The Other Side | Short Story

7

They give up after Blue kills two of them. I am not sure how he does it. Blue is only a boy, after all.

We enter the tower — I enter the tower. Blue is behind me, and he is moving slow and slower. He drags behind him a trail of purple, sizzling oil. I hold the door open and wait for him.

He squeezes inside. I close the door behind him and lock it. I sink my hands past his flailing slick wrongness to take hold of him, to help him up the many ladders. When I vomit from the smell of him, I swallow it.

Back on our floor with the furnace, I lay him on my mattress. I push and push the mattress to the Other Side, and when Blue tucks back into a boy again, I see that the skin of his arms are peeled pink from burns. Half a spear juts from his thigh. A wide gash glints from his side. 

My colourful quilt stains wet with dark red.

"Don't die," I tell him. "I'll be all alone if you die."

He does not hear me. His eyes are closed. His breath drags through his mouth.

I rise and go to the crank he's always turning, and I turn it the way I remember. The tower shakes. The room pulls apart. The bathroom swings in and thuds into place, and I get to work with the water, the towels, the bandages.

I won't let Blue die. I won't.

*

I remember the image of the dark stone furnace. I remember the men and women climbing inside and coming out all wrong. Does it work the other way? Can monsters climb in and come out right? Has Blue ever tried?

Maybe he hasn't. Maybe even loneliness was not enough of a reason to climb through fire.

*

The villagers are here. They have the tower surrounded; I can hear their shouting and their weapons. They try setting the tower aflame, but by some magic, the fire does not catch.

So they ram in the front door.

They storm up the ladders, shouting, cursing. When they breach our floor, I show them from the Other Side pale bandaged Blue, asleep on the mattress.

"Look," I beg. "He's just a boy," I beg.

"A trick of the Divide," they spit.

"A boy that killed two of us," they hurl.

"It's not his fault. It's not his fault!"

They do not listen. They draw up their weapons. The metals catch on the light of their torches, and then they move toward us, lurch for us.

So I swing the star-room into them.

Wood crashes violent against bone and flesh.

I hear the sound of many things breaking, snapping. The men are screaming. Some of them are scooped up to be swung far, far away. Some are shoveled off the edge of the now open space to fall and fall.

More men clamber up the ladder. More men make for us. 

I turn the crank again and swing in the tearoom, the library, the greenhouse, on and on. The men do not give up. In their frenzy, they raise their weapons and hack their blades against the metal arms connected to the swinging rooms. 

I cry no, no. I beg them, stop, please. Then like the cutting of trees, the rooms topple. The rooms careen and crash into the tower, and the tower moans, groans, quakes. The floor beneath us splinters.

I cling onto Blue, poor sleeping Blue. I have to move him. I cannot move him. He's already lost so much blood.

Some of the men have survived the swinging rooms and the rupturing floor, and they grimace as they hoist themselves up. They glare past their wounds as they crawl closer, closer.

There are no more rooms for me to swing in. There is no weapon I can use. There is only me, and Blue.

And then by some magic, the furnace lights on fire.

I know what it wants me to do.

I leave Blue's side. I scramble to the furnace. I open its door and regard the smothering heat of the fire and know, I know — I am going to die. The pain is going to kill me.

But Blue, my gentle Blue. He is hurt because of me. He is dying because of me, because he played the monster for me. So this time, this time, I will do it.

I will play the monster for him.