Sharon Shinn - Gateway

THE GROUND SURGED and shattered under Daiyu’s feet. The twilight sky bloomed to nuclear brightness, then went utterly dark. Blind, she cried out and stumbled to her knees, cutting her palms on a stony surface. She whimpered, but the sound was lost under the ongoing percussion of urgent explosives.

Then suddenly her vision cleared and the booming noise stopped, and Daiyu lifted her head. Had that been an earthquake? Had a barge on the river blown up when its fuel tank caught fire? Where were the sirens? Where were the frantic onlookers? Why was no one screaming?

Instead, all she heard was the comfortable, indistinguishable mutter of a cheerful crowd-a few giggles, a high-pitched squeal, the sound of another firecracker detonating, and some appreciative cheers. Someone tripped over her and hastily apologized. A woman’s voice asked, “Is she all right?” and a man’s voice answered, “Drunk, I suppose.”

Daiyu pushed herself to her feet and gazed around.

For a moment, she thought she was still at Fair Saint Louis. Here was a brightly colored mob of people gathered on a summer evening on a stretch of land overlooking a river. But… but… the river was so small, not even half the width of the Mississippi. There were no booths selling sandwiches and soda; there was no smell of roasting meat and fried dough. And the people! Everyone was oddly dressed-not in shorts and halter tops, but in brightly colored shirts over formal black skirts and trousers.

Everyone was Chinese.

Daiyu looked around slowly, not believing her eyes. But everyone was Chinese.

She pivoted swiftly to glance behind her and clapped a hand to her mouth to silence the scream. The Arch was gone! In its place was a towering pagoda-shaped gate made of some sleek ma- terial that looked like red lacquer. It was maybe half the height of the Arch, but its gorgeous color made it equally impressive. More brightly dressed Chinese men and women stood near it, laughing and talking.

A short report in the air made her gasp, but the whipcrack of sound turned out to be another firecracker bursting over the diminished river. The mob of people murmured and applauded as streaks of green and blue and red rained down.

“What’s happened to me, what’s happened to me,” Daiyu whispered, turning in a slow circle to take in the rest of her surroundings. The familiar tall buildings of downtown St. Louis -gone-replaced by a crowded, crazy-quilt collection of buildings in stone and wood and steel. The well-tended lawns of the Arch grounds-gone. In their place was a swath of green grass bordered by a broad expanse of gravelly stones laid out in interlocking patterns of light and dark. Yin and yang, Daiyu thought wildly. I’m in China. Somehow she had been flung across thousands of miles to the country of her birth-but that was ridiculous-that couldn’t happen-she must have fallen, she must have hit her head, perhaps she was still dreaming, no part of this day had actually occurred-

She shook her head but could not shake herself awake. Unaccustomed panic began building inside her chest, crowding the air out of her lungs. She started pushing her way through the throngs, not sure what to do, where to go, but feeling the need for motion. “This is crazy, this can’t be happening-”

With each phrase, her voice got a little louder. In a minute she would be shrieking and running. Where was she? What cataclysm had overtaken her? “Someone help me,” she panted, pushing past staring girls and curious couples, not pausing long enough to allow anyone to offer comfort or reassurance. “Someone-anyone-I don’t know what’s going on-”

Behind her, from the direction of the river, came a single resounding boom, so loud that Daiyu froze and let out a little cry. It was followed by such a flurry of explosions that everything else was drowned out. She clapped her palms over her eyes and screamed as loud as she could.

A hand slapped itself around her right wrist and pulled it away from her face. She was so startled, she stopped screaming and opened her eyes. She was staring at a tall young man, who leaned close enough to yell into her ear over the sound of fireworks.

“I know you’re terrified,” he called. “But everything will be all right. I’ll take you home.”

And just like that, Daiyu stopped being afraid.

For a long moment, Daiyu simply stood there, trying to recover her habitual composure. She stared up at the young man. He was thin, Caucasian, and serious; his brown eyes were framed by thick lashes. His hair was dark and curly, his mouth generous, and he wore a single gold stud in each ear. She knew she had never seen him before, and yet he looked familiar to her, as if someone had told her about him and she had been waiting all this time to meet him.

“Who are you?” she whispered. Her throat felt too raw for normal speaking. “What’s happening to me?”

“I’m Kalen,” he said. “And you’ve stepped through one of the gateways into another world.”

Her breath caught, and for a minute she felt panic make another hard charge against her ribs. Another world? One of the gateways? “I don’t understand,” she said, still in that whispering voice. He leaned close enough to hear it over the noise of the crowd and the fireworks.

“It’s complicated,” he said. “This isn’t the place to explain. Are you hurt? Can you walk?”

“I fell,” she said. He still gripped her right arm, but she held up her left hand to show him the scrapes.

“Ouch,” he said. He released her wrist to pull items from a nondescript bag he carried over his shoulder. In a moment he was dampening a scrap of cloth with the contents of what appeared to be a water bottle.

“There,”he said, gently daubing at her palm. The water was soothing to her raw skin and his voice was soothing to her jangled nerves. “Does that feel better?”

Only marginally, but the act of compassion lifted her spirits just a little. “Yes, thank you,” she said.

He dropped his rudimentary first-aid kit into his bag, took hold of her arm again, and urged her forward. They stepped toward the green area, away from the river, away from whatever celebration was going on around the red gate. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there when you arrived, ”he said.“We only just realized you’d be coming tonight.”

All her goodwill vanished and she stopped dead. “You were expecting me?”

He glanced down at her. “Aurora and Ombri have been looking for someone like you for a long time,” he said.

She jerked her hand free. “Who are Aurora and Ombri? Who are you? What’s happening?”

“Daiyu-”

“And how do you know my name?”

“People have crossed from this time and place to your world, looking for someone like you to make the journey here.”

She shook her head and put her hands to her face again. “I still don’t understand.”

“No,”hesaid,surprisingher,“Idon’ treally understand it either. Aurora and Ombri can explain it better than I can. Let me take you to the house and get you something to eat. I promise you, everything will be all right.”

For a moment she hesitated. If she truly was in a different world-however impossible that seemed to be-how would she know whom to trust, what to believe? If she followed this stranger to some isolated location, would she suddenly be in mortal danger?

“I promise no one will hurt you,” he said, as if he could read her mind. “Truly, it will be better if I can get you to the house.”

She had no reason to trust him. And yet she couldn’t bring herself to summon fear. He watched her gravely, and something in his expression struck her as simply kind. Again she experienced the sense that she knew him already, that he had watched over her at some point when she was injured or in danger. Daiyu was used to meeting strangers; her father brought them home all the time. But she had never before met a stranger who had made her feel this instant sense of connection. She put her hand out again, and he took it with great care.