Night of Endless Portals

Tired from the late evening discussion, and general confirmation of everything my parents had ever taught me, I trudged down into the depths of the monastery. Malia had taken this route when she left and I wanted to explain myself.

Several different switchbacks and meandering paths later, I heard the laughter of small children in the distance, muffled through at least one door. It sounded to me like a dozen or more children shouted and laughed at something and I needed to find out what was happening. It wasn’t fair to exclude me.

Basements were rare in Texas, as rare as an honest preacher. The fact this monastery sported a large subterranean complex spoke volumes of its wealth. How they managed to construct something like this confounded me, but I wasn’t here to survey their architecture or audit their accounts.

I opened a door to reveal the kids playing on the other side and froze up. Mirrors covered one wall, floor to ceiling. A padded mat covered the floor and about ten kids ranging in age from five to twelve followed Malia as she led them in katas.

“Malia?”

She rolled her eyes and the kids shouted, “That’s Master Malia, ten pushups for you!”

I shook my head in shock while I opened and shut my mouth. When I parsed what they’d shouted, I said, “But I just want to talk…”

My last word was drowned out by “ten pushups, ten pushups!” to the point where I backed out of the doorway. Malia raced forward and caught the sleeve of my jacket.

“Wait, you have to humor me or I lose my perceived authority.” She lowered her voice to keep the kids from hearing. Out loud she said, “Are you afraid?”

I snorted and shook my head. The truth was, I doubted I could do half the number she demanded. But I wanted to speak to her, and Tia stood in the room with the others, a huge grin across her face. If she could be happy down here in the basement, then I could play along. “Okay, but I’m not sure I can do ten pushups.”

A few of the smaller kids brought their hands to their mouths as their eyes widened up as big as bouncy balls. The older kids rolled their eyes as if they knew why Malia immediately waved her hand and said, “That’s fine. You just have to do as many as you can then.”

I pulled off my jacket, painfully conscious of my gut and embarrassingly large man-boobs. When she turned to regard me, Malia raised an eyebrow like a teacher studying her newest, sub-par student. Reminding myself that she was maintaining appearances for the kids in the class, I got down on all fours and tried.

A part of me expected whatever catastrophe that struck the world to have invested me with some great, secret potential. No such luck. My arms wobbled after two sad little “pushups” and after the fourth, I couldn’t raise my girth with my arms anymore. Breath heaving, I remained on the floor fighting for that fifth pushup longer than I ever had in gym class.

Malia knelt down and patted me on the back. “That was a good job, you can rest now” She used the same tone with me that she used with the class at large. In many ways that stung more than the failure.

Helping me up, Malia clapped her hands. “Now back to our exercises kids!”

My parents had drilled martial arts into me from eight until twelve. Four years of dedicated study and the only thing I had to show for it was a fair eye for other martial artists. Malia was on the same level as my mom, maybe even my father. They might have been insane jerks, but no one would question their skills.

Maybe I shouldn’t have questioned their sanity in retrospect.

Once she was done working out the room full of children, Malia shooed them off. She approached me as she wiped her face and hair down with a towel.

“You’re pretty good at that…” I shook my head mid-sentence. “Scratch that, you’re really good at that.”

“My mom couldn’t live with my dad and me. When I was old enough to understand that, just a little younger than Tia, I took up Wing Chung to honor her. Then I got old enough to be angry about it so I took up Krav Maga and Jiujutsu.”

“Wow, that’s… and you’re a graduate student?”

Malia grinned. “I didn’t have a tiger mom, so I made myself my own. Hell, a few of the kids in my grade only graduated because of me.”

“What happened?”

Raising her arms, Malia swept her gaze over the room. “The world fucking ended.” Before I could say I was sorry, she said, “did you really not know this was coming?”

“I swear. I thought my mom and dad were, nuts. Besides, it wasn’t like they had an exact date.”

“So what, they were just certain the world was gonna end and hammered you about it constantly? Gross.” Malia tied her hair up and took off the red upper-robe she’d donned.

As a reflex, I turned away from her and the mirror. Only belatedly did I realize she wore another set of clothes beneath her training gear. From the giggling behind me, I could guess she thought it was funny. Rather than make my embarrassment complete, I turned away from her and mumbled. “The grossness was why I left.” There had to be a better way to say that, but my brain stumbled over the words under the pressure.

“They sound like jerks, but are you going to go find them and apologize?”

“I’d need a shovel or a time machine.”

“Oh, shit. I’m sorry.”

From the doorway, we heard an “ummm, that’s a bad word!” I turned and caught a glimpse of Malia in her undershirt. I put it out of my mind along with the vague sense of jealousy I felt for her. At the door stood my kid sister, stroking the top of her index finger at me and hopping from leg to leg. “If I told pop-pop about what you said, he’d be mad.”

Yeah, sure. The whole world was coming down around everyone’s ears and the best thing Gramps has to do with his time was remind me to watch my language. “You’re right, Tia. But what do you mean, “if?” Do I smell a bribe coming?”

“The monk… his name was Kercin, said there’s an observatory on the roof, but we can only go up if an adult goes with us. If you go with me, I won’t tell.”

Malia snickered and I smelled an only child at once. “Well, I should tell Gramps you’re blackmailing me.”

“But then I would tell on you too!”

Turning so Tia wouldn’t see, Malia put her hand on her mouth. It wasn’t that funny, but then again, those weren’t just tears of amusement. I set Malia out of my mind for the moment and said, “Alright, then it sounds like the only way both of us are getting out of trouble is to go to the observatory, right?”

“Right!” Tia pumped her fist and darted into the dojo like a shot. She grabbed Malia’s shirt and tugged. “Come too Miss Malia. Please?”

Sniffling and wiping her face, Malia nodded as she stood up. “Sounds good. A cool breath of fresh air would be nice in the night.”

I forced the prurient thoughts of the lovely woman out of my head. There were many reasons I wouldn’t mind seeing her in the cold night air. But with Tia there, our nocturnal meeting would be purely platonic. That was fine with me, between me and Alaric, I knew who I’d prefer anyway.

As we made our way up the stairs, Malia leaned in and lowered her voice. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

I mean, come on. This was a mystical fantasy apocalypse. Going outside to stargaze was a bad idea on the near-epic proportions. My only hope was for the dark future coming our way to deflect and hit everyone around us instead. Rather than say that aloud, I said, “Sure. If the monks think it’s fine. I’m sure it’s fine.”

Our choices for stairs up narrowed as we moved up to the third level. Only a single winding stair permitted roof access and a monk in the standard red robes guarded the wrought iron doorway. He bent down and waved to Tia as she approached.

“I see you found an escort.” He bowed as she produced a full-headed nod. “Then I would be happy to open the door for the three of you and permit you access to the moon viewing room.”

Now there was a snappy name, which suggested a covered glass dome optionally lit by candlelight. A few days ago, I would have been too nervous to bring Malia up here alone. As it was, I wouldn’t be here if not for Tia.

When we opened the door at the end of the stairs, Tia clasped the door and waited with wide eyes. She gasped and spun out onto the flat roof while I sighed in disappointment.

“Not what you were expecting, Harlan?” Malia winked at me as she asked.

“A little, yeah. I was hoping for a glass dome and some cushions.”

“Cushions, yes. I wasn’t thinking of a dome.” Malia stepped out onto the roof and mirrored Tia’s spin. “Now that we’ve seen it, it makes almost too much sense, right?”

I laughed. Austerity fit with the monastic theme. She was completely right. “Yeah, I wasn’t thinking. Extravagance and monk don’t really mix, right?”

“Exactly.”

For a few brief minutes, we forgot the horrors of the day. I might have been wrong about Malia, but the way she watched Tia frolic over the roof and the way she smiled when my sister wasn’t looking made me think she really did forget for a while. Once Tia tuckered herself out, I laid my jacket down on the roof for her and Malia and I sat down cross-legged.

Tia had been snoring for minutes before Malia spoke. “We can’t stay here. Not for long anyway.”

I nodded at her words. Food, water, plumbing, would all become problems in major metropolitan areas. Rural places with their own land for farming and ranching, their own solutions to the water and sewage problems had always featured high on my parents’ lists of destinations. Since they were clearly not crazy, their advice didn’t seem so terrible now. For the first time in almost a decade, I truly missed them. “My guess is Gramps will aim for something rural. The more remote a place is, the less likely people will become a problem at first.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s the zombie-flick dilemma. Once you “solve” the zombie problem, the movie gets boring. But a smart filmmaker puts in the human element. Zombies are dumb and slow, humans are smart and armed. Once the world calms down, the remote places might be the only safe ones.” Harlan shrugged. “I mean this is all real now, but I think the films got it right. The zombies and monsters are just like… window dressing. Whatever comes next, people will be the problem I think.”

“What does come next?”

In the distance, the lower stars twinkled and vanished. Only then did I realize that smoke from a fire in central Austin had blocked them. There was no way to know if a dozen fiery salamanders danced about an oil fire or if a few hundred people had skinned their enemies and chanted over a fire pit of their corpses. Was the world taunting me? “I don’t know. Gramps will, of course. And probably Alaric. He was always the best son.”

“He stayed back when you left?”

“Not really. My mom and dad were… extreme. His, not so much.” I wouldn’t tell Malia I didn’t want to talk about this. But maybe if I was cagey and vague, she’d take the hint.

“And Gramps?”

“The patron of my insane little family. He’s the funnel through which my mom and dad learned everything they did. Same for Alaric’s folks.”

Malia shivered and checked her hair tie as if it might have come loose. “I can’t imagine marrying into a family like that, with such odd lore.”

I raised my hands. Me neither. Why my dad agreed to go along with my mom’s madness never made sense to me. Between the two of them, he’d always seemed the more fanatical. I really didn’t want to speak about that right then.

Before I could come up with something witty to say, Malia gasped. A shadow passed between us an the heavens. It blotted out the clouds and stars alike with a silhouette like a dragon swimming across the surface of the ocean. Its wings hardly disturbed the clouds, but it’s cry came loud and thunderous. Malia grabbed my hand and cowered next to me. “I don’t think it’s for us…”

“Shh, it’ll hear you!” Malia hissed at me, her eyes showing white from fear.

I waited until the shadow had long passed before I spoke. “You were there with me on Campus. The dragon there helped us. It seemed to be protecting the whole school.”

The whites of her eyes disappeared and Malia grumbled. “It did a shit job.”

She didn’t pull her hand away from mine and I kept my stupid thoughts to myself. We didn’t know how bad a job the dragon did, not really. That titan could have leveled the entire city of Austin in a few minutes. Maybe an hour. And yet the dragon and the woman fought it back into its portal. How much worse would we have been without the dragon’s help?

“I’m cold.” Malia waited in silence for several minutes before she stood up, her hand still wrapped around mine. “Let’s go inside.” She looked down at Tia and back at me. “But first tell me one more thing: who the fuck was that woman?”

“What woman?”

This time, Malia narrowed her eyes at me. “You’ve done so well so far, telling me the truth. But I can’t tell if you’re lying or just stupid now.”

“What do you mean, what woman are you talking about, Malia?”

She pulled her hand out of my grip and waved her hands around me, as if she were tracing my outline. “There was a… ghost woman. She wore a white shawl and pretty much nothing else. She had hair as black as coal and eyes to match. But she felt… she kept us safe, didn’t she?”

“You mean Yeshe Tsogyal?”

Malia snapped and sucked in air as she looked down to confirm Tia was still asleep. “Yes. See, you did know her!”

“I don’t really though. She just sort of turned up and introduced herself.”

“Well, tell her thank you for me. I appreciate her saving us both.” Malia shivered in the night air and stooped over Tia. “For now, us girls are going to find the women’s bunk and head down. You should do the same with the men’s.”

Saying the word, “men’s” acted like a lightning rod for me. I couldn’t find many good things to say about running for my life. But it stole away my inner trauma for a moment. For almost half a day, I wasn’t confused about who I was, I didn’t loathe every living second in my body. Once night arrived and sleeping arrangements became an issue, I returned to the depths of my self loathing.

Red-clad monks watched over us as we slept, keeping guard both at the door to the women’s area and to the men’s. I bade Malia a good night as she carried Tia off to bed. Without Malia around I would have worried about Tia, maybe even refused to separate from her during the night. But after seeing Malia in motion in the basement and sharing a bit of dark family history with her, I felt confident she would put her life between danger and Tia. It was as much as I could do, more really.

I expected my sleep to be troubled. Either I would have been unable to sleep entirely or I would have tossed and turned between visions of people’s arms dropping into pits. But the moment my head touched the pillow I was out.

A thin cotton sheet billowed around me. No matter how hard the wind pulled at my gown, it continued to cover my breasts and groin, as if the force of protecting my modesty was greater than the wind itself.

My feet stepped over barren rocks, in between tufts of grass. I avoided those green patches because the occasional scorpion or jagged bit of rock might lie there waiting to strike. My feet were callused and used to the rough travel. I could have walked over ground glass without encountering a splinter, but old habits from childhood clung harder than hunger.

I neared a cave, my back burdened with a strange weight. Unused to hefting such a massive load, I couldn’t tell what it was without looking and I felt like a voyeur in another person’s body in the moment and didn’t want to let my awareness stray. When I reached the mouth of the cave, a red-headed devil popped out of the earth. I snapped my fingers at it, pointed and uttered a single syllable. It sounded a lot like the English “ah”. The little red devil vibrated in the air like it might explode. Instead it turned translucent and purple. Two additional arms sprouted from its lower ribs and it flapped those arms to bring the ghost-thing’s own body into the air. It bowed first to me and then in the four directions before it vanished into the roof of the cavern.

From deep within my mind, I knew that fewer such demons walked the Earth now, growing less and less common with each passing season. My own master and husband was responsible for a good deal of the missing demons personally, but he’d taught me the sign to release them and it had never failed me.

An ancient skeleton sat at the back of this cavern. It was older than my husband with beads for a skirt and a rotten headdress that might have once been made from feathers. I bowed to the figure, noting its moldering flesh and the arrow piercing its heart that had ended its life.

Now my own burden came off. I slung the sack over my should and dropped it onto the floor. Scrolls, leather bound tomes, and even shiny silvered disks overflowed from my pack. Keeping them all contained within the hide was a chore in itself. I selected the tome myself, trusting to my intuition as my husband had taught me.

When I pulled it out, my eyes marveled. I could read the title: Secrets Arcane. In the context of my dream, this wasn’t surprising in the least. Either I or my husband had written every record within my bag. But the fact it appeared in English stupefied my modern mind.

The white length of cloth wrapped itself around my arm as I deposited the book under the skeleton. I whispered words into its ears that I could not quite catch, words I felt sure I could understand if given just a bit of time. With those words, the skeleton’s eyes flared red, its neck blue, and its chest shone with pure white light. It nodded to me against the halo of light in the cavern and I hobbled away. At the mouth of the cave, I stomped my foot and sent tremors through the mountainside. Rocks tumbled and fell, covering the mouth of the cave as sure as a glacier passing over the area. I lingered only to confirm the cave had been shut, and resumed my passage through this strange land.

Two strides, I’d walked to the edge of the ocean, a third stride over it, and a fourth, I landed on a beach. With the fifth stride I hit snowy planes and with the sixth… “Wake up Harley-pants. It’s breakfast time!”

My sister and Malia stood over me, in the men’s area, making faces at me. Malia tapped my shoulder. “Right, Harley-pants. Come on! Join us!”

“Please don’t call me that.” I rolled over and considered staying in bed. For a moment, I’d forgotten the strange events, the multiple deaths that brought Malia and I together. Tia certainly had.

But then the truth flooded back over me and nothing I could do would deny it. I shooed the two interlopers out of the bunks and looked around. Their escort had let the two women in because no one else still slept in the men’s bunks. I was the last one up. We’d slept a night after the end of the world; we were still here and it was breakfast time.

My day already looked up.