The Door in Crow Wood, Page 2

Chapter 1 The Misara Fijata Razabera

  Two teenage girls stepped onto the back porch of Cemetery House, hoping for some evening breeze in the July heat. One of them was Simone Gareth, very tall and thin, a dark blonde with a taut jaw and thin lips. The other, Sarah Overby, was her neighbor and friend, a girl of average height, pretty, and red-headed.

  Sarah seated herself precariously on a pile of cardboard boxes. “I thought your dad was getting you and Clay this weekend,” she said.

  Simone did not answer at once. From a rip in one of the screen windows, she peeled off worn out masking tape and crumpled it in her fingers. “He canceled again,” she said. “That’s three times already this summer. He always says it’s his psychiatrist’s advice. You know, like seeing his own kids would give him a nervous breakdown or something.”

  “How’s your world history paper coming?” said Sarah, preferring to change the subject. They had just graduated from high school and were taking a summer school course together at the local university.

  “It’s done. That’s why I invited you over. Would you like to learn some more Gellene?”

  Sarah’s smile became somewhat fixed. Simone and her brother Clay were always chattering to each other in obscure languages and somehow, after showing polite interest, Sarah had been drawn into it. She felt it was nonsense, although Simone seriously maintained that Gellene and Kreenspam were spoken in some far off land—quite where she never said. Sarah was curious about the tiny, hardbound books printed on very thin paper and from which Simone studied with a magnifying glass. They too were never really explained.

  “I suppose a little Gellene would be all right,” Sarah replied, “but what about supper?”

  “We’ll make our own,” Simone said. “Mom’s leaving in a few minutes for some meeting, so we’ll just throw anything together.”

  The back door creaked and Susan Tanner appeared, dressed for her meeting. Much shorter than her daughter, Susan was square jawed and somewhat plump, her short-cropped, dark hair flecked with gray.

  “Simone, May Tyler is picking me up, but I don’t want you to try to drive the car anywhere. The oil pressure gauge is reading low. Maybe it’s just the gauge itself going wacky, but I won’t take chances. There’s leftovers in the refrigerator and some chips and things on the table. Try to tear Clay away from his chess and his locks and make him eat something.”

  “OK, Mom. Will you be late?”

  “I don’t know. You know how these curriculum meetings can drag on. Bye-bye. Have a nice evening.”

  Susan left the girls on the porch and descended the steep driveway to a point where she could flag down Mrs. Tyler by the road. Simone stood looking out across the cemetery through a gap in the trees. Greenlawn was huge and many of the stones large and impressive. They threw shadows across the well-trimmed grass. Her eyes lingered a moment on one of the nearer markers, a stone bench.

  “Let’s go in,” she said.

  No Gellene lesson followed. The three teens ate, then watched television. At nine Sarah went home to work on her history paper. At nine-thirty Simone was in the kitchen washing up the few dishes they had dirtied. Clay was away in his room practicing his hobby of lock-picking, which he had learned from an uncle.

  In the window over the sink, Simone saw only her own reflection. The night was still except for the dull humming of the florescent light above her. She scrubbed out a casserole dish and thought about her troubles: chiefly, that another girl from her high school had won the attention of Carl Besanto. Simone’s rival Dawn Carter was petite, shapely, and pretty. Twice now Carl had dated Dawn. He had almost asked out Simone once—or so she thought. Simone had never been on a real date.

  She pulled the plug to begin the slow draining process and wiped her hands with a towel. Through the open door to the porch she could hear a scratching sound. Something was scratching at the door, which was odd because the family kept no pet. Simone stepped out to the porch and listened. Then she flinched as again something scratched urgently at the door. She began to regret that she had not replaced the burned out bulb in the overhead porch light. The screen door was closed but unlatched, and all was blackness beyond the screen.

  “Go away,” she said in a fierce whisper, half afraid that Clay would hear and tease her about her fear. She stepped close, her hand on the knob now, and tried to see if some animal was on the outer step. Suddenly someone spoke, raspily.

  “Is that you, Simone?”

  Simone began to tremble. She knew at once who it was, but could not bring herself to answer. Strangely, she felt that if she acknowledged this voice, she would become defenseless, would shrink back into her childhood, to times after her parents’ divorce when nothing at all had stood between her and a bottomless anguish.

  “I can see someone there,” the voice continued. “Is it you, dearest? You haven’t forgotten me, have you? Dal angfetal Kreenspam be?”

  Simone dropped to her knees with the door still between them. “Yes, I remember Kreenspam,” she sighed. “But I never thought you would come back.”

  Somewhat later Simone and Clay sat on the shabby, flowered couch in the living room, a slight depression on the cushion between them marking where Raspberry crouched on her haunches. She spoke to them in Kreenspam.

  “Your Kreenspam and your Gellene are far better than I had dared to hope,” she said. “Let’s speak only in your adopted languages this evening, Kreenspam first.”

  “I wouldn’t have kept up with it,” said Clay with a self-conscious grin, “if Simone hadn’t hounded me. She’s always making me talk in one or the other, and bringing up new vocabulary. I’m still not nearly as good as she is. She writes poetry in Kreenspam and keeps her diary in Gellene.”

  “He’d rather be playing war games or practicing picking locks,” said Simone.

  “Still, Clay, your fluency is astonishing. You both have an accent, of course, but that’s to be expected. Now all we need is to get you back to the Fold with me.”

  Simone and Clay exchanged glances. “Where is that?” Simone said timidly. “And—why have you been gone so long?”

  Raspberry hesitated. “Yes, now is the time for explanations. But I’m afraid, you see, afraid that no amount of explanation will persuade you to come with me; though the need is great and almost desperate.” They heard her claws clack together. “And I must be brief. We have to leave tonight and as soon as possible. I may have been followed, you see.”

  “Followed?” said Simone. “By other Fijats?”

  Raspberry sighed and paused. “No, but by other beings, large and cunning, and able to follow my trail by scent. By Ulrigs.”

  “He-hurters,” Simone translated thoughtfully. “And the dictionary you gave us said something about wolf-folk.” She shifted uneasily. “If they can track you by smell, they must be really wolfish.”

  “Yes, yes, but we haven’t time for explanations about them. They won’t try to come here anyway if they keep their promise. No, tonight you must be content with the broadest outline of what awaits you in the Fold. Then you’ll make your decision. So I’ll begin by saying that the surface of the earth is not all mapped and explored by you humans, as you think. A very large area exists that cannot be reached by normal travel. This area I speak of is the Fold, a hidden expanse containing a continent and oceans. Once it was a part of the world you know, once long ago. But the Flood came and twisted and broke things, broke not just the land but the very nature of space on the surface of this planet; so that my continent was folded away, you might say, unharmed but hidden. Ulrumman himself hid the Fold, but let it live. Now it can only be reached by a few paths, and they are awesomely guarded. I speak of the Six Doors of Kulismos, by which a very few have passed back and forth.”

  “And one is in the Mediterranean, you once told me,” said Simone.

  “Yes, but since I last saw you, we Fijats have learned of another, and just thi
s evening I entered this world by it. One might account it one of the greatest coincidences in history that this Door is only a few miles from your home. But I am convinced that it’s more than coincidence. Other Beings, Messengers of Ulrumman, may well have guided your ancestors toward this spot long ago. But to return to my tale, Ulrumman peopled the Fold with intelligent creatures of his own making, the Ten Species of the Sarrs, of which the Fijats are one.”

  “And Ulrigs are another?” asked Clay.

  “Yes, they are Sarrs too. And now I must pass over the history of twenty-seven hundred years during which we of the Narvash, we Fold-dwellers, lived to ourselves. Then in the third century A.D., as you reckon time, humans came to us. A great man named Quintus brought them through one of the Sea Doors, and they stayed and multiplied.”

  “I knew it!” said Clay. “They were Greeks, weren’t they? Because Gellene is like Greek.”

  “You guessed rightly. They spoke Greek, and so now all the humans of the Fold speak Gellene, which is derived from the ancient Greek. All the Narvans, our ten species, speak Kreenspam. So with command of these two languages, you and Simone may go anywhere in the Fold and be understood by both human and Sarr.”

  “What does this have to do with our family?” Simone asked. “You told me once that you Fijats have been watching our family for twenty-three generations.”

  “More than five-hundred years ago, one human left the Fold, never to return,” Raspberry said. “And she was no commoner. She was, by right, the lawful heir to all the Kingdoms of the Fold. She came away through a Sea Door, secretly, fleeing her enemies, and journeyed to England. That was the Princess Lila.

  “All these centuries we Fijats have been passing that same Door to watch and protect Lila’s descendants, the True Line. Being invisible, we have not been noticed, or have been taken for ghosts. We have recorded the true genealogy, watching the inheritance of an empire pass from father to son, and sometimes daughter; watching as they forgot their own royalty; watching as they moved to North America, to Virginia, and then to Kentucky, and then to Indiana.”

  “I can see what’s coming,” Simone said tightly.

  “Yes, twenty-eight years ago, when my friend Zatel came here to Viola, the rightful Emperor was your maternal grandfather Harry Tanner. But when I came six years ago he had died. Your mother was —”

  “Was the Empress?” Clay interrupted excitedly.

  “No, the Queen Mother. For she had had a son, and he then was the rightful Emperor.”

  “Oh,” said Clay in a small voice.

  “And his sister a princess.”

  Raspberry gave them time to think it over. “Now I cannot in a minute explain all the politics of the Fold, but kingdoms are making war there, Sarr against human. And though the war is not yet widespread, it threatens to be so. Children, millions of people are in danger. Someone is needed to make peace. Many, both human and Sarr, would welcome the return of the True Line, now before it’s too late, before devastations are committed by the Dragons of Dragonland.”

  Both teens raised their eyebrows at the mention of dragons.

  “The Emperor might command enough respect from both sides to make peace. If you will come, you may well save hundreds of thousands from horrors and death. I appeal to you, I beg you! Come now and save your fellow humans’ lives.”

  Neither teen responded.

  “I must add in fairness,” said Raspberry, “that you will be in danger, and that your best efforts might not be enough to save the threatened lands.” Still Simone and Clay said nothing. Raspberry added miserably, “And I can give you no assurance as to when, or whether, you’ll return.”

  For a minute Simone was guilt stricken, for she knew that they would not go. They could not abandon their mother, their schooling, even their own world. Then she had a thought and her eyes narrowed.

  “So that’s why you took so much time with us six years ago. You needed heroes to come save your Fold. Looks to me like you tried to take advantage of us when we were young and impressionable. You didn’t say a word then about danger or about not coming back. What manipulation!”

  “It’s true I said nothing specific, but that was because I still hoped then that it would not be necessary for you to come at all,” said Raspberry. “But I said a great deal to you about self-sacrifice and about living for others. I taught you that the person who is challenged to suffer for others, when declining, is not innocent. Even now I firmly believe that I’m offering not just what is best for the Fold but what is best for you as well.”

  “So said the carpenter to the nail,” Simone muttered.

  “But Simone, you at least need not come. Only Clay is absolutely needed. Though you would have been a help to him.”

  When Simone looked at Clay, his eyes had lost their usual peaceful expression. She read something perilous in them.

  “Is there any technology in the Fold?” he asked. “Any scientific secrets that I could bring back?”

  “None at all,” said Raspberry. “Technologically, we are far behind you. We’re in what you would call the Dark Ages. I can offer you nothing but the satisfaction of trying to do good.”

  Clay hesitated.

  “I won’t let you go,” Simone said to him.

  Suddenly Raspberry stirred. “I hear someone running away from the house,” she announced. She scurried to the floor. “Quickly, Simone, let me out the back door so I can investigate.”

  Simone and Clay followed the sound of the Fijat’s feet to the back porch. Simone paused with her hand on the knob. “But if it’s Ulrigs—”

  “No, this was a human,” said Raspberry impatiently. “Ulrig footfalls sound completely different. Hurry.”

  Simone opened the door and Raspberry shot out. Then the teens waited, whispering to each other. As the minutes lengthened, Simone tried not to care whether Raspberry came back. Why should it matter what might happen to her old tutor? She had buried her love for Raspberry long ago.

  More minutes passed until, at last, Clay went to a kitchen drawer and rummaged for a flashlight. “I’m gonna go out and—”

  “No, you won’t! You’re staying right here. I—”

  Simone paused. Someone was walking across the backyard. Before they had a chance to react, there was a knock at the door. From the kitchen Clay shined a flashlight beam past Simone and through the screen door, revealing a young man, outlandishly dressed.

  “Hi!” the man said and smiled.

  “Who are you? What are you doing here?” Simone asked.

  The stranger looked puzzled. “I want,” he began, and the teens started, for he spoke in Gellene, “I want to come in and talk to you. I’m just a passing stranger who needs directions.”

  “Anywhere away from here!” Simone said, and she reached out to latch the door. Too quick for her, he caught the knob and pulled it open. She heard the ringing of metal against metal, saw a reflected flash, and found a sword tip threatening her middle. She made a strangled sound and backed up as the man entered.

  “Icky, come!” he shouted over his shoulder, and at once another man ran across the yard and entered behind him, sword in one hand and a coil of rope in the other.

  In a few moments the intruders tied Clay and Simone’s hands behind their backs and placed them on kitchen chairs, where they sat gasping and wide-eyed. In the kitchen light, the two men appeared to be from another world indeed. Their clothing was baggy, flowing, and entirely black except for a touch of crimson at the collar. The taller of the two, who had entered first, wore in addition a silver medallion and a large hat that reminded Simone of a Revolutionary tri-corner, though with a higher peak.

  He was sharp-eyed and handsome with thick, dark eyebrows that came together when he smiled. The shorter, broader man whom he had called Icky was also young but with an ugly, drooping face, sensuous and disagreeable. Their drawn swords, she noticed, were not manufactured but smith
-wrought with all the imperfections of a pre-machine age.

  The taller man waved a free hand at Icky. “Search the rest of the house.” Icky left the room, peering about with wide eyes at the unexplained paraphernalia of an American home. Soon they heard him stomping and clattering about, upstairs and downstairs.

  He returned. “Nobody else here, Ven.”

  “Right. Then keep a watch at the windows.”

  “I can’t see out with all these little fires. They’re burning little fires in glass eggs all over the house.” Ven ignored this, possibly because he was as mystified as Icky by the light bulbs. He put his sword tip to Clay’s throat. “Where is the Emperor?”

  Clay grew pale and said nothing. Ven drew back his sword as if to lop Clay’s head off. “So I kill you and ask her?”

  “No wait!” Simone cried in Gellene. “He’s the Emperor. Don’t kill him, he’s your Emperor.”

  Ven lowered his sword and looked them over suspiciously. “Dressed like a clown? Living in a ruin?”

  “Maybe we came to the wrong house,” said Icky.

  “But the Fijata was here!” Ven slammed his sword against the kitchen table in frustration. “And who are you?”

  “His sister,” Simone said weakly. He approached her and pulled her head back by the hair. “A princess? Where’s your court, your palace?”

  “We aren’t royalty here!” said Clay. “Here we’re just—just—”

  “Commoners,” Simone supplied.

  “Yeah, and we didn’t know we were royalty until tonight when Raspberry told us.”

  Ven released Simone and turned back to Clay. “The Misara Razabera will never be able to confirm that. Not that I would believe her anyway.” He looked to Icky. “What do you think?”

  “It could be, Magus. All the centuries since cursed Lila came here—even royal families can decline, get poor. I say sacrifice them now, in the cemetery, and see how the stinking emperor-lovers react back home. If those Forest folk get all sick and teary faced, we’ll know we drank blue blood.”

  “Right.” Ven took a moment to scout out the back door and returned. “The way’s clear. Convenient they’re so far from other houses.” He stooped and picked up Clay’s fallen flashlight. “This’ll be our proof for the Hag. It has one of the fire-eggs in it.” He turned to Clay. “How do you light it?”

  “Just push the button. Yeah, that’s it,” Clay answered. “Then push it again to—”

  “Yes, enough.” Ven stuffed the light into his rope belt. “Now, on your feet and out the door. Icky, stay behind the girl, hand on her shoulder. If she tries to run, stab her through.”

  Clay and Simone were forced out into the backyard, through the gap in the fence, and across the cemetery lawn. Their way was very dark, lit only by a few far off streetlights along the highway. The cars sped past, but no shout could reach them, even if a shout had been safe. Simone shuffled between dim gray headstones, her head spinning, trying not to believe that the one called Icky had said they would be sacrificed. From time to time a sword tip pricked her back.

  She forced herself to speak. “Why?” she asked. “Why kill us?”

  Icky answered, “Shut your mouth. You’re wanted dead by Higher Powers, that’s enough.”

  “But—but Raspberry, I mean Razabera, said we could prevent a war and thousands being killed.”

  “That’s her line, is it?” Icky grunted and added nothing.

  They came to one of the more prominent monuments, a sort of little temple made all of white stone and with a low roof supported by six pillars. It was set on thick, triple foundations, and the sides were open. Simone and Clay were driven up under the roof where Ven and Icky used more rope to tie them down on their backs side by side, making loops around the pillars.

  Simone and Clay had been there before. Growing up at Cemetery House, they had played on all the monuments, knew every name inscribed on them. Simone felt as if she were being sacrificed on her cradle.

  Clay began to cry brokenly. Simone, just a year older, tried desperately to think, to keep a clear head, while Icky produced what seemed to be a piece of chalk and began marking an elongated circle around her and Clay. Meanwhile, Ven brought out candles from his jerkin and lit them with a device Simone could not see. He dripped a bit of wax just in line with Simone’s head and used it to stick the candle in place. Then he did the same with Clay. The tall sticks lit the teens’ frightened faces and heaving chests. Beside each candle Ven placed a small cup.

  Icky had finished his circle. “We’ll have to use their own blood for the sprinkling,” he said in a casual, workmanlike tone. “How shall I draw it?”

  Simone spoke out in as firm a tone as she could manage. “We’re the rightful rulers of everybody in your world. The Misara Razabera said so. So if you kill us, you’re killing your own sovereigns. Do you think Thoz doesn’t see? Can you bear that much guilt? Your Emperor’s blood on your hands?”

  To her surprise, Ven’s dark brow furrowed. He rubbed his hand over his mouth. “Shut up. We’ve got a god on our side, the highest. We’re protected in all we do.”

  “A god? Who?” Simone mentally scrambled for the Gellene word for Satan. “Fowroz?”

  “Shut up!” Ven produced a silver knife and held it to Simone’s throat. She looked him in the eye and with her last bit of courage held her voice steady.

  “Fowroz is going to the Pit and so are you.”

  To her astonishment, Ven backed off cursing. As he did, she suddenly became aware that Clay was brokenly reciting scraps of a Psalm. Since he spoke in English, only Simone understood.

  “Ven! Ven Magus!” Icky whispered intensely. “There’s something out here. I hear something over there among the tombstones.”

  “Just some animal,” said Ven. He was breathing deeply and perspiring. “Start the chant.”

  “But we haven’t sprinkled the blood yet.”

  “Hadris! Cut the boy’s ear off.”

  Icky had slipped his sword into its sheath while tying and chalking. Now he drew it with a rattle. He paused and said, “By the dark power of evil I take your blood. Fowroz protect me!” He leaned forward, blade in hand.

  Suddenly, there burst forth from all around them an otherworldly howling, as if all the banshees in Hell were upon them. Captives and captors alike were thrilled with horror. Icky dropped his sword. Ven stumbled back off the monument, trying to draw his. The teens writhed on the stone. Then dark, snarling figures leaped from the shadows.

  Simone saw a tall but inhuman figure, some great animal, dart forward with a blade in what passed for its hand. Running upright like a man, it thrust the sword into Ven’s back. A split second later another did the same. Icky came stumbling over Clay and Simone and fell down onto the other side of the monument, rolling near Ven. Then two of the howling creatures brushed over them in pursuit, and he was stabbed from all sides.

  Simone turned her head and closed her eyes, but she could not help but hear the animals’ blades hacking at the fallen men’s bodies. She heard a gurgling and gasping and knew that the men were not yet dead. She wanted to die herself, so as not to hear them. The horrible sounds went on and on.

  At last all was silent. She opened her eyes and saw nothing beyond the candlelight; nothing until a great wolf face, blood spattered, appeared over the stone ledge beside her. She opened her mouth to scream but no sound came.

  The thing spoke in Kreenspam. “Calm now. All is well. The witches are dead.”

  She blubbered some reply.

  “We’ve come to help you. I am Snag, a captain of the Ulrigs of the Middle Range.”

  Snag and the other Ulrigs cut their bonds with bloody swords, and the two stood shakily, leaning on each other and shuddering. Dimly in the light of the candles they saw four Ulrigs standing somewhat below them on the steps, all of them lean and tall, their eyes like faintly lighted lamps.

  Sn
ag stepped in front of Clay. “Are you,” he asked, “the Great Sisskame, son of Susan, descendant of Lila, descendant of Quintus who is called the Sisska?”

  Clay answered through tears. “I don’t know. Raspberry said I was the descendant of Lila. She said I’m some kind of emperor.”

  Snag bowed his ugly head slightly toward Simone. “And this your sister?”

  “Yes, this is Simone.”

  “Then she also is a Sisskame, and a great Princess.” Suddenly Snag prostrated himself and the other Ulrigs did the same. “Emperor,” Snag said, “we come to you as loyal subjects to bring you to your throne.”

  Simone saw that Clay was at a loss. Nothing in his seventeen years had prepared him for the events of this night. Nothing, that is, but Raspberry’s brief tutelage. And where was Raspberry? She remembered that Ven had said the Fijata would never be able to confirm something Clay had said.

  “Excuse me,” she said to the kneeling monsters, “but where is Raspberry, I mean the Misara Razabera?”

  The Ulrig Captain looked to his second. “Snart?”

  “There was a fight, Captain, just as you came up from the west side of the house. Small creatures over there in the shadow of the fence.”

  Simone started off, dragging Clay with her, the Ulrigs reluctantly following, and soon they came to the place Snart identified as the scene of the fight. Here tree limbs overhung the deep darkness of the fence row. Simone plunged alone into these shadows, calling for Raspberry. She paused to listen, and in a moment she heard the familiar raspy voice, but diminished and distorted, gasping. She crawled on, feeling ahead of her, following the voice, until her hands touched the small furry body. Something was wrong. The fur was damp and sticky. Simone became very still inside.

  “Raspberry, are you bleeding?”

  “Yes, yes,” the Fijata said, “but no time for that. Dark magi are here. I recognized one by his hat. Magi, Simone. Oh, what do you call them? Witches. You must get away. Don’t trust them.”

  “Shhh.” A few cold teardrops fell from Simone’s eyes, but she was astonishingly steady. “They’re dead. Some Ulrigs killed them. Now tell me where you’re hurt. We’re going to help you.”

  “Past helping,” Raspberry muttered. “I’m torn open. The Magus released a winged thing, something bred in the Forest Obscure, in the Vulture’s land. It’s a robalt, a familiar dark and deadly. I think I may have killed it. It’s lying by here somewhere, I know. I could hear it at first when it was moving a bit, but it seems to have stopped.”

  “Let’s see how bad you really are,” Simone said. She had pulled her hands back, fearing to touch Raspberry’s wound. Now she forced herself to touch the Fijata and soon felt the horrible gash. Her heart pounded in her ears and she felt dizzy.

  Raspberry moaned, “No, Simone, give it up. You need my counsel while I can still speak. These Ulrigs are promise breakers; they were not to come here. But it’s turned out well that they did. None of us Sarrs knew that witches were following. But you must see, girl, that if the Magi can come once, they can come again. Somehow they know about the Door in Crow Wood. So it’s no longer a question of choice, my dearest. If you stay here in Viola, the witches will kill you, kill Clay, your mother—”

  “No, not mother! We have to get away. They musn’t come here again. Let them follow us somewhere else. Anywhere.”

  “Yes, to the Fold. Go with these Ulrigs. They are not good, not noble, but they will not harm you. They revere you as Sisskames. Go to the Fold and—no glory for yourself. Save lives. Pity the people. Take nothing for yourself. Go and—behave nobly, Misara Simone.”

  “No, Raspberry, don’t call me noble.”

  “You must be and so must Clay. Is he here? At the Door—at the Door—don’t believe what he says—”

  Simone was distracted by a light behind her. She looked back and saw that Clay had brought another flashlight from the car. He came near and shined it on the place where Raspberry was. Simone started, for of course nothing appeared at all, only flattened grass where the invisible creature lay. Though wet with blood, Simone’s hands appeared clean.

  Clay moved the beam to search about closer to the fence. In a moment he found something there, something black and hairless. Simone screamed in horror but could not look away. The thing was like a gigantic bat with hard, sharp claws and wings two feet long. It’s open mouth showed fangs. But it was dead: the tiny eyes stared dull and its throat was torn and bloody.

  “What is it?” Clay asked, stepping back.

  “A Fijat-killer,” Snag supplied, for he had joined them. “Even invisible enemies can’t escape them, for they track by sound. The Magi brought this thing here to kill the Misara Razabera.”

  “But she’s not dead!” insisted Simone, reaching out to Raspberry again. “She’s—Raspberry?”

  The Fijata was no longer breathing.