Kendra Kandlestar and the Door to Unger (17 page)

THE DOOR CHUCKLED, his voice deep and sinister. And now, as the light of the summer’s first moon struck him, the face in the stone began to transform before their very eyes. The rocks shifted and groaned and the great face tripled in size—until at last it looked like an Een no longer, but like an Unger. It even had two stony tusks jutting out from either side of his mouth like a pair of mighty columns.

“I am the Door to Unger,” the rocky face boomed. “I open but one night of the year, to celebrate the curse of Greeve. Come to me and know the truth. Enter me, and you will know UNGER!”

With these words, the great wooden teeth of the door lifted upwards to reveal a dark and inky black abyss. Kendra gulped and now she noticed that Uncle Griffinskitch and the rest of her companions were stepping towards the gaping mouth of the door. It was as if they were in some sort of trance. She tried to call out to them, but no sound seemed to come from her throat. Then she realized that she, too, was walking towards the door! It was as if she was moving by some strange impulse; she tried to stop her legs, but she could not. She watched her companions disappear through the door in front of her, one by one, and soon she was the last one left. From behind her, she could hear the monstrous spectators erupt into a frenzy of cheering and raucous laughter; the whole stadium seemed to be shaking with their noise. Then, the next thing she knew, she was stepping in between the door’s two large tusks and—just like that—she was in engulfed in darkness.

Everything was abruptly quiet. She turned to look behind her, but saw nothing other than a row of sturdy wooden slats. The door had closed behind her, and the arena, with its roaring throng of monsters, was gone. She had crossed through the door. She had entered the maze.

For a moment she sat there in the darkness, alone, clutching at her braids. There was no sign of Uncle Griffinskitch, Oki, or any of the others.
Where have they gone?
She wondered.
Could they disappear, just like that?

The silence was eerie. She could hear a soft thumping, off in the distance. It was the only noise in the whole place, and somehow, it made the maze seem even quieter. Kendra pulled harder on her braids. The silence made her feel incredibly alone.

“What now?” she whispered, just to hear the sound of her own voice. She had half-expected the door to crumble the moment she crossed its threshold; after all, didn’t the prophecy say that she would destroy the door? But the door hadn’t been destroyed; in fact,
nothing
had happened. Kendra stood there, helplessly, wondering what to do next. “Maybe I just have to find my way out of here,” she told herself after a moment. She said this in the most cheerful voice she could rally, but she couldn’t help to wonder if coming to the door was the biggest mistake she had ever made.

She tried to push this doubt to the back of her mind as she took a step forward. The maze was incredibly dark; she could barely see a thing. Still, she had a sense that the maze was enormous, the type of place where you could yell and your voice would echo on through the ages. She looked about for some clue that would tell her the right direction to take. Yet, it was so dark that when standing next to one wall, she couldn’t see another. Kendra was used to feeling small in a big world, but now she felt tinier than ever.

At last, she chose a passageway and set off into the darkness, pressing her hand against the wall to orientate herself. She knew the trick in any maze was to not get lost, so she did her best to remember her route. Then, as she walked, she became aware of a voice. It seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once, and Kendra knew immediately that the voice belonged to the door.

“Are you lost, child?” the door asked.

She tried to ignore this question, but the door repeated it until at last she said stubbornly, “No, I am not!”

“You will be,” the door uttered, a hint of satisfaction in its voice. “Fear this place, child.
They
will get you.”

“Who?” she asked, regretting the question the moment it left her lips. She didn’t want to play the door’s game. She tried putting her hands to her ears, to block out the voice, but it had no effect. It was as if the voice was inside her head.

Then Kendra turned a corner and found herself face to face with an enormous Orrid. It was a disgusting creature, hunched and crooked and green, with narrow eyes framed by a pair of curled horns. She had caught the thing in the act of gnawing on a shard of yellow bone, and now it glared upon her with voracious hunger.

“Eenee!” it screeched. Then, it pounced towards her, like a flea or some insect.

Kendra shrieked and turned to run back the way she had come. Now she put no thought into her direction, taking every turn or gateway she could find in the wretched maze. Through all this, the door was laughing, and Kendra scowled in anger. The door was right; she was now completely lost. There was no way she could ever remember the parts of the maze where she had already been.

With the Orrid still in hot pursuit, Kendra saw a window set in the wall, just low enough to the floor for her to reach. She leapt up and grabbed the ledge with her small hands. She pulled herself through, only to land with a thud in another corner of the maze, this time face-to-face with a large Unger, covered head to foot in long white hair. It stared at her a moment with its cold blue eyes before letting out a ferocious roar. Kendra didn’t pause. Quickly, she darted through his legs and down another stretch of passageway.

Her heart was beating like a drum. She could hear the Orrid skitter through the window—now she had both of the monsters after her. And still the door was laughing.

She rounded a corner and ran smack into a pile of rubble, part of a wall that had tumbled down long ago so as to block the corridor. She fell to the ground from the force of the collision, but just as quickly got up and began scrambling through the debris. She had noticed a few holes between the fallen stones that were just big enough for her to squeeze through. Just as she pulled her tiny legs through one of these spaces, Kendra heard the Orrid and Unger come upon the rubble, screeching with fury that they had missed their chance to catch her.

On the other side of the pile of rocks, Kendra let out a sigh of relief and wiped her arm against her smarting forehead. It seemed she had escaped the beasts—at least, for the time being.

But the voice was another matter.

“See,” the door said. “They will destroy you, these fiendish aberrations. They will not rest until all of Een is vanquished, each of its citizens destroyed.”

“That’s not true!” Kendra retorted (though it was strange to be speaking to no one but thin air). “We could live together, Eens and Ungers and such. We could be friends.”

The door now laughed so hard that the halls and passageways of the maze shook, as if trembling by earthquake. Kendra pitched herself against the wall just to keep from falling down.

“Oroook once thought as much,” the door said after a moment. “Foolish Unger! He believed in the one. But I had the Keepers destroy him for his treacherous ways. Such is the fate of all those who defy the truth.”

Truth?
Kendra thought. She remembered Effryn’s warning from the night he had brayed at the moon.
You have to believe what you know, not what they tell you,
he had said. Suddenly, she felt her boldness swell. “It’s not my truth,” she declared brazenly. “I
know
that Ungers and Eens can get along.”

“Really?” the door mocked. “Perhaps you should explain that to the Unger that just tried to crush you in its claws. Understand this, child: all things that crawl, fly, or swim this wretched earth are filled with hatred. That’s what I know, all too well.”

Kendra shook her head, and set off down the passage, leaving behind the pile of rubble that had allowed her to escape from the Orrid and Unger. She knew she had to keep moving. She had to try and find a way out of the maze—and yet, she had this terrifying feeling that she was just winding her way deeper and deeper into the core of the dark labyrinth. It was so hard to concentrate, for all the while the voice was speaking. It was like a tap that wouldn’t stop dripping. Kendra thought she would go crazy. She wanted to scream. Every turn of the maze seemed to be the same as the last. Soon she began to wonder if she was just going down the same passage, over and over again. How could she find the way out? And what had happened to Uncle Griffinskitch and her friends?

These thoughts had just crossed her mind when Kendra stepped into an intersection of passageways—and there she saw little Oki. He was trembling head to foot and his eyes were wild with fear.

“Oki!” Kendra cried.

“EEK!” the tiny mouse screamed, and he turned and darted down one of the black passages.

The door chuckled.

“Wait!” Kendra called, running after her friend.

But Oki did not wait. It was as if he didn’t recognize Kendra, or as if he thought she was going to harm him.
This place has made him go mad
, Kendra thought. She chased Oki through the zigzagging course of the maze, but his legs were spinning like two propellers in a storm and she could gain no ground on him.

And then the little mouse disappeared around a bend, and before she could get there herself, Kendra heard Oki release a terrible squeal—replaced a moment later by a loud, satisfied grunt.

“Oki!” Kendra cried, skidding to a halt.

She tried to muster the courage to look around the corner—but before it came to this, a hideous sharp-nosed snout peered around the wall. An Izzard! Its eyes gleamed through the darkness and yellow drool dripped down from its fanged mouth. Kendra knew Oki was no more.