Лиза Смит - The Return - Midnight

The Nether World was completely different from the Dark Dimension. It was a world of ice and slippery snow, of glaciers and rifts, all bathed in a blue twilight from three moons that shone from above.

The kitsune children almost starved in the Nether World because there was so little for a fox to hunt. They made do with the tiny animals of the cold: mice and small white voles, and the occasional insect (Oh, yuck, Bonnie thought). They survived until, through the fog and mist, they saw a towering black wall. They followed the wall until finally they came to a Gatehouse with tall spires hidden in the clouds. Written above the door in an old language they could hardly read were the words: The Seven Gates.

They entered a room in which there were eight doorways or exits. One was the door through which they had just entered. And as they watched, each door brightened so they could see that the other seven doors led to seven different worlds, one of which was the kitsune paradise. Yet another gate led to a field of magical flowers, and another showed butterflies flittering around a splashing fountain. Another dropped to a dark cavern filled with bottles of the mystical wine Clarion Loess Black Magic. One gate led to a deep mine, with jewels the size of a fist. And then there was a gate which showed the prize of all flowers: the Royal Radhika. It changed its shape from moment to moment, from a rose to a cluster of carnations to an orchid.

Through the last door they could see only a gigantic tree, but the final treasure was rumored to be an immense star ball.

Now the boy and girl forgot all about the kitsune paradise. Each of them wanted something from another of the gates, but they couldn’t agree on what. The rule was that any party or group who reached the gates could enter one and then return. But while the girl wanted a sprig of the Royal Radhika, to show that they’d completed their quest, the boy wanted some Black Magic wine, to sustain them on the way back. No matter how they argued they couldn’t reach an agreement. So finally they decided to cheat. They would simultaneously open a door and jump through, snatch what they wanted, and then jump back out and be out of the Gatehouse before they could be caught.

Just as they were about to do so, a voice warned them against it, saying, “One gate alone may you twain enter, and then return from whence you came.”

But the boy and the girl chose to ignore the voice. Immediately, the boy entered the door that led to the bottles of Black Magic wine and at the same instant the girl stepped into the Royal Radhika door. But when each turned around there was no longer any sign of a door or gate behind them. The boy had plenty to drink but he was left forever in the dark and cold and his tears froze upon his cheeks. The girl had the beautiful flower to look at but nothing to eat or drink and so under the glowing yellow sun she wasted away.

Bonnie shivered, the delicious shiver of a reader who had gotten what she expected. The fairy tale, with its moral of “don’t be greedy” was like the stories she’d heard from the Red and the Blue Fairy Books when she was a child sitting on her grandmother’s lap.

She missed Elena and Meredith, badly. She had a story to tell, but no one to tell it to.

“Stefan. Stefan!” Elena had been too nervous to stay out of the bedroom for longer than the five minutes it had taken to show herself to the sheriffs. It was Stefan the officers really wanted and couldn’t find, not seeming to consider that someone might backtrack and hide in a room that had already been searched.

And now Elena couldn’t get a response out of Stefan, who was locked in an embrace with Meredith, mouth pressed tightly over the two little wounds he’d made.

Elena had to shake him by the shoulders, to shake both of them, in order to get any response.

Then Stefan reared back suddenly, but held on to Meredith, who would otherwise have fallen. He hastily licked blood from his lips. For once, though, Elena wasn’t focused on him, but on her friend — her friend whom she’d allowed to do this.

Meredith’s eyes were shut, but they had dark, almost plum-colored circles under them. Her lips were parted, and her dark cloud of hair was wet where tears had fallen into it.

“Meredith? Merry?” The old nickname just slipped out of Elena’s lips. And then, when Meredith gave no sign of having heard her: “Stefan, what’s wrong?”

“I Influenced her at the end to sleep.” Stefan lifted Meredith and put her on the bed.

“But what happened? Why is she crying — and what’s wrong with you?” Elena couldn’t help but notice that despite the healthy flush on Stefan’s cheeks his eyes were shadowed.

“Something I saw — in her mind,” Stefan said briefly, pulling Elena behind his back. “Here comes one of them. Stay there.”

The door opened. It was the male sheriff, who was red-faced and panting, and who had clearly just lapped himself, returning to this room after starting from it to search the entire first floor.

“I have them all in a room — all but the fugitive,” the sheriff said into a large black mobile. The female sheriff made some brief reply. Then the red-faced male turned to speak to the teenagers. “Now what’s going to happen is that I’m going to search you”—he nodded at Stefan—“while my partner searches you two.” His head jerked, ear-first, at Meredith. “What’s wrong with her, anyway?”

“Nothing that you could understand,” Stefan replied coolly.

The sheriff looked as if he couldn’t believe what had just been said. Then, suddenly, he looked as if he could, and did, and he took a step toward Meredith.

Stefan snarled.

The sound made Elena, who was right behind him, jump. It was the low savage snarl of an animal protecting its mate, its pack, its territory.

The ruddy-faced policeman suddenly looked pale and panicked. Elena guessed that he was looking at a mouth full of teeth much sharper than his own, and tinged with blood as well.

Elena didn’t want this to turn into a pi — that was, a…snarling match.

As the sheriff gabbled to his partner, “We may need some of them silver bullets after all,” Elena poked her beloved, who was now making a noise like a very big buzz saw that she could feel in her teeth, and whispered, “Stefan, Influence him!

The other one’s coming, and she may already have called for backup.”

At her touch, Stefan stopped making the sound, and when he turned she could see his face changing from that of a savage animal baring its teeth back to his own dear, green-eyed self. He must have taken a lot of blood from Meredith, she thought, with a flutter in her stomach. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that.

But there was no denying the after-effects. Stefan turned back to the male sheriff and said crisply, “You will go into the front hallway. You will remain there, silent, until I tell you to move or speak.” Then, without looking up to see if the officer was obeying or not, he tucked the blankets more tightly around Meredith.

Elena was watching the sheriff, though, and she noticed that he didn’t hesitate an instant. He made an about-face and marched off to the front foyer.

Then Elena felt safe enough to look at Meredith again. She couldn’t find anything wrong in her friend’s face, except her unnatural pallor, and those violet shadows around her eyes.

“Meredith?” she whispered.

No response. Elena followed Stefan out of the room.

She had just made it to the foyer when the female sheriff ambushed them.

Coming down the stairs, pushing the fragile Mrs. Flowers before her, she shouted, “On the ground! All of you!” She gave Mrs. Flowers a hard shove forward. “Get down now!”

When Mrs. Flowers almost fell sprawling on the floor, Stefan leaped and caught her, and then turned back to the other woman. For a moment Elena thought that he would snarl again, but instead, in a voice tight with self-control, he said, “Join your partner. You can’t move or speak without my permission.”