The Ever Breath (10 page)

“Stabbed? Me?” Artwhip said, over his shoulder. “Thanks for the warning. All the more reason for you to leave me alone.”

“One more question,” Truman shouted down the alley.

“No more questions!” Artwhip said.

Truman stopped running. He stood in the alley and shouted, “Is Cragmeal a traitor like the man said?”

Artwhip stopped in his tracks. He turned around and dipped under a strung-up carpet so that he and Truman were face to face. He looked at Truman, standing there, breathless, and whispered, “I still believe in Cragmeal. I’ve devoted myself to the cause.” He lifted his shirt and revealed the hilt of a dagger—the feathered head of a snake, just like the one on the crest in Swelda’s parlor, the one with the crown of feathers like Grossbeak’s.

“What’s that mean?” Truman asked.

“I’m a jarkman,” Artwhip said. “A revolutionary.”

Did this mean that Truman’s
grandmother
was a revolutionary? “You’re for Cragmeal?”

“He’s my king, but I’m new.” Artwhip balled up his fists and shoved them in his pockets. “I’m awaiting orders, but I think they’ve forgotten about me, or worse.”

“Worse?”

“It’s been twelve years since we had a king to lead the jarkmen. We’ve been losing members and faith. And then the news spread that Cragmeal was back.” Artwhip shrugged, helpless. “But where is he now? Will the jarkmen believe people like the news peddler? That Cragmeal’s a traitor? Maybe we’re falling apart. Maybe there’s no longer a chain of communication. Maybe so many of us are caged up that it’s all over.” His eyes were wide and watery. Truman hoped he wasn’t going to cry. Truman felt like crying himself and he knew he couldn’t. Not now. There was too much at stake.

He walked up close to Artwhip and whispered, “I think I know where Cragmeal is. Are there any museums in this world? Dark ones with stuffed creatures and chopped-off fingers in glass cases?”

Artwhip stared at him. “Chopped-off fingers?”

At that moment, bullhorn speakers crackled. Then they squawked one of their prerecorded warnings:
“The enemy may be among us! The threat level is five. We repeat, five. Please report any suspicious behavior. Turn in information about any suspected jarkmen. This message comes to you from the Office of Official Affairs.”

Artwhip and Truman looked up at the speakers, which were attached to the corner of the building at the end of the alley.

“What are they talking about?” Truman asked. The speakers were repeating the warning. Truman hated the crackle, the droning voice, the electrified nervousness.

“Five is the highest level, but it’s always a level-five
warning. Why have levels if it’s always set at the highest?” Artwhip said, shaking his head.

“What is the Office of Official Affairs?”

Artwhip blinked. “Where are you from? Up in the highlands? You don’t know what the Office is?”

Truman shook his head.

“The Office of Official Affairs has divided all of us into the Officially Good and the Officially Evil, trying to make us believe that there are only two types of creatures. To protect the Officially Good, the Office has to do away with the Officially Evil.”

“How can they tell the Officially Good from the Officially Evil?”

“Ah, well. It’s simple.” Artwhip raised his finger. “The Officially Good agree with the Office of Official Affairs, and the Officially Evil don’t.” He lowered his voice. “But the Office doesn’t seem to have any real idea of what it means to be truly good—kind, brave, thoughtful. My father wants to achieve Official Goodness—to have his name, Archimeld P. Ostwiser, written on a folder, filed away in the Office of Official Affairs, with all of his important dates and distinctions and a wax seal pressed onto the documents so that he’s good and he can prove it.” He paused and took a deep breath. “The problem is that this desire to be Officially Good is the thing that allows my father to pass through the cage-lined streets and separate himself from the caged creatures. And that, Truman, is the most dangerous element of all! Do you understand?”

Truman nodded, but he wasn’t sure he understood any of it.

Artwhip clapped Truman on the shoulder. “I haven’t eaten anything but watery stew and old lard cakes for weeks. You’re hungry too. Aren’t you?”

Truman nodded again. He felt like he was starving, actually. He’d had nothing but berries all day.

“My father’s in the restaurant around the corner right this moment. He’s probably inspecting his teeth in the reflection on his cutlery. When I walk in there, he’s going to tell me that I’m too skinny and I should get a real job in his department at the Office of Official Affairs so I can fatten up and live a normal life.” Artwhip put his hands on his hips and let out a great sigh. He looked at Truman. “But if you’re there, maybe it’ll distract him a little.”

“I can be very distracting,” Truman said.

“Good, because they’ve got great food—fatty rinds of beef, broiled beet-nuts, stuffed mutton, bee ale, goose-egg chowder, potted cheeses, and chunks of sugar-crusted angel bread the size of my fist!”

Truman opened his mouth to tell him about all of his allergies, but then he closed it. Things were different in this world. “Thanks,” he said. “I’d love to come.”

“Okay, then,” Artwhip said. “Bring the mewler too. The best thing about my father is that he always picks up the tab.”

Camille remembered that the third step was missing. She jumped over the space and landed in the cellar, her hands clamped on her backpack’s shoulder straps. She looked past the gears, tubes, and corks, the baskets of berries, searching for the passageway to the Breath World. There was no time to waste—Truman was lost and her father, just a boy now, was there too. They needed her.

After scanning the room, she squatted down. From there, she spied a hole in the wall—a hole with a faint dim glow.

It was too small to crawl into with the backpack on her back. She quickly reversed it so that it sat on her chest and pushed the globe off to the side a bit so that she wouldn’t press on it too hard. Then she got down on all fours and pushed herself in. She crawled as swiftly as she could. The glowing jars of browsenberry wine lit her way. She thought of Truman. Lost in the woods? Lost in the Breath World? He was afraid of bullies and sidewalk cracks. How would he survive?

The passageway got tighter. She felt as if she could barely
breathe. The dirt was crumbling at the edges. She could feel the moist earth dampening the knees of her jeans. She started to wonder if her grandmother was crazy. Was any of this real? It would have felt like a dream, but the smell of the earth was too clear, the sound of the jostling snow globe inside the backpack too precise. She’d never dreamed in that kind of detail.

And then she came to a room with a branch reaching up into the shape of a gnarled and knotted hand—a hand holding nothing. The pinky was curled completely, as if it were broken and in need of a splint. She touched the rough bark, let her hand slip into the wooden hand. It was warm and strong.

There was something about the room that made her want to sit there and think about things. It felt like a place where you could come to some understanding. She didn’t have time to linger, though. She walked toward the tunnel up ahead, and that was when she saw the little husks.

They were small and translucent, the kind she’d read about in stories of survivors who’d had to eat locusts. Locusts molted and left behind strange, alien-looking exoskeletons. There was a small pile of them—two dozen or more. Some were broken into shards; others were still intact. What were they doing here in this hidden room deep under the ground?

She heard a noise up ahead—almost like a howling wind.

Then there was banging—sharp, hard knocks. Five in a row, then a pause. Then four more, a pause, and then six bangs in a row.

She began crawling into the tunnel on the other side of the room, moving steadily until she saw light at the end—a
golden light. She climbed up and out of the hole … into a tiny one-room hut. As soon as Camille stood up, she felt strange. Her eyesight was blurry and dim.

Was there dust in her eyes from the tunnel? She closed her eyes and then opened them again. The room was filled with blurry objects—a fat stove, a table and chair, ceiling-hung crockery, narrow cupboards. The walls, of mud and roots and vines, were twisting with shadows that weren’t shadows at all. They were cats with human hands, walking everywhere—on the small bed, the counter, the table. And it was there, on the table, that she saw Truman’s glasses, neatly folded. Her heart lurched in her chest. She rubbed her eyes, then took another look. Yes. They were his glasses, all right. It was proof. He’d really been here!

The banging was coming from an old woman wearing a wooly blue knit hat. She was holding a hammer and trying to wedge a thick branch into one of the room’s saggy corners, using the branch as a tent pole. She seemed flustered, but strong. She was muttering wildly under her breath, through lips that were crimped around nails. The other corners of the room were propped up by sticks already, but one of the sticks had snapped in half just above the sink and the mud ceiling had crumbled into the basin, which was now full of dirt.

Camille wasn’t sure what to do or say. She would have knocked first, but she hadn’t come through a door. So she gave a little cough.

The cats inched in and started hissing at her. This made the woman spin around, wielding the hammer over her head. She spat the nails out of her mouth.

“Who is it?” she sputtered. “D-d-don’t think I won’t use this!” One of her eyes was blue and wide with fear and the other was shiny and black. This was Ickbee. Though she and Swelda were identical twins, they didn’t look completely identical anymore. Swelda’s face had become gaunt with age, but Ickbee’s was big, pink, and flushed.

“Child of Cragmeal!” the woman said. “Oh my!” She bowed down. “I can’t tell you how this makes me feel—so proud, like a wind-caught sail on a tall, tall ship!” She lifted her head and spread her arms wide. “Look at you! My heart’s so full it may burst at the seams!” She wrapped her arms around Camille and smothered her for a moment. Camille felt the air being squeezed from her lungs. “Oh,” Ickbee cried, “it makes me want to cry to see you after all this time! But that’s no good, no good at all.” She released Camille, then pulled a handkerchief from her sweater sleeve and wiped her nose. “I’ve got to get this house propped up before it caves in on itself. And I can’t hammer with my one good eye blurred by tears!” She raised the hammer and then quickly lowered it. Ickbee’s mind changed gears quickly. “I’m sorry I lost your brother. He’s fleet of foot, that one!”

“That’s, um … okay?” Camille said, though she wasn’t so sure that it was.

“This house is tumbling in on itself and it will shrivel if the Ever Breath isn’t found,” Ickbee said. “The passageway will turn to dust and death! I tell you, death! Both worlds will be lost.”

“This is it, then, right?” Camille asked. “The Breath World?”

“But a mere dark corner of it,” Ickbee answered.

“But you’re one of the keepers of the passageway between the two worlds and”—Camille turned around and pointed to the tunnel—“that’s where the Ever Breath once was? In there? In the hand with the broken pinky?”

“Broken pinky!” Ickbee stomped her foot. “It’s begun!”

“What’s begun?” Camille asked, feeling slightly panicked.

“The hand! If the Ever Breath is gone for too long, the hand will curl up just like that, finger by finger. If it forms a solid fist, the Ever Breath can never be replaced!”

“We still have time,” Camille said. “It was only the pinky!”

“It will go quickly now,” Ickbee whispered. “Look at them!” She pointed to some wilting roots, the mud around them collapsing onto the floor in small mounds.

“How much time do you think we have?”

“A matter of days. We’ll have to find your brother, hope for some communication from your father, and, of course, hope that your father’s had luck locating the Ever Breath and—” She broke off and clapped at the mewlers. “Help me here! Start propping this up! I’ve got to take care of the child of Cragmeal!”

They sulked and hissed, but slowly they moved to the pile of branches on the floor.

Ickbee turned to Camille and said, “But you must be hungry! I forgot. I have food for you. I must seem a dansey-headed fool!” She scanned the counters, the stovetop. “Take a seat! At the table!”

Camille sat down and stared at her brother’s glasses. Her eyes were still blurry and she was getting a headache from squinting. She picked up the glasses and impulsively slipped
them on. Everything snapped into focus—the mewlers’ fur, the roots lining the small hole she’d climbed up from, even the grooves in the table and her own hands.

“Mewlers!” Ickbee cried, clapping hurriedly. “Quick now! Prop, prop, prop! Keep at it!” Ickbee was more in focus for Camille now too. Her face was chubby and round and pretty. Her one blue eye and her one strange black-pearl eye seemed to glitter. She smiled at Camille. “Mewlers are actually quite handy around the house! Good company for an old woman. Bean loaf, bean loaf, bean loaf,” Ickbee said, pacing along the counter. “Where is the bean loaf?” She started rattling around under the sink.

The mewlers clattered boards and nails.

“Excuse me,” Camille said, over the noise.

“Yes?” Ickbee said. Her head was in the cupboard under the sink and when she lifted it, she struck the back of her head on the wood casing. “Oof!” She rubbed the sore spot. “That will be a nasty welt!”

“I’d like to know what happened.”

“Happened?”

“To the Ever Breath,” Camille said.

Ickbee collapsed onto the little bed for a moment. “I was robbed! It can happen to anyone. It wasn’t all my fault. I’m not the first keeper of the passage to have a problem. I mean, during the flood of 1812, there was that infant sea creature that somehow swam through and took up in some Fixed World sea where I hear he grew quite big and thrived. There have been a couple of blood-betakers, a stray wolven man, for which all of the Breath World is extremely apologetic.” She shook her head wearily.