The Door in Lake Mallion, page 27
Mushrooms light up around the set in time to the haunting melody played as an accompaniment to Coral’s monologue: “Being its caretaker, I was the closest person to it. I knew the truth. The Meteorlight wanted to shine, and it knew it had shone as much as it could in Jet. It had come here from space, after all. It knew there was more out there. So it used me . . . to send it away.”
“So you say!” The audience turns to Decca coming out of the wings in a flash of corduroy — Luisa’s jacket. Her teeth are bared, but when the spotlight swings to her, her eyes dart nervously. Someone in the audience whoops, a galvanizing sound. She raises her chin. “Maybe you wanted to take it away and teach everyone a lesson about laziness!”
Coral smiles, her chuckle low, humourless. “Yes, I’m sure that’s what they said about me, without me there to plead my case. But you’ve seen how it works through Dunstan, don’t you?”
Another spotlight, another member of the gallery, seated in the front of the set, her golden pen and compass catching the stage lamps. “The Meteorlight took you over so it could leave,” Ada says, trying to keep the exposition on a straight line. “You took it to the Door. It went through. But how is it in Dunstan?”
“Could it be” — the audience lets out a cry of joy as Luisa enters the stage, a crowd favourite — “that the Meteorlight, like the mushrooms that grow from it, is some kind of spore? Is that how it landed in him when you sent it away?”
Coral is nodding, the patterns of her scales illuminating the weight of her many worries. “Yes, certainly. I believe it landed in the first place it could. Inside you, Ada — you were there that night, after all. Then it went into your boy. Spores scatter, you see, and that’s what it did when it tried to escape. Unfortunately, the Door opened right as Reeve Gris was sailing over. And, well . . . it sounds like some of the Meteorlight went into him and his friends, turning them into Jet’s interim leaders.” Then her fiery eyes land on Decca. “And how did that turn out for them?”
Ada looks stricken from her perch, stage left. “A spore? Does that mean that Dunstan is infected?”
“Not just Dunstan,” Luisa cuts in, gesturing out into the audience, which has gone utterly silent. “It’s spreading.”
The stage lights snap out.
* * *
Coral, utterly still, kept her steady, sideways-blinking gaze on Luisa. “Spreading how?”
Luisa bit her lip, but this was one flare in her mind she wanted out in the open. “It started small. My dad, Hector. He was having trouble sleeping. Then he had dreams, dreams predicting the moment the Door in Lake Mallion opened. As if he were there, experiencing it.” She turned to Decca, nodding. “He could see it happening, like when Decca and I connect with our Meteorlight. And there are others in town suffering from strange sleeping patterns, bad dreams.”
Moss, for the first time from his corner, arms tightly folded as if they could shield him from this, muttered his piece. “I could see Jet in my dreams. So could my friends, the ones who—”
“Pushed Dunstan to the Door to begin with,” Coral growled, and Ada flashed a furious look at the Richler boy. He hunched back into himself.
“It’s not just the sleepy sickness,” Luisa went on. “There are mushrooms spreading across town. What will happen when they get outside Knockum?”
Coral seemed to digest this, then turned, sharply, towards Decca. “Reeve Gris and his friends. What’s happened to them? They’re the humans who’ve had the Meteorlight driving them the longest. Though Dunstan’s held it the same amount of time, it remained dormant . . .”
At this, Decca squirmed. “I don’t know,” she said, and it sounded true. “I’ve never seen them. We’re not allowed!” She seemed to protest this to Luisa’s openly questioning face. “There was a decree when they arrived that they had to guard the Meteorlight in the Tallest Tor. They’ve never left. The only people who liaise with them are the Stackers under the commander.”
“Not a good sign,” Morag scoffed from her own little corner.
“And what’s your part in all this?” Ada asked her superior, her mentor. “Why have you been hiding everything all this time?”
“My part?” Morag shook her head, then jutted it at Coral. “I pulled her out of the water, that’s what! Listened to her side of things. And believed her from the get-go.” A wry scoff from the side of her mouth. “Kind of hard not to with the scales and tail.”
“There aren’t a lot of Morags in the world, which I learned very quickly,” Coral added, swirling her coffee before taking a sip. “After I ended up in Knockum, I had no idea where the Meteorlight went. I thought it had been snuffed out. Or maybe soared off into space. But I stayed here, guarding the town, the Door — just in case. Making things ready, in case it did come back.” Her glare cut pointedly to Decca. “If I could have returned to Jet, I would have.”
“For Ven.”
Coral turned to Luisa then, jerking like she’d been struck. She looked away quickly.
“Is that what that mushroom is doing on the roof? Making things ready?” Ada asked pointedly.
A nod. “I planted it up there years ago. The spores have remained dormant; it only blooms in the presence of the Meteorlight. Believe me, if things go sideways, we’ll be glad we have it — and the others.” She made a slight bow towards Morag. “Miss Gunn made sure that the others on every lightkeeper station around Lake Mallion are fruiting properly, as well.”
Ada exchanged a relieved look with Luisa.
“But that—” Decca’s protest seemed piercing in the lightkeeper station. She bit it off, though, and said, “The Meteorlight is . . . everything. It created Jet, created us.” She motioned to herself, Coral, then paced. “It’s inside every Jettite! Why would it do this? You make it sound so—”
“Evil?” Coral lifted a shoulder, looking more exhausted as her ad hoc interrogation spooled on. “It’s not that. Certainly not benign, either. It just is itself, a plant but not quite, an animal but not quite. It has dreams, it shares dreams. It wants to survive. To thrive. Like the rest of us.” A shake of her scaled head. “Just on a greater scale.”
“And a bigger stage.” Luisa held out a hand to stop Decca, to guide her back to sitting, and held her hand as she talked it through. “All Jettites have a little bit of the Meteorlight. They don’t suffer ill effects from that. But they, and Jet itself, respond to things that make them happy, like the spectacles. That makes it shine brighter. It wants to shine. But it needs others to make it shine. And Dunstan . . . that’s all he’s ever wanted.” Everyone stared at her openly, and she held up her hands, which were sparking. “It’s not the same with me! I’m happy to stay under the radar! But” — she scanned the room — “Moss and I were close to Dunstan. It seems he passed some into us.”
“And what will happen if it spreads to everyone in Knockum?” Ada asked, voice rising. “In Brindlewatch?”
“It won’t,” Coral said, but not very confidently. She stared at her boots. “The Filamenta wasn’t meant to carry the entire source of the Meteorlight. It’s why it cracked. And I used what few spores were still alive on it to seed all the lightkeeper stations. Even now that it’s been fixed, thanks to Luisa’s cleverness, it might not be enough. The Meteorlight is stronger now, in Dunstan.” She sighed. “All I know is that the Meteorlight needs to go back in its box underground, with the Door shut and never opened again.”
Coral went to Decca, her hand out, and reluctantly, the Stackling yielded the Filamenta. Coral hefted it, feeling its weight.
“I need to see these Higher-ups for myself. The ones who have been purportedly ruling Jet all this time.” She turned her gaze on Decca, who seemed the most crushed by this interaction. “I have to see what happens if the Meteorlight stays inside someone for far too long.”
Luisa stood up, mind still working. “You said that the Light splintered when you sent it off? Some of it must have gone into Reeve and the others, as the boat came down.” Luisa hoped the flares of her thoughts were still her own, knowing that buried beneath them was the Meteorlight, alive and unwelcome. “Which means that whatever made them good vessels, is what Moss, Dunstan, and I have in common.”
“A broken heart.”
Everyone turned to Morag. She looked round the room, shrugging. “I’m no Grisly, but I keep up with their little legends. The night Reeve Gris stole his father’s boat . . . he’d had his heart broken. The Sunken Three had, too. It’s why they were all there, commiserating. If what those cultists say about broken hearts is true, it’s what sucked them down in the first place.”
“And Dunstan, too,” Ada said quietly, fists clenching against the chair, remembering Dunstan’s overly hurried explanation of his first foray into Jet.
“Mrs. Cord,” Luisa cut in, “when did Dunstan start seeing the green light? You said that’s when his eyes started getting worse . . .”
Ada creaked to her feet, ready to pace herself. “It was . . . a couple of weeks before term ended, wasn’t it?” She blinked. “Weren’t you two planning some kind of show?”
“We were . . .” The Terrazine and Me poster flashed across her vision. They had been rehearsing. Dunstan was late, again. Luisa had had it, and the moment Dunstan showed up and they’d gotten into it, he declared to Luisa, Arnault, and Mariah that he was leaving their friend group to date Moss Richler and finally, truly shine. She could feel the poster tearing in her hands.
Overall it was extremely dramatic. And very stupid. It could have been resolved with a late-night sniping and apology-fest at Veg Pot Noodle. But none of that happened. That’s the day Luisa’s heart broke; she’d felt it would be broken forever.
“Dunstan’s heart was broken before Moss got to it,” Luisa said, eyeing him curiously from the corner. “And I guess . . . mine, too.”
“For the record, Cord broke my heart, too. Just in a different way.” Moss rubbed his chest. “I didn’t want to do what I did. I considered it a . . . sacrifice. For the greater good. And I guess it hurt me, too.”
“As it should have,” Ada muttered.
Luisa shivered, remembering her tally at Tantalon Depot. How many more broken hearts in Knockum had this glowing green spore planted in them?
“We need to get this Meteorlight out of everyone. But especially Dunstan.” Ada went straight for Coral, who staggered back as she held the mysterious device just out of reach. “If it’s doing something terrible to him, it needs to be removed!”
Coral shook her head. “You don’t understand. The Meteorlight has grown almost as bright as it was in Jet during my rule. And it has woven itself so deftly around Dunstan’s broken heart they won’t want to part with each other. He’ll need convincing. We need to offer Jet’s Higher-ups as the proof, if they’ll come back with us.” Her face twisted with the emotion she was unable to show for over fifteen years.
“Whatever you do,” Morag said grimly, “you’d better do it soon. That big show of Cord’s is coming up at the Starfall Festival, and I have a feeling that when it’s all over, the lizards will be sent packing . . . or the Meteorlight will have its way with all of us.” She downed the rest of her coffee, got up, and headed for the door. “I won’t alert the Brindlewatch guard yet, Coral. Don’t want anything untoward happening to the Jettite refugees camped out here. They’re innocent in all this, and they deserve a chance to go home.”
But the key to all that was Dunstan agreeing to part with the Meteorlight, send it back to Jet where it could be locked away for the greater good Moss had just mentioned. Surely he would, Luisa thought. For the good of Jet? For Ven’s home?
Ada looked to Luisa, who seemed to be thinking the same thing. Neither one of them looked too certain.
“If you’re going down there, I’ll go with you,” Luisa said suddenly. But Decca grabbed hold of her.
“Me, too,” she said, just as Ada was raising her hand, volunteering.
Coral waved them all off. “We’ll need to plan it well. Make sure that no one else is in the city, that the Higher-ups are unguarded. Can you manage that, Stackling?”
“Ah, er . . . yes, Your Majesty,” she peeped. At least Decca stayed true to a hierarchy, and Commander Vora was well below the King.
“What should we call you, then?” Luisa asked. “King Vert? Or—”
“Coral,” she answered readily. “I discovered who I truly was in this town. And that’s who I’ll be until I can make up for not being able to resist the Meteorlight and causing all this in the first place.”
Ada put her hand on Coral’s. “You’re not alone anymore,” she said. And that was enough.
Scene 14 Beginning of the End
Interlude: The Wages of the Limelight
A quick beat. A minor stammer of drum, trumpet, and string. A quick tempo to build them up. Dunstan and Ven appear from opposite sides of the stage, their steps mirror-image quicksilver until they collide, inches apart. They are magnets of opposing forces, and can’t help but attract. They reach for one another and feint back, still dancing the same steps.
Then each has their solo: Dunstan in Jet, the glowing black metropolis of subterranean dreams. The Jettites lift him up! The green spotlight falls on Ven — strutting ably through the crisscrossing roads of Knockum, the humans begging for the prince’s autograph, Commander Vora, and the Stackers bowing as he passes. The Knockumites raise him high.
Each hero receives exactly what they want. Each is given their stage. The divided crowds dance in sync, bringing Ven and Dunstan closer, so close; their fingertips and claws brush.
The two vanish down in their coteries as the music swells. When the corps dance deftly back into the wings, the two are left behind, at last, deposited on the lapping lakeshore beneath a shining moon.
They clasp hands and press foreheads. “I promise,” they say. “We will still be each other’s heroes.”
The moon turns green. Dunstan, distracted, lurches towards it. The ribbons coming out of his hollow eyes reach for it. Ven grasps Dunstan by the shoulders, trying to pull him back, but it’s too late. Dunstan finds his feet leaving the stage, finds the moon has a curious black pinprick in it that is slowly growing wider, more symmetrical, its prehistoric facets opening like a jaw.
Dunstan hears his leading lizard call, but there is no answer he can give.
There is only . . . the limelight.
* * *
Dunstan shut his eyes, hard. The ringing in his ears felt like it could be gunning for his arteries, other avenues to send a harsh spark through his body and blood. Then he opened them again, blinking rapidly as he realized he was not on a stage, not floating towards a sickly green moon, but sitting beside Ven in the Normand Odeon, in the projectionist’s room, as the movie spun its spell on the screen below.
“Sorry, what did you say?” Dunstan asked Ven, who was gazing at him with concern.
He snuck a claw beneath Dunstan’s goggles, meaning to raise them. “Did you fall asleep under there?”
Dunstan quickly slapped Ven’s hand away, maybe too forcefully, and pressed his goggles down tight. “N-no, of course not! I was just really into the love story . . .”
It was the first time in a week that Dunstan and Ven had had a moment to be together. Things had begun to move fast since they’d dropped their bombshell on Knockum. Dunstan intended to tell everyone the truth, one day, but they had to make sure Jet was secure before all that. In the meantime, everyone needed to play their parts, above and below. And Dunstan wasn’t about to admit that playing so many roles made him unsure who he was supposed to be.
The voice inside hadn’t quieted, but it hadn’t grown any louder, had it? Dunstan had tried to tell the difference, at first, then he did everything he could to put it all away into a box. What did it matter, anyway? He was fine. And after his encounter with Moss, he was worried, sure, but he still felt reassured each time he let the Meteorlight shine, each time it made him great. There was nothing to worry about. No one would take anything from him—
It’s a curse! It’s hurting me! Leave Knockum out of it!
Moss’s words rang over the celluloid spooling in front of them. His fingers clenched the armrest as Ven sighed, resting his head on Dunstan’s shoulder, mindful of where he put his spikes. “I missed you,” he said quietly.
Dunstan glanced down. He’d wanted to ask Ven if the Meteorlight could hurt people . . . if there was a reason he was seeing more velvety mushrooms that certainly weren’t native to Knockum popping up around town. To ask him if it was normal that Luisa and Moss had some of the Meteorlight . . . who else did? Dunstan had been shining in Jet to help it; but when he was shining in Knockum, was that really a good thing?
The lid on these swirling questions clamped shut, the locks on the box doubly reinforced. No. Just enjoy this moment. Enjoy every single one. They’re yours. Yours alone.
As Ven wound his tail around Dunstan’s arm and hand, Dunstan could feel the truth pulsing in their Meteorlight connection; Ven felt lonelier than ever, and that just wouldn’t do.
“What’s the matter?” Dunstan sat up with alarm because this feeling was dreadful, all-encompassing — too familiar. “I thought things were going well, establishing the Jettites here? The spectacles? Jet’s okay now, isn’t it?”
Suddenly Ven unwound his tail from Dunstan, whipping it back to his side guiltily. “Sorry,” he said, an easy smile coating any misgivings, put away in Ven’s own lockbox. “Everything is fine! It’s just . . . don’t you miss me?”
