The Portal and the Veil Read online

  “Be what I’m supposed to be. I was meant to be a Keeper. And you, I think, were meant to help me finally become one.”

  Joshua wasn’t sure, but it almost seemed like Brian hesitated—like the idea interested him somehow. But then Brian shook his head again. “That can’t happen. No way. And even if I was willing to try—which I’m not—it would take hours. The rest of the Wardens will be back before then.”

  “Oh, you won’t do it here.”

  Brian laughed. “You expect me to leave? With Tunraden? Forget it. Cleave me if you like, but taking Tunraden out of here is literally impossible.”

  “Tunraden,” Isabel sighed. “That’s a lovely name. And if I know Meister, I’m sure it’s true you can’t leave the Warren with her—not by the usual routes, anyway.” She swept past him. She crossed the cluttered chamber to a tall cabinet against the far wall. She opened the door, revealing shelves full of strange objects—a black disk laced with red streaks like lightning, a cat head made of silver, a tiny brass top, a transparent rod with a long thin fish inside. Joshua stared, his eyes flicking wildly over these wonders. Tan’ji, they had to be—or technically, Tan’layn, instruments that still hadn’t found a Keeper.

  “Those aren’t for you,” Brian said, looking nervous.

  “No, they’re not.” Isabel reached into the cabinet and pulled something out. A sphere as big as a grapefruit, blue and white and green. Joshua’s mouth dried up, and his heart began to pound.

  “What are you doing?” said Brian.

  Isabel ignored him. She brought the sphere over to Joshua. He felt glued to the ground, pinned in place. “Here,” she said, holding it out. “This is yours now, Keeper.”

  Brian gasped angrily, but Joshua barely heard him, frozen in place. The Laithe of Teneves. Here in front of him. Isabel had said it was a living globe, but Joshua hadn’t understood what that meant until now. The little globe, wrapped in a glowing haze, was made of water and air and earth. Clouds moved across the surface. Currents rippled on the oceans. Africa and the Middle East were pointed at him, and he could see the grainy surface of the Sahara and the Arabian Desert. He could see the rugged brown of the Himalayas, the turquoise blue of the Caspian Sea, the fertile green of the Ganges Delta. He thought he could even see little splotches of giant cities—Mumbai, Cairo, Istanbul. It was a map like he’d never imagined, a map to erase all other maps, and it was all so perfect and real that he stood there thinking maybe he’d never—

  “Here,” Isabel said again, and she set the Laithe in his open hands.

  Joshua had never been so terrified. He thought he might drop the Laithe from fear. The globe was small enough that he could almost wrap two hands around it. It felt like a stubborn cloud beneath his fingers, and he somehow understood that he couldn’t actually touch the surface of the little earth. There was a copper meridian around the globe, too, a flat ring that circled it. He gripped the ring now. Lots of globes had meridians, all anchored at the north and south poles, but the Laithe’s meridian had no anchors. The globe hovered inside the encircling meridian without touching it, like Saturn inside its rings. Gently he brushed a finger across the globe, and discovered that it could rotate freely inside the meridian in every direction. What was this thing? How was this thing? And no, he wasn’t ready for it, not for this, it was too beautiful and perfect and . . . important.

  The copper meridian was smooth and blank, which was strange. Normally, meridians had lines to indicate degrees, north and south. Joshua flipped the ring over, marveling as the globe inside stayed almost perfectly motionless, still centered on the eastern coast of Africa. The other side of the meridian was covered in strange markings—not degrees, no, but curious arrows that pointed in a clockwise direction. There were inscriptions that looked like words in a language he’d never seen. At the top, a small golden rabbit was attached to the meridian. It was curled up, as if asleep.

  “Well?” said Isabel, watching him with her dark brown eyes.

  Joshua struggled to speak, staring at the rabbit. “It’s . . . too much.”

  Her eyes flashed. “It’s yours, Joshua. I see that. It’s a lot to take in, going through the Find—”

  “Uh, this is not the Find,” Brian said. Isabel rounded on him, but he only shrugged. “Speaking as the only Keeper in the room, just saying. This is not how the Find works. And if you don’t go through the Find properly, you can—”

  “It won’t be up to the Wardens to decide what’s proper today,” Isabel snapped. “The Laithe is Joshua’s. Surely you can see that.”

  Brian shrugged again, slowly this time. “I can see . . . things,” he said, gazing at Joshua through his glasses. “But it doesn’t matter what I can see. The Laithe is Tan’layn—one of the unspoken. You’re going to speak for it?”

  “It isn’t Tan’layn anymore. It has been claimed. It is Tan’ji, and Joshua is its Keeper. Show him, Joshua.”

  Joshua thought he might cry. He wanted this wonderful globe, he did. But he felt sort of like someone had poured a thousand gold coins into his hands—an incredible treasure, but too much to carry. And now Brian was saying this wasn’t the Find. “I don’t know what to do,” he said, and he meant it in all the ways it could be meant.

  But Isabel impatiently reached out and touched the meridian of the Laithe. Joshua frowned. People weren’t supposed to touch other people’s Tan’ji, he knew that much. Isabel didn’t seem to care. “Here,” she said, pointing to the golden rabbit. “Slide this.”

  Hesitantly, Joshua took hold of the rabbit. He tugged it gently, and the rabbit began to slide around the meridian, as smoothly as a skate on ice. Instantly, the surface of the globe began to shift. Madagascar was still right in the middle, centered inside the Meridian, but as he slid the rabbit, the island began to grow. It swiftly tripled in size. Meanwhile oceans and continents around the edge rearranged themselves, drifting outward and shrinking.

  Joshua released the rabbit, terrified. “I broke it!” he cried. “Look!”

  “It looks the same to me,” said Isabel. “You’re zooming in, but only you can see it. You didn’t break it—you’re doing what it was made to do. You are its Keeper.”

  Only he could see. He was its Keeper. Trying to believe it, Joshua slowly slid the rabbit farther around the meridian. Madagascar continued to expand. The tip of India vanished over the horizon. Africa shriveled slowly away to the west. By the time the rabbit was a quarter of the way around the ring, the island nearly filled his view, a green swath of rainforest in the east, highlands in the middle, and drier land to the west.

  Joshua kept going, moving the rabbit. Central Madagascar grew closer and closer. Off to one side, there was a lake he didn’t know the name of and a city he did—the only city in Madagascar he knew by name, Antananarivo, a name that was fun to say out loud even if he wasn’t sure how to pronounce it. When the rabbit reached the bottom of the meridian, Joshua realized there was nothing there to stop it, so he kept going on around the circle, back up toward where the rabbit had begun. He heard Brian say, “Whoa,” but Joshua didn’t look up. If it was true that no one else could see what was happening on the globe, Brian must be seeing something else—the Medium, probably.

  On the globe, hills began to appear. A winding road, and river—a gray snake and a green. Blocks of buildings, and now the dots of individual houses. Trees, though many of them had lost their leaves. Joshua’s mouth fell open. In real life, Madagascar was below the equator, which meant it was winter there now, especially in the highlands. There was farmland there too, not like the big square farms in Illinois, but sculpted in ledges across the hillsides. Terrace farming, it was called.

  Joshua looked up. He blinked his eyes—he’d almost forgotten where he was. Isabel stood in front of him, her face eager. Brian was right there too, closer now, and Joshua turned to him.

  “Will I see people?”

  He wasn’t sure why he thought Brian would know. Brian seemed smart, smarter even than Horace, maybe. And he knew about Tan�
��ji.

  “Some,” said Brian, his eyes darting through the air around the Laithe. But then he waved his hands like he was trying to erase his answer. “Don’t ask me questions. This shouldn’t even be happening.”

  People. Tiny people down there on this living globe. They couldn’t be real people, of course. Could they? Joshua pushed the running rabbit farther, two-thirds of the way around now. The land beneath him continued to grow from the center and melt out of sight around the edges of the Laithe. He passed through a cloud. The view descended into a narrow valley of terraced crops between two forests. A farmhouse. Dirt lanes.

  But then suddenly, as the rabbit reached three-quarters of the way around, the Laithe began to get fuzzy. Little blurry circles began to appear, like raindrops hitting a puddle. He pushed the rabbit farther, but the circles spread and grew. He couldn’t see anything anymore, just ripples of brown and gray and green.

  “I did break it,” he whispered. “I can’t see anything.”

  “What happened?” said Isabel.

  In a panic, Joshua slid the rabbit backward. The ripples went away. The dirt lanes and the trees and the farmhouse reappeared, shrinking. The land farther out crept back in over the horizon too.

  “Wait,” he said, pushing the rabbit forward once more. But again, as he zoomed in, the rippling circles covered the surface of the Laithe. “I can’t get close. I can’t see all the way.”

  “You have to,” Isabel said. “Try again.”

  “What do you see, Joshua?” asked Brian in a friendly way, leaning in over the Laithe.

  “Like . . . circles. Ripples.”

  “And where are you now? Where are you looking?”

  “Madagascar.”

  “Wow! That’s pretty far away from where we are right now.”

  “Nine thousand miles,” Joshua said automatically.

  Brian whistled. “Super far. And have you ever been there?”

  “What? No. When would I go to Madagascar?”

  “I don’t know. People go places. Some people, anyway. But if you haven’t been there . . .”

  “Enough,” said Isabel, holding a hand up to Brian. “You’ve made your point.”

  Brian stepped back. “You can’t expect him to master it in five minutes, zooming all the way in on a spot he’s never been to, halfway around the world. If he were doing this the right way, he’d be in the Find for weeks before managing something like that.”

  “Weeks?” said Joshua.

  “We do not have weeks. We have minutes.” Isabel snapped her fingers at Brian. “Take me to the Loomdaughter.”

  Brian looked startled, like he had forgotten why Isabel was here. He frowned at Isabel’s wicker harp. “If you think I’m coming with you, you’re crazy,” he said.

  Miradel flared violently at Isabel’s chest, spilling a forest of green light across Brian. He tensed, his eyes going wide.

  “Don’t, Isabel!” Joshua cried. “You said you wouldn’t hurt him!”

  Isabel’s face was rigid with anger. After several frozen moments, it softened. The glowing green harp shrank and dimmed. “I’m not crazy,” she said quietly. “I’m desperate.”

  Brian shook his head, breathing once more. “I get that. But I can’t help you.”

  “You can,” Isabel insisted. “You want to try, I know you do.”

  He looked away, but not before the strange fire in his eyes seemed to brighten. “I’m not . . . ,” he began, and then started over, speaking slowly and carefully, holding his hands up like shields. “You’re desperate for something that might not even be real.”

  Joshua’s eyes darted to Isabel in alarm, but there was no anger, no burst of green light. Instead, she looked almost happy. “But it might be,” she said. “Take me to the Loomdaughter. Show me. If you can convince me that you can’t do what I want . . .”

  “You’ll let me go?” Brian asked lightly.

  Isabel tilted her head in a way that wasn’t quite a no, wasn’t quite a yes.

  “Just show her,” Joshua pleaded with Brian, frightened by the conversation and wanting it to end, willing to worry about what came next when it came. “Just for a minute.”

  Brian looked long and hard at Joshua. At last he gave a single nod and abruptly turned away, walking deeper into the workshop without a word.

  They followed him. In the back, Brian led them into a small, round chamber. It smelled like a rainstorm. There was a tall stone table there, and on top of it sat a big oval . . . thing. Joshua got up on his tiptoes to see.

  “Tunraden,” Brian said, his voice sullen and distant.

  Tunraden was a great stone slab, almost two feet wide and six inches deep. It looked very, very old. There were no markings on it, except for the top, where there was an engraved outline around the edge and two circles at each end of the oval. It looked very ordinary, Joshua thought, but it didn’t feel anything like ordinary. Not at all. It felt like thunder.

  “What does it do?” Joshua said, clutching the Laithe.

  “It makes Tan’ji,” Isabel said breathlessly, circling the Loomdaughter. “And he can use it to fix Tan’ji too. This is how he made April whole again, how he fixed the Ravenvine. And it’s how he’s going to help me become a Keeper.”

  “Well, two out of three, anyway,” muttered Brian.

  “You can . . . make Tan’ji?” Joshua said, not sure he heard right.

  “On a good day, yeah.”

  Still studying Tunraden, Isabel said, “It’s astonishing.”

  “Um . . . thank you?” Brian said, obviously trying not to sound pleased.

  “It’s bigger than I thought it would be,” she went on.

  “I get that a lot. Tunraden is one of the small ones, supposedly. The first few Loomdaughters were too big to even move. But you can see now why taking her outside is a bad idea. We can barely get around.”

  “I’ll get you where we need to go,” Isabel said.

  Brian shook his head. “If the Riven discovered there was a Loomdaughter on the loose—”

  “I can protect you.”

  “Says the woman who just threatened to kill me.” Brian watched her with that dark and thoughtful light still in his eyes. “I’ve been thinking,” he said. “I don’t think you really would cleave me. Why would you destroy the only person who could possibly help you?”

  Isabel gave a smile that was more like a snarl. “If that person refuses to even try to help me, what would I have to lose by destroying him?”

  Joshua stepped forward, his heart surging.

  But Brian simply said, “Hope. That’s what you’d lose. Nearly all of it, I think.” When Isabel didn’t reply, he said, “Let’s wait for the other Wardens to come back. Let me talk to them. I can convince them to let me try and help you.”

  It was impossible to tell if Brian meant it or not. But Joshua certainly did not want to be here when the Wardens got back, when they learned what he and Isabel had done. They would take the Laithe away from him, he was sure of it.

  “Please,” Isabel spat. “Meister would never let you help me.”

  “I can’t go with you, I’m sorry,” said Brian.

  “You’ve been down here a long time, haven’t you?” Isabel said. “I doubt Meister ever lets you leave. How long has it been since you felt the sun? Breathed fresh air? Stood under a tree?”

  Brian shrugged like he didn’t care, but it didn’t ring true. “How long since I got sunburn?” he asked. “Smelled car exhaust? Got pooped on by a bird?” He scrunched up his long face. “Actually scratch that last one. There are a surprising number of birds down here.”

  “How long?” Isabel pressed.

  Brian scratched his chin. “Three years.”

  “Whoa . . . ,” Joshua said slowly, trying to imagine living in a cave for three years. He could hardly even imagine three years of anything.

  “And how many more years before Meister lets you go?” said Isabel.

  Scowling at her, Brian said, “How many years since you’ve bee
n trying to get your harp under control?”

  Isabel scowled right back. “I have it under control.”

  “Mostly,” said Brian. “Usually.” He gestured at the air around her. “I can see it, you know. That thing is like a tornado in a bottle, and you’ve got your thumb squeezed over the spout, constantly.”

  It was obvious from Isabel’s face—a smooth but guilty slab of shock—that he’d struck close to home. And Joshua knew that Isabel sometimes did lose control of the harp. But she shook her head stubbornly. “You don’t know the first thing about it,” she said.

  Brian crossed his arms as if he had all day, and said, “Then tell me.”

  Isabel hesitated, leaning over Tunraden. “I can’t always control it,” she explained at last. “It gets away from me sometimes. It’s gotten away from me in the past and . . . bad things have happened.” She glanced at Joshua. “But nobody else could ever even use it at all. Not even a little. Besides, I was meant to be Tan’ji, and the Wardens robbed me of that. Then Miradel came along, and . . . I was the only one for her. The only one. But it isn’t quite right. Not yet.”

  “How is it not quite right?” asked Brian. “If I were going to try and help you—still a huge if—I would need to know.”

  Joshua couldn’t help himself. Brian did need to know. “Sometimes she severs people on accident,” he said.

  “Rarely,” said Isabel. “When I’m angry, or . . . upset.”

  Brian looked at her for a long time, chewing his cheek again. He said quietly, “Bad things have happened, you said. How bad?”

  Isabel took a deep breath. She took another. “When Chloe was little, after she brought the Alvalaithen home but was still going through the Find, she was in the yard. She was playing with the dragonfly, going thin. I heard her screaming. I ran outside, and she was . . . sinking into the ground. It hadn’t happened to her before—I guess she hadn’t imagined it could happen.”

  Isabel paused, looking up at the stone ceiling, like she was imagining the surface of the earth hundreds of feet above them. “Chloe was in up to her knees, hanging on to a lawn chair like a life jacket, screaming. Like she was drowning. I panicked. I got upset, and—”