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VIII. The Forbidden Door

H’Dlava Kou’h rifled through the heavy stack of pages on his desk, peering at the neat script. Quite decent, for a human scribe. And not far from completion. Zoe had worked hard on her Human translation of the breakthrough Overview of Human Medicine, originally penned by h’Nofit Juro’h, and it seemed she actually would finish her transcription soon. A burchar Scribe might have taken years; perhaps there was something to be said for copying the words themselves, rather than worrying over a perfect reproduction of every brushstroke. To think, Zoe hadn’t believed her Common was up to snuff, but her notes certainly showed how hard she had worked, and how far she’d come.

Something made him flick an ear as he read through Zoe’s translation. He absently rubbed his ear tip as he read the note clipped to an offset page. Yes, that word was the correct one. Yes, “Hidden” did need the capital letter. Something nagged, the back of his neck jumping, the spurs there jutting out. It was odd that humans didn’t capitalize their word for the phenomenon.

His entire neck and back writhed, and he finally recognized his own body’s signals to flee at the same time as he heard the faintest sounds coming from…

H’Dlava looked at the door at the far end of the room. The one that had always been there. The one that no one could—or would—ever pass.

And then he heard the pounding of frantic footsteps, and as the mayor and several others poured into his medical chamber, the door that had never moved—

Opened.

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It always starts like this, the dream.

There’s fire somewhere, an odor of smoke, except it’s sweating, shitting, and vomiting all at once, combined with that acrid waft of bad rain. The most recent quake has opened up something nasty underground, something from… Before.

They tell ‘em and tell ‘em, Mama—your real mama—says behind the ancient, closed door of your memory, and still, some fuckwit has to toss a match down there! The fuckwit in question’s name turned out to be Bouillon. Teddy Bouillon’s belligerent curiosity killed his mom, dad, little sister, and a dozen other people, the school makes a point of telling you and every other kid who shows up that day despite the stench.

A grove burned, too. Just a small one—but they don’t talk about the ruined grove at school. They are given curricula, the teachers are, and that’s what they teach, full stop. The groves and their keepers are saved for what your mother calls the “laundry news.” Sometimes she means the gossip the beaters share over the washtubs; other times, you’re pretty sure she means the whispers that a different sort of linen workers share—the kind you were born knowing better than to go spreading around at school.

You could go to sleep breathing the freshest air on the planet, but when you dream about when it happened, all you can smell is that fucking stench. Doesn’t matter how old you get, it’ll linger in your nostrils and make your eyes sting for days when you wake up from this dream.

What comes later is why that was the day you ran.

(why can’t you think of what comes later, why did you run)

You saw them for the first time. Odd little things. They were scuttling towards the burned grove. Why were they going to the grove, instead of the Pit?

Parrots or no parrots, you’ve always liked the golden mother trees they cultivate and worship, so you follow, walking nowhere-somewhere, the way only a kid who loves playing slow tag can. You’ve got one of your mother’s shopping burlaps strung over one shoulder like you’ve got an errand, but that could be anything from buying bread to picking apples to delivering a dozen bars of Mama’s famous sweetsoap all around town—and should anyone stop you to check, you’ve still got three of them left, for the purposes of slicking your way out of sticky situations.

They’ve started calling it the Pit now, that hole in the middle of what had become the new bad side of town literally overnight. That’s where those things are headed. You don’t want to follow them, because if you follow them you’ll—

(find out)

—well, honestly, you’ll wake up in a pretty damn good place without having to relive all of the bad bits again; but right now, the not-yet-memory of the worst of the bad bits hangs in your dreaming mind, just like the putrid smell of the Pit will clog your nostrils with the not-yet-forgotten awfulness of the dream.

You follow, because you have no choice, because it’s that dream.

(never the same dream, always the same ending)

It’s especially foul this time around.

You’ve always hated creepy crawlies. Roaches, spiders, those giant wingless wasps that can fill a cow’s udder with their maggots, no sign till you’re made to milk them. This, though—these bug-things are like an invasion, but no one else has noticed them but you.

It’s not supposed to be like this. You learned about them in school last week. The teacher said they were coming to take care of the Pit.

But now, in the way of dreams, you see the faces of people you once knew, whose names were as familiar as your own (even though you won’t remember them in the morning). May Freeman smiles at you as she calmly walks past something that looks like a flat, greasy cobblestone but scuttles away on no legs that you can see. It makes a scraping, scratching rattle as it moves, reminding you of the jar of baby teeth Mama kept in the cupboard next to the dry beans, clattering and dancing any time the ground shook.

The wandering greasy stone meets another. Thin proboscises emerge, a whippy little pair on both ends of each stone. They seem to consult each other for a moment, then one stone thing’s little tendrils meet the other’s.

You can’t see what happens, but there’s a quiet click, and the greasy stones have hooked together in such a way that makes you feel queasily prurient.

It goes like that. Familiar faces with familiar names, neither of which you’ll retain when you wake. The fetid cobblestone bugs click together again and again into a longer and longer chain, until there’s something like an alien centipede clattering along. They’re the source of the stench that haunts your waking life like an oil seep on the back of your tongue. Clickety-clack, the bugs’ gravel-chewing sounds say, follow the leader.

(don’t turn around)

Down and down and down, where the old fires still burn, the old wars still murder us.

(don’t look behind you)

Clickety-clack. Like someone jiggling a door.

(DON’T LOOK)

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You jolt awake.

You don't smell it.

You moisten your lips. Swallow. Still no smell. No taste from the stench so thick you could stand a spoon upright in it. It’s the one thing you never forget, even when you want to.

(even when you wish you could remember)

The kriuulu had found you gawking at the dead grove—at the creature-chains encircling it, draped over and through the ashen branches like grim tinsel as they consumed the ruined glory. You can’t remember what made you run. Maybe you saw something else that you’ve simply forgotten, along with damn near everything else, something the parrots hadn’t wanted you to see.

An image flashes in your mind, a trunk and limbs denuded of bark, showing the warped wood mummification of its previous mobile form. That was it, wasn’t it? That was when you fled. Not a Cathedral Day ceremony, not seeing that horror.

(too many horrors, too many times)

Or was it the other way around? Had you seen what Cathedral Day really was—with the other, the kriuulu-tree-corpse, being the nightmare you keep having?

That doesn’t feel right, either.

So you sit up. Swing your legs over the side of the bed. You ache. When the hell did you get old? How did that creep up so fast? One minute, you’re a young man with a young man’s dreams; the next minute, you’re an old man, and all you have in the morning is fear.

A sudden noise above you, and you look up.

The ceiling is crawling with flat, greasy bugs, each chained to others, body to body and mind to mind.

Ah, there it was. That smell.

(you know the smell, the smell knows you)

You spit on the floor. Masons, he called them. Of course. But what was there for atterlim to eat here? Toxic waste? It’s rare, but it still bubbles up occasionally, But that would have killed the village before it could even begin. You spit again, but the foulness doesn’t go away.

(wake up wake up wake up)

“Will you shut that shit down? I’m awake, already.”

Your involuntary flinch doesn’t help the blooming headache when the dissonant chorus begins all at once, all gravel and scratch, trying to speak—but there aren’t enough atterlo in the chain to do anything more than stinking, chaotic babbling.

“Shut up! Are you trying to wake up the whole damn town?”

The ‘lim chain falls silent just long enough for you to stand up—then the auditory torment starts up again, twice as loud!

“Augh!”

A hand grabs you by the shoulder, spinning you away into darkness.

(time to forget, to close the door)

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Rene sat up with a shout.

He was in his own hammock in his own room, inside the shell of the pallicorn who’d been his constant friend, companion, and home for decades.

“Mama?” He reached out to touch the solidity of her inner shell. Soft lights moved under his hand like an aurora, and her gentle susurrus reassured him that all was well.

Now why did he suddenly think about atterlim?

Masons. Of course. Damn that nephew of his. He needed to have a conversation with Julius about having friends in low places.

That was when he heard Julius calling for him from below, his frantic yells telling Rene that something had gone very wrong.

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Zoe woke with a headache, smelling the antiseptic odor of a medclinic, and opened her eyes in a panic. She wanted to puke up the egg-flesh she was sure they’d stuffed down her throat while she slept. Matteo would have loved to see that...

Matty’s dead, she thought, and opened her eyes.

The ceiling was made of smooth black stone, reflecting the glow bulbs scattered about. She sat up, seeing a floor just as bare and stark. One wall was cluttered by tables bearing glassware of all shapes, little blue chemical flames dancing below some of them, the strangely volatile candles keeping medicines brewing. Another set of tables bore cutlery of all shapes and sizes, the sight of which always made Zoe shudder. Nearby was a basin that she knew from experience h’Dlava kept filled with clean water.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

On the floor not far from her was a heap of blankets. Tavirr lay nestled in them on his side, his wings loosely folded behind himself. She wondered if he had somehow shifted in his sleep, why there seemed to be almost half his nest of blankets left unoccupied. It looks warm, she thought. He looks warm. She made herself look away.

Finally, she looked at the small group of people around her, only two of whom she recognized. One was a huge man with dark skin and no hair, flanked by a slightly younger-looking version of himself; the other, smiling gently, was the only burchar she’d ever met.

She did not look at the last... person, the one her stomach kept trying to insist must have made her eat egg-flesh.

“Hey there,” Rene said.

“Is Tavirr—”

“He woke up yesterday,” Rene said. “He’s refused to leave the room, but Dlava says he still needs monitoring anyway. You, uh, gave us all one hell of a scare.” He nodded at his younger companion. “That’s my nephew, Julius Mayor.”

Zoe swallowed hard. Why was the mayor here? “What happened?”

“That,” said the mayor, “is what we were hoping you’d tell us.”

“What do you remember?” h’Dlava asked.

Taking a moment to think, Zoe tried to put her memories together, but nothing quite fit. “I know I was exploring,” she said. “It was a cave just off Dlava’s... well, this room, I guess. I got Tavirr to come see what I’d found... and... I don’t...” She trailed off.

“We found you,” said h’Dlava, “in a cavern not far away, yes. You should not have even been able to enter those corridors, let alone find it. One of our scouts alerted us of your location.”

“But what happened?” she asked again. “Why are we back in the... in your space?” She avoided the gaze of the other person with difficulty, even though it had not spoken, had not moved even a feather. “And... scouts?”

Rene huffed at that. “Scouts. Spies. ‘Masons,’ Julius calls ‘em.” He stared at his nephew, who shook his head.

“All that and more, Uncle. First, Zoe, let me introduce you to Fthelis. He’s a suulon from a grove not far from here. Not—not one of those kriuulu, the ones who keep us, well, you know. Fthelis is a friend. He’s brought some news.”

Zoe finally looked—stared—at the kriuulu. She’d never seen any that weren’t vo’ai.

Fthelis was taller than any vo’ai she’d ever seen, and his plumage was an iridescent greenish brown, except for the dull red at the tips of his crest feathers. Like vo’ai—like most nonhumans—Fthelis went unclothed, though he did wear a leather belt all strung with pouches. On one hip hung a long knife; a strap across his chest and shoulder secured a rifle over his back.

She swallowed and looked away.

“Peace, sister,” the thing said. “I am no friend of the vo’ai. My people hold no mandate over yours.”

“Really?” she snarled. “Because I woke up with an awfully familiar taste in my mouth. Tell me again how nice you are! How many humans have been sacrif—oh, excuse me, Chosen for your Cathedral?”

“Zoe,” said h’Dlava, “I gave you a tincture made of certain herbs, including powdered egg-flesh. It is not psychoactive. And you are rather less… altered… than I daresay your last taste of egg-flesh would have left you.”

“As I said,” Fthelis murmured, “we hold no mandate. And there exist no suulon Cathedrals.”

Zoe glared at him. “I don’t believe you,” she said, throwing off the blanket and getting up. She backed away, her hands balled into aching fists and nails digging into her palms, until she felt blankets under her feet. “You’re a fucking kriuulu, that means you murder people and feed them to your fucking trees! What a nice friend you must be!” Her voice rose to a bellow, and Zoe heard the gratifying sound of a lysk waking with a snarl.

She felt his warmth as he rose behind her, heard the snap of his wings flaring out. “Get out!” he roared. “All of you!”

Only then did Zoe see what crawled out from under the many tables, long chains of the same horrible things that had attacked them in the cavern, where something terrible—It was a war, she realized. That's what was down there, a war, preserved in stone and crawling with these!

But the bug-chains seemed to drain under and around a stone door that Zoe saw had been placed to cover that hallway—the one leading to that cavern.

“Dlava,” she called, “Rene! Wait!”

They did.

The burchar suddenly seemed to fill the room, his presence overshadowing the doors, the other beds, the tables and buckets and bottles and glow bulbs. “Why,” he asked, “did the atterlim alert us to your invasion of their homespace?”

Tavirr inhaled sharply at atterlim but said nothing.

“Homespace?” Zoe said, her stomach sinking.

“How do they even have a homespace here, though?” Rene said. “They live in poisoned ground!”

“Winds,” Tavirr cursed. “Of course. Khiai.”

H’Dlava bowed his great head in somber agreement. “Atterlim homespaces are meant to be inviolable. For their sake, and for ours. Why—how under every sun did you find your way in?”

“The…” Zoe knew there hadn’t been a door. “The door was open.”

The door must have been open, she thought. But she knew there hadn’t been any door.

—door—

It was a whisper, a tickle in the back of her mind, the sharp tingle of ozone accompanying it.

“No. The door,” she said more forcefully, “wasn’t even there. This is the first time I’ve ever even seen a door there.”

H’Dlava reared back as if struck. “That can’t—there has always been a door here, right here, the villagers say it was here when they found this place, the underground rooms, almost everything was already here... Rene! It was always here!”

“It was always here,” he agreed. Then he shot Zoe a rueful look. “Which might be, in retrospect, the actual weirdest thing I ever saw. I helped dig out the first cavern, this cavern, and fuck me if I don’t know how I could have forgotten the damn thing’s existence.”

H’Dlava looked at him. “I didn’t realize you were that old.”

“What can I say, I look young for my age. But seriously, you two didn’t see a door?”

“No door,” Tavirr stated. “But. Now that I think on it, I cannot remember there not being a door, either. This door?” Tavirr’s talons slipped from Zoe’s shoulders as he strode past h’Dlava to stare at the thing in question. “It looks more and more familiar the more I look at it. I can say I believe the door has been here the whole time, but—I can also say that Zoe and I, we went through no door.”

The burchar’s haunches sagged, and he lowered himself to the floor as if drained or wounded. “You don’t know what this means, do you? Any of you. Places… changing.”

Zoe looked at Rene, but he just looked disturbed by h’Dlava’s shock.

The burchar rubbed his face, scratched the base of one of his horns. “Ahhh, I need to send a message home. But...” Standing up and moving closer, h’Dlava laid a hand on Tavirr’s shoulder. “I wish that you had not seen what I know lies beneath us. This world of ours—ghosts walk its many layers, its underworlds and hells. I wish no enmity between us, brother.”

“The Pact of Adba holds my heart, brother. I raise no arms against you.”

H’Dlava smiled. “Ah! Who is your h’adba?”

“H’Jasse Tav’h, of h’Gauril. She’s a scholar and scribe, very tall. She has much in common with Zoe.”

“Being very tall?” h’Dlava asked, winking down at Zoe, who shook her head and groaned.

“I for one am sick of being back in here,” she complained. “Rene? Give me a few more days to finish h’Dlava’s book, and then I’d love to get back aboard Mama!”

“Of course, the pallicorn!” h’Dlava all but shouted. “Rene, is the Library at h’Gauril one of your stops?”

“Yes, but—”

“Oh,” the burchar said, eyes twinkling. “Have you ever seen the Feast of Adba?”

“No, but—”

H’Dlava grinned. “It is not to be missed. It’s a proper Feast this year, with wing dancers coming in from all over h’Gebrim. May I ask if there is room for a young burchar like myself?”

“The final say is Mama’s. But I only have one requirement, since you’re asking nicely.”

“Name it!”

“Tell me, have you heard about the bet my nephew’s got going?”

“Oh. Er, yes?”

Rene gave him a wicked grin. “Want to place a bet of our own?”

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“Bet?” Julius asked, confusion written all over his face.

“Nine people, Julius. Nine. That’s how many have asked me for, how should I put this, inside information on h’Dlava and me...”

“I have no idea—”

“Spill. It.”

“Ohhh, that bet.”

“That bet.”

A dimple appeared on one cheek, and Julius started laughing. “You should see your face, Uncle.”

Rene sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. He walked out of the room.

“Uncle? Uncle Rene?” When he didn’t answer, Julius added, “Please tell me you’re not angry with me.” Then he went after his uncle, sick with the idea that he’d managed to mess up his relationship with the man who’d gotten him and his daughter to safety.

He rounded the corner and found Rene, choking back laughter. He turned to find h’Dlava occupying the space behind him, unnervingly silent for someone so large. Oddly, he had a bottle of brandy in one hand.

Without a word, the burchar walked past him, handing the brandy to Rene. “Your winnings, my friend.”

Rene grinned at Julius. “I’m taking your town doctor for a while, sorry.”

“Why?”

“Honestly, I have no idea. What’s this ‘Feast of Adba’ he asked me about?”

As Rene walked away, Julius smiled. He just knew Sasha was going to squeal over this one.

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It was late, but Zoe was still working. She shook the glow bulb again to brighten it, and kept writing.

As late as it was, Zoe couldn’t let herself sleep yet. She’d been working on transcribing a translation of a burchar text on practical human medicine and medical knowledge for h’Dlava practically since she’d met him, and she was finally almost done. She’d put most of the work in while waiting for Tavirr’s wing to heal, starting with the glossary to help herself knock out a few cobwebs; now, with the last chapter finally done, all she needed to finish was the index.

‘All,’ sure, Zoe thought ruefully. Any book that had an index, she knew, would be a hell of shuffling pages back and forth to make sure her translation of each index entry was correct.

Zoe rubbed her neck and frowned at the familiar-unfamiliar Common word. Hidden, she thought. That diacritic mark means it ought to translate over as a... proper noun? But—oh, wait. There was a note from h’Dlava clipped behind her earlier note to him…

A rustling at her feet—a scrabble-scratch along the wall under her borrowed writing desk—a faint smell of something acrid—

She hurled herself away from the desk, her chair toppling, as one of those horrible bug things from that awful chamber—atterlim, that’s what Rene called them—flowed out from a nearly invisible crack in the wall under the desk. It—they?—had something gripped in the jaws of their front segment. As if sensing her disgust and fear, the segment detached itself.

It looked like a small, flat rock. She could see the tips of four sharp little feet poking out from under its body. It scuttled towards her, halted, and dropped something that looked like a small black leaf. After a long moment, it scuttled back towards the rest of its... body?

It didn’t take its former place as the “head,” though. Instead, the rest of the atterlim split somewhere in the middle of their chain of segments. The singlet nudged its way into its new place and, with a tiny quiver of what Zoe could swear looked like happiness, the whole of the atterlim body pulled their way back into the wall.

Another series of scratching sounds, and the crack filled itself in, the faint odor subsuming again into the neutral smell of clean rock.

Zoe waited to see if more would come out from somewhere else, some other crack in some other wall—or the ceiling, the little hairs on the back of her shuddering neck whispered. She grabbed the glow bulb on her desk, almost dropping it, but nothing else came out of any other part of her room.

Carefully, she extended a foot to drag the leaf closer to herself. It scraped against the floor, leaving a scratch, and when she picked it up, she realized it wasn’t a leaf.

She couldn’t remember the word Tavirr had used, but she knew stone leaves didn’t grow on trees. Turning it over, she saw that there was an odd symbol etched on the other side.

Why did the atterlim bring her this... whatever it was? She wondered if it was part of the supposed “news” the mayor’s parrot friend had brought.

Still shivering, Zoe tucked the little stone leaf in her pocket. Then she went to the room beside hers, where Tavirr had settled in once his wing had let him.

The glow bulb bobbed in the dark hall, but another glow met hers when she knocked on Tavirr’s door.

“Sorry, I…” she trailed off, remembering the way she’d seen him curled on his side a few days earlier. How it had seemed there could have been enough room for her, as well.

“I cannot sleep either,” Tavirrr said.

“Do you mind if I…”

He opened the door all the way and let her in.