Once I left the river behind, I realized the road to the Gates of the Far Keep wasn’t a road at all. It
was more of a crude, winding path, hidden within the walls of two towering black mountains that
stood side by side, creating a natural gate more ominous than anything that could’ve been made by
Mortals—or Keepers. The mountains were slick, with razor-sharp corners that reflected the sun, as
if they were made of obsidian. They looked like they were cutting black slits into the sky.
Great.
The idea of navigating a path through those jagged knife-blade cliffs was a little more than
intimidating. Whatever the Keepers were up to, they definitely didn’t want anyone to know about it.
Big surprise there.
Exu circled overhead now, as if he knew exactly where he was going. I picked up my pace to
follow his shadow on the trail in front of me, feeling grateful for the creepy bird that was even
bigger than Harlon James. I wondered what Lucille would think about him. Funny how a
supernatural crow borrowed from the Greats could seem like the one familiar thing in the landscape.
Even with the help of Uncle Abner’s crow, I kept stopping to consult Aunt Prue’s map. Exu
definitely knew the general direction of the Far Keep, but he disappeared from view every mile or
so. The cliffs were high, the trail was twisted, and Exu didn’t have to worry about navigating those
mountains.
Lucky bird.
On the map, my path was outlined in Aunt Prue’s shaky hand. Every time I tried to trace where
it would lead, the path disappeared a few miles ahead. I was starting to worry that her hand had
shaken a little too far in the wrong direction. Because the directions on the map didn’t have me
going over the mountains or between them—I was supposed to go through one of them.
“That can’t be right.”
I stared from the paper up to the sky. Exu glided from tree to tree in front of me, though now
that we were closer to the mountains, the trees were that much farther apart. “Sure. Go ahead. Rub
it in. Some of us have to walk, you know.”
He squawked again. I waved the whiskey flask over my head. “Just don’t forget who has your
dinner, eh?”
He dove at me, and I laughed, sliding the flask back into my pocket.
It didn’t seem so funny after the first few miles.
When I reached the sheer cliff face, I double-checked the map. There it was. A circle drawn in the
hillside—marking some sort of cave entrance or a tunnel. It was easy enough to find on the map.
But when I lowered the paper and tried to find the cave, there was nothing.
Just a rocky cliff face, so steep it rose into a straight vertical, cutting the trail off right in front
of me. It pushed up into the clouds so high that it looked like it never ended.
Something had to be wrong.
There had to be an entrance to the tunnel somewhere around here. I felt along the cliff,
stumbling over broken pieces of the shiny black rock.
Nothing.
It wasn’t until I stepped back from the cliff and noticed a patch of dead brush growing along
the stones that I put it together.
The brush grew in what was vaguely the shape of a circle.
I grabbed the dead overgrowth with both hands, yanking as hard as I could—and there it was.
Sort of. Nothing could’ve prepared me for the reality of what that circle drawn on the mountain
actually represented.
A small, dark hole—and by small, I mean tiny—barely big enough for a man. Barely big enough
for Boo Radley. Maybe Lucille, but even that would have been cutting it tight. And it was pitch-dark
inside. Of course it was.
“Aw, come on!”
According to the map, the tunnel was the only way to the Far Keep, and to Lena. If I wanted to
get home, I was going to have to crawl through it. I felt sick just thinking about it.
Maybe I could go around. How long would it take to reach the other side of the mountain? Too
long, that was for sure. Who was I kidding?
I tried not to think about what it would feel like to have a whole mountain fall on you while you
were crawling through the middle of it. If you were already dead, could you be crushed to death?
Would it hurt? Was there anything left to hurt?
The more I told myself not to think about it, the more I thought about it, and soon I was almost
ready to turn back.
But then I imagined the alternative—being trapped here in the Otherworld without Lena for
“infinity times infinity,” as Link would say. Nothing was worth that risk. I took a deep breath,
wedged my way inside, and started to crawl.
The tunnel was smaller and darker than I ever could’ve imagined. Once I squeezed inside, I had
only a few inches of free space above me and on either side. This was worse than the time Link and
I got locked in the trunk of Emory’s dad’s car.
I had never been scared of small spaces, but it was impossible not to feel claustrophobic in
here. And it was dark—worse than dark. The only light came from cracks in the rock, which were
few and far between.
Most of the time, I was crawling in complete darkness, only the sound of my breathing
echoing off the walls. Invisible dirt filled my mouth, stung my eyes. I kept thinking that I was going
to hit a wall—that the tunnel would just stop and I’d have to backtrack to get out. Or that I
wouldn’t be able to.
The ground beneath me was made of the same sharp black stone as the mountain itself, and I
had to move slowly to avoid bearing down on the exposed edges of razored rubble. My hands felt
like I’d shredded them to pieces; my knees, like two sacks of shattered glass. I wondered if dead
people could bleed to death. With my luck, I would be the first guy to find out.
I tried to distract myself—counting to a hundred, humming the off-key tunes of some of the
Holy Rollers’ songs, pretending I was Kelting with Lena.
Nothing helped. I knew I was alone.
It only strengthened my resolve not to stay that way.
It’s not much farther, L. I’m going to make it and find the Gates. We’ll be back together soon,
and then I’ll tell you about how much this really sucked.
I fell silent after that.
It was too hard to pretend to Kelt.
My movements slowed, and my mind slowed with them, until my arms and legs moved in
some kind of stiff syncopation, like the driving beat to one of Link’s old songs.
Back and forth. Back and forth.
Lena. Lena. Lena.
I was still Kelting her name when I saw the light at the end of the tunnel—not a metaphoric light but
a real one.
I heard Exu cawing in the distance. I felt the beginnings of a breeze, the stir of air in my face.
The cold dampness of the tunnel began to give way to the warm light of the outside world.
I was almost there.
I squinted when the sunlight hit the mouth of the hole. I hadn’t hauled my body out yet. But the
tunnel was so dark that my eyes were having a hard time adjusting to even the smallest amount of
light.
When I was only halfway out, I dropped onto my stomach with my eyes still closed, the black
dirt pressing against my cheek. Exu was calling loudly, probably angry that I was taking a break. At
least that’s what I thought.
I opened my eyes to see the sun glinting off a pair of black-laced boots. Then the bottom of a
matching wool robe came into focus.
Great.
I raised my head slowly, prepared to see a Keeper towering over me. My heart began to pound.
It looked like a man—in a way. If you ignored the fact that he was completely bald, with
impossibly smooth grayish-black skin and enormous eyes. The black robe was tied at the waist with
a long cord, and he—if you could call it a he—looked like some kind of miserable alien monk.
“Did you lose something?” he asked. The voice sounded so much like a man’s. Like an old
man, sort of sad or maybe kind. It was hard to reconcile the human features and voice with the rest
of what I was staring at.
I pulled against the rock opening, yanking my legs out from the tunnel, trying to avoid bumping
into whatever he was. “I—I’m trying to find the way to the Far Keep,” I stammered. I tried to
remember what Obidias had said. What was I looking for? Doors? Gates? That was it. “I mean, the
Gates of the Far Keep.” I got to my feet and tried to step back, but there was nowhere to go.
“Really?” He looked interested. Or maybe sick. Honestly, I wasn’t sure it was really even a face
I was looking at, so it was hard to tell what the expression meant.
“That’s right.” I tried to sound confident. When I stood tall, I was almost his height, which
was reassuring.
“Are the Keepers expecting you?” His strange, dull eyes slitted.
“Yes,” I lied.
He turned abruptly on his heel to go, his robe swinging after him.
Wrong answer.
“No,” I called out. “And they’ll torture me if they find me. At least that’s what everyone seems
to think. But there’s this girl—it was all a mistake—I’m not supposed to be here—and then the
lubbers came, and the Order broke, and I had to jump.” My words died out, once I realized how
crazy I sounded. There was no point trying to explain. It barely made sense even to me.
The creature stopped, tilting his head to the side, as if he was considering my words. Me.
“Well, you’ve found them.”
“What?”
“The Gates of the Far Keep.”
I looked past him. There was nothing around but shiny black rock and clear blue sky. Maybe
he was crazy. “Um, I don’t see anything but mountains.”
He turned and pointed. “There.”
The sleeve of his robe slid down, and I caught a glimpse of an extra fold of skin flapping away
from his body and disappearing under the robe.
It looked like the wing of a giant bat.
I remembered the crazy story Link told me over the summer. Macon had sent him into the
Caster Tunnels to deliver a message to Obidias Trueblood. That much I’d already put together. But
there was another part, about how Link was attacked by some kind of creature he ended up
stabbing with his garden shears—it was grayish black and bald, with the features of a man, and
deformed black bands of skin that Link was convinced were wings. “Seriously,” I remembered him
saying. “You don’t want to face that thing in an alley at night.”
I knew it couldn’t be the same creature, because Link said the monster he saw had yellow
eyes. And the one standing here was staring back at me with green eyes—almost Caster green.
Then there was the other thing. The whole gardening-shears-to-the-chest thing.
This couldn’t be him.
Green eyes. Not gold. I didn’t need to be afraid, right? He couldn’t be Dark, could he?
Still, it wasn’t anything I’d ever seen before—and I had seen more than my share.
The creature turned around, lowering his arm that wasn’t an arm. “Do you see them?”
“What?” The wings? I was still trying to figure out what he was—or wasn’t.
“The Gates.” He seemed disappointed by my stupidity. I guess I’d be disappointed, too, if I
were him. I was feeling pretty stupid myself.
I searched in the direction he had pointed a moment ago. There was nothing there. “I don’t see
anything.”
A satisfied smile spread across his face, as if he had a secret. “Of course you don’t. Only the
Gatekeeper can see them.”
“Where’s the—” I stopped, realizing I didn’t need to ask the question. I already knew the
answer. “You’re the Gatekeeper.” There was a River Master and a Gatekeeper. Of course there
was. There was also a snake man, a whiskey-drinking crow that could fly from the land of the
living to the land of the dead, a river full of bodies, and a dragon dog. It was like waking up in the
middle of a game of Dungeons & Dragons.
“The Gatekeeper.” The creature nodded, obviously pleased with himself. “I am that, among
other things.”
I tried not to fixate on the word thing. But as I looked at his charcoal-colored skin and thought
about those awful wings, I couldn’t stop imagining him as some terrifying cross between a person
and a bat.
A real-life Batman, sort of.
Only not the kind who saves anyone. Maybe the reverse.
What if this thing doesn’t want to let me in?
I took a deep breath. “Look, I know it’s crazy. I left crazy behind about a year ago. But there’s
something I need in there. And if I don’t get it, I won’t be able to go home. Is there any way you
can show me where the Gates are?”
“Of course.”
I heard the words before I saw his face. And I smiled, until I realized I was the only one
smiling.
The creature frowned, his huge eyes narrowing. He put his hands together in front of his chest,
tapping his crooked fingertips. “But why would I do that?”
Exu shrieked in the distance.
I looked up to see the massive black shape circling above our heads, as if he was prepared to
swoop down and attack.
Wordlessly, without looking up, the creature held up his hand.
Exu descended and landed on the Gatekeeper’s fist, nuzzling his arm as if reunited with an old
friend. Maybe not.
The Gatekeeper looked even more frightening with Exu at his side. It was time to face facts.
The creature was right. He had no reason to help me.
Then the bird squawked, almost sympathetically. The creature made a low, throaty sound—
almost a chuckle—and raised a hand to smooth the bird’s feathers. “You are lucky. The bird is a
good judge of character.”
“Yeah? What does the bird say about me?”
“He says—slow on the switchbacks, cheap with the whiskey, but a good heart. For a dead
man.”
I grinned. Maybe that old crow wasn’t so bad.
Exu squawked again.
“I can show you the Gates, boy.”
“Ethan.”
“Ethan.” He hesitated, repeating my name slowly. “But you have to give me something in
return.”
I was almost afraid to ask. “What do you want?” Obidias had mentioned that the Gatekeeper
would expect some kind of gift, but I hadn’t really put much thought into it.
He looked at me thoughtfully, considering the question. “Trade is a serious matter. Balance is a
key principle within the Order of Things.”
“The Order of Things? I thought we didn’t have to worry about that anymore.”
“There is always Order. Now more than ever, the New Order must be carefully maintained.”
I didn’t understand the details, but I understood the importance. Wasn’t that how I got into this
mess in the first place?
He kept talking. “You say you need something to take you home? The thing you desire most? I
say, what brought you here? That is what I desire most.”
“Great.” It sounded simple, but he might as well have been speaking in riddles or randomly
written Mad Libs.
“What do you have?” His eyes glinted greedily.
I stuffed my hands in my pockets and pulled out the one remaining river stone and Aunt Prue’s
map. The whiskey and the tobacco—Exu’s stash—were long gone.
The Gatekeeper lifted his hairless brows. “A rock and an old map? Is that all?”
“That’s what brought me here.” I pointed at Exu, still perched on his shoulder. “And a bird.”
“A rock and a crow. That is difficult to pass up. But I already have both of those things in my
collection.”
Exu pushed off from his shoulder and flew back up into the sky, like he was offended. Within
seconds the crow disappeared.
“And now you have no bird,” the Gatekeeper said matter-of-factly.
“I don’t understand. Is there something specific you want?” I tried to hide the frustration in my
voice.The Gatekeeper seemed delighted by the question. “Specific, yes. Specifically, a fair trade is
what I prefer.”
“Could you be a little more specific than that?”
He tilted his head. “I don’t always know what will interest me until I see it. The things that are
the most valuable are often the ones you don’t even know exist.”
That was helpful.
“How am I supposed to know what you have already?”
His eyes lit up. “I can show you my collection if you would like to see it. There isn’t another
one like it anywhere in the Otherworld.”
What could I say? “Yeah. That would be great.”
As I followed him along the sharp black stones, I could hear Link’s voice in my head. “Bad
move, man. He’s gonna kill you, stuff you, and add you to his collection of idiots who followed him
back to his creepy cave.”
This was one time I was probably safer dead than alive.
How fair and balanced was that?
The Gatekeeper slid through a narrow crack in the wall of slick black stone. It was bigger than the
hole, but not by much. I moved along sideways because there wasn’t enough room to turn around.
I knew this could be some kind of trap. Link had described the creature he encountered as an
animal—dangerous and crazed. What if the Gatekeeper was no different, just better at hiding it?
Where was that stupid crow when I needed him?
“We’re almost there,” he called back to me.
I could see a faint light ahead, flickering in the distance.
His shadow passed in front of it, momentarily darkening the passage as the narrow space
opened into a cavernous room. Wax dripped from an iron chandelier bolted directly into the glossy
stone ceiling. The walls sparkled in the candlelight.
If I hadn’t just crawled through a whole mountain of the stuff, I might have been more
impressed. As it was, the closeness of the cavern walls just made my skin crawl.
But when I glanced around, I realized this place was more like a museum—with an even crazier
collection than what you’d find if you dug up the Sisters’ whole backyard. Glass cases and shelves
lined the walls, filled with hundreds of objects. It was the randomness of the collection that
intrigued me, like a child had done not only the collecting but the cataloging. Intricately carved silver
and gold jewelry boxes sat next to a collection of cheap children’s music boxes. Shiny black vinyl
records were piled in towering stacks next to one of those old-fashioned record players with a
funnel speaker, like the one the Sisters used to have. A Raggedy Ann doll curled in a rocking chair,
a huge green jewel the size of an apple resting in her lap. And on a center shelf, I saw an opalescent
sphere similar to the one I had carried in my hand the past summer.
It couldn’t be… an Arclight.
But it was. Exactly like the one Macon had given my mom, except milky white instead of
midnight black.
“Where did you get that?” I walked toward the shelf.
He darted in front of me, snatching the sphere. “I told you. I’m a collector. You could say a
historian. You mustn’t touch anything in here. The treasures in this room cannot be replaced. I’ve
spent a thousand lifetimes collecting them. They are all equally valuable,” he breathed.
“Yeah?” I looked at a Snoopy lunch box full of pearls.
He nodded. “Priceless.”
He replaced the Arclight. “All sorts of things have been offered to me at the Gates,” he added.
“Most people, and non-people, know it is only polite to bring me a gift when they come knocking.”
He stole a look at me. “No offense.”
“Yeah, sorry. I mean, I wish I had something to give you—”
He lifted a hairless eyebrow. “Besides a rock and a crow?”
“Yeah.” I scanned the rows of leather books lined up neatly on the shelves, the spines inscribed
with symbols and languages I didn’t recognize. The spine of a black leather book caught my eye. It
looked like it said… “The Book of Stars?”
The Gatekeeper looked pleased and rushed to pull it down from the shelf. “This is one of the
rarest books of its kind.” Niadic, the Caster language I had come to recognize, looped around the
edges of the cover. A cluster of stars was embossed in the center. “There is only one other like it
—”
“The Book of Moons,” I finished for him. “I know.”
His eyes widened, and he clutched The Book of Stars to his chest. “You know about the Dark
half? No one in our world has seen it for hundreds of years.”
“That’s because it isn’t in your world.” I looked at him for a long moment before correcting
myself. “Our world.”
He shook his head in disbelief. “How could you possibly know that?”
“Because I was the one who found it.”
For a moment, he didn’t say a word. I could tell he was trying to decide if I was lying or
crazy. There was nothing in his expression that made it seem like he actually believed me, but like I
said, there wasn’t really too much to go on—his face not really being a face and all.
“Is this a trick?” His dull green eyes narrowed. “It wouldn’t serve you well to play games with
me if you ever expect to find the Gates of the Far Keep.”
“I didn’t even know The Book of Moons had another half, or whatever you said. So how
would I know to lie about it?”
It was true. I had never heard anyone mention it—not Macon or Marian or Sarafine or
Abraham.
Is it possible they didn’t know?
“As I said, balance. Light and Dark are both part of the invisible scale that is always tipping as
we hang on to the edges.” He ran his crooked fingers over the cover of the book. “You can’t have
one without the other. Sad as that might be.”
After everything I had learned about The Book of Moons, I couldn’t imagine what was within
the covers of its counterpart. Did The Book of Stars yield the same kind of devastating
consequences?
I was almost afraid to ask. “Is there a price for using that one, too?”
The Gatekeeper walked to the far end of the room and sat down in an intricately carved chair
that looked like a throne from an old castle. He lifted a Mickey Mouse Thermos, pouring a stream of
amber liquid into the plastic cup, and drank half of it. There was a weariness in his movements, and
I wondered how long it had taken him to amass the collection of intangibly valuable and valueless
items within these walls.
When he finally spoke, he sounded like he’d aged a hundred years.
“I have never used the book myself. My debts are too steep to risk owing anything more.
Though there is not much left for them to take, is there?” He threw back the rest of his drink and
slammed the plastic cup on the table. Within seconds, he was pacing again, nervous and agitated.
I followed him to the other side of the room.
“Who do you owe?”
He stopped walking, pulling his robe tighter, as if he was protecting himself from an unseen
enemy. “The Far Keep, of course.” There was a mix of bitterness and defeat in his voice. “And they
always collect their debts.”
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