CHAPTER 43

The City of Souls

From: [email protected] /* */

To: [email protected] /* */

Subject: 2 down

Hi, it’s Allie skinjacking. Milos and Moose are dead. Jill, are you there? We need those other names! Jix, I hope you made it to the City of Souls, and that you’re all okay. Tell Mikey and Nick hello. And be careful, all of you!

Allie

Back on New Year’s Eve—the same day that Allie and Clarence first boarded the plane to Baltimore—Nick, Mikey, and Jix sailed for Chichén Itzá. They took the smallest of the Everlost racing yachts from Corpus Christi Marina, solemnly passing the hull of the doomed boat, which still floated upside down. They sailed southwest across the Gulf of Mexico, toward the Yucatan Peninsula. That first day, and all through the night, Mikey stood at the yacht’s bow. The sun rose to his left at dawn, and he felt it shine through him, adding golden accents to his natural afterglow. Their boat did not pitch and roll with the motion of the sea; rather it glided as if skating on ice, regardless of what the living sea did around it, leaving no wake to mark their passage. Their journey offered no bursts of sea spray, no bow lurching to meet the waves. It was an indignation of Everlost that ocean voyages were stripped of their drama.

This was the first time Mikey had been at sea since his days as the McGill, and he couldn’t help but feel a little nostalgic. Back then, his greatest pleasure was to be miserable in every possible way. Things were so much better now, but he did occasionally have an urge to wallow. This sleek sailing yacht was nothing like the dank rusty bulk of the old steamship, the Sulphur Queen. He couldn’t say which he liked better: the rude character and brute force of the old vessel, or the sleek majesty of the yacht. Perhaps he’d be most at home with a combination of both. If the yacht’s sails were wind-tattered, if its polished brass and varnished wood were scarred from a hundred successful voyages, it would have suited him, because character should always come before beauty.

Jix, who knew full well what was in store for them, chose not to brief Mikey and Nick until the fourth day, when the Yucatan shoreline was already visible on the distant horizon, and changing their minds ceased to be an option. Then he sat them down in the galley, and told them all they needed to know about the City of Souls and His Excellency, the Supreme King of the Middle Realm.

“It is a very old city,” Jix told them. “And he is a very old soul. From a time when things were very different. When we arrive, you will be formally announced and I will present you.” Then Jix paused, knowing the next part would be difficult to swallow. “I will be presenting you to the king as gifts.”

“Excuse me?” said Mikey “Did you say ‘gifts’?”

“It’s the only way to get you into his court. Otherwise you will be confined to the ripening caves for years, until you forget your past and remember nothing but the City of Souls.”

“I’m nobody’s property,” grumbled Mikey, growing himself a pair of inadvertent fangs that he drew back once Nick glared at him.

Jix showed no emotion in his response. “If you wish to stop your sister, then you will do as I say. The king will become your ally only if you approach him with absolute humility, then win him over.”

Nick sighed. “Then we’re in trouble. Mikey doesn’t do humility.”

“If all goes well, you may not be palace slaves for long.” Jix thought for a moment, pondering what he should say and what he shouldn’t. “His Excellency has another name,” Jix told them. “They call him ‘the Unremembering King.’ It has to do with his memory. The things he remembers and the things he doesn’t.”

“So he forgets things?” scoffed Mikey. “Big deal. Who isn’t forgetful in Everlost?”

“No,” said Jix patiently “He’s not forgetful, he’s unremembering. There’s a big difference, and you will know that difference. It is the very core of his power.”

“What does that mean for us?” asked Nick

“It means that he will have a very short attention span for you,” Jix explained, “and when he tires of treating you as playthings, he may unremember you into a position of power. But take care, because there are others who seek power in the City of Souls. . . .”

“Like you?” asked Mikey, almost an accusation.

“I,” said Jix, “will be the least of your troubles.”

Upon seeing the approaching yacht, winged messengers went soaring over the forest toward the city, and by the time the yacht neared shore, an army numbering a thousand was there to capture the intruders, whoever they were.

“His Excellency believes in excess,” Jix told Nick and Mikey, as they sailed closer to the waiting army.

Mikey and Nick were less than thrilled by the huge battalion of tribal warriors, each armed with nasty-looking sharp objects. Although they knew the weapons technically couldn’t hurt them, there was nothing pleasant about being riddled with arrows, or impaled by a spear, or hacked by a machete—and if this king was as resourceful as Jix said, perhaps he had found a way to inflict pain, or at least unrelenting discomfort.

“They’ll recognize you, right?” asked Nick. “Because you work for the king.”

Jix mewled a little, then said, “Not necessarily.” Then he turned to Mikey. “Quickly—explain to me your power. What kind of things can you turn yourself into?”

“I can’t make myself something real, if that’s what you’re asking. I can’t be a giraffe or a jaguar or an elephant—it has to be something I make up, and I’m never sure how it’s going to look.”

Jix pondered that, fiddling with his whiskers. “I think we can work with that.”

Five minutes later, the yacht had run aground, and the entire army had lowered their weapons, gawking in awe at a creature that was part vulture, part fish, and part iguana, with scales like golden kernels of maize. Taken together, they were four of the holiest of Mayan symbols. The only thing holier was the boy riding the beast: a jaguar spirit, and what appeared to be his dark, oozing shadow riding behind him. When the strange beast leaped off the boat onto shore, none of the warriors dared to disturb it, because clearly it was sent from the gods. Then when the creature turned itself into a boy, the guards picked up their weapons once more, but only to protect the three boys, and escort them inland to the City of Souls.

Jix spoke to their escorts in a language that baffled Nick and Mikey. “It’s Mayan,” he explained. “The language of the kingdom. But don’t worry; the king speaks English.”

“How could he learn a language that didn’t exist before he died?” asked Mikey, who knew that an Afterlight’s set of skills could never surpass his or her fleshly education.

“He didn’t have to learn it,” was all Jix offered as an explanation.

They marched on well-worn dirt paths that had crossed into Everlost. The forest around them was filled with trees that lived, and trees that had crossed. It seemed Everlost had much more of a footprint here than in the North.

They marched through the night, and just after dawn they came to a high stone wall that stretched out in either direction for as far as the eye could see, and in the center of the wall was a triangular wooden gate, barring their entrance.

Mikey and Nick suspected that an ancient city might have such a wall, but what they saw atop that wall made it clear that this wasn’t just an ancient city, it was an Everlost city. All along the ramparts were strange-looking spirits, their mouths open wider than normal mouths, like living gargoyles, and their feet—if they even had feet—were embedded in the stone. They all wore brightly colored headdresses full of feathers and gold, and there were hundreds of them, probably enough to stretch all the way around the city.

“The wailers,” said Jix, with an exasperated sigh.

At the sight of the approaching crowd, they began to shriek, their eyes fixing on the three new arrivals. Then, in a minute or two, those screeches resolved into song, sometimes dissonant and sometimes harmonic. Their song was in Mayan, and was strangely hypnotic.

“They are announcing us to the king,” Jix explained. “Telling their impressions of each of us—but I suspect the king won’t be listening. He never listens to the wailers anymore. He’s lost interest in them.”

“What are they saying?” asked Mikey.

“They’re talking about me,” Jix said. “They’re saying that I look familiar, yet very suspicious. . . . Now they’re talking about Nick. They say that you are made of rotten tree-resin, and you’re highly suspicious. . . . Now they’re talking about you, Mikey. They seem to like you.”

“Really?”

“Yes,” said Jix, “but they’re very suspicious of spirits they like.”

The song continued, and the army, which was apparently used to this, waited with practiced patience.

“Now they’re debating whether or not you should be thrown into the Cenote,” Jix explained. “That’s a bottomless pool that goes to Xibalba, the Mayan underworld . . . although I suspect it really just goes to the center of the Earth.”

“Thanks for sharing,” said Mikey.

That made Nick laugh, which was something, because Mikey was never known to make anyone laugh.

The strange song of the wailers soon changed, becoming more melodic, building toward a crescendo. “They’re singing the song of opening,” Jix told them. “When they’re done, the guards will open the gates.”

“How long will this take?” asked Mikey.

“As long as they feel like,” said Jix. “The wailers are a pain.”

And sure enough they went on singing for another half hour, until finally they reached the last note which, since Afterlights need no air to sing, lasted four whole minutes. Then the song came to a dramatic end and the gates began to swing open. Immediately Nick and Mikey were struck by light and color so bright they had to look away.

“Welcome,” said Jix, a little bit proud, and a little embarrassed, “to the City of Souls.”

No one who has seen the City of Souls is ever the same. There are sights and sounds to boggle the most worldly mind and fill it with both elation and terror. Spirits with the colorful wings of parrots soared overhead in formation, dancing in the sky, while on the ground below, Afterlights adorned with gold, jade, onyx, and impossibly bright feathers engaged in all sorts of joyous activities. Troops of dancers stomped and gyrated in circles everywhere. Crowds moved in swarms, seeming to have no purpose other than moving and swarming. Magicians performed amazing feats and jugglers hurled balls of flame high into the sky. The entire city was a single massive party that had raged for eons and showed no signs of slowing.

“As I told you,” Jix said, “the king likes excess.”

“Right. More is more,” said Mikey.

“No,” said Jix, “as far as His Excellency is concerned, ‘more’ is not nearly enough.”