“What do you want from me?” I said, staring wide-eyed at the chair, telling myself this otalith wasn’t crazy enough to strap me into it.
“Get in the cage.”
I turned to face her, mouth dry. “No.”
“I can shoot you in the head right now, or you can get in.”
“Why? You don’t have to do this.”
“The way I see it, you got some cackle for free by riling me up. Now you get to pay. You mess with me, I mess with you. I told you I’d kill you the next time I saw you. This is me being nice.”
“The world’s going to end in three days if I don’t get out of this town. You can’t put me in that cage. You don’t understand.”
She shook her head, smiling. “All you people are crazy. The sooner you get in, the sooner you get out. And don’t tell me you can’t fit either. I’ve already had a dude bigger than you in there.”
I pleaded with her, promised to kill the “bubble dudes,” to take her with me when I escaped, but I succeeded only in reigniting her fury. When her face turned red again, I folded myself into the cage, my knees against my chest. Inside smelled faintly of urine. The otalith closed the cage door with a clang and locked it with a padlock, then went to the winch on the wall and began turning. With each click of the wheel, I was lifted higher off the floor, swaying. The ceiling was only eight feet high. She stopped turning the wheel when I was three feet off the floor.
My breathing was fast and shallow, stomach tight. How could I get out of this cage? Could I pick the lock? Break it? Where was Zelda? How did that communication work? Were there distance limits?
I told the otalith about radar guns and where we could get one if she let me go, but she didn’t fall for it. She advised me in her way to keep quiet, then climbed the stairs and shut the basement door behind her.
The bars of the cage were already digging into my tailbone and back. The cage swayed, the door rattled, and I grunted as I squirmed to reach the bloom in my pocket. I had very little room to move. After some effort, I managed to get both hands and the bottle above my knees, where I unscrewed the lid and dropped bloom onto my skin.
Nothing. No voices. No pain. I dropped more. Still nothing. Then I realized the otalith had been angry, which meant her cackle had spread and contaminated mine, stifling its spread, stifling the bloom. I was trapped here. Alone. I hadn’t told Zelda or Kaliah where I was going. I couldn’t even talk to Zelda. Fears snowballed in my mind: the world would end, Em would die, everyone would die, and I would be stuck in this cage, useless, the captive of a sadistic otalith.
I pressed my back and knees against the walls of my cage and shook my whole body. I couldn’t straighten my legs! They were folded against my chest, stuck that way! Claustrophobia rushed through me. My muscles felt electric. I wanted to explode out of my confinement. Panic, for minutes, long agonizing minutes.
Panic like that could only last so long. When it had receded somewhat, I gathered my thoughts. I had to remove the padlock somehow. I looked around me at the loot the otalith had accumulated. The table directly to my left was cluttered with miscellaneous items. I squeezed an arm through the bars and sorted through the pile: a silverware set, cash, two framed paintings, a jewelry box. Under a stamp collection, I found a scrapbook with the words “First Sojourner” printed on the cover. I dragged the book nearer to me and was able to turn the pages without too much strain.
Chapter 27
EACH PAGE HAD A small piece of paper glued on top of it behind plastic sleeves. On these papers were words from a language I’d never seen before. The letters were white, surrounded by gray shading, like someone had copied a relief, or several reliefs, by pressing the papers onto them and rubbing a pencil over the words.
In the margins of some of the pages were notes, handwritten in English: “By all accounts, the First Sojourner could speak with her rekulak fluently, and without the aid of elaborate rituals . . . . The totem of the First Sojourner was considered sacred among the ancient sojourners. It was fabled to have unique properties . . . . Ancient sojourners could sense when their time of death was near and often organized and attended their own funerals, gathering their friends and family around and using the totem of the First Sojourner in conjunction with a Nexus Whorl to give their body to their rekulak so that it could enter our stomach and choose its next host . . . .”
In the plastic sleeve of one page was a silver metal disc, thin and palm-sized, with an elaborate pattern carved into its face. It was old, the grooves stained black and the edges worn smooth. The note above it read: “Rekulak Coin, one of many made that was fabled to have the power to summon the First Sojourner.”
That sounded useful to me, so I freed the coin from its clear plastic prison and nudged it into my pocket. I read on, all the notes, hoping to find instructions for the coin or something else that might help me, but I found nothing more promising. The scrapbook was empty after ten pages.
Resuming my search of the room, I turned my head, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw the tool cabinet a few feet behind me. The top drawer was a little higher than the bottom of my cage, and it was open. Inside was a steel hand vise, among other things. Hope sparked in me. I imagined
