down a boat.
Stephen nods gravely. 'Indeed, as is Alan Black.'
'Good. I've got … well, all that was left of us to begin with, plus another hundred and seventy-three. They're on the other boat; I'm just the messenger for this one.' She stares at him for a moment more, and shakes his hand. 'Glad to see you made it.'
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The Liska house is absolutely chaotic. Will feels a constant, nagging sense of guilt; intellectually, he knows that it's not his fault, and that there are plenty of people volunteering to take refugees into their homes, but he still feels bad when he sees how hard his parents are working. Not only are they working on keeping up with the sudden flood of additions to the household, but they also have to work on trying to find a place to live in America. They're probably going to end up in New York, according to Maht. There's a town not too far from counterpart Gallows Hill, with a few houses that are, well, acceptable.
The problem is the timing. The government is giving families monetary help when it comes to relocating, but the real estate agents on Earth just don't get that. They don't understand that no, there is no time to go looking at houses, we just want whatever you have that's more or less big enough, thanks. It's not their fault. Maht may make faces and curse silently when she's put on hold, but that's for Will's benefit, and not the agents.
Then there is also the question of the refugees. At present, Willow is sharing his room with Kephri, Eŋya, Julian, and Dan; Professor Naois, his wife, and their two-year-old daughter Dara are sleeping in Violet's room, while Violet has moved into their parents' room. Only Julian speaks any English, although Dara has picked up a few words in the two weeks that they have been here. It is tiring, to say the least. Mama has been helping them look for a house; they're taking full advantage of the computer now; so close to the end of everything, the mental blocks have been lifted. It creeps Will out; more than ever, his thoughts have a tendency to go wandering now. And all the while, they wait for the storms to come.
One day, while Julian is playing with Dara, and Kephri and Eŋya are doing the dishes, and Willow is helping Erica confer with Naois and Oisin about a house down the street from the one that the Liskas will be moving into, and Violet is teaching Dan English upstairs, the doorbell rings.
'Can someone answer that?' Willow shouts, at his mother's behest. (It has got to be bizarre, suddenly having your house overrun by people you don't understand.) He gives a small groan when Kephri appears from the kitchen, a towel held in a curl of tail and pink rubber gloves contrasting oddly with his mottled greenish skin. People tended to back off quickly when they saw a Vheɧtˀ for the first time. He rushes over to the door, opens it, and sends the dish towel flying. Willow cranes back in his chair and nearly leaps out of his seat himself. Zorion and Čhatma stand in the doorway, backed by a girl carrying a glaive who has to be Zorion's sister.
'Sweeties, I'm home!' Čhatma sings in wildly accented English. Erica looks away from the phone, putting a finger to her lips. Her eyes widen as she sees the heavy, ornate weapons they carry.
'It's okay, they're just for show,' Willow explains quickly, seeing her face. 'They're kind of like the polar bears' armor in His Dark Materials.'
'The what?' Čhatma asks. 'Hey, are we allowed in the door?'
'Oh, yeah, yeah, come in and make yourselves comfortable. What was that, mom?' Willow tugs on his hair in frustration. 'Uh … the Joneses aren't willing to go any lower than $200,000,' he says to Naois. Naois and Oisin look at each other.
'It depends on who will be staying with us,' Oisin says carefully. 'We haven't decided yet.'
'Can you tell them that we'll call them back?' Willow asks Erica. She relays this message, exchanges pleasantries, and hangs up, rubbing her temples.
'I am so glad Maht is handling our own things,' she confides.
Willow hugs his mother. 'It'll be all right, I promise.'
She laughs. 'You shouldn't be reassuring me. Now, who are your friends? You know them, I presume?'
Willow follows her line of sight: all of his former roommates and Zorion's sister sitting on the floor in a circle, with Dara at the center tottering from one to the other. 'Yeah. Čhatma is the one sitting next to Eŋya, and the other guy is Zorion. The girl is Zorion's sister Leandai; I've never met her.'
'And they came on a later ship because they were going back to find their families,' Erica says.
'Yeah. I don't know what Čhatma is doing here; his family is huge, I assumed that he wouldn't want to be separated from them …' Willow walks over and sits down next to Kephri, who slides over to make room for him. 'Hey guys? This is my mom, Erica. My sister is upstairs, and my maht Cameron is at work right now.' He smiles when Zorion, Leandai, and Čhatma all offer their various forms of greeting at his mother.
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After spending two days in the house overflowing, Willow needs to escape. Julian wakes up as soon as he gets out of bed (his parents really have better things to be doing than worrying about their son sharing his bed when there are six other people in the room) and demands to know what's going on, but he says he's going out to meet a friend, and Julian falls back to sleep. However, he does somehow manage to leave his room without disturbing the various people distributed across his floor. Riley is waiting at the end of the driveway. He's unusually grim-looking; while he still refuses to get rid of his mohawk, he has let it fade to not-quite-black. 'Hey.' 'Hey.' Willow smiles at him in the pool of light from the street light across the road. 'Where do you want to go?' 'I don't want togo anywhere.' Riley shoves his hands into the pockets of his worn-out jeans. 'But let's head over to Anatol's. I think Felix is working the night there.' Willow nods. He's only seen his old friends once since he came back, although he's seen Matt a couple of times, running around on his bike to see if anyone needs a refugee taken off of their hands. 'How is your house doing?' Riley grunts. 'We've got our hands full of this one group from Othiamba in our apartment, and then another group from Trezam living downstairs. The downstairs group are all pretty young, but they're all freaking magicians. And one of them is fucking nuts; he thinks he's Don Quixote or something.' Something about that description rings familiar in Willow's head, but he remains silent and lets his friend rant. 'The people in our apartment, there's these two kids who should be in middle school, and a girl and a guy our age. I think the girl might be pregnant, which just sucks. And then there's a crazy-looking guy with scars all over the place.' 'Do you know their names or anything?' Willow asks. Riley shakes his head. 'I forget. The downstairs people are all right — they speak Welsh or something. Do we really have to talk about this?' 'What else do you want to talk about?' Will asks. 'Where are you going to live, you know, after everything?' 'After the end of the fucking world!' Riley shouts. He glances at Will. 'Sorry; I had to get it out of my system. I don't know. I don't give a fuck. It's the end of the world; shouldn't it just be the end of the world? It's like in all those apocalyptic movies, do you really even want to live after everyone else is dead?'
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The end of the world begins shortly after Willow gets back to his house. He just sliding back under the covers when there is a change in the air. Not the humidity, or the temperature, or the pressure; something indefinable that nonetheless has everyone in the room awake and gasping in under thirty seconds. 'It's happening,' Julian announces with perfect calm. 'Willow, where is the portal?' Will remains calm. He has his bag packed under the bed, although it's really just a backpack. New clothing can be bought; food can be bought. His bag has one set of clothing, a toothbrush, two photo albums, a teddy bear his grandparents gave him, and several Yyeørel books that wouldn't exist in America. He hauls it onto his back, as his friends get up and do the same with their own few remaining possessions. No one speaks. When he opens the door to the landing, Professor Naois and Oisin are there as well. Naois is carrying Dara, and Oisin has a small handbag. 'Let's go,' Willow says. Downstairs, they meet Leandai, Violet, his parents, and their dog, Charlie. Cameron nods. 'It's only a mile down the road. I'm going to take the car with Violet, Charlie, and the Professor's family. Erica and Willow will lead you all on foot.' Willow hesitates as he translates this, but no one makes a fuss. No one present actually trusts their car in the first place, which makes him giggle. Outside, the wind suddenly picks up, and there is a tremendous crack of thunder. It's so atmospheric that it's nearly funny, until Willow is reminded that the weather corresponds to the magic levels, and thunderstorms are perfect witching weather. He hopes Diana is happy, wherever she is. He hasn't seen her since they got off the boat. It's raining outside, pouring buckets and sheets so thick that they can hardly see one another. Willow takes hold of Erica's arm with one hand, and reaches behind him for Dan with the other. They walk along the sidewalk in a long chain, or at least, that's what Willow hopes; he can't see far enough behind him to check. The rain makes it slow going. Within the first five minutes, the water has risen out of the drains and is running over their feet. Meanwhile, the strangeness in the air grows ever stronger. It presses things in strange ways; although it is late at night, a flash of lightning illuminates the air enough for Willow to be able to see that the trees have been stripped of their leaves, and now loom menacingly over the streets. A dead cat washes across their paths; he steps out of the way. He looks up to make sure that there are no more coming his way, when another bolt of lightning cracks across the sky. Willow screams: as it does, it lights up a figure who has managed to get two feet away from him without his noticing. Everyone in the line stops. Erica whirls around. 'Help!' the figure shouts, in a light man's voice. 'Help! I can't control it!' 'What?' Willow shouts back. 'Who are you?' 'You're Violet's older brother!' the stranger shouts, and Willow thinks he recognizes him. 'Kai?' 'Yes. I can't stop it — everything is coming out of my head, and it hurts.' Erica leans in closer, praise her, to Kai. 'What's the matter?' she says loudly. 'This!' If Will squints, he can see Kai press his hands to the sides of his head. When he removes them, shimmering purple light comes away with them, like lightning reflected in water.
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Kephri immediately crouches into a defensive position as the portal opens and they all go spilling out the other side. There is no one out there, though — just more woods, like those behind Yggdrasil house. When he turns around, the portal is just a crack in a rock face. The ground under his bare feet (he flatly refused shoes, no matter what the conditions might be) is a packed dirt path. He makes room as Violet comes out of the portal, followed by Matt, Julian, Eŋya, and then a dozen people he doesn't recognize. After them, the golden animal named Charlie bounds out, tail wagging, and stops to shake itself. They gather around the crack and wait. And wait. 'Is there any room for error?' Julian asks Matt. 'Hell of a lot of it. I don't think it'll just keep them, though; they'll come out somewhere.' '"Somewhere,"' Julian repeats. Matt shivers.
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One of the others, a dark-skinned woman, claims to have photographic memory as part of her power set, and takes a mental picture of the rock and its surroundings. 'So we can come back and check,' she says.
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Kephri notices the Othiambians looking around in confusion, and walks over to them. 'Hi,' he says in Uzoma, the only language from that continent he knows. 'Hi,' says the very small, emaciated boy. They look at each other. Kephri is small compared to many other countries, he knows that, but this boy only reaches his chin. He starts speaking, but Kephri can't understand a word. He stands there helplessly until Matt seems to realize what is going on and comes over. He says some things to the boy, and then to the other three who are there. ☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠
At this point, I run out of steam. Or, rather, I run out of exciting apocalyptic scenes. Oh well. That can change. Yes, also, that is Nyali that Kephri is talking to at the end, and the black woman is Reed Henry.
