The First Story Read online

  “No!” Matt shouted and began an earnest run for the alley. He watched the group turn and saw their expressions were not sinister, not anymore. Each of them had the wide-eyed expression of a child who had just been unknowingly cruel, realizing they had just made an unbearable mistake. They ran as Matt approached.

  Blood had begun to pool around John’s head, which lay in a puddle of murky water. That was unacceptable, but the angry redness of the entire scene gave him pause. He wanted to lift John’s head out of the dirtiness; he wanted to pick his friend up and carry him to safety; he wanted… But he didn’t know what to do, what he could do, what could be done.

  Chapter 2

  A Meeting in the Woods

  The Eternal Gloaming blinked. It was slight, quick, and barely noticeable, but the Chittering Underground’s eyes turned toward the disturbance; the Growl in the Night felt a chill, and the Keeper of Ways made an errant mark on a map.

  “Go, check the Caves,” the Chittering Underground instructed her subjects, her children, and thousands upon thousands of spindly legs scurried to do her bidding.

  “I should investigate,” the Growl in the Night whispered through the twilight as he rose and bounded away into the shadows of the trees.

  The Keeper of Ways stared at the flawed map. He squinted at the wrongly placed line, and he concentrated. There was a path in the error; the line marked it. There was a purpose to the mistake; the line revealed it. There was urgency hidden in the ink; the mark symbolized it. He rolled up the parchment, placed it with the hundreds of other maps lining his walls, and he sat to ponder the potentiality of future roads.

  The Growl in the Night followed his nose, whiskers flitting too and fro. His heavy paws trundled over forest carpet, through dense undergrowth, around barriers his powerful claws could not dispatch. Nothing seemed out of place, amiss. A guttural noise, raw and primal, rumbled around his stomach, through his chest, and squeezed from between his fangs.

  The thousands upon thousands of spindly legs returned to the Chittering Underground. They pooled around her massive legs, all of them, and they lingered in the enormous shadow of her body. The Chittering Underground turned all of her bulbous eyes to the ground, surveying her children. The thousands and thousands of spindly legs fluttered in unison, tense and anxious. Eight of those legs scurried forward, whispered the cause of concern.

  “Is it true?” she asked, and a thousand mandibles clicked affirmation.

  In bounded the Growl in the Night. “What have you discovered?”

  “You saw it too?”

  “Felt it more like.” The Growl in the Night paced back and forth at the mouth of the Chittering Underground’s cave; he carefully and splendidly avoided crushing any of her children. Pads and paws swept around the forest floor with grace that should have been impossible, and a tail, like banded steel, swished from side to side, balancing and testing as it went.

  “It is as bad as it felt.” The Chittering Underground lifted one of her own spindly legs that were thousands and thousands of times bigger than her children’s could ever hope to be. She pointed toward the Caves. “The First Story has been stolen.”

  The roar that erupted from the Growl in the Night shook the leaves from the trees, caused the ground to rumble, and frightened the wind away. “I will find the thief! I will punish the thief!”

  “I’m afraid it isn’t as simple as that.” The Chittering Underground watched the flashing eyes move closer, heard the roiling sound of fear, but she never wavered in her defiance. “We need to inform the Council of Aspects.”

  “The Council?” The Growl in the Night spat out the words. “Useless! We are the oldest beings in existence; we should lead Creativity!”

  “The Council was duly elected. You know that as well as I.” The Chittering Underground shifted her enormous bulk and pushed forward. The mammoth beast in front of her, dwarfed by her own body and cowed by her clacking mandibles, was forced to step back into the forest-scented air, snarling in retreat. “And there is more to this theft than is readily apparent.”

  “What does it matter? If the First Story is used…?” The Growl in the Night bowed his furry head in deference.

  “I am aware of the danger.” The Chittering Underground flicked one of her legs, and the Growl in the Night turned and leaped into the shadows. “I am very aware of the dangers, but we follow the laws.”

  “The laws!” Another wave of vicious sound forced its way into the air from underneath the cover of darkness. “Are we supposed to just sit in our caves and do nothing?”

  “That was the long-ago agreement. You signed in blood.”

  The Eternal Gloaming settled into the treetops, spilled onto the forest floor, twisted around the rocks and pathways, and dipped into the rivers and streams; all of Creativity sighed at the comfort of the Never-Ending Day. The Growl in the Night huffed his final protest before shifting back on his haunches. He rested and forced his breath to flow normally. The night grew intensely quiet.

  The Chittering Underground turned all of her eyes to the sky. The light, dim but strong, was soft and reassuring. “For now, we send a message.” She whispered to her anxious children. “And we wait.” Her children scurried away, back to the forest floor, the trunks of trees, and the bushes filled with food. The Chittering Underground stifled a shiver as the Eternal Gloaming seemed to dip toward darkness once more. She trained her eyes on the Gloaming Woods, and the half day around her pulsed, almost imperceptibly, with anticipation of the potential new day just over the horizon.

  Chapter 3

  Matt didn’t have the same response to hospitals that so many people had. He had heard people describe the smells, the sounds, and the wall colors as disturbing, frightening, or gross. He knew there were a lot of people who hated hospitals. He hadn’t been one of them. He had always seen hospitals as hope. They represented help, caring, safety. He had always liked hospitals until today.

  He watched his friend roll into the hospital on a gurney stained with blood, and all of the hope drained from him. The hospital was now a place of terror, of dread.

  “You’ll have to wait out here, sweetie,” a nurse said. A strange tone he didn’t quite recognize dripped from her words, and she pointed to a room full of chairs off to the side.

  Matt waited until the gurney disappeared through two large metal doors that opened with a hiss. He waited a moment more until the hissing doors closed. He waited again, standing in the middle of a pale, cold corridor, suddenly understanding the term “industrial white” as a description of a wall color. The nurses’ station, off to the right, was encased in shiny, reddish wood like someone had tried to inject nature into this unnaturally white setting. He didn’t appreciate the attempt. He turned and faced the waiting room. The chairs were made from the same truly fake-looking wood. He continued to wait, even as he sat in one of the chairs closest to the hissing doors.

  A clock he couldn’t quite see—a free-standing hand sanitizer station blocked half of it—behind the nurses’ desk was ticking loudly, too loudly. The rest was silence, too much silence. Matt took inventory of his memory, in order to recount to parents, and tried to organize the events that were swirling now. The police had arrived first after the convenience store clerk had made the call, and one of them had asked so many questions, and Matt had answered. At least, he thought he had answered. He remembered other officers tending to John.

  He remembered them taking his pulse, further checking his neck, tentatively pressing his skin, lifting his shirt, taking note of the old bruises and the new wounds. A fresh tear fell down his face. He had been crying this entire time but not continuously. Tears would flow freely, then stop, then trickle, then flow, then stop. At times, he felt he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. A roar filled his ears, his mind, his consciousness.

  Emotions that he hadn’t known before bubbled behind the roar in his head, the throbbing pain around his eyes, the tremble of his hands. Complex, confusing, irritating emotions, full of familiar things
but different from anything that had come before. There was fear, but it was more pronounced, more scratching, like claws in his flesh. There was sadness, encroaching, invasive, like thousands of insects beneath his skin. There was anger. So much anger flooded through him as if a wall, a border, some boundary had been breached.

  He sat and waited. He listened to the obscured clock tick, he stared at the shiny wood, he glared at the sterile walls, and he felt the emotions.

  Chapter 4

  Consultation with the Chittering Underground

  She walked into the forest, the little girl. It was nearly dark but not yet. It was no longer day but still yet. She made good time, traveling over fallen logs and boulders until she came to the place where she could no longer see the lights of the town behind her.

  “We’re almost there,” she whispered to the fine porcelain doll, her traveling companion and a gift from the Toy Peddler, long ago, when she had been part of one of his stories. Her pigtails, the color of sunlight, fluttered in the cooling breeze, not yet cold but no longer warm. She walked on, past the fields of wildflowers that were so beautiful in the sunlight and so fragrant under the moon. In the time before night and after day, they were both and neither. She passed the caves where she thought the tiger lived.

  It was a story she told herself when she needed to be brave, the story of the tiger who was courageous and cowardly at the same time. The tiger who fought against all odds to protect his family but faltered while trying to protect himself. It was a story of the in-between, the kind she always loved to tell and to hear. She had been part of so many stories in the past, so often as the victim, like the Toy Peddler’s story, the little girl everyone worried and fretted about or despised. This time it was her own story she entered. She was the hero.

  The further caves appeared through the trees. These were the caves of fire. The flames inside the deep, dark caverns flickered and shot inky shadows into the forest. The shadows mixed with the light so splendidly, so nearly completely, that they always made her smile as they danced among the woody audience. Tonight, before the Eternal Gloaming dipped, as it was wont to do, the flames were especially vibrant, too vibrant. The light was overtaking the shadow far more than it had before. It made her uneasy, so she hastened her pace past the caves of fire.

  “Something is wrong,” she said, and the trees seemed to sigh their agreement. The trees spoke often as she continued her journey. “The Chittering Underground awaits,” they said, and she smiled at the pleasant invitation they offered.

  “The Chittering Underground is always so polite,” she whispered to her doll and hugged it close to her chest then made a mental note to return it to the Toy Peddler sometime soon. She had no need for props in her own story. Not really.

  The caves came faster then, one series after another: the Caves of Time, the Caves of Destiny, the Caves of Wonder, dug into the giant cliff so long ago, they stood forever as sentries over the Woods. She walked on, past the Caves of Enlightenment, the Caves of Fear, and the Caverns of Corruption until she came to stand in the Twilight Clearing, where the Eternal Gloaming began to waver, or it should have wavered. It should have dipped into the night just a bit, but still, the light was too strong even here. It should have been nearly night. Always. Nearly night. But the clearing looked like the dawn of a new day. She hurried among the tall grass, giggling without intention as the spindly weeds tickled her from ankles to chin until she came to rest at the burrow.

  The large, dark opening underneath the piled stones and newly grown shrubs appeared as a deep mouth on the earth, gaping open to the gray sky. The little girl stood before the mouth and waited.

  “It won’t be long now,” she told her doll, wondering why she was still acting like a little girl. Maybe this was the way her story was meant to go, but somehow she doubted it. She took one arm of the doll and let it drop to her side, the legs dangling just above a tiny cache of the Chittering Underground’s children. They were pushing and pulling stones and bits of dirt, making the outside of the burrow neat and tidy.

  The long spiked leg appeared very quickly, very suddenly, followed by another and another and another until the mouth of the great Chittering Underground, adorned with sharp, spindly spines of hair, came into view, towering over the little girl. The night pushed against the day, but the in-between time remained constant, but only barely.

  “Thank you for coming.” The great mandibles of the giant’s mouth whooshed from side to side as hot breath, pulsing and thrusting, came haltingly with the words.

  “Of course,” the little girl responded and bowed low in front of the enormous beast.

  “We have much to discuss, but not like this.” The Chittering Underground bowed in return. “I have need of the Sister of Monsters.”

  “It has been too long since we had a meeting outside a story.” The little girl sat on a stone. Her eyes grew large, then larger, then bulbous, like the monster in front of her. The little girl of the old stories was no longer there. She dropped her doll to her side and shifted awkwardly, positioning one hip firmly on the rock beneath her, her other suspended in air. “What need have you for the Sister of Monsters?”

  “Much better. Your true form suits you more so than the little girl in peril. I have a fear, Little Sister.”

  “What sort of fear?” the Sister of Monsters’ voice adopted the authoritative tone of a senior Aspect, deep and rich; gone was the airy timidity of a moment before.

  “I fear, Little Sister,” the Chittering Underground said, “that Creativity is running out of time.”

  The little girl brushed the errant strands of hair from her large, black, spider’s eyes and offered, her patience with the dramatics wearing thin, “Again I ask, what need do you have of me?”

  “You do not believe my warning?” The great spider lifted its bulk to the points of its legs.

  “I only know that if this is some new scheme by the Growl in the Night to take back Creativity, the both of you will find the Council very cross.”

  “You dare!” The Chittering Underground bounded forward, and her gigantic body slapped the earth with such force that the whole of Creativity shook.

  The Sister of Monsters’ resolve melted away, but her muscles thickened in tentative preparation.“I meant no disrespect.” Eyes downturned, head slightly cocked to the left, she tried another approach. “I only wished to remind you of the last time Creativity was under assault.”

  “I have told you repeatedly that I had nothing to do with that!”

  “Can you say the same of the Growl in the Night?” The Sister of Monsters felt righteously indignant enough to lift her eyes. She stared into several of the Chittering Underground’s orbs and saw the spark of anger dim.

  “I have need of the entire Council of Aspects,” the Chittering Underground continued, her anger completely replaced with calm passivity.

  “And I ask once more, what need do you have of—”

  “The First Story has gone missing.”

  The night shuddered, and darkness encroached much too far on the leftovers of the day. The Sister of Monsters looked to the caves and then over her shoulder at the forest. “Help us,” the trees whispered, and the Sister of Monsters stood, bowed, and made her way out of the clearing. The Eternal Gloaming shimmered with strengthening light.

  Eight tiny, spindly legs clicked and clattered toward the Chittering Underground.

  “No, it is all right,” the mother of all spiders responded. “The insult was slight. She argued with me because she did not understand the enormity of the problem. She understands now.”

  But the great mandibles tensed and paused in their incessant clacking. The Chittering Underground watched the Eternal Gloaming settle back into soft stability, not too dark, not too light, and then her eyes turned to the shadows of the forest where two red eyes sat amid the shadows, and a low rumble, so very much like distant thunder, inched forward.

  Chapter 5

  John’s mother came in first, alone, frantic, and hea
ded straight for the nurses’ station. She was wearing her work clothes from the dentist’s office, where she was a receptionist, but she still wore the scrubs that the assistants wore, just like the nurses in the hospital. Matt had never really known why she would do that, but seeing the way the nurses immediately responded to her questions, he suddenly understood. More than that, he could see why people craved respect in general. It was difficult to be alone inside a tribe.

  “Mrs. Hensley,” Matt called, getting up from his chair quickly before they could disappear behind the metal doors.

  “Matt,” Mrs. Hensley said with a twinge of fear and questions. She hurried to him, nearly running, and grabbed him by the shoulders, pulling him into a deep hug. “Are you okay?” Her question went into his hair, settled on his scalp, and bathed him in protection.

  “I’m fine,” Matt said as she pulled him back and looked him up and down. “I wasn’t there when—I got there just after.” He spoke the words and felt the guilt rise underneath his skin. It struggled against the massive wave of love he felt from Mrs. Hensley.

  “Well, thank goodness you got there when you did.” She closed her eyes and breathed a deep, halting breath. Her eyes flicked open, suddenly, as if a thought had hurt her, and she looked at him seriously. “Are your parents coming?”

  “Yes, they’re on their way.”

  “Good.” She stopped and looked around as if unsure what to do next. “Good.”

  “I can take you back now,” the nurse behind her said, and the words sparked action. Mrs. Hensley nodded and turned to face the woman, then, in an awkward turn, back to Matt.

  “You’ll wait here for your parents?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I’ll be here.”