The Wind Through The Keyhole (27 page)

The waterfall—no longer red, now a fading pinkish-orange—thundered ahead of him. Cold spray spattered his hot face. Tim felt something caress his boot, seeking purchase, and threw himself forward at the water with an inarticulate yell. There was one moment of freezing cold—it encased his body like a glove—and then he was on the other side of the falls and back on solid ground.

One of the tentacles came through. It reared up like a snake, dripping . . . and then withdrew.

“Daria! Are you all right?”

“I’m waterproof,” Daria replied with something that sounded suspiciously like smugness.

Tim picked himself up and looked around. He was in a little rock cave. Written on one wall, in paint that once might have been red but had over the years (or perhaps centuries) faded to a dull rust, was this cryptic notation:

JOHN 3:16
FEER HELL HOPE FOR HEVEN
MAN JESUS

Ahead of him was a short stone staircase filled with fading sunset light. To one side of it was a litter of tin cans and bits of broken machinery—springs, wires, broken glass, and chunks of green board covered with squiggles of metal. On the other side of the stairs was a grinning skeleton with what looked like an ancient canteen draped over its ribcage.
Hello, Tim!
that grin seemed to say.
Welcome to the far side of the world! Want a drink of dust? I have plenty!

Tim climbed the stairs, skittering past the relic. He knew perfectly well it wouldn’t come to life and try to snare him by the boot, as the tentacles from the flowers had tried to do; dead was dead. Still, it seemed safer to skitter.

When he emerged, he saw that the path once more entered the woods, but he wouldn’t be there for long. Not far ahead, the great old trees pulled back and the long, long upslope he had been climbing ended in a clearing far larger than the one where the bumblers had danced. There an enormous tower made of metal girders rose into the sky. At the top was a blinking red light.

“You have almost reached your destination,” Daria said. “The North Forest Kinnock Dogan is three wheels ahead.” That click came again, even louder than before. “You really must hurry, Tim.”

As Tim stood looking at the tower with its blinking light, the breeze that had so frightened him while crossing the rock bridge came again, only this time its breath was chilly. He looked up into the sky and saw the clouds that had been lazing toward the south were now racing.

“It’s the starkblast, Daria, isn’t it? The starkblast is coming.”

Daria didn’t reply, but Tim didn’t need her to.

He began to run.

By the time he reached the Dogan
clearing, he was out of breath and only able to trot, in spite of his sense of urgency. The wind continued to rise, pushing against him, and the high branches of the ironwood trees had begun to whisper. The air was still warm, but Tim didn’t think it would stay that way for long. He needed to get undercover, and he hoped to do so in this Dogan-thing.

But when he entered the clearing, he barely spared a glance for the round, metal-roofed building which stood at the base of the skeletal tower with its blinking light. He had seen something else that took all his attention, and stole his breath.

Am I seeing that? Am I really seeing that?

“Gods,” he whispered.

The path, as it crossed the clearing, was paved in some smooth dark material, so bright that it reflected both the trees dancing in the rising wind and the sunset-tinged clouds flowing overhead. It ended at a rock precipice. The whole world seemed to end there, and to begin again a hundred wheels or more distant. In between was a great chasm of rushing air in which leaves danced and swirled. There were bin-rusties as well. They rose and twisted helplessly in the eddies and currents. Some were obviously dead, the wings ripped from their bodies.

Tim hardly noticed the great chasm and the dying birds, either. To the left of the metal road, about three yards from the place where the world dropped off into nothingness, there stood a round cage made of steel bars. Overturned in front of it was a battered tin bucket he knew all too well.

In the cage, pacing slowly around a hole in the center, was an enormous tyger.

It saw the staring, gapemouthed boy and approached the bars. Its eyes were as large as Points balls, but a brilliant green instead of blue. On its hide, stripes of dark orange alternated with those of richest midnight black. Its ears were cocked. Its snout wrinkled back from long white teeth. It growled. The sound was low, like a silk garment being ripped slowly up a seam. It could have been a greeting . . . but Tim somehow doubted it.

Around its neck was a silver collar. From this hung two objects. One looked like a playing card. The other was a key with a strange twisted shape.

Tim had no idea how long he stood
captured by those fabulous emerald eyes, or how long he might have remained so, but the extreme peril of his situation announced itself in a series of low, thudding explosions.

“What’s that?”

“Trees on the far side of the Great Canyon,” Daria said. “Extreme rapid temperature change is causing them to implode. Seek shelter, Tim.”

The starkblast—what else? “How long before it gets here?”

“Less than an hour.” There was another of those loud clicks. “I may have to shut down.”

“No!”

“I have violated Directive Nineteen. All I can say in my defense is that it’s been a very long time since I have had anyone to talk to.”
Click!
Then—more worrisome, more ominous—
Clunk!

“What about the tyger? Is it the Guardian of the Beam?” As soon as he articulated the idea, Tim was filled with horror. “I can’t leave a Guardian of the Beam out here to die in the starkblast!”

“The Guardian of the Beam at this end is Aslan,” Daria said. “Aslan is a lion, and if he still lives, he is far from here, in the land of endless snows. This tyger is . . .
Directive Nineteen!
” Then an even louder clunk as she overrode the directive, at what cost Tim did not know. “This tyger is the magic of which I spoke. Never mind it.
Seek shelter!
Good luck, Tim. You have been my fr—”

Not a click this time, nor a clunk, but an awful
crunch
.
Smoke drifted up from the plate and the green light went out.

“Daria!”

Nothing.

“Daria, come back!”

But Daria was gone.

The artillery sounds made by the dying trees were still far across that cloudy gap in the world, but there could be no doubt that they were approaching. The wind continued to strengthen, growing ever colder. High above, a final batch of clouds was boiling past. Behind them was an awful violet clarity in which the first stars had begun to appear. The whisper of the wind in the high branches of the surrounding trees had risen to an unhappy chorus of sighs. It was as if the ironwoods knew their long, long lives were coming to an end. A great woodsman was on the way, swinging an ax made of wind.

Tim took another look at the tyger (it had resumed its slow and stately pacing, as if Tim had been worth only momentary consideration), then hurried to the Dogan. Small round windows of real glass—very thick, from the look—marched around its circumference at the height of Tim’s head. The door was also metal. There was no knob or latch, only a slot like a narrow mouth. Above the slot, on a rusting steel plate, was this:

NORTH CENTRAL POSITRONICS, LTD.
North Forest Kinnock
Bend Quadrant

OUTPOST 9

Low Security
USE KEYCARD

These words were hard for him to make out, because they were in a weird mixture of High and Low Speech. What had been scrawled below them, however, was easy:
All here are dead.

At the base of the door was a box that looked like the one Tim’s mother had for her little trinkets and keepsakes, only of metal instead of wood. He tried to open it, but it was locked. Engraved upon it were letters Tim couldn’t read. There was a keyhole of odd shape—like the letter
*
—but no key. He tried to lift the box and couldn’t. It might have been anchored to the ground at the top of a buried stone post.

A dead bin-rusty smacked the side of Tim’s face. More feathered corpses flew past, turning over and over in the increasingly lively air. Some struck the side of the Dogan and fell around him.

Tim read the last words on the steel plate again:
USE KEYCARD.
If he had any doubt about what such a thing might be, he had only to look at the slot just below the words. He thought he even knew what a “keycard” looked like, for he believed he had just seen it, along with a more recognizable key that might fit the
-shaped keyhole of the metal box. Two keys—and possible salvation—hanging around the neck of a tyger that could probably swallow him down in three bites. And, since there had been no food that Tim could see in the cage, it might only take two.

This was smelling more and more like a practical joke, although only a very cruel man would find such a joke amusing. The sort of fellow who might use a bad fairy to lure a boy into a dangerous swamp, perhaps.

What to do? Was there anything he
could
do? Tim would have liked to ask Daria, but he was terribly afraid his friend in the plate—a good fairy to match the Covenant Man’s bad one—was dead, killed by Directive Nineteen.

Slowly, he approached the cage, now having to lean against the wind. The tyger saw him and came padding around the hole in the middle to stand by the door of the cage. It lowered its great head and stared at him with its lambent eyes. The wind rippled its thick coat, making the stripes waver and seem to change places.

The tin bucket should have rolled away in the wind, but it didn’t. Like the steel box, it seemed anchored in place.

The bucket he left for me back home, so I could see his lies and believe them.

The whole thing had been a joke, and under this bucket he would find the point of it, that final clever line—like
I can’t fork hay with a spoon!
or
So then I turned her over and warmed the other side
—that was supposed to make folks roar with laughter. But since it was the end, why not? He could use a laugh.

Tim grasped the bucket and lifted it. He expected to find the Covenant Man’s magic wand beneath, but no. The joke was better than that. It was another key, this one large and ornately carved. Like the Covenant Man’s seeing-basin and the tyger’s collar, it was made of silver. A note had been attached to the key’s head with a bit of twine.

Across the gorge, the trees cracked and boomed. Now dust came rolling up from the chasm in giant clouds that were whipped away in ribbons like smoke.

The Covenant Man’s note was brief:

Greetings, Brave and Resourceful Boy! Welcome to the North Forest Kinnock, which was once known as the Gateway of Out-World. Here I have left you a troublesome Tyger. He is VERY hungry! But as you may have guessed, the Key to SHELTER hangs about his Neck. As you may have also guessed,
this
Key opens the Cage. Use it if you dare! With all regards to your Mother (whose New Husband will visit her SOON), I remain your Faithful Servant!

RF/MB

The man—if he was a man—who left Tim that note was surprised by very little, but he might have been surprised by the smile on the boy’s face as he rose to his feet with the key in his hand and booted away the tin bucket. It rose and flew off on the rising wind, which had now almost reached gale force. Its purpose had been served, and all the magic was out of it.

Tim looked at the tyger. The tyger looked at Tim. It seemed completely unaware of the rising storm. Its tail swished slowly back and forth.

“He thinks I’d rather be blown away or die of the cold than face your claws and teeth. Perhaps he didn’t see this.” Tim drew the four-shot from his belt. “It did for the fish-thing in the swamp, and I’m sure it would do for you, Sai Tyger.”

Tim was once more amazed by how right the gun felt. Its function was so simple, so clear. All it wanted to do was shoot. And when Tim held it, shooting was all he wanted to do.