Jane Doe and the Cradle of All Worlds Read online

  I plead and beg for three corridors and one flight of stairs. No matter what I say, I can’t turn the Guy Who Won’t Stop Walking into the Guy Who Just Might Stay. I compliment his almost-beard. Say ‘please’ more times than I can count. Then I get angry and call him a jerk. That’s when he lashes out and pins me to the wall. He glares at me, but not for long.

  ‘Your eyes,’ he says. ‘They’re –’

  ‘Yellow. Got a problem with that? You know, yours aren’t exactly –’ Actually, his eyes are pretty incredible, for a guy and all. Big and dark. Somehow, they seem older than the rest of his face. ‘Okay, so your eyes are kinda cool, I’ll give you that, but –’

  ‘Shut it.’ The guy leans in so close our noses are almost touching. I tell him to let me go. He says, ‘What are you gonna do?’ So I knee him in the balls and he staggers back.

  I straighten my tunic. ‘That.’

  The guy groans. ‘Don’t. Follow. Me. You stay.’ He opens the nearest door and the candles in the hallway beyond flicker on.

  It’s time to play my final card. Now or never. Keep it secret, Dad told Winifred, but it’s all I have.

  ‘You’re trapped in here, right? Looking for a way out? I can help you. I have a key.’

  The guy freezes, one hand stuck to the doorknob.

  ‘A key?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say, but I’m already wishing I hadn’t because now he’s turning around, staring at me with a hungry look on his face.

  ‘Show me.’

  I take the key from my pocket. The guy tries to play it cool but I can see his fascination plain as day. His eyes twitch. His mouth hangs open. ‘Where did you get that?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter where I got it. It’s mine.’

  ‘Yours.’ He wrenches his eyes away from the key. ‘Where’d you say you came from?’

  ‘I didn’t. But I come from an island. An island called Bluehaven.’

  ‘Bluehaven.’ He says the word slowly, trying it on for size. Is he happy? Sad? About to flip out? I don’t think he even knows. For a while, he doesn’t say anything at all. Feels pretty awkward, really. Then he clears his throat. ‘Your father. You followed him in here?’

  I nod. ‘Kind of. He was maybe an hour ahead of me? I need to find him as soon as possible. He’s sick. You don’t want to tell me who you are or where you come from? That’s fine. But this key has opened every door I’ve tried so far. Help me find my dad and you can have it. Once we find the gateway back to our world, you can use it to find yours.’

  But even as I say this, a tiny voice in my head asks, Why? Why go back to Bluehaven? We’re in the place-between-places, after all. Me and Dad could go anywhere, to any world. Pick a gateway, any gateway. Hell, we could find our home. Our real home.

  We could even find my mum.

  But what about Violet? What if the next world’s worse than Bluehaven? What if Dad really did have to leave our home because the people there hate me, too? What if Mum died long ago? What if that was the reason he left? What if, what if, what if?

  It’s all too much.

  I tuck the key back into my pocket to cover the fact that my hands are shaking. The guy’s been staring at it all this time, enchanted, but he snaps out of it now, takes a breath.

  ‘So,’ I ask him, ‘do we have a deal?’ I don’t get a nod, but I don’t get a headshake either. ‘Good. Go get your dog and we can start searching right away.’

  ‘What dog?’

  ‘That dog.’ I point through the open door behind him at the ugly mutt that’s been watching us for the last few seconds down the hallway. ‘What, it isn’t yours?’

  The guy turns around. Makes a sound like kittens dying. The dog takes a few steps forward, and I realise it isn’t a dog at all. It’s too big, too muscly, more like an oversized boar. It isn’t hairy, either, but covered in rusty metal plates from head to claw, stained blood-red and brown. No eyes. No ears. Just a wet snout and a set of long, razor-sharp teeth.

  ‘Should’ve kept that bucket,’ the guy says. He quickly closes the door and the thing-that-isn’t-a-dog snarls and barks. ‘Um. Run. Now.’

  TIN-SKIN TROUBLE

  Heart pumping. Lungs burning. Bare feet slapping on the stone. My almost-friend might be bigger than me, but I’m just as fast. Turns out his name’s Hickory. He finally told me when the not-a-dog broke through the door and started chasing us. No point keeping secrets now, I guess. We’re sprinting along candlelit corridors, praying for another door.

  ‘What is that thing? Where’d it come from?’

  ‘Tin-skin,’ Hickory says. ‘Otherworld. No more questions.’

  We bump into each other as we round corners. A hard right. A left. There’s a door up ahead, and it’s about time, too. The Tin-skin’s gaining on us, gnashing its teeth.

  Hickory reckons the door’s locked, tells me to get ready, but I already am. I grab the handle, shove the key into the lock and turn it. We dash inside and slam the door behind us as the candles flicker on. But the Tin-skin isn’t giving up. It throws itself against the door again and again. Barking, snarling, scratching with its claws. I throw my weight against the door, ask Hickory for a hand, but he’s gone all quiet behind me.

  Because this isn’t any ordinary room.

  The floor, walls and ceiling are covered in square stone plates, each about a foot wide. Every slab has a symbol carved into it. A circle-within-a-circle, a bird-looking thing, a star. Crooked lines and swirls and demonic, frowning faces. Hundreds of pictures, but no way out.

  I wedge myself at the base of the door. ‘There has to be a secret passage, right?’ The doorknob rattles above my head. ‘Right?’

  Hickory just stands there, staring at the stone plates.

  ‘Triggers,’ I think he says.

  ‘I can’t keep this thing out forever,’ I yell. The door cracks and splinters. ‘Hurry!’

  Hickory moves carefully around the room, running his hands over the symbols.

  The Tin-skin claws a gap through the wood above my shoulder, forces its snout through the hole, teeth chomping, spit drooling. Smells like rotting meat.

  ‘Just pick one, Hickory,’ I scream. ‘Press them all!’

  But he doesn’t. He moves from symbol to symbol. Goes to press a lightning bolt. Stops. Heads back across the room and starts plotting again. I check the corner to my left. A skull on the wall. An eye on the ceiling. An almost-triangle-in-a-circle on the floor and –

  ‘Wait,’ I shout. ‘That one over there. The circle with the messed-up triangle in it.’

  ‘Quiet,’ Hickory shouts, ‘I’m thinking.’

  ‘Trust me.’ The Tin-skin shoves its whole head through the door. ‘Push it!’

  ‘We push the wrong one and we’re dead. I think it’s this one.’

  ‘The snake? Are you crazy? When are snakes ever a good thing?’

  Hickory shakes out his hands as if he’s about to do the most groundbreaking thing anyone has ever done. He slams his palms into the snake plate.

  It doesn’t budge.

  ‘Amazing,’ I say. ‘Now would you please press the damn triangle? It’s the symbol on the key. Over there. Left corner.’ He goes right. ‘No, my left, idiot! You know what? Fine!’

  I launch myself from the door. There’s a crash behind me. I slam my fists onto the stone plate as hard as I can. It clicks, something else clunks, and a massive stone tablet above the door plummets down, sealing us in with a bang. Problem is, the Tin-skin’s in here, too.

  ‘Ah,’ Hickory says. ‘Much better.’

  The Tin-skin growls, chomps its teeth. I scoot back into the corner and hear something through the wall. Hidden wheels turning. Cogs ticking over. An ancient engine getting louder, getting faster, shaking the room.

  The Tin-skin’s spooked. It takes a step back.

  Then the machine, whatever it is, stops.

  Silence fills the room. I look at Hickory. Hickory looks at the Tin-skin. The Tin-skin barks, and I know it’s gonna strike. It launches forward, I close my e
yes and – BAM – a square column of stone shoots up from the floor, pinning the creature to the ceiling in a wreck of twisted metal and splattered blood. Guts and offal dribble down the column.

  I get to my feet, puff a strand of hair away from my eyes. ‘Well, that was lucky.’

  BAM. A second column shoots from one wall and slams into the other. BAM. A third drives down from the ceiling, smashing into the floor. More and more columns spear the room, slamming into their opposing stone plates and staying there. Hickory swears and calls me names as he ducks and dodges. I swear and call him names back because it isn’t my fault.

  ‘Turn it off,’ Hickory shouts, but I can’t see the symbol from the key anywhere else, just lion heads smashing into lightning bolts and arrows pummelling alligators.

  But there. Over in the far corner of the room. One column’s moving much slower than the others, grinding upwards at a snail’s pace. And there’s no stone plate above it. Must’ve slid into the ceiling when I set off the trap. A black hole big enough for us to squeeze through.

  Our way out.

  ‘There,’ I point and shout.

  Hickory doesn’t hesitate. He dives, rolls and leaps across the room as the columns shoot out faster and faster. He reaches the corner, jumps to the top of the slow-rising column, and pulls himself up and out of the room in one swift motion.

  The exit glows as the candles up in the next room flicker on.

  ‘Okay.’ I psych myself up with a deep breath. ‘Easy as pie.’

  I’m nowhere near as graceful as Hickory. Where he dived, I trip. Where he rolled, I tumble. Where he paused and plotted, I panic and plunge ahead. BAM – I dodge left. BAM – I jump right. BAM – I drop and slide as BAM! BAM! KA-BLAM! – three columns slam down behind me. Candles are smashed from the walls. Columns crisscross and crash, filling the empty spaces, but I’m nearly there. I grab the edge of the slow-rising column and haul myself up. It’s a tight squeeze but Hickory yanks me clear just in time. The column seals off the room below. I smile and laugh. Hell, I even consider spinning round and giving Hickory a hug.

  But something isn’t right.

  The hands that grabbed me haven’t let me go. They’re pinning me onto my stomach and they can’t be Hickory’s because he’s kneeling in front of me, arms raised in surrender.

  Stop struggling, his face is saying, don’t do anything stupid, but now I can feel the cold barrel of a gun sticking into the back of my neck. So I do something stupid.

  ‘Get off me,’ I grunt, shouting, wriggling, grabbing at the gun. ‘Let – me – go.’

  Heavy breathing at my ears now. A flurry of insect-like clicking and clacking. The hands flip me over and I’m staring up at a soldier – no, two soldiers. They’re both impossibly tall and lanky. Carrying rifles. Wearing glassy-eyed gas masks. Skin-tight suits of dirty, patchwork leather stitched head to toe. One of them dangles a chain with a round shackle at its end. The other tilts his head curiously at me. Points his rifle again, ready to fire.

  Until Hickory whistles.

  The soldiers look at him. I look at him, too. His hands are still raised and he’s still on his knees, but one of them has moved.

  Now it’s resting on a stone-slab trigger.

  The soldiers click and clack and raise their guns, but Hickory’s already shifting his weight. Already diving onto his stomach as two giant blades spring from each wall and slice the chamber clean in half. I clench my eyes shut and turn away as the two soldiers hit the ground in four pieces. When I open them again, Hickory’s lying right beside me, face flat against the stone, a lone dimple creasing his cheek.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ he says.

  THE WAY THINGS ARE

  Hickory raids the dead men’s pockets, keeping this, discarding that. Bullets. A knife. Strips of dried meat that he sniffs and throws away. Me, I’m huddled in a corner, keeping clear of the big black puddle leaching across the stone. I feel sick. Can’t stop staring at the soldiers. Their top halves look like spilled sacks of sausage and their bottom halves are twisted a metre away, legs akimbo.

  ‘Well,’ I say, ‘this is traumatic.’

  One of the bodies makes a noise. A tiny pop. A bubble of escaping air.

  The chamber seems normal enough. One open door. A dozen candles on a claw-like chandelier. I can’t even see the slits in the walls where the blades quick-as-blinked, but I can see the stone trigger poking up from the blood-puddle. No way I’m standing up in a hurry.

  Hickory keeps looking at me. Whenever our eyes meet he quickly turns away.

  ‘Got lucky,’ he says after a while, and points at these little symbols carved into the stone beside the door. A tiny arrow. Two wavy lines. A cross. ‘I’ve been in this room before.’

  ‘You carved those?’

  Hickory nods. ‘Directions. Secret signposts.’

  ‘Right,’ I say. ‘Yeah, lucky.’ I nod at the corpses. ‘Um. So who are they?’

  ‘Not who. What.’ Hickory picks up one of the soldier’s arms. The leather’s wrapped around it like a second skin. Brown and stained. He whips off the glove and I gasp. Three fingers, not five. Way too long. Grey-speckled skin. ‘Leatherheads. Foot soldiers. Very bad.’ Hickory kicks the collared chain coiled beside the other corpse. ‘For the Tin-skin.’

  ‘That thing was their pet?’

  Hickory nods. ‘Tin-skins and Leatherheads – trackers and snatchers.’

  ‘Snatchers. You mean they were gonna take us somewhere?’

  ‘To the fortress.’

  ‘Wait, there’s a fortress in here?’

  ‘Big one.’ Hickory picks up half a rifle. Both were sliced clean in half by the blades. ‘Shame,’ he mutters, and throws it aside. I figure he’s gonna expand on the whole ‘big fortress’ thing, but he just shuffles back against the wall and sighs. Maddening is what it is.

  ‘Okay,’ I say. ‘I’ve heard a lot of stuff about this place over the years, but I’m damn sure I’ve never heard anything about Tin-skins and Leatherheads and – and big fortresses. Not to mention the gigantic corroded gateway leaking bloody snow all through the place. You can’t tell me that’s normal. Hickory, what the hell is going on in here?’

  He considers for a moment. Stares at the Leatherheads. Glances at me.

  ‘Step where I step,’ he says, standing up. ‘Stop when I stop. I tell you to run, you run. Tell you to hide, you hide. We get separated, stay put, wait till I find you.’

  ‘Hang on, what?’ I get to my knees, still wary of the blades. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Somewhere safe.’ He heads for the door. ‘Show you something on the way. Be quick, be quiet. Worse things than Tin-skins, traps and Leatherheads in here.’

  ‘Oh, that’s comforting,’ I mutter, crawling around the blood-puddle.

  I follow Hickory down grand stone staircases. Across rooms filled with statues. Past arches that open onto balconies that look over vast pillared halls that seem to stretch on forever, all of it thick with candle-flicker and a feeling we’re being followed. Hickory moves like an animal on the prowl through these winding corridors of stone, stopping now and then to check out his secret symbols carved into the walls. More arrows. A tiny eye. Little squares and crosses. He mumbles to himself, keeps shaking his head. Clearly, he isn’t used to having company. He seems conflicted. Keeps glancing back at me. I just hope he isn’t debating whether or not to strangle me, steal the key and leave. He doesn’t speak to me. Doesn’t answer any more of my questions. ‘How far is it?’ ‘Did you hear that?’ ‘What did you mean by worse things?’ ‘Are we nearly there? Hickory?’ All I can do is step where he steps, stop when he stops, and wish someone else was tangled in my puppet strings.

  We walk and walk, and if it wasn’t for the occasional blast mark on the wall or the odd missing candle, I’d swear we were going in circles. It’s like we’ve done a hundred laps of Bluehaven. Then Hickory says, ‘We’re close,’ and points up at a chandelier. There’s an insect dancing around the flames. Moth-like but sparrow-sized.
A flutter of purple and white.

  ‘How’d that get in here?’

  ‘Same way the snow did.’

  There are more moths down the next corridor. A yellow one on the wall. A big black one surrounded by a swirl of tiny white ones. And then there’s grass on the ground. Real, lush, honest-to-goodness grass, golden brown under the candlelight, sprouting right from the stone.

  ‘Manor draws it in,’ Hickory says. ‘Gives it life.’

  I take the lead, scrunching the grass between my toes. There’s another gateway round the next corner, about the same size, shape and pale, tooth-like colour as the one I came through from Bluehaven. It’s flanked by a couple of flaming torches and covered in pockmarks like the gateway in the snow. Some are furry with brown moss, others have cocoons nestled in them. The grass at its base is dotted with tiny flowers, and none of them look bent or broken, far as I can make out. The scene looks undisturbed.

  Dad didn’t come this way.

  ‘Are all the gateways made of stone?’ I ask.

  ‘Yep. Wooden doors just lead to different parts of the Manor.’

  ‘So … so is this the gateway to your world? Your home?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You don’t sound so sure.’ I look at Hickory then, as if seeing him for the first time. His old-man eyes sitting in his young-man’s face. Suddenly it all makes sense. ‘You can’t remember where you came from, can you? Hickory, how long have you been in here?’

  ‘Long enough to forget,’ he says.

  I turn this over in my mind. At first, the idea of forgetting Bluehaven doesn’t seem so bad. But then I think about Dad and Violet. Forgetting Bluehaven would mean forgetting them too. Hell, I miss them both already, and it’s only been – what – one night? One day?

  ‘Can you remember anything?’ I ask. ‘Family? Friends?’

  ‘My name,’ Hickory says. ‘Nothing more.’

  I’m about to ask him why he isn’t a wrinkled wad of skin slumped over a walking stick – scratch that, a mummified corpse – but then I remember something Winifred said about the Manor. Time can do strange things in there. Hickory must know what I’m thinking because he holds his arms out and says, ‘Manor gives life,’ with a bitter edge to his voice.