The Door Read online

  “What was I going to be called if I was a boy?” Hannah had asked in the pickup truck during last year’s trip.

  “Sylvester. Obviously.”

  “Sylvester Obviously Silver.”

  “I’m just kidding,” her mother said. “You were going to be Boris.”

  They munched on cider donuts in the little café next to the gift shop. There were zero actual rivers at Five Rivers Farm, but there were plenty of sweets and snacks. The shelves were shaped like hollow trees; a sign said they stocked over a thousand kinds of saltwater taffy.

  “More like fifty kinds,” her mother always said. “Do they think we can’t count?”

  After they ate, her mother shopped for pumpkins and apples from the plywood bins outside the café, while Hannah lingered beneath the eaves of the farmhouse, waiting for the witch to come out onto the balcony.

  The witch had a broomstick and a cauldron. The cauldron was filled to the brim with Jolly Ranchers and Smarties and hard pink gum that always tasted stale. Every fifteen minutes or so, the witch appeared on the balcony in full costume — pointy hat, black robe, warty mask — to toss handfuls of candy to anyone waiting below. Most kids were allowed one session before their parents snatched them away, but Hannah stayed as long as she wanted. This candy stash had to last her for months; it wasn’t like she was allowed to go trick-or-treating in town. Plus, her favorite candy —

  (On the subway car, Hannah realized with a start that she’d forgotten the name of the candy. It was a blank spot in her memory.)

  — was the rarest. Sometimes you could go three rounds without seeing the famous (Striped? Gold?) wrappers cascading down with the rest of the witch’s stash.

  Eventually, she felt her mother’s hand on her shoulder. “Okay, little lady, time to hit the road.”

  (Her mother didn’t talk like that — did she?)

  Back home, they performed their own autumn ritual: With mulled cider simmering on the stove, and corn hung on the front door like a holiday wreath, the weaving began.

  (Did they work in the garage? No, Cliff House didn’t even have a garage. Did it?)

  Old craft books open on the table between them, they would start by braiding the straw into thicker, stronger ropes. When they were done, they would …

  They would …

  (It was as if a thick fog were rolling through the memory, leaving gaping holes in its wake.)

  Hannah and her mother sat at a table. There was a book open to a blank page. The walls of the room were undecorated. They were supposed to be doing something.

  (Her mother’s face was distressingly absent.)

  They had just been to Carbine Pass. To a farm near the town. Where a witch gave her candy.

  (That can’t be right.)

  They had gone shopping. Hannah and her mother. Shopping for back-to-school clothes.

  (But she didn’t go to school.)

  What year was this memory from?

  (Start over.)

  The leaves on the trees were changing colors because it was autumn. What did Hannah and her mother always do in autumn?

  (Nothing left but a single stray detail.)

  A green, cackling face! There was a witch who tossed candy from a balcony above the parking lot of …

  Of …

  Five Rivers Farm!

  (Hannah let out a breath.)

  Her mother had taken her to buy supplies for their autumn ritual. Which was what, exactly?

  She had absolutely no idea.

  Hannah had grown so accustomed to the train’s segmented walls and travel posters, the slats in the wooden bench and the polished swirls in the steel, that it was difficult to imagine her life before she had been a passenger on the dead city subway. The pitch of the train car’s slurps, the clatter of its armor, had faded into familiar background noise.

  Sometimes it felt as though the train were chugging up a steep hill; other times it tipped forward and hurtled down at freefall speed. Shaken, jostled, bumped, and spun, they rode on beneath the city. Other passengers got on and off, a polite and nondescript group of souls.

  Hannah concentrated on holding her fragmenting memory together. She was terrified of slipping into the dull rhythm of the afterlife, like Stefan, who wasn’t even sure that he used to be a gypsy. Hannah couldn’t let her earthly existence become a forgotten dream. She tried to keep a vision of her mother at the forefront of her thoughts. But this vision was blurry and inconsistent, and only became harder to hold as the train spiraled on and on.

  The city wants me to forget, she thought.

  In the center of the car, Nancy swung around a copper pole, humming tunelessly. Belinda occupied herself with the newspaper. Hannah noticed a smudge of green paint on the side of her thumb and tried to wipe it away, only to realize that it wasn’t paint at all.

  It was a hairy patch of fungus, and it had taken root beneath her skin.

  “Stefan!”

  “Hrm,” he grunted, without opening his eyes.

  “Is this normal?” she demanded, holding out her thumb.

  He winced at her voice, opened his eyes, and held up her hand for inspection. “Huh,” he said, vaguely interested. “Does it hurt?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Does it or doesn’t it?”

  “I guess it’s not painful, but … look at it!”

  The splotch faded into her thumb and was gone. She recalled the toothpick-sized splinter from the attic in the mansion district. It had just been joined by a patch of Nusle Kruselskaya fungus. She had the disturbing thought that the city was imprinting itself beneath her skin, one neighborhood at a time.

  “Huh,” Stefan said again, releasing her hand. “Weird.”

  She massaged her thumb as if she were trying to squeeze the venom from a snakebite. At the same time, Stefan gave her face a quick appraisal.

  “Forget your hand,” he said. “We really need to touch up your disguise.”

  “Thank you!” Nancy blurted out with relief. “Please do something about that.”

  “A touch-up would be wonderful,” Belinda chimed in. “We weren’t going to say anything, Hannah dear, but you do look somewhat … worse for wear, at present.”

  Horrified, Hannah probed her face, which now seemed much less real than it had in the castle, full of cracks and wrinkles.

  “How bad is it?” she asked.

  “Not quite zombie bad,” Nancy said. “But getting there.”

  “It is a bit grotesque,” Belinda admitted.

  “The thing is” — Stefan reached into the cargo pocket of his baggy pants and produced a small paintbrush folded in half at a hinge — “I only have this minibrush on me, and I used the last of my paint back at the concourse. And you can’t just go into a shop anywhere in the city and buy Guild paint. We make it ourselves, in the castle.” He laughed to himself. “Anybody know where I can get a supply of Foundation?”

  “The makeup counter,” Nancy offered. “Next to the lipstick and blush.”

  “Not that,” Stefan said. “Foundation with a capital F. Think of it like …” He fished for a word. “Modeling clay. Except back up and imagine the stuff they use to make the clay. The raw material. That’s Foundation. Everything in the whole city is made of it — buildings, cars, roads, our paint, the glassworkers’ glass” — he rapped his knuckles against the metal bench — “the insides of train cars. It can be all sorts of things, if you know how to cook with it and mold it. Honestly, mixing paint from Foundation is a whole other skill that’s way beyond me. So even if we could somehow get our hands on some, I wouldn’t even know what to do with it. Well …” He squinted, thinking to himself. “There are a few things I’d like to try, but …”

  “How do we get it?” Hannah asked.

  “You don’t. Watchers deliver shipments to neighborhoods, and then everybody argues about the best way to use it, and somewhere down the line our Guild president gets a cut, and the castle can mix new paint. It’s like that in all the districts. And everybod
y’s Foundation use is measured to make sure they aren’t making deals on the side and getting more than their share.”

  “Is that what the meter guy does?” Nancy asked, sliding down the metal bench to sit on the other side of Stefan. “We saw him reading dials on the roof, right after we escaped.”

  Hannah recalled the alphabet translating itself, forming the word Foundation.

  “Yeah.” Stefan grimaced. “Nobody likes the meter men.”

  “I think I can help.” Hannah reached into her pocket and found the tube of paint and the brush. She showed them to Stefan. “I stole this from your room.”

  His eyes widened.

  Suddenly, the train lurched noisily to a halt. The map indicated it was the second-to-last station stop before the end of the line. The door opened. A tarnished silver fist parted the beads, and an entire suit of armor followed.

  Stefan muttered a curse and jabbed Hannah with his elbow.

  “Retainers,” he whispered. “Everybody sit still and be quiet.”

  She looked at him quizzically. “What about my face?”

  “Later.” His voice was low and anxious. “Try not to look them in the eyes.”

  * * *

  It was nearly impossible not to stare as three medieval warriors shifted their great bulk from the platform to the train. The first knight’s face was hidden by a helm shaped like the sweeper on the front of an old-fashioned locomotive. His plumed red crest bristled against the ceiling. A broadsword was slung across his back.

  The second knight was a bit more practically dressed, with chain mail peeking out from beneath a leather tunic emblazoned with a yellow cross. His face, shadowed by a half helm, was weathered and crosshatched with scars. A short sword with a ruby hilt was sheathed at his side.

  The last man through the door was a massive brute. Islands of coarse hair tufted from his bare arms and shoulders. He rested the spiky iron head of his mace gently on the wooden bench, which creaked in protest.

  The three men stood together, shifting their immense weight to avoid falling as the train left the station.

  Nancy fidgeted, clearly getting ready to unleash some kind of sarcastic greeting. Stefan leaned forward and shook his head, as if to tell her, Don’t even think about it. Since he wouldn’t explain why he was so scared — the knights hadn’t paid them the slightest bit of attention — Hannah consulted the handbook. She flipped to the R section and found the entry.

  While Hannah was reading, the margins were being scrawled in by some unseen hand.

  “DEMON!”

  The angry cry tore her attention from the handbook. The largest of the three men was directing his companions’ attention to a spot on the floor at the back of the car. He was pointing so urgently that the veins in his biceps popped up like squiggly blue ropes.

  Hannah almost burst out laughing. That hulking warrior was scared of a shadow! The first knight pulled his broadsword from its scabbard. Next to her, she felt Stefan’s body tense.

  What had been a dark spot beneath a stray flap of paneling unshadowed into Charlemagne.

  “That’s not a demon, sir,” Stefan said, jumping off the bench and holding out his empty palms to show that he was no threat. “That’s a friend of mine.”

  The man in the leather tunic gripped his sword by its hilt and turned to Stefan. Hannah wondered what happened when you got run through by a blade in the afterlife. Stefan was holding his ground, staring down the knight. His hands were trembling.

  “He means you no harm,” Stefan spoke slowly and deliberately. “Let’s all just calm down.”

  Hannah watched helplessly as the third man began to swing his mace, a deadly pendulum getting faster with each revolution.

  Charlemagne launched himself into the air toward the knights. A misty spray of paint landed in an arc across the chest of the man with the mace. His roar of displeasure rattled the posters in their frames. Charlemagne scrambled up the wall before the man could spin his body around.

  Nancy and Belinda sprang from the wooden bench as the mace reduced it to splinters. Before she realized what she was doing, Hannah had the cap off the tube of paint.

  Charlemagne flashed from the wall in a glimmer of city lights — he had taken refuge in one of the advertisements. The first knight was having trouble with his huge broadsword inside the confines of the train. The man with the short sword had better luck. Knees bent slightly, one arm out for balance, the other brandishing the weapon, he turned slowly, carefully, hunting the paint-lizard. Stefan backed up to join Hannah. Belinda and Nancy were just behind them.

  The first knight clanked into the center of the car. He seemed very practiced in standing around menacingly, and did so now, placing Hannah’s group under guard while his companions hunted down the demon. Behind him, the two fighters were poking about the train as if they were looking for a particularly fearsome set of lost keys.

  “Were you in the Crusades, good sir?” Belinda asked.

  “Shut up, Belinda!” Nancy said. “Who cares?”

  “I’m appealing to the chivalry of an honorable knight,” she replied. Then she raised her voice. “Did you happen to know King Richard personally?”

  The great hunk of armor didn’t move, as if it were just an empty suit in a display case. Then, all at once, the breastplate and helm began to rattle excitedly. The knight’s silver finger pointed at Hannah’s legs. She felt Charlemagne squelch between her shoes.

  A deafening war cry came from the other end of the car. A ham-sized fist shoved the knight aside. The warrior’s arm was a weapon-swinging engine, and in his bloodlust he was going to cleave them all in half.

  Hannah squeezed the tube of paint, coating the brush in a huge glob. The mace seemed to slow as her eyes followed it around and around. She could pick out individual spikes. Behind her, Nancy and Belinda were trapped with their backs against the wall.

  Charlemagne flung himself into the woodpile where the bench used to be, leaving a blotchy stain on a jagged plank. The warrior shifted his weight, transferring the energy of his spinning weapon into a vicious downward strike. The wood exploded into shrapnel. The mace embedded itself in the floor of the train.

  Hannah splatted the paintbrush into the center of an advertisement for indoor pools (MAKE EVERY DAY A LIGHTDAY). The splotch of paint was a bright yellow stain covering a kidney-shaped hot tub. She held the brush aloft and lunged across the car to the opposite wall as if she were closing a long shower curtain. In her mind, the curtain was an impenetrable shield. She hoped that was how it worked: You thought of something you wanted, and just sort of painted it in the air.

  “No, that’s too much! What are you doing?!” Stefan’s voice was hysterical, shrill.

  Her line in the air was a vine growing sideways, blossoming with citrus cloudbursts that changed color at incredible speeds, as if there were infinite hues buried within the paint. Distantly, Hannah was aware that the subway train was agitated, its slurps rising in pitch, becoming frantic.

  The train car bucked like a mechanical horse and sent her sprawling. She felt an acute stab of pain in her elbow, and then she was upside down, tangled in Stefan’s arms, looking up at a lattice of expanding colors and shadows. There was a piercing whine as the train slammed on its brakes.

  “Get back!” Stefan dragged her into the narrowest part of the train’s nose. The broadsword came slashing through the paint. Nancy moved to cover Belinda as the short sword began to hack toward their heads.

  The train came to a stop and began whipping itself from side to side. Metal panels fell to the floor. Nails and bolts rained down; Hannah felt them pelt her back through the army jacket.

  “I’m really sorry!” she yelled, hoping the creature would understand. As its armor plating sloughed away, its slurps were amplified. Gelatinous flesh oozed and rippled.

  Stefan was on his knees with Hannah’s brush in one hand and his miniature travel brush in the other. Lost in a citrusy fog, the knight’s weapons appeared here and there, striking out blind
ly. Using deft strokes, Stefan sketched the color-blossoms into solid shapes. Cement bricks began to appear. The mace lost itself in the almost-wall with a thick splat. The short sword poked through a half-solid brick, its steel awash in paint. Stefan parried with his brush, trapping the blade. The entombed weapons poked out in sculpted protrusions.

  With the retainers disarmed, the train calmed down. It began to take one contented, sleepy breath after another. Hannah scrambled to her feet and pulled Nancy and Belinda up with her.

  “The paint won’t hold these maniacs back for long,” Stefan said, turning to Hannah. His sweater was a constellation of tropical colors. Muffled cries came from the other side of the wall. A vaguely melon-shaped brick began to wiggle. Paint flecked off, revealing silver spikes.

  Quickly, Hannah parted the beads and opened the door. The train had halted inside a cavern where two tracks ran side by side.

  “No more fungus,” Hannah said to Belinda, helping her down to the ground.

  “No more anything,” Nancy said. It was as if they’d gone off the rails in the desolate outskirts of the undercity, where even the fungus had decided it was too dull to live.

  Stefan left the door ajar behind him. The light from the train’s interior was the only thing helping them see.

  “That paint didn’t do what I wanted it to do,” Hannah said as their footsteps crunched gravel.

  “Everybody thinks they can be an artist, like it’s so easy,” Stefan said.

  Hannah’s fingers felt along her jaw line. How much of the boy-face was left? How much paint had she wasted?

  The light from the train faded. They trudged uphill, single file. Hannah echoed Stefan’s half-whispered calls for Charlemagne. The darkness closed in. It wasn’t until Charlemagne came bolting up from behind them that Hannah realized how close they were to an exit. The paint-lizard skimmed along the rocks, leaving a pink slug-trail, and tumbled out the open air.