Eric Nylund - All That Lives Must Die

A truck pulled out of a driveway and accelerated toward them.

Eliot and Fiona sprinted.

The truck blared its horn.

They jumped together onto the sidewalk. A whirlwind of dust and fumes and papers swirled around them.

“That was stupid,” she hissed.

“There he is!” Eliot said, ignoring her, and ran after the boy from Paxington.

The student must have heard him, because he turned. The boy was older, eighteen maybe, two heads taller than Eliot, and he had a faint mustache. His dark hair was long and wavy and combed back. He was deeply tanned and muscular. He smiled at them.

Eliot found himself smiling back. A friendly face was the last thing he expected today, but he was glad to find one.

The boy held out his hand for Eliot to shake and asked, “Paxington? Transfer students?” His voice was embroidered with a rich Italian accent.

“Yes,” Eliot replied. “And no.”

Up close, Eliot noticed the boy’s uniform was different from theirs. The fabric was smoother and of a more luxuriant texture. It looked like it had been custom tailored.

Fiona and Eliot shifted uncomfortably in their too-baggy and too-tight uniforms.

The boy gave Fiona a slight bow. “You look like you might need some help. Allow me to introduce myself. I am from the family Scalagari. My given name is Dante.”

“It’s great to meet you. I’m Eliot. Eliot Post. And this is my sister-”

“Fiona.” She tried to smile, but it wavered and failed. “We were beginning to worry that we had the wrong street.”

“Can you help us find the school?” Eliot asked.

Dante Scalagari’s smile faded. “Ah, I see. You must forgive me. I did not know you were freshmen. You both look. . well, take no offense, but you look like you’ve seen more of the world than our typical freshman.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Eliot said.

Fiona cleared her throat and glanced at the sidewalk. “If you don’t mind very much. . we have to get to the placement exams before the time runs out.”

Dante held out his hands in an apologetic gesture. “Believe me,” he said, “I’ve nothing against you. In fact, you have my deepest sympathies. But, alas, I cannot show you the way.”

“What?” Eliot said. “Why!”

Dante’s hands clasped and his fingers interlaced. “Tradition,” he said. “Rules. And because I’m late for school myself. Perhaps I will see you again on campus.”

“If you just point us in the right direction,” Fiona said, and started to unfold their map.

Eliot leaned closer and traced their route, explaining, “We tried following Lombard, but that didn’t. .”

He glanced up.

Eliot looked back and forth along the sidewalk. There was no trace of Dante Scalagari.

“Impossible,” Fiona breathed. Her head snapped sideways. “Wait, there’s another student.”

Eliot saw them as well. A girl this time; he caught just a glimpse of platinum curls over the Paxington navy blue blazer-as she turned a corner, entered the shadows, and disappeared from view.

Fiona sighed. She looked over the map again. “Well, with two students so close, the school has to be nearby. Let’s go this way.”

They followed the street numbers as they increased, and once more passed where Paxington should have been-but clearly wasn’t.

Fiona clutched the map, crinkling its edges. “What are we doing wrong?”

Eliot leaned closer and examined the map. “The directions said it was at the intersection of Lombard and Chestnut?” He followed those two roads with his fingers. “That can’t be right. They must mean Richardson Avenue. That cuts across both.”

“Not Richardson,” Fiona told him. “It specifically said the intersection of Lombard and Chestnut.”

“I remember what it said,” Eliot answered, anger creeping into his voice. “I’m not an idiot. I’m saying that’s impossible because they run parallel. They never cross.”

Fiona checked, and then double-checked this.

“Give me the map.” Eliot gently took hold of one corner. “I’ll puzzle it out.”

Fiona refused to release her grip. She pulled away. “They have to cross somewhere.”

Eliot didn’t let go either. The map snapped taut between them. He pulled hard.

Fiona yanked the map, too.

The yellowed parchment tore down the middle. . almost all the way through.

Eliot stared at the ruined map, remembering how Cee had told them to work together. And here they were: they hadn’t found Paxington, let alone faced the placement exams, and were already fighting each other.

He glared at his sister.

She glared back at him. “Great,” she said. “Like we don’t have enough trouble already.”

“Thanks to you,” Eliot said. “Just because you’re a ‘goddess’ now doesn’t mean you know everything. . or even anything.”

Fiona tilted her chin up and tried to look “down” at him the way Audrey could. It didn’t work.

“At least now you know how to make two parallel lines meet,” Eliot told her.

“What do you mean?”

Eliot snorted. “It’s easy, but useless, really.” He crossed one of the map’s torn flaps so Lombard and Chestnut Streets, once parallel, angled toward each other.

Static electricity raced up his fingertips, growing stronger as he brought the pieces of the map together.

Fiona guided the other part of the map toward his. “I’ve felt something like this before,” she whispered.

The two portions of the map wavered as if magnetically attracted and then repulsed. . and then the two sides snapped together.

Lombard and Chestnut crossed-at least on paper.

Fiona ran her fingers over the parchment. “This feels like that spot in the Valley of the New Year where there was a hidden exit. A spot where space folded .”

“Like there’s an extra space or a doorway”-Eliot pointed to the spot where the two streets intersected-“here?”

“We passed that spot and didn’t see anything,” she said.

“But did we really look?”

They stared at the map. The “intersection” was a block and a half away.

Fiona crumpled the outer edges of the map, and they both ran.

They dodged people on the sidewalk; Eliot careened off a trash can, stumbled, but kept going. He caught glimpses of other Paxington students, but didn’t bother to ask for help. There was no time left.

They sprinted toward the address where Paxington was supposed to be, where the lines crossed on the map.

It looked like the same place they had walked by earlier. . but it felt different.

That static electricity sensation was here.

He slowed and stopped.

So did Fiona.

They looked for something out of the ordinary. There was only a wall made of roughened granite blocks.

Eliot ran his hand over the surface.

It was just rock. . but there was something else, faint at first, and then stronger. Deep inside the stone there was a vibration, almost like he was touching the strings of his violin.

Fiona felt the wall with both her hands. “It’s like threads,” she whispered.

“Like music,” he said.

He spied a minuscule crack in the stone, and as he touched its edges, there was a pause in the music.

Fiona found the spot as well.

Eliot stared at the crack and found that when he looked at it from a particular angle- an angle that hadn’t been there before -the crack tilted and expanded and was really a four-dimensional corner.

Disorientation washed over him as this new space revealed itself. The sensation was like staring at one of those crazy M. C. Escher drawings: Everything appeared normal, until suddenly you saw an extra dimension tilting sideways.