I stepped over the low rail that separated the totems from the walkway and stopped, facing the massive carving of Tsonoqua, whose arms reached out as if to pull me into an embrace—the better to eat me I supposed. The face, highlighted with red and green paint, pursed its lips as if to kiss, while a darkling gleam played in the hooded eyes. Another pair of dark eyes looked up from the face of the huge woman seated at the carving’s feet.
The Grey was more present around the totems and I didn’t bother to hold on to normal. Whatever happened next would take place in the thin space between the worlds. But as I let go, little changed, and I found Quinton still beside me and the strange audience of ghosts and humans, spreading around us in a circle, still visible in the Grey. The shimmering edges of the hole in the totems hands seemed to spread and hold the worlds together in the presence of the gathered spirits, animal and Indian. The real Indians and the birds were there as well, watching, encircling us and completing the sphere of magic that contained us all.
“I want to return your pet,” I started, “and the man you lent him to needs to account for his actions.”
Qamaits laughed, showing needle teeth in her spirit form, and shook her head.
“No dog.”
“I didn’t say it was a dog. I don’t think your gods will be pleased that Sisiutl’s been killing people who never threatened them on the whim of this man you gave his leash to. I only want to send the man up the stairs to account for it and return Sisiutl to his post—neither of you should be in the human world.” Lass shrieked in my head and I winced as he began to claw and fight to escape.
Qamaits noticed and her laugh was dismissive. “I like it here. Sisiutl shares his meat. I do not have to hunt or gather food. It is cold, but I have many blankets and the people do not chase me away. Why should I go?”
“You have a duty,” I said, sickened, knowing the people Sisiutl had netted must have gone down the maw of this creature, too. “The man has done wrong and Sisiutl is tainted with it. I only ask you to show me the stair so the man can answer for that.”
As she considered, I looked at her collection of eclectic trash: the colorful blankets, discarded children’s toys, fancy liquor bottles…
She stood up, easily three times my bulk and a hair shorter, yet she loomed, double-shadowed. She stared at me with odd eyes that gleamed yellow and red and shook her head, baring her pointed teeth. “If Sisiutl goes back to the realm between, I must go, too. Why should I?”
“You have a duty to the gods and you don’t belong in the human world,” I repeated as I threaded the pheasant feather into my buttonholes to free my hands. “You must go back.”
Qamaits recoiled at the sight of the feather, her eyes staring. Then she roared and swelled even larger than her looming totem, the double shadows behind her filling and solidifying into a hulking shape from nightmare: wide and black and seemingly made of teeth and claws. “Meat!” she shrieked. “I eat you all!”
I jumped back, dragging Quinton with me and jerking on Sisiutl’s leash, calling for the serpent-headed creature. The double-ended monster rushed into the park, casting a wave of color through the Grey and screeching as it came.
The crowd shuddered, gasping or muttering strange words and issuing angry animal cries. The huge sea serpent stopped between Qamaits and me and glared at each of us with a different head. Qamaits drew up short, glowering.
“Who will it answer—me or you?” I asked, feeling weak-kneed and anguished as Lass battered against me in terror. “It says its hungry. Want to find out which of us it prefers for dinner?”
I wasn’t certain how much longer I could stand up, let alone bluff on instinct alone. I felt sure I was bleeding inside and tearing apart like a rag doll with ripped seams. It wasn’t as bad as being beaten to death had been, but it was bad enough.
Qamaits moved back half a step, teetering on the edge of the hole in the worlds.
Her glare shifted back and forth between me and Sisiutl and she gnawed her lip until blood flowed over her chin.
“Show us the stairs,” I demanded, forcing my old dance-gypsy bravado to the surface.
Sisiutl grinned and snapped one snake head at the ogress. It would have been as glad to snap at me, I imagined.
Keeping a wary eye on me, Qamaits dug into her cart of discarded treasures and pulled out a strangely folded thing of plastic and cardboard, coated in filthy, torn, and peeling pink vinyl. She unfolded it: a dollhouse.
I heard Quinton snort beside me, but I wasn’t about to cast stones—I was holding a legendary monster by a piece of frayed string and arguing with an ogress who looked like a homeless woman. Belief and appearances were only nodding acquaintances, it seemed. Qamaits lifted the house so it passed through the ring of oily gleam between her effigy’s hands, and as she brought it down the ring expanded, the world rippling and warping to accommodate the house. Even Lass grew still as we were enclosed in the second bubble of Qamaits’s realm.
The dollhouse grew and the ring of some sort of dimensional rift flowed out to encompass the park, which became the yard. It unfolded until the house had become full-sized, its open front leaving the interior revealed and raw. The smell of water lilies and black mud rose into the frosty air as a pool formed from a puddle at my feet, a sturdy stone needle rising from its shore nearby. I walked unsteadily to the post and tied the piece of string through the eye of the needle.
Sisiutl rolled in the grass where bricks had been a moment before, snorting with delight. Then it stopped and slithered across the ground, back and forth, as if pacing in some strange, reptilian way. Qamaits stood aside and watched me with narrowed eyes.
I took the feather from my buttonholes and teased Lass loose from me. He shouted and fought to stay with me and not to be thrown into the realm of the zeqwas. I tore him out with a keen of agony and stumbled to my knees, pushing the last trailing threads of him away with the plume. Once outside of me, he recovered the memory of his shape but cleaner and younger than I had known him—and he did have a mild resemblance to Quinton. I shivered to see him looking so solid and familiar.
With a hunted look, he glanced around, as if seeking an escape, but there wasn’t a way out. The world of the house ended in a band of rainbow beyond which the normal world of Occidental Park lay in a thin mist. The crowd still stood around it, their movements suspended. Sisiutl prowled its yard and snapped at Lass while muttering to itself.
Lass started toward Quinton and turned up his hands. “Q—”
Quinton looked a little dazed, but shook his head. “No. You messed up and I can’t help you this time.”
“But—I helped you. You took my identity to hide from those… people.”
“I know. I’m sorry I had to, but there’s nothing I can do for you now.”
Lass slumped. “I don’t—I can’t…” Trepid and shaking, he eyed the surreal house of Qamaits and then the ogress herself, who grinned at him with bloody teeth.
Qamaits called to Sisiutl, who leaped toward Lass, biting at the air. “Choose!” she commanded. “Sisiutl hungers.”
Lass stumbled back, remembering fear, and shot a supplicating glance at me. Then he looked at the long, vanishing stair that wandered up into the depths of the house and back to me again. “Please… can’t you come with me? I don’t want to go by myself!”
I was tired and aching and I wished I could hold on to my disgust of him, but I felt impotent pity as I looked at Lass’s spirit. I don’t know how I knew it was true—maybe the way Qamaits licked her lips or the shift in Sisiutl’s pacing—but I was sure one step across the threshold would have the monsters on me and I didn’t like my chances against them both. “I can’t go with you,” I replied.
Qamaits gnashed her teeth in frustration.