The Suburb Beyond the Stars (15 page)

S
he saw yellow harvested by workers wearing black sacks, men with rings around their eyes and pointed ears. They watched her so she would not move. She sat in the field of yellow, painted thick as oil pastels, color so rich it crumbled. She waited for them to finish. Purple clouds passed over.

Prudence knew that it wasn’t right. It wasn’t real.

Everything was darker. She did not like it. She was used to the colors now. Her eyes could not focus. The field was gone. She recalled that it was a dream.

“Prudence! Please! Prudence!”

That was almost certainly her name.

And then she saw feeble light. A lantern or two. Stripes of black.

A stocky boy she knew, standing over her, struggling.

She wondered whether she was supposed to do something now.

Brian saw Prudence blink. Though her face was overshadowed and hidden partially by her own tangled hair, he saw a look of dawning recognition. He called her name.

“She’s waking up,” Brian announced to his tormentor. “We’re not as easy to confuse as you thought.”

“All you’re arguing,” said Milton Deatley, “is that it’s not worth keeping you alive.”

He threw the boy down next to the young woman, who coughed and rubbed at her eyes. Brian hit his head badly — saw stars. When he looked up, he could tell the side of his head was bruised and bleeding.

Milton Deatley stood with his back against a pillar. He said, “I’m sorry you’re uninterested in becoming a part of the neighborhood. You’d be a particularly fertile resource.” He smiled and moved to the cell door. “I’m closing you in now. No one will come back for you. In a few days, you’ll be desperate for food and water. Eventually, you’ll die of starvation. In a week, the streets in the suburb up above you will be filled with Thusser, newly delivered into this world, strolling about, looking at their fine homes. There is an old Thusser proverb appropriate to this circumstance. It is, unfortunately, too complicated, too nuanced, for you to understand.”

And with that, Milton Deatley swung the prison door shut.

The door clanged on Brian’s hand. He had made a kind of shambling leap and blocked the bars.

“Give up,” said Milton Deatley. “You’re not equal to this task.”

Kneeling there, with his head throbbing and his hand crunched by a slamming iron grate, Brian did not feel equal to anything. He could hear Kalgrash’s yelps as the Winnower snatched at the damaged troll. He looked up at Deatley’s raw, mealy face and did not have anything to say.

But a voice, low, gravelly, came from behind him. “No,” said the voice, a tortured little scratch of a thing. “No, we’re not equal to this. But the Norumbegans are, and I’m putting in a collect call to them right now.”

Deatley and Brian looked to the wall, where Prudence was blinking slowly. She held her forehead and muttered.

Deatley scowled, threw the door open, and walked back in. “On what channel?” he demanded. “I’m flooding the channels. Which one? You’ll never get through.”

Prudence continued to whisper and to tarantula her hand around her head, pressing secret nodes.

“Stop! Stop it!” cried Deatley.

He took a run at her and began to kick her ribs.

At this, Brian, ferocious, heaved himself up and grabbed Deatley. He tangled his arms through the dead man’s. The corpse tried to lift him but stumbled. Prudence was still muttering her incantation. Deatley tried to brush Brian off.

And suddenly, Deatley exclaimed, “You’re not! You’re not calling them! It’s a bluff! You don’t even know how to call them!”

Prudence smirked. That was a mistake. Deatley growled in irritation and raised his hand to release a burst of magical energy and destroy her utterly.

Brian yanked on the developer. The developer’s hand was engulfed in fire, ready to fling.

Prudence saw what was coming and screamed.

Just outside the cell, Kalgrash was pursued by tendrils. He swiped at them with his ax. He caught a few hard enough to sever them. Most just swayed sideways with his blow.

He could hear Deatley yelling some kind of nonsense, but he couldn’t tell what was going on in that corner of the room. He whacked the air with his ax. Nothing seemed to keep the crawling tendrils away.

He ran through a few archways. Gelt was easily able to keep up, shuffling on his dry husks of feet. Gelt grabbed at the troll and seized him.

Kalgrash gasped, wrapped in serpentine coils. He couldn’t move. Gelt began to squeeze.

Abruptly, Deatley called, “Gelt! Get rid of this kid! Hold him off for just a second!”

Gelt turned, disengaged several coils from the troll, and shot his tendrils through the bars of the cell. He sought out Brian where he and Deatley fought. Kalgrash helplessly watched the silver cords seek his friend.

Brian felt them brush against him as Gelt felt for who was who. The boy trembled, fighting to keep Deatley from flinging fire at Prudence.

Deatley said three words. Now his whole body glowed. It pulsed with power. He was getting ready to blast them all.

The tendrils poked Brian’s face, searched his hair.

Kalgrash ripped his ax backward. It couldn’t quite cut the fibers, but it could yank.

Gelt, wrenched, flew toward Kalgrash.

Gelt’s jerked tendrils clamped on to Deatley and the pillar, grabbing for an anchor. He couldn’t see who he’d trapped.

The troll pulled harder on Gelt, facing away from the battle, like he was dragging a freight train up a hill.

Gelt, helpless, strangled the body of Milton Deatley.

His razor-sharp wires cut the corpse.

Milton Deatley’s remains screamed.

Brian pulled away, saw the flickering body rent by metal threads. The blaze of magical energy Deatley had summoned still roamed the man, seething, boiling in the flesh — which bubbled, welts of light popping in the cheeks, the hands, the neck.

Then the Thusser who’d been driving the body abandoned it. Particles spilled around the silver cords — granules of ash and flesh.

The troll yanked again on the Winnower, screaming with the effort.

Blue light now glared through Deatley’s sliced limbs, and the eyes, now doubly dead, rolled back. The cords cut deeper, searing with magical discharge. The Winnower mewled, trying to withdraw from the tangle of corpse, clothes, and enchantment. His tentacles stung. He twitched, cutting the dead man deeper —

With a burst, Milton Deatley’s body collapsed, released — now sifting like sand — now snapping with
energy — now blown across the room — and with a thunderous clap, the man was gone.

Nothing was left of the interdimensional real estate developer but sliced slacks, a jacket, a burned shirt, and year-old dust.

Gelt whined with rage.

Brian, breathing heavily, lacerated by the tentacles that had seized on to him, took stock. He saw his friend the troll being crushed by Gelt. And he saw that Gelt still had the blunderbuss wrapped in a silver wire.

Brian scampered through the door. He flanked Gelt, who was concentrating on Kalgrash. Moving quickly, Brian grabbed the gun. Gelt’s silver arm tugged back, but could not change the weapon’s direction.

Brian aimed it and spoke the Cantrip of Activation.

There was a blue blast.

The monster, struck, screamed, his silver cords sticking out straight and radiant like a dandelion’s needly corona. Brian collected his wits, thought, screamed a word, and fired again.

Gelt the Winnower blew apart. His body collapsed.

His tendrils settled softly to earth like severed webs.

The room, finally, was quiet.

Brian and Kalgrash stared at each other. Both of them were badly damaged. Brian was cut. Kalgrash was slashed. Prudence was wobbling to her feet. Gregory and Snig still lay prone, insensate.

But the fight was over. The Thusser’s most powerful servant on Earth was gone.

I
n a vaulted cavern beneath a spired palace beneath a towering mountain, a stout boy in glasses leaned over his best friend in the world and slapped him.

Gregory didn’t respond. His mouth sagged open slackly. He was breathing, but there was no sign he might wake.

“What do we do?” Brian demanded.

Prudence knelt by his side. “I don’t know.”

“How’s Sniggleping?”

Prudence made a clicking sound with her tongue. “He’s a Norumbegan. He’ll get over it.” She put her hand on Gregory’s cheek. “I’m worried Gregory won’t. He might be too far in.”

Brian, terrified, shook his friend’s shoulders. “Gregory!” he yelled. “GREGORY!”

“It’s his own fault,” said Kalgrash, sitting with his armored knees bunched up by his breastplate. “He wanted to show off his leadership skills. He headed out of the house to save someone who didn’t need saving. Sad, sad, sad.”

Brian frowned. “He was just trying to help.”

“He was not trying to help,” said Kalgrash, picking at the torn metal of his upper arm. “He’s jealous of you. Hey, do you think fiddling with my clockwork will make this wound feel better or worse?”

“Worse,” barked Prudence. “Stop it.” To Brian, she said, “Slap him again.”

“I’ll slap him,” said Kalgrash.

Brian said, “Kalgrash, don’t be so — don’t be so mean about him.”

“Gimme an egg and I’ll give you an omelet. I say turnabout is fair play.” Kalgrash folded his arms. “He always wants to be the center of attention. I never liked him. Right from the first time I tried to kill him.”

“It was me you swung the ax at.”

“Just a little homicide between friends.”

Brian was in no mood to smile. Gregory looked pale, maybe even a little blue.

“He’s fading,” said Prudence. “Gregory!” She leaned into his face. “Gregory, it’s your cousin Prudence. We’re safe here. There are no Thusser. They’re gone. Remember, you’re from Brookline, Massachusetts. Your best friend is Brian Thatz.” She stroked her cousin’s cheek, ran her hand up to his hair, and yanked.

He didn’t move.

“You try,” said Prudence to Brian.

He said to Gregory, “This is … this is your best friend. Brian. We’re … we’ve been friends since we were eight. We …” His voice caught. He discovered he was almost crying. He looked down at Gregory’s pallid,
impassive face, nearly the face of a corpse. “We met playing tetherball. You told me to stand near the pole. Then you hit the ball. It took you twenty minutes to untangle me.” He said, “Stop thinking about the Thusser. They’re not here. Forget about them. They’re brainwashing you.”

The body was slack. Kalgrash now came forward, concerned, too, and knelt with the others. Brian was glad to see it. Gregory’s head lolled.

And suddenly, with the shift of the head, the insensate body began choking.

“Get him up!” Prudence shrieked. “So the spit goes down…. Turn his head!”

In his coma, Gregory drowned on his own saliva.

He saw that he was clustered about with Thusser. They were everywhere, and had been always. In the streets of cities, on the sidewalks, up staircases three by three. So many of them that he was clamped between their wide shoulders, their dark coats. He couldn’t budge. They crushed him. He heard commotion, clamorous as a celebration of the Horde and its power.

Someone was talking about spit.

Saliva dripped down Gregory’s chin. His eyes stared wide. Involuntarily, his neck bunched and flexed as he
choked. “Now lean him forward!” Prudence said. “Drain his mouth!”

He knew the voices, but did not know whose they were. He could not recall who he was. He felt his breath go out of him.

“Gregory!” Brian said. He was slapping his friend in the face again. The body was still — no longer choking, but breathing in gasps. “Gregory! It’s Brian. You’ve got to get the Thusser out of your head. Don’t think about them!” And suddenly, he remembered Gregory talking about the Cantrip of Activation — saying that if you said not to think about school, the first thing he’d think of was school — and Brian realized he should stop talking about the Thusser entirely. So he began stammering things he knew about his friend: “You … you always play jokes on people. You know, with your phone, or stuff taped under someone’s seat, or chemicals. People say you’re always laughing at something. That’s what they say about you. You must … must be able to remember.

“You live in a brick house. We used to build stuff in the basement. Robots that didn’t work. We wanted to be inventors. You came with my family to Maine. We went fishing. You told me about having a crush on Angelique Maddis. You were …”

And Gregory’s breathing began to quicken, as if he were undertaking some great struggle.

They shook him. They talked to him. They reminded him of excursions to museums, things he’d flung at the television, the pants he wore when he wanted to impress people — “Thanksgiving dinner,” said Prudence. “There were only humans there. Only humans. From Connecticut. Remember, Gregory. Our cousin Austin. Our cousin Paul. Actually, he’s a pain. Don’t remember him. You won’t come back.”

He started to fade (picturing Thusser carving the turkey, showing their teeth, stripping skin off the bird with their knives).

And then Brian pleaded, “Gregory, come back. We need you.” His voice thick, he insisted, “I need you, so that we can fight this thing. There are so few of us. Don’t leave me here alone. Don’t leave me here. I need you to come back.”

And at that, Gregory groaned. He struggled with nothing. Kalgrash swiftly moved to make sure the boy’s head didn’t bruise against the wall. Gregory’s legs kicked. He started coughing again.

Brian said, “Please.”

And Gregory’s eyes focused.

He lifted his head. He looked around.

He was awake.

“Where are they?” he asked.

And Kalgrash said, grimly, “They’ll be here soon enough.”

T
here was a little party in the vault beneath the Palace of Norumbega. There were no hors d’oeuvres, no drinks (except tap water in a Nalgene bottle), no music, no dancing. But that didn’t matter. There was more joy in this party than if they’d all been dining at the Ritz. Because, for the moment, they were safe and they were together.

It didn’t take much to wake Wee Sniggleping. Prudence just put his head on her knees and said, in a voice cutesy and high, “Oh, isn’t he darling! The precious little elfling. Oh, Snig, we’ll wake you up like we revived Tinker Bell. Clap, dear children! Clap if you believe in Snig and Tink! Oh, clap, do, little ones, do! Clap for Uncle Snig!” and so on until the old man growled, “Awright, awright, you got me,” and opened his surly eyes, pawing at the air in desperation to smother everything adorable. “Terrible to wake from a dream of the Thusser just to discover you’re surrounded by mankind.” He hawked a loogie on the prison floor. “At least the Thusser have dignity.”

Gregory, Brian, and Kalgrash told the story of what had happened to them. Prudence gave them big hugs and thanked them for coming to save her.

“You’re surprised, aren’t you?” said Gregory. “You didn’t think we’d make it.”

“Oh, I’m surprised, all right,” said Prudence.

“See, we’re better at this than you thought.”

“Yeah, you’re amazing,” Prudence agreed. “Any time I need someone to sit motionless next to me in a cell for twelve hours, I’ll give you a call.”

“Hey!” Gregory protested. “That’s not fair! I helped Brian with —”

Prudence agreed, “No, you were wonderful. You stare great.”

“Where’s the thanks?”

“For what? People do more heavy lifting at a teddy bears’ picnic.”

“Brian,” Gregory pleaded, “stand up for me here.”

Brian said, “We did it together.”

“Isn’t he sweet?” Prudence said, ruffling Brian’s hair. “Always trying to smooth everything over.”

“Would you stop ruffling his hair? What about mine? My hair is totally unruffled!”

Prudence looked at Gregory and coughed. “I’m not sticking my hand in there. Too much product. Your bangs would crackle.”

Kalgrash asked, “Does anyone here know how to repair troll arms? I mean, I don’t want to interrupt the discussion of gel or anything, but I’m bleeding fake blood all over the real floor.”

Sniggleping looked at the gash. “I can’t repair it,” he said. “I’d need a full workshop for that. But I can at least stop the damage from spreading, and — more important — I can turn off the sensation of pain. Nothing easier.” He reached into his vest and pulled out a set of little mechanic’s tools in felt pockets.

He sat Kalgrash down and got to work.

While Sniggleping labored over the troll’s arm, Prudence said, “The Thusser are probably already preparing their next onslaught. We’ve got to get moving.”

“They’re completely breaking the Rules,” Brian said. “In a few days, they’ll start to settle here. We’ve got to warn the Norumbegans. Like you were pretending to do, Prudence. Honestly, isn’t there some kind of a … a hotline?”

Prudence shrugged. “I have no idea. I really was bluffing. Snig?”

“Certainly, there was a hotline,” said Sniggleping, squinting at a wire he held in his tweezers. “It was in my workshop. But everything there was seized and destroyed. Those are the kind of conditions under which I’m expected to work. So the hotline is gone. Who knows where it’s stashed. The only thing left in the area is a sensor. It will send a warning about the arrival of the Thusser, when they come.”

“But by then,” Brian protested, “it will be too late!”

“Yes. A shame, really,” said Sniggleping. “I liked your world. There were several good bits. I particularly liked mist in valleys. Cheese, well aged. Classic-car rallies.”

Brian insisted, “We’ve got to convince the Norumbegan Emperor to come enforce the Rules. This place isn’t the Thussers’. The mountain is the Norumbegans’. The planet is ours.”

Gregory said, “So, yeah, if the big hotline is gone, how are we going to warn the Emperor?”

“The Emperor and all his court are in another world,” Sniggleping said. “You’d have to travel there. They all emigrated there when the treaty was struck with the Thusser. If you could find the Emperor’s court …”

Brian was staring, haunted, into the darkness. He had thought of something. “We can do that,” he said. “We can go to their new world.”

Gregory asked, “How?”

“Because we found the gate, remember?” Brian said. “It was in the crypt of the cathedral. We couldn’t go through at the time….”

“But you could now!” Prudence exclaimed. “I could send you through safely, I bet! Snig? Could we do that?”

Sniggleping nodded and shrugged one shoulder.

“Whoa, wait. Where are we going?” Gregory asked. “We have school on Monday.”

“It’s probably Monday already,” Prudence said. “Or last Monday. Or a month from Monday.”

Brian said, “This is more important. If we don’t warn the Norumbegans and get them to stop the Thusser, the settlement will start to spread. In a few years, no one will even remember what the world was like without the Thusser.”

“What do you mean, without them?” Gregory said. “They’re all over the place at my house.”

Prudence laughed.

Then stopped.

She realized he was serious.

“Come on, they’re already in
all
our houses,” Gregory said. “You know. Who do you think the guys with the dark rings around their eyes and the pointy ears are? In the mini-mart, Brian, you know. They stand by the Little Debbie products. Two of them. Or at the fire station. They’re always standing on either side of the garage doors. You know what I’m talking about. Don’t look at me like that! They walk down Beacon Street in a formation all the time.”

“No,” said Brian, softly. “No, Gregory, they don’t. Not yet.”

“Unless,” Prudence said, “he’s seeing something that’s happened since you came here. If time is different.”

Brian realized she could be right. “They can’t be,” he said. “They …” He didn’t finish the thought.

“We’ve got to go,” said Kalgrash. “Quickly. Where’s this portal?”

“In the crypt of St. Diancecht’s Cathedral,” Brian answered quietly.

And so they walked up through the castle and to the cathedral. This time, there were no monstrous humanoids to menace them. The kitchens were silent. The feasting hall was empty, except for the pageantry of the hunt upon the wall. If there were any more kreslings, they had evidently abandoned the courtyard and the battlements.
Brian crossed the drawbridge with his blunderbuss at the ready, and no one threatened them.

In the crypt of the cathedral they passed down the line of Emperors, from the first kings who arrived from a realm across the sea in a flying coracle to those who’d built the towers and deeps of the subterranean kingdom to the final, dissipated monarchs, who had collected wines and played tennis while the Thusser had gained in power. Each Emperor lay upon his bier, carved in stone, until the last. That final one sat up upon his sarcophagus, his gown falling off his shoulder, staring into the darkness as if awakened from a nightmare. Or into one.

The last Emperor gazed through an arch, over which was carved in crude letters the English words
Stay Out.

“Last time,” said Brian, “monsters attacked us when we tried to go through there.”

Sniggleping nodded sourly. “Guardians of the Gate. You and Jack Stimple destroyed them. There was a fire.”

The five of them walked through the arch. There was an awful stench of decay in the room. Moldering, brittle black rags covered the floor — the remains of creatures that once protected the gate through which the Norumbegans had fled, centuries before.

The gate itself was a panel of darkness. The eye could not determine whether it was flat or an absence. It was simply black.

“I’ll stabilize the gate for you,” said Prudence.

Brian asked, “You can’t come through with us?”

“No,” said Prudence. “You need us here to hold the gate open.” She smiled. “Hurry back,” she said. “I’m really
hungry. I could really do with a vegetable curry right about now.”

“What use is sorcery,” said Gregory, “if you can’t magic up a vegetable curry?”

Prudence walked to the wall of darkness. “Snig?” she said. “I don’t know exactly how to work the portal. The only ones I’ve used were local. I’ve never seen one this complicated before.” There were little symbols and cranks around the gate. Sniggleping walked forward and explained the workings of the thing to Prudence. Together, they reached up to each rune, each crank, and they twisted the levers and touched the runes and adjusted dials. Sniggleping whispered words to himself.

The quality of absolute darkness subtly changed.

Sniggleping nodded.

“Ready?” said Prudence.

“It is. But I don’t know if they are,” said Sniggleping, gesturing at the boys. He stepped back. “The gate is open and should lead directly to the Norumbegans’ new world.”

“All right,” said Prudence to the boys and their troll. “We’ll guard the pass. You go through. Find the Emperor and warn him that it’s now or never. The Norumbegans have to come back now.”

Brian, Gregory, and Kalgrash hesitated. They stood before the curious darkness.

“Trying to go through that gate …” Kalgrash said. “It’s kind of like making up your mind to swim in the river in the midwinter. You know, I never can decide whether to wade in or cannonball.”

Gregory said, “I usually go in backward. I don’t know why that helps, but it does.”

“You’ve done a great job so far,” said Prudence. “I believe we can all do this. We’ve just got to keep working together.”

Brian said, “What else are we going to do?”

Kalgrash swept his hands forward. He said, “Alley-oop.”

With that, they walked forward. Brian turned and waved. Prudence waved back at him. He stepped forward and was engulfed. His friends were already gone. They passed through the wall into another world.

Prudence and Sniggleping watched them go. They stood amidst the clutter of charred monster, arms crossed.

“Good luck to them,” said Sniggleping. “Good luck, I say.” He reached into his vest pocket again and drew out some playing cards.

For some hours, Prudence and he played piquet. There, in that crypt, beneath that lost cathedral, in that abandoned city, under that eldritch mountain, ringed by networks of streets and culs-de-sac and faux lanterns and lawns, the two sat through the hours.

They flipped discards and awaited the return of ancient kings.