Chapter 2 (Ash)

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Next: *Chapter 3*

Ash used to ask Grandmama where Celtheste was, and Grandmama would say “far,” and Ash would say, “but where?” and Grandmama would say, “across the sea.” And for years, this was sufficient. They looked like they could be from East or Southeast or maybe Central Asia? It was exceedingly unclear what they were, especially when you looked at the whole family. Ash’s skin was twice as dark as anyone else besides Da. Ari, her twin, had light skin, and big, oval eyes. She might as well have been from another continent, and she looked barely anything like Axel, who looked nothing like Aaron or Aliyah. So “across the sea” worked for when they lived in Canada or Queens. Nobody really questioned it.

It was when they lived in Europe and then Kentucky that people really started asking questions and Ash began banging her head on the wall because of how little sense she could make of it. Their last name had to be some kind of Arabic, but even that was off by a couple critical letters. Grandmama’s stories seemed a bit European at time, what with all the crowns and castles, and places named Singwood and Arcandean. But of course Ash could never find Celtheste on a map. She looked in Asia and Europe. She looked between and beyond, even at the islands, though she knew Celtheste was not an island. That, at least Grandmama was adamant about. But anything more specific and the old woman was wretchedly vague. Once, in a fit of determination, Ash stormed Grandmama’s room with a National Geographic foldout of the world and demanded that she point to exactly where Celtheste was. Calmly, Grandmama put on her glasses and carefully scanned and squinted at the glossy magazine paper. She looked a long while before shaking her head.

“Celtheste is not on this map,” she said. Ash was enraged.

“How?” said the girl, “How can it not be on the map? This is the whole. Entire. World.” Grandmama shrugged.

“It’s a bad map.” Which was just enough of an answer to disarm Ash just long enough to be shuffled out the door.

But Ash was relentless. She never stopped asking, and Grandmama didn’t seem to discourage her. In fact, she seemed to enjoy Ash’s latest theories and interrogation techniques. At one point Ash was certain that Celtheste must be a former Soviet State that had been absorbed in the last fifty years. She tried every variation fo the spelling and learned the Cyrillic alphabet in order to page through tens of historical Russian atlases. There were times she thought she found something, but Grandmama would shoot her down and give her something ridiculous: “Caltania is on the moon,” she said once, “Caltania is on mars,” “Caltania is deep inside the earth,” “Caltania is in a dome under the ocean,” “Caltania is on a disappearing landmass,” “Caltania is in the place you go to when you stand on your head and everything is upside down.”

“See,” said her brother Axel, “she’s full of shit.”

“But her memories seem so real,” said Ash.

“Like what? The time she thwarted a plot against the emperor?”

“Helped thwart a plot.”

“She grew a guy’s limb back?”

“He was part tree.”

“When she met a literal fairy princess? Come on, Ash. Embellished at best, totally full of shit at...definitely.”

“No, I mean her memories seem real.” Ash hadn’t been able to articulate it at that moment, but what she’d meant was the look in Grandmama’s eyes when she told them all those stories; the way she seemed to hurt, and shrink, and smile and breathe easier. For a moment, she considered that it was all real, but just in Grandmama’s head. That she was chasing someone down a rabbit hole of senility. And yet, that still didn’t answer any questions about who they were, not really.

“Nah,” said Axel.

“Then where do we come from?” said Ash, “If not Celtheste, then where? No one else will tell us.”

“I’ll tell you,” said her brother. He leaned in towards her, “it doesn’t. Fucking. Matter. Who the fuck cares if we’re from Tibet or—Tonga or some shit. It has nothing to do with us. We live in the now, bro. In the here. In...what is this place again?”

“Frankfurt.”

“Right. So I’m not gonna learn huk-huk homeland language so I can commune with the ancestors. Because I have to learn German now, so I can make out with a hot German girl or whatever their mating customs here are.”

“You’re disgusting,” said Ash, but that was still the most substantial conversation she’d ever had about Celtheste, not counting, of course, that day at the big house by the sea. But that had never happened. Or no one had ever allowed her to believe it happened. Until now.

Ash knew the moment she touched Foxgear’s papers that she’d finally gotten somewhere. She shuffled each paper behind the next, scanning the faces and the names, with this cold sweat on the back of her neck. It was like surfacing from a dream and then, after a day of forgetting about it, finding a stranger had written down the details, had taken pictures of the most secret parts of your mind. She knew these kids. Just not as kids, and never in this context. There was her father, of course, even then as gap-toothed and disheveled as his current self. He didn’t look scared like the other kids, just caught off guard by the camera. It would be comical if she didn’t absolutely hate him for his hopeless incompetence. In fact, it was probably true that he didn’t remember any of it; according to the file, he was six years old. But the others, the older ones—it was like catching them in a lie. More than that, she’d uncovered some kind of plot to drive her insane. All these years, everyone had insisted that she’d imagined everything: the peculiar jewelry, the hushed conversations, the big house by the sea and all those cousins running around... and one day, it seemed, everyone started pretending none of it had happened. Even Grandmama.

These jokers Ash called Uncle Poter and Aunt Hyathime, they had their papers, too, with their little mugshots. And according to the numbers at the top of their files, they were sixteen. Sixteen! They were fully sentient humans! Yet they’d always insisted, clumsily, Ash might add, that they’d grown up with Ma in Alberta or some shit and they didn’t remember anything before that. It was always so vague. They’d barely remember what they’d had for breakfast five minutes ago if it was convenient to them. They’d always been so cheerfully irritated with all of Ash’s questions, always busy, busy, busy, and aren’t you a smart girl to be asking all these useless questions, and don’t you have homework to do? They only seemed to arrive when some kind of disaster struck, to throw money at Da or coo over Ma, or wrap all of their things in Saran Wrap to be shipped off to wherever place it was time to live next.

In their pictures they were immediately recognizable. Their faces already looked old, their eyes were sunken in and twitchy. They were both holding their breaths, expecting to be caught at any moment. It was as if no one had changed since these photos. The flash had gone off and they’d all been stuck that way, however they were in that moment, forever. She recognized weepy Aunt Myrta right away, lurking probably some close distance behind Da. There was that man who’d come with Poter and Hyathime once. Ash had never learned his name but knew his swollen, crooked nose from a mile away. And then there was Ma. She wasn’t looking into the camera, but beyond it somehow. Her eyes were glazed over. Her small lips pursed tightly. She was ten here. Surely she remembered fleeing from another universe as well as Ash could remember moving to Germany at around the same age. Hell, Ash could remember every move back to when she was four. It was all so clear to her, so obvious, so infuriatingly vivid. All these faces, all these names. She knew them. Some of them were liars, some of them were ghosts. None of them had ever so much as uttered the name of Celtheste since that day on the beach, and yet there it was, clear as day, Selthesti, printed under uyruk, which must mean nationality.

She could feel them, the memory of them, humming in the back of her mind. She could feel that big old house—huge and rectangular, with rickety old elevators that had folding metal gates and dumbwaiters that didn’t work anymore. It was a reunion. She remembered being on some trip with Grandmama. One minute they were in a supermarket buying dates, the next they were by the ocean, straggling up a slope that turned from sand to vegetation and then the house was right there, all of a sudden.

And there were cousins. So many, endless numbers of cousins. No one explained how and if they were really related, but there were hundreds filling the grounds. And the basement. And the hallways. You could see the children because they were running like sand through your fingers. You could see the children in the kitchens where the flock of aunties cooked and washed and clanged their pots and kettles—or some would lean against the counters fishing pretzels out of jars and chattering while the children ran beneath them like water. And upstairs in the bedrooms, the men stood apart from one another, staring out the windows, smoke rising together from their cigarettes. There was smoke from the cigars, too, resting between the fingers of the older women sitting in ornate chairs. All the doors were open and most of the rooms were silent. It seemed, these aunties would not speak. The parlors and libraries and drawing rooms were simply empty.

But the foyers and the hallways and the bathrooms were filled with life; packed with boys and men in blue, grey, and brown suits—checkered ties; women with circular hats, veils—rectangular dresses in red, blue or brown. There was so much movement and laughter that the chandeliers would vibrate, and a sheen of dust would fall, slowly over the people below, and the light from the about-to-set sun would come through the high windows and catch the specks and particles, suspending them in the air like tiny dusk fireflies. It must have been, thought Ash, that people entered the house through these rooms and then found people they recognized. Then they would start conversations right there that lasted hours. They must have moved inward to eat at some point, maybe to the long tables in the dining room, or to the awnings set up outside, but only after the aunties in the kitchen came up all at once; shouting, clanging their pots and kettles, shooing the crowd along. According to Grandmama, this was a Celthestan thing to do, to stop at the first place on a journey and decide you liked it far too much to move on.

Ash remembered sitting on the beach with about four other kids, all of them fast friends, as the daylight retracted. They were full and content and one of them was named Asha like her with a big strong voice and bold hand motions, and one of them was named Fareh in a blue dress, and there was a boy with a very round, shiny bald head who the girls were a bit annoyed at. They all looked very different, and some barely spoke any English, and yet they all had something in common with her, something a little wild and pure and restless. She hadn’t been able to put her finger on it, but she remembered thinking it should be like this all the time. She remembered thinking: I wish this feeling was a place so I could come here anytime. And when I grew up, I’d live here.

Ari was there, too, back when they were inseparable. Before she became the pretty twin and forgot about all their old adventures looking for dinosaur bones in public parks. She forgot this day, too. She’d told Ash it probably hadn’t happened. That she’d read about it somewhere and forgot it wasn’t real. Everyone told her that. Everyone. But it was. It was real. It was all real and this proved it. This proved it was real, dammit.  They’d all been there, on that beach, when Ash and her new found friends rounded the edge of a particularly large boulder. All of them: Auntie Hyathime, and Uncle Poter, and Auntie Myrta, and the man with the bad nose, and Da holding Grandmama’s hand, and Ma standing alone far away from the rest of them, and everyone else in these files that Ash either did not, or only vaguely remembered, except this man. She put her thumb on his forehead, or the image of him as a toddler. This man she remembered very clearly. His name, most of all.

“Kastour, please.” It was Poter, speaking as quietly as he could, almost under his breath. “This is nonsense. You can’t return. There’s no way back.”

“There is! There is!” Shouted the man. He looked like no one Ash had ever seen before: Jet black hair and faintly purple eyes, the highest, gauntest of cheekbones. “There are tunnels! Doors! Back the way we came or some way else. These men I found, Poter, they know the way. They can take us back.”

“Who, Kastour?” Said Hyathime, “you will take your children, too? To a world they’ve never known? You weren’t old enough to remember how dangerous it was. How dangerous!” But Kastour was screeching now.

“How can you stand it? All of you! And all the thieves and degenerates back in that house. How suffocated this world is! How dead and ripe!” He spat. That was enough for Grandmama, who shook Da’s hand free in one defiant swipe. She shoved her nose straight into Kastour’s chin.

“You should be so lucky. To be alive in this dead world.” She was snarling.

“What?” Replied Kastour, not intimidated in the least, “because of you? You think you rescued us? You stupid old woman. You tore us from our home? You ripped us away from magic! You cruel beast!”

She slapped him. With the whole motion of her arm. The man staggered back, and in the process lost his footing. He turned and fell on his hands and knees, facing the ocean.

“You cannot return,” said Grandmama, “because Celtheste does not want you.”

“You’re wrong,” said Kastour, as he got up. And he began to hobble into the ocean. “You’re wrong. Celtheste calls to me. Your old ears are too deaf to hear. It’s calling us, Maleha, it’s calling us back. All of us.”  And then, without warning, he sprinted into the ocean.

Someone screamed. Poter yelled his name and sent Da and two other men after him. Someone else noticed the children, watching from beside the boulder and shouted. Ash locked eyes with her Grandmother.

“We’re here” said Foxgear. “My friend, hello? We’re here.”

So they were going to Celtheste. There was some kind of portal to locate, inside or underneath a building. Or at least that’s what Ash surmised from their cautious and long-winded explanations. The deal was, take Ash to Celtheste and she would allow them a long, juicy peek at her map. No touching. No photos. It reminded her of a situation her sister Aliyah had been in, but Ash didn’t want to say what. The point was, Ash had all the leverage as long as she had the map. And Ash needed all the leverage she could get, even if these people seemed relatively nice.

She told them her name, though. Handed over some ID and travel documents after they’d requested it. There was no point in hiding that anymore and Ash was tired of being called “my friend,” as if she were in some kind of WWI letter from the front.

“It’s a beautiful name,” said Foxgear.

“The name of queens,” said Jacoby. Ash raised an eyebrow, but continued her introductions.

“And this Gertrude. Gertrude, say hi.” The dog stuck out her tongue in greeting.

“After Gertrude Bell?” Said Jacoby. He’d laid out an unwieldy spread of files and file folders and Manila envelopes across every open surface in the front of the car, filling out paperwork with one stubby arm while he held up references with the other.

“Yes, actually. She’s my favorite archeologist.”

“A fine choice,”’ said Jacoby. “I am a student of the archeological sciences myself, you know.”

“Don’t be modest,” said Foxgear, “Asha, Jacoby is the foremost expert on middle Celthestan archeology in two worlds.”

“If that was true once,” he said, “it certainly isn’t anymore. I’m quite out of practice.”

“Nonsense,” said Foxgear, “were you aware, Asha, that he was the director of this very museum for over 25 years?”  She motioned outside towards the unassuming little corner building they were parked down the street from.

“No,” said Ash.

“Well, he was! Isn’t that wonderful?” Jacoby did not share Foxgear’s enthusiasm.

“Unfortunately, having once been director does not give us a way into the archives. In fact, I believe it will cause us some difficulty.”

“Why?” Asked Ash. The two adults looked at each other. Foxgear spoke up.

“We’re not entirely sure how, but some years ago, Interrealm lost control of this site and it fell into the hands of some people who, shall we say, are not so friendly to us.”

“It’s been somewhat of a catastrophe,” said Jacoby. “The Museum of Cosmic Apologies was our bureau’s last bridge point into E-Earth, the world in which Celtheste is located, and since they took over we ourselves have been unable to cross over either way, much less move or process any civilians.” Ash took a moment to admire the amount of breath support it took to finish that whole sentence by himself, but then it was back to business.

“I don’t understand. Whoever they are—why would they want to control the portal?”

“Not a portal,” said Jacoby, “portals are doors. One room to the next. This is a bridge. It crosses the divide.”

“But to answer your question,” said Foxgear, “we assume they use it for smuggling and other such prohibited activities. Interrealm—we are supposed to do something about that but it’s a bit of a losing battle lately. Wild, Wild West as you Americans say.”

“I’m not American,” said Ash.

“You have an American credentials,” said Jacoby, flipping through her passport. “How did you get it to say you were eighteen?” She’d forged her birth certificate. But Ash wasn’t about to tell them that, so she changed the subject back.

“Wild West. Does that make you...what, the sheriffs of the multiverse?”

“Not us, personally,” said Foxgear. “We were never field operatives. I’m a linguist and Jacoby, you know.”

“Research arm,” said the man. “That’s all we were until a month ago.”

“And what happened a month ago?” They looked at each other again, this time for longer, not knowing what to say. Foxgear touched her belly. Finally, she spoke.

“Asha, I must say that our first priority is your safety. Though we are not perhaps your ideal escorts, I assure you all Interrealm operatives have received sufficient field training.”

It was a suspicious and unsettling dodge to her question. Ash took a long hard look at her new travel-buddies. There was obviously something big they weren’t telling her about, something horribly dangerous that Ash had always been on the cusp of falling into. And these two were as bottom-of-the-barrel as you could get when it came to serious adventuring. A pregnant woman and a senior citizen? Tragic accidents waiting to happen, or at least a stupid lawsuit. Then again, maybe their frailty was exactly why the alliance was acceptable. If it came down to it, she and Gertrude could take them. And besides, no one had offered her a deal before that she was willing to take. That was another lesson she’d learned quickly on the road: most of the times, all you can do is take opportunities as they come and hope you’re quick enough to pivot when things inevitably go wrong.

“Fine. So what’s the plan? Don’t tell me we’re going to knock out some guards.” There was an immediate, appalled uproar from Foxgear and Jacoby.

“Oh! No, no, no!”

“Heavens no!”

“It’s not so bad,” said Foxgear, “There are guards, yes, but it is a museum, not a military base. In the daylight, just a normal museum, yes?”

“All we need do is find a clandestine way for all of us to get inside and then take the fire-stairs down to sub-basement 3.”

“Yes, it’s not so bad,” Foxgear repeated, “there is a back door. We just need to be a little bit sneaky. The two of us,” she pointed at herself and Jacoby, “maybe there is a picture of us, saying ‘don’t allow them in the museum!’ That’s why we need you to go in first and let us in the back door. Very simple. Not a big James Bond sort of thing. We just need to open a door.” They made it sound so simple. Ash couldn’t tell if they were reassuring her or themselves. But her suspicion was that things would be considerably more complicated. And sure enough, things immediately went wrong.

First there was the door, which was thick and wooden and grisly, with an iron ring for a handle. It was wedged into the stark neo-gothic stonework of the doorframe which formed a neat arch above it and above that, a stone plaque with Arabic letters, accented with the faintest flecks of yellow paint. The whole building had a closed-for-business vibe. The windows were frosted over with dust, the once tomato-red bricks had a diseased grayish tinge to them. There was no indication that there was any museum here except for a ratty piece of paper duct-taped to the door that said Kozmik Af Müzesi. Ash pulled, then pushed, then the door gave in with an obnoxious, flatulent groan. If there was any chance she was going to just slip in quietly, that chance had now passed.

Everyone looked up as she walked in, Gertrude in tow.

“Lay low, girl,” Ash whispered out the corner of her mouth. They’d taken precautions of course, for the nature of the mission. Gertrude now wore tiny Christmas tree socks on each foot. Stealth mode.

The place had clearly been a house at one point, but it was as if they’d cleared it out to re-decorate and just never did. The front room, once some kind of parlor, was lit by a lonely generic floor lamp, under which an old woman sat at a dented metal file desk. She eyed Ash suspiciously and then looked back down at her book. So did the little boy sitting on the floor, but it was a pile of stray clothing tags that he returned to. Through an archway that took up the entire left wall, Ash could see a hallway and a staircase. A smattering of people tore themselves away from the framed newspaper clippings they were gandering at to appraise the girl and her dog. To Ash’s relief, they all seemed to forget her immediately, their eyes wandering away idly. But the relief didn’t last more than a second.

A pair of grey loafers were coming down the stairs. The feet that wore them were bare along with the legs they were attached to. A pair of sweat-shorts came into view next, and then a massive, blocky Panasonic camera hanging over a pineapple-patterned t-shirt. Ash didn’t wait to see what was coming next. She didn’t want to see another pair of sunglasses in her life.

Not a chance, thought Ash, and she backed up, feeling for the door with one hand and her backpack with the other. She looked down to check on Gertrude, but was appalled to see that she was scampering away silently, past the stairs, down the hallway. No! Ash tried to say, but caught herself. No one looked at the dog, tail wagging, legs flailing every couple steps as she tried to find traction. Ash tore herself from the door and ran after.

It was a labyrinth of a house. Every room looked the same. Bare white walls. Despondent, slightly unkempt people, staring vacantly at walls and freestanding plexiglass cases. Back door, back door, thought Ash, just find the back door and—and what? Hope Foxgear and Jacoby could handle the Bulgarians in tight quarters? Gertrude seemed to know what she was doing at least, weaving determinedly around and (at one point) between people’s legs. They were all over this place, at least one in every room, striding around mechanically, totally unaware of how small the rooms were or what they were supposed to be looking at. One almost saw her, Ash thought, but she’d ducked her head and zipped off just in time. Ash shivered. These couldn’t possibly be actual Bulgarians. So what were they?

Magic, said Grandmama’s voice in her head, filthy, demonish magic of men. In those days the land was corrupt with it.

Ash held her breath and stopped in her tracks. There was one standing at the end of the hallway, back to her, staring at the white space above a watercolor painting. Gertrude had already slipped passed him and into the room to his left, into the pale light of sun reflected off snow, coming through some glorious window. But it was a narrow hallway. She couldn’t pass by without bumping into him and if he turned around she was caught. What did they see? Did they even see her or, as it seemed, straight through her to the map?

Gertrude’s head popped around the corner of the door. Inches away from the Bulgarian’s outdated ripped jeans. Desperate times.

Here girl, mouthed Ash. Gertrude nodded and trotted back towards her. Slowly, silently, Ash removed her backpack and crouched down. When Gertrude arrived, Ash placed it in front of her and held her finger to her lips. Then pointed back to the light filled room. Gertrude nodded in understanding. She picked the backpack up with her mouth and set off.

An eternity passed on the way down the hallway. Gertrude first, bag bobbing along with her head, a plastic appendage hovering centimeters from the ground. When she got to the man, Gertrude stopped, realizing that there was no way she could slip past the man holding the bag sideways. Ash held her breath. The dog tried to adjust her body and, that failing, set the bag carefully down, so she could nudge it with her nose. The man stood motionless. Ash shook her head after the first nudge and its tiny, precarious scraping sound. Gertrude froze. The man scratched his neck.

Ash produced a loud, noxious cough and the man spun around, and in that moment, Gertrude snatched up the bag and ran.

Ash had to act quickly.

“Excuse me, sir. Do you know where the toilet is?” The man stared blankly. Ash held her breath. She thought about if she was ready to fight for the map, despite everything she’d already been through. So far she’d just been running, which had been easy enough. Sure, being shot at and having her arm jerked away from her in the middle of a crowded flea market was unpleasant and traumatizing, but it had all been simple, too. Just duck, hide, rack up some distance, take a detour. There wasn’t much choice to survival besides weighing options. You didn’t risk anything when there was nothing you wanted except to get away. If she was honest with herself, Ash loved it.

This, she didn’t. If it had been up to her, she would have been gone the moment she saw these sketchy men crawling over this sketchy museum. Gone. Out of the city. Out of the country. At least three seas between them. But here she was, facing one down without a weapon or a clue. And what did she know? What would she do? Come to think of it, she’d never even looked at an assailant this closely, so she did, as he failed to react to her question. He had so few lines on his face and the lines that were there were far too clean. He looked like he belonged in a different light, a different painting altogether. Or, just—a painting.

“Hello? Sir?” Ash repeated. He didn’t open his mouth or move. “Hey. I’m talking to you.” He didn’t seem to hear her either. To her horror, he began to look right, towards where Gertrude had gone. “Hey! Over here. Remember me?” An inkling of an idea was forming in her mind. Not much of one, but it was something to go on anyway. She’d need water. And where would she get that? She had a bottle in her backpack but that was gone now. She tensed. The man had decided to walk towards her. Big, blocky strides that made the floorboards bend and squeak with each step, until he was right in front of her. He grabbed the sleeve of her windbreaker and then opened his mouth.

“Map,” he rasped. It was a voice not fully formed, choked with fluid, as inhuman as the blackness inside his mouth. That’s right. There was no flesh in there. No pink. Just an empty void like someone had forgotten to shade it in. His comparatively fluorescent lips closed back around it, and Ash spit on his nose. She’d been gathering this one since last she spoke. A big, slimy glob right in the middle of his face. The creature flinched, startled by the sensation. It held up its hand to touch the offending spot, which was now running thick with pigment—paste—leaving grooves and cracking ever so slightly as a clay pot in too-high-heat. For a moment the whole of him flickered and he looked very two dimensional. Practically a cardboard cutout. He shook himself, like a wet cat. Ash slipped past him and down the hall, into the light-filled room. There was a door to it. A thick red oak one with a deadbolt. Finally, some piece of the universe wanted to cooperate. She shut it. Bolted it. She leaned her back against it and slumped to the floor.

“Ma’am. Young miss.” Someone’s crisp English accent. Ash opened her eyes. Slowly. “Is this your dog?” She was looking at a thin balding man in an ill-fitting blue suit. “I’m afraid pets are not allowed on the museum premises.”

“She’s not—she’s my—“ Ash’s head was swimming. Her blood was thick with adrenaline. Hold on. She stood up. This was it. This was where she needed to be. The room was like all the other rooms, but bigger, and the back wall was all windows and a glass door into the snow-laden courtyard. And sure enough, in the corner of that courtyard, above a sad little fountain, an old man and a pregnant woman were climbing over the wall in their puffy winter jackets, rather un-gracefully, but who could blame them.

“Ma’am. I really must ask that you remove your pet. It’s bothering the museum patrons.” The rest of the room came into focus behind the balding man, as did Gertrude’s low, angry growls.

“No,” said Ash. How could she have missed this? There was another painted creep in this room playing a violent game of tug of war with Gertrude and her backpack. Unacceptable. Ash pushed this skinny loser aside and leaped towards the action. She grabbed the bag on Gertude’s side and pulled. “Hand. It.” She pulled harder but the man had one hell of a grip. “Over.” His knuckles were white hot. Fine then. She’d pull out the stops.

Here was another advantage: she and Gertrude were pulling on the top of the bag, where two heavy-duty slide release buckles kept all its contents from slipping out. Ash unbuckled them as she made eye contact with Gertrude, who was straining with all her might; her jaw locked, her teeth showing. She gathered herself and, with Ash, made one concerted, aggressive tug. The paint man reacted by tugging back twice as hard and in that moment, with a nod, Ash and Gertrude let go. The man flew back into a wall. The balding British man shrieked. And out of the backpack shot all of Ash’s things.

Mostly it was just dirty laundry, a baseball cap, passport. Her lightweight metal canteen rang out as it rolled towards her. But the map, too, was there. It hovered in the air for a moment, coasting back and forth like a stray leaf. The paint man, recovering, reached out to grab it, but Ash was quicker. Not in getting there first, but in unscrewing the cap on her canteen and splashing the water across the room, right at his head.

He melted. Or he split apart, then melted. Where the water hit, in a jagged line down the middle of his face, the colors of his skin liquified and streaked, layered onto one another, then splattered onto the floor. The rest of him followed, peeling away to either side, collapsing into small clouds of chalky powder as they hit the floor. The map landed at Ash’s feet.

“Oh no,” fretted the British man, “no, no, no magic here. Where did they even come from? And who the givens are you?”

No time to pause. There was a light rapping on the glass door to the courtyard on her right and behind her—meanwhile the British man had picked up an old rotary phone hanging on the wall and was frantically dialing for help. Gertrude barked aggressively at him and he flinched, but kept spinning that obnoxious wheel.

“Asha! We are over here!” Came Foxgear’s muffled voice from outside. Ash rolled her eyes and booked it over there. This part was easy. The  handle was a bar that she pushed forward with the door. Her new colleagues burst into the room along with a cold blast of air.

“Hello?” Chattered the balding man. He must have reached someone. “I’m afraid there’s been a complex misunderstanding in the map reading room.” But he never got the chance to explain. The phone was snatched from him by a meaty round hand and tucked into a flush pink ear.

“I apologize,” said Jacoby. He breathed laboriously into the receiver before continuing. “There’s been a misunderstanding”—loud exhale— “about the misunderstanding. Which is—that there’s no misunderstanding after all. Everything’s fine.”  He handed the phone clumsily back to the British man and patted him on the back. “Won’t you tell them, Shang?” he said, “tell them everything’s fine.” The man, Shang, was visibly sweating across his shiny forehead. He looked at Jacoby, then at Foxgear, then at Ash and Gertrude, all scattered around the room, postured aggressively towards him.

“Of course,” he said, and into the phone, “My mistake. Everything’s fine, loves,” and he hung it back on the wall.

“Who is this?” Asked Ash.

“Shang used to work for me here at the museum,” said Jacoby, “and frankly I’m surprised to see him. I thought we’d all been ousted.”

“No one was ousted,” spat Shang, “we were offered an exceedingly reasonable deal and only fools like you refused it.”

“You took the deal?” Said Jacoby.

“I’m here aren’t I?” Said Shang, “and frankly I find that the place is under better management.”

“You wouldn’t dare, Shang! You wouldn’t dare!”

“But Shang!” It was Foxgear’s turn to chime in. “You swore an oath! Do you even know what these people are doing? What they might be capable of?”

“No! And why in the world would it matter? Heaven knows I never cared for any of this white hat nonsense. I’m a curator, not a policeman and neither are you lot. The quicker you realize it the—“ Ash had quite enough of this guy.

“So you work here,” she interjected. Shang scrunched his nose at her. “Do you work here? Yes or no?”

“I do. But I don’t see how—”

“Then take us to sub-basement three.”

“Must you speak like you have a gun to my head? Because you don’t. In fact, you’re quite a ways off and you’ll find that I won’t be vanquished by a splash of water. A girl with a dog! Honestly, how uninspired—” Gertrude bared her teeth.

“Now he’s brave!” Roared Jacoby, who seemed to have puffed up to twice his original size and whose ruddy complexion had deepened so drastically it was now nearly purple. “The mighty Shang!”

“Don’t think I won’t pick up the phone again, Jacoby!”

“You know what I think?” Said Jacoby, “I think you’ll do exactly as I say.” Ash felt like she was intruding on something. But it was something familiar, like she was on the outside of a family argument. “Do you know why, Shang? Because you did exactly as I said not a minute ago. Because you led us to believe you’d gone into hiding rather than admit you’d been disloyal. Because, dear boy, you have neither the respect nor the admiration of anyone you respect or admire and even your shriveled little heart cannot withstand that kind of shame forever.” Ash smiled a little. She couldn’t help it. It was the kind of takedown that Ash aspired to execute, that Grandmama had routinely delivered to Da during his worst bouts of irresponsibility. Although Ash would never admit this, she spent an ungodly amount of time rehearsing snappy deep-cuts in her head, to really let Monica from Geometry class, and others, know what life was all about. Teach them a lesson or two about their attitudes.

“It’s too early for that kind of talk,” said Shang. He tried to remain defiant, but it was clear he’d just been severely deflated. “Honestly, Jacoby, it’s still light out.” The old man only grunted in response. The color had gone out of his face. Maybe he’d run out of poise or, more likely, had suddenly become embarrassed at his own outburst. Foxgear held on to her own alarmed grimace as she reached, slowly, for the courtyard door. It hadn’t closed properly and the chill was being felt by all parties now. Ash noticed herself shivering. “Oh don’t bother,” said Shang, looking towards Foxgear, “we’re heading out that way anyhow.”

“What do you mean by that?” Asked Foxgear. Shang sniffled as he adjusted his tie.

“Isn’t it obvious? We’ll have to cross the courtyard if we’re to take the elevators.”