The Chaos (27 page)

Or maybe it hadn’t sunk down lower. Maybe I was just up higher. My skin started to prickle with the awfulness of my approaching realization. I didn’t want to know what I was about to know, but I had to find out. I had to turn all the way around to follow the pulsing mass of cloud back to its source, to the horrible thing I was sure I would see behind me—there. The spluttering mouth of the volcano Animikika, only about half a mile above me. It was spitting ash and the occasional plume of fire. Animikika; “it is thundering.” I was standing on the slope
of an active volcano. If everything weird in the world in the past couple of days was a manifestation of someone’s madness, which rahtid insane so-and-so had been seeing Toronto Island as a live volcano?

As I watched, a red tongue of molten lava swelled up from Animikika and spilled over her top, into a channel already gouged by previous flows. For some reason, I’d thought that lava moved slowly, like heavy syrup. This came rushing down like a river. I was standing right in its path. You’d better believe I hot-footed it out of the way. Might have made it, too, if I hadn’t tripped on a lump of rock hidden under the ash. I fell on my hands and knees right on the very edge of the river of lava as it hissed by me. The heat from it on my face was intense.

Yikes! The fingertips of one hand felt like I’d dipped them in hot water! I yelped, snatched my hand up and instinctively shook it off even as my eyes were seeing what had burned them. As I’d put my hands down to brace my fall, the tips of my fingers had landed in the lava flow. I was shaking liquid lava off my fingers. Holy crap. I blew on the scalded fingertips. Shouldn’t they have burned right off, or something?

The new lava flow hit the lake water far below me. The water around it evaporated immediately into hissing steam. The fog around this place wasn’t just floating ash, but steam from the lake.

A fish scuttled past my feet on four stumpy webbed legs. It said, “Whee!” as it leapt into the lava river. I watched its wavery shadow beneath the surface as it darted upstream. It’d looked like a salmon. All the way up and down the lava river, I could see other walking salmon taking the same leap. I tried to remember my bio lessons. Salmon changed a few times during their life cycle, right? Did they grow legs at some point and then lose
them later? Whatever. I was pretty sure they never were able to swim in liquid rock.

I choked and coughed some more. I was breathing in ash and heaven knew what else. I could get buried in a lava flow any second. I needed to get off Animikika, like, yesterday.

The volcano rumbled again. I tensed myself and watched the mouth of it, ready to run. With a boom, Animikika spat out a jet of—what, exactly? Was that ash? Small rocks? Chunks of it started raining down on my head. I covered my head with my hands. The stuff didn’t hurt as it fell on me, though. It was too light. The tiny pieces pockmarked the ash on the ground as they disappeared beneath it.

A bigger piece landed at my feet. It was beige, flattish, uneven, only about an inch or so around. It didn’t sink into the ash. It had a strip of paper stuck to it. The paper caught the breeze and flew away before I could do anything.

More of those larger pieces were falling now. I crouched down and looked at one of them. I wasn’t going to touch it until I knew what it was. Something about it looked familiar. And added to the smell of burning, there was also a sweetish smell in the air now. Not a good mix, let me tell you.

Something small bopped me lightly on the head. I put my arms up again to protect myself. My fingers touched the thing that had fallen into my hair. It was cool. It crumbled in my hand as I grasped it. I pulled it out of my hair. Apparently, I was smelling cookie dough baking. I was holding a crumbled fortune cookie. Whole bits of cookie were falling now from the volcano’s last outburst. I unfolded the fortune in mine. It read,
Rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb.
I picked up a few more. They all read the same thing. I was still starving, so I ate a few of them, never mind that they had ash on them. They would have tasted better wrapped in cling wrap. My tummy grumbled. A few fortune
cookies weren’t going to be enough to satisfy it.

The breeze picked up, and the fog cleared a little more. The shadows in the distance looked like a couple of trees. On a volcano that a couple of days ago had been lava erupting from the bed of Lake Ontario? They weren’t that far away, so I headed toward them. Maybe one of them would be a fruit tree, and I could have breakfast. Man, I was tired, too. Closest thing I’d had to sleep in nearly two days was being unconscious while a witch took me to her house. Oh, and I guess when Punum and I had had the joint dream, or adventure. That’d been a few hours. My body with its new coating was heavy, though. I was feeling it, dragging the weight of it around.

In the few minutes it took me to walk to where the trees were, the volcano spat out household smoke alarms (all beeping; go figure), a rain of clear plastic name tag holders (I ate a few of them; they were okay), more lava, and lightbulbs. That last one was messy; broken glass everywhere. My taint-thickened feet crunched through the glass as easily as if it were freshly fallen snow. There were some advantages to this new body.

I was almost at the trees. There were two of them. They were higher up on the hill, with only a small rise now between me and them. One of them was a fir. And was that other one a peach tree, complete with ripe peaches? I used to like peaches. But my new taste buds were sending me messages that the last thing they wanted was peaches. Great.

I clambered up over the rise. The roots of the two trees were hidden by low-lying fog. No. Fog didn’t have a pearly glimmer like that. Fog didn’t bulge out like a big balloon. It was the bubble I’d seen in Bar None! And lying facedown with one leg buried thigh-deep in it was—

“Tafari!” Fatigue forgotten, I sprinted in his direction, dreading the worst. “Tafari!”

My heart leapt when he lifted his head to squint at me through the gloom. He was alive! Or was he? “Tafari!”

He struggled awkwardly to prop himself up on one elbow. “Get away!” he yelled. “Shoo!” He picked up a branch that was lying nearby and swung it at me. He hit my leg. I barely felt it. I moved back a little.

“Taf, it’s me. It’s Scotch.” Something smelled good, a mixture of molasses and new plastic.

“Scotch?”
Tafari’s eyes went wide. “You’re Scotch? You’re shittin’ me.”

“I’m not. It really is me.” All I wanted to do was hug him. And maybe eat a little something. But he was ready to fight me off.

“What the hell happened to you?” He didn’t put the branch down. “And how do I know it’s really you?”

I remembered the fake Tafari I’d seen. “Yeah, I might say the same thing. Can you smell that?” My tummy rumbled again. I checked out Tafari’s hands. One of them had fused fingers. It was him. “Are you okay?” I asked him. “Are you hurt?” I tried to get closer—for one thing, the delicious smell was somewhere around him—but he brandished the branch at me. “Get real,” I said. “A little piece of wood can’t stop me now.”

I grabbed the end of the branch. He shouted as I yanked it out of his hand, but not in alarm; in pain. He held on to the thigh that was trapped in the bubble. He grimaced.

“Oh, crap!” I said. “Did I hurt you? Taf, I’m so sorry!” That smell was getting more and more distracting.

“I can’t get out of this thing,” Taf replied. “I’ve been trapped in here since—”

“Since Bar None the night before last. I know.”

“What the hell is going on? What is this thing I landed on?”

“I don’t know. Stuff is crazy all over.” Mesmerized, I reached for the part of the bubble that was holding him.

Gently, he batted my hand away. “Don’t touch it! It might suck you in, too. It’s been getting tighter. I can’t feel my leg anymore.”

“Poor Taf.” My hand was already sneaking back toward the bubble. I sniffed; it was what smelled so good.

“So, what happened to you really? Are you okay in there?” Taf asked.

“I’m seriously ugly now, I know.” I was practically drooling, I was so hungry.

“That’s not important. Are you hurt? Hey, what’re you doing?”

I’d crouched down beside him. I was tearing at the bubble. It was stretchy, and tough, a bit like trying to get the cling wrap off a sandwich.

“Scotch, no! It’s not safe!”

A strip of the bubble came away in my hands. Tafari gaped at it. “How’d you do that? I’ve been trying to get it off me for almost two days.”

“Piece of cake,” I replied dreamily. “And speaking of cake . . .” I held the strip of bubble up to my nose. I have no words for the glorious smell that rose from it. I put it into my mouth.

“Don’t do that!”

But I was chewing it already. I stuffed it all into my mouth. “Don’t be silly,” I told him through the mouthful. “We have to get you free, right?”

He stared in amazement as I tore strip after strip of the bubble away. Soon I had his leg free. He cried out and started massaging the leg. “It’s all pins and needles,” he told me.

“That’s the blood rushing back in.” I crammed some more of the bubble into me.

“How’s it taste?” Tafari asked.

I really didn’t want to share, but this was Taf, after all. I held a strip out to him. “Here. Try it.”

He grimaced. “No, thank you. Listen, we should get out of here. I’d say we both need to go to a hospital.”

“Good luck trying to get in the door of one. Do you have any idea what’s been going on in the rest of the world?”

He shook his head no. “My phone died yesterday morning.”

The volcano erupted again. By the light of it, I finally noticed the burns on his face and hands. “Shit, I’m being so selfish! You’re hurt bad!”

“And you’re eating . . . What is that, anyway?”

“Breakfast.”

“How’d you get here, Scotch? Did you come on the ferry?”

“No, I came through a witch’s stove. Don’t look at me like that. There is no ferry.” I kept stuffing my face, but a thought was worming its way through my feeding frenzy. Rich had been able to call me, even though my phone was dead. Maybe it worked both ways? “Taf, get my phone out of my jeans pocket, will you? My fingers are too clumsy like this.”

Hesitantly, he scooched closer to me and slid my phone out of my pocket.

“Now call Rich.”

He punched in the numbers and put the phone to his ear. His face fell. “The phone’s dead.”

“I know.” I held out my palm, and he gave me the phone. I put it to my ear and waited. Sure enough, Rich came on the line.

“Scotch! And you found Tafari! I just kept getting static when I tried to call him.”

“And I see you got that whole surveillance camera thing worked out.”

“Yeah. I can reach the telecommunications satellites. How cool is that? Holy shit! What’s that thing beside Tafari?”

“It’s me.”

“Oh, my god!”

“I’m okay, Taf’s okay, but this volcano could take us out any minute. I want you to practice saying something for me.”

“How’s that going to help? I’d send an ambulance helicopter or something, but most flights have been shut down.”

“Just repeat it after me. I want you to send it out along the wires, or whatever you do, till someone answers. She’s gonna be pissed. But tell her I solemnly pinkie swear never to use it again, and could she please send that fire bird over to the part of the volcano where we are?

“What? What’re you talking about?”

“Just do it, please.” I had him repeat the phrase for calling Izbouchka until I was certain he had it mostly right. And all the while, I kept snacking on the bubble. I’d eaten about half of it. The rest was beginning to look lumpy and deflated. When Rich rang off to try to get help for us, I said to Tafari, “We might have a lift out of here.”

“Is Rich going to come for us, or something?”

“Or something, yes.” I wanted to cry. “Taf, Rich isn’t doing so well right now.”

He replied, “Scotch, don’t move.”

“What?”

“Don’t move, I said! There’s something behind you.”

I got the creepy-crawlies between my shoulder blades. I wanted to look behind me, but I didn’t dare. “Is it black and blobby with a mouth like gears grinding in old oil and too many legs?”

“Six, or eight, or four. I can’t exactly tell. I think it’s black, but it’s too covered in ash for me to be sure. What the hell is it?”

“Oh, no.” Skin prickling, I turned to face the horror behind me, just as Spot leapt at me.

“So Brer Anansi, he clap him one hand against the side of the tar baby face, braps! And him hand fasten.”

I slapped Spot. My hand held fast. Spot growled and snapped at me.

“He took his other hand and smacked that tar baby upside the other side of its head.”

I slapped my other hand onto her. “Got you now!” I crowed at her. Spot was heavy. But I was the Queen of the Thunder-Thighed, and right now, I was pissed. I used my thighs and I pulled and pulled. Inch by inch I was dragging Spot along.

“Scotch, what’re you doing!?” called Tafari. “You’ll get killed!”

“Maybe, but I’m taking this bitch out with me!”

Spot did that nasty trick of swallowing her own face and then pooching it out somewhere else on her body; in this case, her snarling snout almost took my nose off.

“Oh, yeah?” I asked her.

“I bet you I buck you!”

I head-butted her as hard as I could, right in the snout. She yipped in pain. “Take that, you giant zit!”

Of course my head didn’t come free. Being stuck like that made it harder for me to see where I was going. I had to kind of crank my neck, and I could only see out of one eye. The other eye was so close to Spot that it was seeing only black. I had to move kind of sideways. With each step I took farther up the hill, I stuck the landing, bent my knees, flexed my thighs, and dragged Spot a little farther. “How you like my one-two step now?”
I growled at her. She was fighting to get away. Her legs scrabbled in the ashy powder dust, but couldn’t get any purchase. And then we were at the roaring red mouth of Animikika. The volcano spat a red gout upward. Spot whinnied. She dragged me a few feet back down the mountain. I dragged back until we were at the mouth of it again. “Plenty power in these legs, sweetie. I could do this all day.”