Canyon Red Read online

  Brosie was alone in a dark, wide vestibule. Bookshelves ran along the walls to the left and right, and they disappeared into two hallways of blackness. A staircase rose in front of her, dominating the middle portion of the room. She could see that on the second floor were landings to the left and right, and a massive wooden door straight from the top of the stairs.

  The room was completely silent, though it was the kind of room that in many stories would have a hidden organ playing. She tried movement; she found she could control herself. The door at the top of the stairs arrested her. And just about anytime something arrested Brosie, she went to it.

  It took walking up the stairs to realize she was wearing a dress. It was blood-red, the color of her hair, which was not its usual orange. On the Island she only wore dresses while playing a princess, and those dresses were closer to rags than to robes. Now she felt—Oh, what was the word we just learned in class the other day?—regal. She felt warm and important, until she reached the landing at the top of the stairs and looked over at the hallway on her right.

  It was a very quick sighting, nothing more than a disturbed moment in the dim hallway light, but she certainly saw something move there. It had looked like a man, but she hadn’t seen it well.

  She remembered the ghost stories she’d heard over firelight on school camping trips. They were about old witches who kept in the shadows of houses and cast spells over inhabitants as a form of revenge. Or sailors who had been tragically lost at sea and could never escape their misery even as ghosts. All of them seemed dangerous now, full of curses and malice.

  Many children in Brosie’s shoes would want to find a corner somewhere and sit with their back against it; standing out in the open where anyone or anything might sneak up behind you is sometimes unbearable, especially in the dark.

  But instead of fear, Brosie felt annoyance. She wanted to follow the figure down the hall, but there was this great door that seemed to hold her in place, whispering to be opened, and she could not follow both desires. Soon, however, the choice was made for her.

  The ground level below the stairs where she’d started out was completely shrouded in darkness now, a great black hole waiting to gulp her up if she fell. From it she heard a heavy-bodied, huffing noise growing louder. Then she saw the glow of tangerine eyes flicker and brighten.

  In that moment, something very small but powerful, deep in the dungeons inside of Brosie, creaked and turned, and a door was opened in a cloud of previously undisturbed dust. It changed everything.

  The huffing grew into a bellow, and without understanding what was happening, Brosie turned, hiked up her long dress, and tried the handle of the great wooden door.

  Locked.

  She slammed it with her shoulder.

  It didn’t budge.

  At once, the eyes were gone. Candles that she hadn’t seen before became lit, their flames flickering into dawning life. In the middle of the floor, where Brosie had stood just minutes before, there was a girl sitting at a desk and writing. She was younger than Brosie, and there was something else…

  Somehow Brosie knew—the girl was dead.

  “Are you afraid, yet?” the girl asked without looking up from her writing.

  Brosie cleared her throat and found that she could speak. “Of course not.”

  Finally, the girl looked up from her writing, locking her gaze on the living girl. “Then you’re in more danger than you can imagine.”

  With that, the candlelight was snuffed out, the door behind Brosie blew open, and after only a moment’s hesitation she stepped through it.

  It closed on its own, and Brosie thankfully leaned her back against the wood. There was no slowing her heartbeat, which was like an unmanned canoe plummeting down mountain rapids. The best she could do was close her eyes and count the beats.

  Eventually, the canoe of her heart found a more horizontal rapids. She did not want to open her eyes, but the eerie feeling that she was not alone in this new room forced her to look at her surroundings.

  She realized right away that her feeling was both wrong and right. It was not a room she was standing in at all, but an outside area, a courtyard or atrium of sorts, right in the middle of the house. She was right, however, to think that she was not alone.

  An unimpressive stone platform in the middle of the courtyard was surrounded almost completely by a circle of robed figures. She saw that the only exposed part of them was the face. But theirs were not human faces; they were fuzzy and unclear. If Brosie had (accurately) known the meaning of the word nebulous she would have used it to describe those faces. She watched as another nebulous figure entered the courtyard through a door along the right wall.

  The one I saw inside, she thought.

  Unlike the others, this one was wearing a hood. Apparently, it was the last figure, the one the rest had been waiting for. Each of the nebulous pivoted in sync to face the empty platform. No words were forthcoming from the circle. Perhaps they were without voices as well as faces.

  By some hidden cue they all raised a hand high into the air. Brosie saw their weapons clearly; silver stones glimmered fiercely in the hands of the nebulous. Then the stones were launched at the empty platform.

  It was an odd sight, these ghostly figures throwing stones, with such obvious determination, at no one at all. But it also made Brosie feel a sickness rising in her throat. She suddenly felt it was very important to stay hidden. She tried to slink along the door and walls to the corner, which was hidden in shadow.

  The nebulous launched a final round of stones that met above the platform and clacked and rolled to rest below. Again in unison, the stone-throwers turned themselves slowly, as if controlled from below, to face Brosie.

  She hadn’t made it to the corner, or even barely away from the door. Her feeling then reminded her of math games in school, when it was her turn to face off against another student with an equation on the board and the rest of her teammates were watching with arms crossed. Only this was much worse: these things were not children, and they were probably not interested in watching her do math.

  Without turning from her they all pointed to the platform at the center. They were demanding, not suggesting, that she step into the center of the circle.

  Brosie was fully panicking. Strangely, the thought crossed her mind that there was no poetry for this moment. She of course shook that thought away and tried to figure out what to do.

  She could go to the platform and face her fate, or try to communicate with the nebulous somehow, or she could run away. Since nothing about facing her fate sounded good and communication seemed unlikely, Brosie embraced the choice to run straight to the door and leave without looking back.

  But before she could turn the handles, the doors burst towards her with a gush of cold wind, knocking her to her bottom on the ground. For a moment she saw nothing but heard the huffing sound again. Then, through the still-windy threshold, there came a large creature with bright tangerine-colored eyes. It was about one and a half times the size of any horse Brosie had ever seen on the Island. But she couldn’t see it clearly; it was shrouded in a cloak of mist. It was stepping in her direction, and it was not slowing down.

  Brosie scrambled to her feet and ran the other way, jumping onto the platform then leaping off it to get to the other side of the courtyard. But as soon as she touched the ground, she felt a violent gyration in the air and had to stop.

  The nebulous had formed a much smaller circle immediately around her, and the misty monster was part of the circle right in front of her. Her eyes were about a foot away from the monster’s. She realized the gyration was caused by the incredible speed of movement these cursed things possessed. She also realized she would not be able to escape.

  The monster stepped towards her, and she went backwards until she found herself on the platform. With the same speed and churning of the air as before, the nebulous slid back to their original positions in a large circle around the platform, all except one—the one she’d seen in
the hallway. The figure reached up and pulled back its hood, revealing the calm face of Brosie’s mother, Evening.

  The moment was quiet. Brosie had a second or two to think about her short life and her family. This all had to be some kind of punishment; there was really no other way to read it.

  “Brosie,” Evening said, “you’ve brought this on yourself, because of what happened That Night on the canyon. You knew that, didn’t you?

  “You are not the smartest in school, or the best actress, or the best anything. You haven’t honored me with greatness. Yet, even those things wouldn’t matter if what happened That Night had not happened.”

  Brosie wanted to speak, to say she was sorry. But shame smothered her like an overcoat in summer, and there was nothing she could say.

  At the edge of her vision the nebulous were raising their stones, but she was looking at her mother, trying to get more of an explanation from her. She just wanted her mother to keep talking; she hadn’t heard that voice in so long.

  But it was silent, and the stones were cast, the first by Evening. Brosie never felt them.

  3

  Lewis Ashe

  Brosie finally poured her glass of water without spilling it on the fourth try. The kitchen was bright from full moonlight outside the window. She drank from the glass carefully and put up the water jug, which had a few lines printed on the back: “Water is the purest source of vitality. None of our local legends was ever without it. And Jukjeon Water is the purest of all!”

  But Brosie was still living in her dream. The orange eyes captivated her more than anything else. She actually expected them to be around every corner. Where did the monster come from? She had never seen, heard, or read of anything like it.

  A groan from the furniture in the living room interrupted her thoughts. She peeked around the door into the darkness of the room, ready to see tangerine-colored eyes glaring at her. Instead, she saw a familiar purple rectangle of light from the armchair. Her father was captivated, as he usually was, by an electronic tablet that held the names of every citizen of Lorn Island. Tonight, though, it was especially late—almost dawn, in fact. His spectacled face was lit up by the tablet screen. No doubt, even if he were to look in Brosie’s direction, he wouldn’t be able to see her.

  Some nights his daughter used this to sneak up and scare him, though the pleasure she got out of it became less and less as he reacted with more and more irritation. She didn’t want to be a part of any scaring tonight, anyway.

  “Daddy,” she said softly, expecting him to flinch. “I had a bad dream.”

  He didn’t move at all, except to continue mouthing something he was reading on the screen.

  Brosie walked across the room to him, pulling back a rocking chair so it would squeak and groan to announce her presence. Still her father continued in his trance, chanting to himself in rhythm.

  Her own experiments had taught Brosie what to do in a situation like this. She stopped beside him, gently put her hand on his shoulder, and said “Daddy” again in a quiet, even voice.

  Lewis Ashe stopped muttering silently to himself. He looked over at his daughter with his eyes, but Brosie thought that his mind was still somewhere far away. He sighed.

  “Yes, love? I was listening the whole time. Just busy right now.”

  “I had a really bad dream. I just wanted to talk about it.”

  Brosie could not see it, since there was a glare from the tablet on his spectacles, but her father turned his eyeballs wearily to the screen for a few seconds. Then, imitating a warrior who lays down his meal to go and fight in the name of duty, he turned the tablet screen down onto his lap.

  “Talk away,” he said.

  Brosie recounted the whole dream to her father, with a few embellishments. The nebulous figures hadn’t only stood around the platform, they had floated. The blackness at the bottom of the stairs had grown massive jaws. The monster had not merely stared at her in the courtyard, it had cackled.

  “Mama was there, too. She was upset with me. And I just feel like I’ve done something wrong,” Brosie finished.

  “As if,” her father responded. “You feel as if you’ve done something wrong. But as for the dream, it’s witches and ghosts and goblins. Nonsense. Nothing at all to be concerned about.”

  “But I still feel . . . I don’t know, unpleasant. Even though I know they’re not real.”

  “It’s a training of the mind, Brosie. You’ve been spending all your time up in the graveyard, Ackleford tells me, and of course you can’t shake the feeling that ghosts are creeping around every hall and laughing at you. You have to laugh back at them. You’re a rational girl, and you won’t be taken in by nonsense. Tell yourself that.

  “Remember your vision: to be the Island’s greatest poet. I thought letting you play around Ackleford’s filthy plot might put the spur to your talent. A number of great poets were inspired by graves and shadows and such. But maybe it’s not helping you. Maybe it’s time we got a little more hands-on with your training.”

  Brosie felt a sudden surge of panic in her mind and for a moment forgot her dream.

  “It’s very inspirational, Daddy. I’m always coming up with grand adventures and wonderful places, and it’s teaching me how to write epics. I think it would ruin things now if I stopped going there.”

  “That’s not the way I see it. I see you interrupting my work tonight worried about ghosts, Brosie. And what’s with this grave I hear you’re digging?”

  “It’s—” Brosie thought about lying, but a strange thing happened. She looked into her father’s face, visible by the moonlight, and a scene flashed into her mind. She was walking in the middle of a street during last year’s Harvest Festival. Her parents were there, together. Her mother took her hand and trailed it across a coconut. In the distance her father was smiling at her, hands empty and rubbing his stomach in a “yummy” gesture. He loved coconuts and knew his daughter despised them. Then the scene ended.

  “It’s a grave for Mama,” she said flatly.

  “Your mother isn’t dead, Brosie. She could walk back in here any moment. I’ve told you that.”

  “I know. I can’t explain it. I just feel like—um, as if—I have to do it.”

  Her father’s hand was twitching slightly, fingering the tablet. His breathing was heavier, and his mood was somehow changed.

  “I don’t want you to go back to the graveyard anymore, Brosie. Tomorrow, we’re going to find you a tutor. You’ll continue to learn writing that way.”

  Brosie had the feeling that the organs inside her had wrecked, that they were all mish-mashed together in unnatural ways. But she said nothing to her father; he was already entranced by the tablet screen again and she knew she’d lost him.

  * * *

  Returning to the bedchamber was out of the question.

  There were many things that Brosie didn’t know, but she knew very well that she had one chance to sleep each night. If she woke before dawn, she didn’t find her way back—period. That meant a few more hours of feeling the cycle inside herself churn and choke as she watched her window. She wasn’t interested in that.

  The grave had to be finished; Brosie knew this. Only dirt would muffle the cycle, it seemed. She would have gone and finished it right then, but there was a problem.

  Those eyes.

  They could be anywhere out there. The world was too open. There weren’t enough walls to press your back against and slide across as you traveled from one place to another. Better to stay here, on the sitting room couch, until the light arrived.

  And with that thought, Brosie knew she had lied to her father. It wasn’t unpleasantness she was feeling.

  It was fear.

  4

  That Night

  Brosie had her own plans for living on Worthing Hill one day, and they were not the same as her father’s.

  To Lewis Ashe, becoming a great poet meant lots of study about very serious, grown-up things like meter, slant rhymes, consonance, and enjambment. br />
  But to Brosie, great poets were people who lived in beautiful and mysterious ways. They could enter a garden in the dead of night, listen to the silence, and imagine all the feet that had passed by there throughout the ages and were now gone forever. They could know that we humans own nothing except that which we have been given.

  If she committed herself to graveyards and the dark chambers of the sea, never fearing them but only understanding the poetry in death and history, then she was convinced the Island would find her a person too unexplainably different from anyone else to keep her out of Worthing Hill. Unfortunately for Brosie, her new tutor, Mrs. Appling, was much more concerned with enjambment.

  “Above all else,” Mrs. Appling said during their session, “remember why we hold the Harvest Festival every year: ‘If you sow seeds of excellence, in due time you will harvest their fruits.’ Entrench yourself in your craft, and you will emerge more skillful than you can imagine.”

  Brosie felt confused. “Which fruits are the excellent kinds?”

  “It’s a metaphor, dear. There aren’t any actual fruits in this scenario.”

  But Brosie was concerned. A peach was not a cantaloupe, was not a plum, was not a mango. If she were going to put in all this work, she wanted to know what she was going to end up with.

  “If I spend the next 10 years studying poetry, will I end up on Worthing Hill?”

  “Who can say for sure?” Mrs. Appling said. “The way the Extraction works is a mystery to us all. One can only assume that technical prowess plays a role.”

  It was then that Brosie recommitted to living a poetic life, and to studying as little as possible. None of the grown-ups seemed to know anything, after all.

  * * *

  From the hallway, Brosie saw her father’s spectacled face slumped over his tablet and heard him snoring. Though he would probably wake before dawn, Brosie wasn’t worried that he would check her room. He never did.

  He only notices if you wake him up, she thought.