MEET ME OR THEY ALL DIE

  This had gone too far. Isaac straightened up, pulled his backpack onto his shoulders, then cinched the straps until the whole thing felt a part of his body. All the while, stuck with holding the tossed rock in her hands, Sadina stared at him as if he’d turned into a stranger that she failed to comprehend.

  “What now?” she asked, said with a hint that she expected an absurd answer.

  “Now?” Isaac repeated. “Now we tell the others because this creepy guy is threatening us.”

  Sadina bent over and picked up the paper, then casually flipped it to show another message scrawled on the opposite side, in the same charcoaled, messy handwriting.

  TELL ANYONE, THEY DIE

  TWO FOR THE PRICE OF ONE!

  NO, SERIOUSLY, MEET ME

  “This jackass has a sick sense of humor,” Sadina said, terse enough to scare the man if he somehow heard. “Let’s go kill him and be done with it.” But then, her face fell, the true reality of the situation hitting both of them at the same time.

  Indecision melted Isaac’s insides, making it impossible to move. And the fear was no longer tiptoeing. It had moved in and made itself comfortable, bolting its furniture to the floor.

  “Come on,” he whispered, barely able to speak. “What do we do?”

  She nodded slowly at him as if considering, and the terror that had replaced the fake mirth in her eyes made him incredibly sad. “We don’t know what we’re dealing with, Isaac. We grew up in a happy little bubble on a fairy island. We have no idea how the real world works. I think we need to tell . . . ugh, I don’t know.”

  “He said we’d die if we tell them.” Isaac tried to look casual, glancing around at the others, all of whom seemed in no hurry to ramp up again, not even Kletter. She was in a trance of exhaustion, staring dully at nothing, eyes wide and unfocused. “He said we’d die.”

  “I know what the note says, Isaac.”

  “Then what do we do?” He didn’t bother keeping the frustration out of his voice.

  Sadina grabbed his hand and pulled him toward the fire-wrecked, weed-infested house into which the shadow had disappeared a few minutes earlier. Isaac resisted for half a second but then gave in, surrendering himself to her whim, trusting her more than himself. They crossed the cracked sidewalk, entered the yard, all kinds of dry vegetation swishing and grabbing at their legs. The house loomed, holes of darkness dominating the facade.

  Isaac reassured himself. Tried to. If this man wanted to hurt them or kill them, there were easier ways to do it than luring them into a house with a hastily written note tied to a rock. Or maybe that’s exactly what a psychopath would do. They didn’t teach this in primary or secondary school on the island. His parents had never told him bedtime stories of what to do when a creepy old man threatens to kill all your friends.

  “Where are you guys going?” Trish yelled from behind them.

  “We wanna check out this cool haunted house!” Sadina replied, somehow making her voice as light as a holiday morning. She didn’t break her stride, continued to pull Isaac along. “What’re you, my mom?” she added, then made a weird howling sound. Her real mom, Ms. Cowan, had been asleep in a patch of grass for twenty minutes.

  They reached the porch, or what had once been a porch. Now it was merely a mound of greenery, traces of faded red brick peeking through, the bare remnants of a wooden railing hanging precariously over the edge. The house had no door, only an open maw of black space, the frame of the threshold resembling an oval more than a rectangle. If it had been up to Isaac, they’d have stopped at the foot of the broken heap of porch steps, but Sadina didn’t hesitate, leaping up them like a frog scaling the mossy stones of a waterfall. He followed, and braced himself for what waited inside the house. They went through the vacant doorway.

  The floor creaked beneath them, each crack of wood seeming to unleash the smells of an ancient, abandoned tomb. Rot and decay. Dampness, the kind that never had or never would have a chance to dry, its moisture a recipe for grotesquerie. The scant light from the front door stretched Isaac’s and Sadina’s shadows across a dusty minefield of warped floorboards, an obvious set of footprints the only disturbance. The deep impressions ended on the other side of the room, where a tall, bulky man faced them, his back against the wall, his face hidden in the darkness.

  Just the sight of him sprinkled a shower of terror over Isaac’s skin.

  “What do you want?” Sadina snapped. In his entire life, Isaac had never seen such bravery on display, and he swore to become more like his friend.

  “You need to listen to me,” came the reply. Whereas before they’d heard only a harsh whisper emanate from the stranger in the shadows, now it was the no-nonsense growl of someone who’s lived ten lifetimes in one. “That lady you’re following out there, you can’t believe a word she says. She’s the devil, and you’re nothing but demon guinea pigs to her.”

  Isaac, from somewhere—maybe inspired by Sadina’s performance—grasped on to a spout of courage. “We’re supposed to believe you? The guy who was just bragging he’d kill every last one of us if we didn’t come in here?”

  “I had to get you inside, somehow,” the man replied, a little too jauntily for Isaac’s liking. “Give me a break, boy. You know how many ways I could’ve killed you once you stepped through that door? The bare fact you’re alive and speaking is all the trust in me you’ll ever need.”

  Sadina wasn’t having it. “We should leave. This conversation is getting stupider by the second.”

  It was the phrase “guinea pigs” that kept Isaac still. It seemed so . . . certain, such a specifically chosen term. And the stranger had a point—why lure them in here just to talk gruffly and act spooky?

  “Just tell us what’s going on,” Isaac said. “Who is Kletter, and if she really is the devil then why’re you bothering to warn us? Why do you care? Tell us why she killed those eight people on the boat.”

  He didn’t respond.

  Isaac turned to Sadina. “Just say it. Do you trust Kletter?”

  “No. Yes. Well my mom trusts her and I trust my mom. So yes. Mostly.”

  Isaac sighed.

  “You don’t have a choice but to trust me,” the man growled.

  “Step into the light,” Sadina added. “I’m sick of talking to a ghost.”

  The shadow walked forward, with all the confidence in the world that he had nothing to be afraid of by revealing himself. With each step creaking on the floorboards, wafting up dust, Isaac watched as the light slowly maneuvered itself up the man’s body. Black boots, dirty denim pants, a rough-cut plaid shirt, then a face only a mother could love. He was a gigantic man, well over six feet tall, heavily built, and ugly as a mildewed stump. Scraggly beard; tilted nose; pockmarked skin, red and leathery; eyes that seemed hammered deep into his skull; long greasy hair that had gone beyond needing a wash, something only a sharp blade could defeat.

  “That better?” the man asked. “Are you ready to listen?”

  Isaac looked at Sadina but she didn’t take her eyes off the newly revealed stranger.

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  The man folded his apelike arms, which made his muscles bulge all the more against the plaid-printed material of his shirt. “It’s Timon. We don’t have time for this get-to-know-you nonsense. Your friends aren’t gonna last another five minutes before they come in here after you.”

  “Fine, then talk,” Isaac said, not believing for a second that the man’s name was actually Timon. Timon? Really? His name had to be Slayer. “What did you call us in here for?”

  The man replied tersely. “Have you heard of the Godhead? Do you know anything about them? Has she . . . has Kletter talked about them?”

  Isaac opened his mouth but no words came out. Godhead? He did remember her mentioning that word before, but that was it. Easy to forget amidst a life-changing sea voyage.

  “Like in the Bible?” Sadina asked. “Never read it.”

  “No I’m not talking about the damn Bible,” the man shot back. “What has Kletter . . .” He stopped, rubbed his bearded face, visibly shaken with uncertainty. “Listen. You need to come with me, right now. Out the back door, away from that woman. We can get help and we can save your friends later. If you don’t even know what the Godhead is, then we’re about twenty steps behind the mule.”

  “Isaac? What’s going on?”

  It was Kletter, her voice like a crack of thunder without lightning, right behind them. Isaac swung around, filled with a suspicion that had no justification, based only on a few words from a man they’d never met. But he felt a wash of terror at her sudden intrusion, with a stab of guilt. She stood silhouetted in the light of the doorway, appearing taller than she’d ever seemed before, thicker, a malign presence without a face.

  He searched for words. “We . . . uh . . .”

  Something slipped over his head, cloth, black, cutting off his vision. It cinched around his throat and then he was being jerked backward, toward the spot where Timon had been standing. A stifled yell escaped his lips, swallowed in the scratchy material that pulled against his mouth and nose, making it hard to breathe. Then the world tilted, darkness spiraling on darkness, and his back slammed against the floor with a thud that thrummed through his bones. He heard a muffled shriek from Sadina, a thump, and knew she’d met the same fate as he had.

  “What—” he started to yell, but a hand as hard as iron clamped against his mouth, pressed against his teeth. He kicked out with his legs, tried to squirm away from that grip, but other hands had him by the arms, pushing down on his chest, others now squeezing him by the ankles, holding him in place as if he were about to have a limb amputated without numbing herbs. Where had all these people come from? It was as if the undead had risen through the floorboards, as if . . .

  CRANKS! the terrified voice inside his mind screamed. But he knew, he knew that wasn’t it. This was too measured, too . . . planned to be the nightmare crazies that had haunted his grandparents’ people. Flooded with fear, he finally seized upon his own instincts and forced himself still, forced himself to wait for an opportunity to understand what was happening, an opportunity to resist. He lay under the pressure of those holding him, swathed in darkness and the cold ice of terror. The room had grown silent.

  There were footsteps, the creaks of the floorboards coming closer to his head. A new voice, one he didn’t recognize, a woman’s, sounded from nearby. She said two words, as laced with dread as the drip-drip-drip of liquid from a corpse.

  “She’s gone.”

  Someone grabbed Isaac by the arms and started dragging him across the floor. It was a bumpy ride.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  A Cold Cliff

  Kit. The boy, Kit. The boy he’d saved from his savage father. (Uncle? Stranger? Didn’t matter.) The boy was all the Orphan could think about, for days and weeks, even now as he’d marched into the middle of nowhere with priests and priestesses of the almighty Cure.

  The group—old and young, all who deserved to see—stood in the midst of a snowstorm, although the snow more resembled sharp, pointy pellets of ice flying through the air like small bullets. The only reason the group as a whole hadn’t been sliced and sheared by the flying pricks of ice-blades was because the wind howled incessantly, in both strength and direction. The frigid air with its accompanying bites of hard snow swam in great circles around them, shifting up and down and out and back, never gaining the fierce impetus needed to damage and cut.

  The Orphan thanked the Cure for small favors, no matter how tiny and very unlike an actual favor they were. He had bands of leather fastened, tightly, around his upper arms, his wrists, his thighs, his ankles. Bound tightly enough to warp the natural contour of his muscles and nerves and tissue with great pain, burning like a microscopic flow of lava had leaked into the tiny spaces between his cells. Together with the harsh environment it inflicted a great, searing discomfort that would make him a better man, a better servant, a better participant in the troubles to come. Which suited him fine.

  Kit.

  Saving Kit had changed something deep inside Minho. No, not changed. Completed. He squirmed his arms and legs, seeking comfort against the bindings. Yes, completed.

  Each band of leather was attached to a long wooden pole, themselves banded in iron every few inches along its length to make them strong, unbreakable. At the opposite ends of those iron-bound spears of wood, which poked away from him in all directions like the spikes of an injured porcupine, stood a Bearer of Grief, the Orphan’s masters. These Grief Bearers were so named from the Grievers of old, the menacing monstrosities of machine and flesh that had terrorized the people of the Maze. It was symbolic . . . or some such absurdity. The only thing the Orphan knew for certain was that he’d been chosen to wander the wilderness at least three years ahead of schedule, and that he’d be the one bearing all the grief known to this pocket of the world for the foreseeable future. His life was about to become pain-defined, pain-manifested in all its many, dastardly, excruciating, demonic forms. Or maybe that was a bit dramatic.

  Wandering. Pain. Hunger. Forty days and forty nights. That was expected of him, though he had different plans in mind.

  Was he ready? Was he scared? Did he fear failure? Minho of old would have answered yes to all of these questions, and now he did, too. Yes. I am Minho, and I am ready, I am scared, and I fear failure. So let’s kick some ass, shall we? I am the Orphan. I am the Orphan with no name, named Minho. That’s who I am. Someday, perhaps, Kit would grow up to be proud of him.

  “Wrap him tight, for Flare’s sake,” one of the Grief Bearers said in a harsh, spiteful voice that gave something away about the man’s day so far. He’d been the Bearer of Grief to the Orphan for many a year, and Minho knew his moods and peculiarities, his eccentricities, his proclivities. Griever Glane had been denied his sweet delights the prior evening, spurned by those he didn’t think capable of spurning him. He’d be a grouch of sadistic extremity this day. He was always a grouch, but in the hours ahead, he’d take it to new levels of hateful debauchery.

  The Orphan was ready. Scared. He feared. Time to go.

  Shadows approached, moving shadows mostly obscured by the heavy blizzard that swelled over their imaginary dome of life. Those shadows were acolytes—priests and priestesses to the Cure, cloaked in the sacred weaves of the rough and scraping vines that purportedly descended from the sanctified vines of the Maze itself. It was a cloth, of sort. That was the nicest way the Orphan could bring himself to describe the long, rough-hewn drapes of material in which they intended to wrap him. Wrap him up head to toe, leaving not a centimeter of his parts exposed to the harsh elements of the plains.

  Once he became a caterpillar in its cocoon, hoping to someday break out and fly, the acolytes would use the iron-bound lengths of wood—still attached to the leather shackles on his arms and legs—to move him to his destined location. No one knew where that might be. Literally no one. Even the Great Master in the Golden Room of Grief did not know where the Orphan secretly named Minho would be sent. But he would be sent all the same, and when the acolytes found the spot, they would leave him there to wander for forty days and forty nights. To return as a Bearer of Grief, himself.

  Also, no one knew how exactly one was supposed to survive such a nefarious task. Some didn’t.

  Minho honestly didn’t give a Flare’s barnacle, anymore. He just wanted this madness of a ceremony to be over with. He had a dark secret hidden within his soul and mind and psyche that no necromancer of the most devious dark art could ever compel Minho to reveal. Like a seed that takes a hundred years to sprout, needing little water, little sun, little care, but eventually grows into its purpose. This would be the Orphan, nameless, named Minho.

  When his seed sprouted, it would grow to the ends of the earth, digging its roots to the deepest parts of bedrock, and raising its limbs sky-high to create a canopy of endless green, covering the four corners of the world. This was all a metaphor, of course. The real intention was simple and as plain as the sun being eclipsed by an enlarged moon.

  The Orphan, Minho by name, had decided that destroying the Godhead—the very reason for the Remnant Nation’s existence—was a terrible idea. Evolution was progress. It shouldn’t be stopped. By definition, it couldn’t be stopped.

  No, his ultimate desire and purpose was not to destroy the Godhead.

  It was to join them.

  Minho didn’t resist or complain as the priests and priestesses began draping the coarse cloth of the vine around his body and all its parts, cinching and pulling and tying along the way, pulling no punches—as Griever Glane would say—or showing the slightest regard for his discomfort.

  The Orphan looked into the future like the ancient seers of old.

  The farther he reached, the more unbearable the pain. But it would all be worth it. If nothing else, he couldn’t wait to stop thinking in these ridiculous, sanctimonious metaphors. Thinking of Kit, the life he’d extended, brought him peace.

  The acolytes completed their task. Rough, thorny threads now encased his entire body, woven into a tight tapestry that would both protect him from the worst of nature’s weapons while also keeping him humble. The cocoon of cloth needled and bit and scratched and bothered. It sucked, one might say.

  “Take him,” Griever Glane said, his voice muffled by the holy canvas that covered the Orphan’s ears. But did he detect a hint of sadness in the man’s words? “Take him to the edge, and be gentle enough. I know this boy. He won’t resist.” The old man clapped the Orphan on the shoulder. “Next time I see you, son, we’ll be peers. Be tough, and remember what you’ve been taught. If you come back with the Flare, you’ll be executed. May the Cure watch over you.”

  It was almost comical. Almost. But it fed the Orphan’s desire for a new destiny.