A/N: I’m really, really sorry this took so long.  What with finals and stuff, I haven’t had much time to write.  Some idiot scheduled our semester finals after Christmas break, so I’ve had to study all the time.  However, it might be of slight humorous interest to you that my Environmental Science essay was to come up with a new species and write about it; I wrote about Chirin.  ‘Course, everything had to be all science-y and non-magic, but I thought it was interesting anyway.  And now, without further ado, the next chapter!

Chapter 5:  Unexpected Visitors

            Ari and Kaki were sitting on the bed, chatting happily about nothing in particular.  Ari’s parents had left and weren’t going to be home for another few hours, leaving them free to talk as loudly as possible about everything that had been happening to Ari, but the conversation had gone off into random tangents so often that the two had given up on trying to stay on subject.  Ginhoshi had gone to sleep in Ari’s lap, and she stroked the cat’s silver fur as she talked animatedly.  Suddenly, Ginhoshi sat up and hissed at the closed door, her fur sticking up and her claws digging into Ari’s leg.

“Geez, Gin, what is with you?” Ari said, extracting the cat from her leg and putting her on the floor.

She continued to growl menacingly at the door, and waved unsheathed claws in its direction.  Ari began to get freaked out, and her imagination instantly began churning out images that she would much prefer that it didn’t.  Finally, just to prove that it was really nothing, just her cat acting like a loon, she picked her staff, holding it like a sword, and moved slowly towards the door.  Ginhoshi gave a loud meow of alarm, and snatched the leg of Ari’s jeans in her teeth, trying to pull her away from the door.  She was still growling, although it was muffled by the mouthful of denim she had.

“Apparently she doesn’t want you going out the door, Ari,” Kaki said, her voice joking but her eyes showing traces of fright.

“It is because she can sense what waits behind,” an erethral voice rang out, and the girl from Ari’s dream appeared, although she was transparent and light bluish-grey, “To leave this room by that exit would be to die.”

“Ariiiiiiii…who is thiiiiiiiis…?” Kaki began to edge away from the ghostly figure.

“I have no clue, but she’s the one who showed up in my dream…except she wasn’t a ghost then…”

“In the Realm of Dreams, I have form.  But here, I am no more than spirit.  My name is Erynn, and it is my sworn duty to guard the Amulet.  Not even in death do I relinquish this responsibility.  And so I guard it and you from him with a shield-spell around this room.”

“Him?  Listen, you’re gonna have to be a little more specific than that, you know.”

“I cannot speak his name; he will break the shield if I do.  You must get out of here!”

“How?  We can’t use the door, remember?” Kaki was starting to sound frustrated.

“The window!” Ari ran over and looked out, but saw several of the dog-things she had fought a year ago prowling around beneath, “Ooooor, maybe not.”

“What?” Kaki went and looked as well, “Ah.  Those would be the infamous ‘dog-demon-thingies’, I presume.”

“Chirin.  He has a large number of the beasts under his command.  They will alert him if you attempt to get out that way.”

“Greeeeaaaaat.  Now what?”

“Well, there’s an air vent in my closet that might be big enough…I used to play in it when I was little.  I called it my ‘secret hallway’.”

“Nothing to lose,” Kaki shrugged.

The two girls dug through all of the junk that had accumulated in Ari’s closet over the years, eventually finding a large grille set into the wall.  It was, in fact, just big enough for them to crawl through on their stomachs.  Now came the problem.  Ari had a phobia of going into narrow spaces where you can’t turn around and you don’t know what’s at the end.  She stared at the tunnel, then shook her head and backed away.

“I can’t do this.  I have had nightmares about this sort of thing.  Where I’m in a tunnel and it gets narrower and narrower until it stops in a dead end and I can’t go back and…I just can’t go in there,” she turned pleadingly to Erynn and Kaki.

“You have no choice.  The only other way that you will leave will be in his hands,” Erynn gestured at the door.

“Aha!  Okay, Ari, remember in the Matrix?  Morpheus told Neo to do something, but he was too afraid and got caught by the Agents.  Remember the bug?  Just keep thinking; it’s either this or the bug, this or the bug.  Just imagine that it’s Smith out there, and if you don’t do this…”

“The bug,” Ari finished Kaki’s sentence for her and shuddered.  Agent Smith is behind the door, and I am more afraid of the bug than of the tunnel.  Tunnel is better than bug.  Tunnel is better than bug…

Ari took a deep breath, chanting this to herself.  It didn’t work; she knew that it wasn’t an Agent behind the door.  Then she thought of something brilliantly terrifying.  She imagined that there were lots of Agent-bugs crawling towards her from the other side of the room.  That worked.  She practically flung herself into the tunnel and started sliding along the dusty metal of the vent, using her elbows to push and pull herself forwards.  Kaki followed, and so did Ginhoshi.  They crawled and crawled; every time Ari began to feel afraid of the tunnel and her instincts were screaming at her to turn back, she imagined that she heard the scuttling of hundreds of silver Agent-bugs crawling through the vent after her, their many antennae waving, and she put on a burst of speed.  It also helped that the vent had gotten no narrower and that somehow Ginhoshi had gotten in front of her and was leading the way through the mazelike vents.  Ginhoshi had been in here before, and knew the way outside into the side-yard that was completely overgrown with bushes and small trees.  It was also far from Ari’s bedroom window, so the Chirin creatures would most likely not be there.  At last, she saw sunlight shining through where the metal grille had somehow been torn off.  Dusty, tired, and nervous, the two girls and the cat climbed out into the sun.  But there was no time to rest; they still had to get away from the house unnoticed. 

Slinking from bush to tree and sometimes crawling through some of the higher grass that grew like a small prairie in the yard, they felt like spies in a movie.  When they reached the high wooden fence separating their yard from the neighbor’s, an old lady named Miss White they found a gap in the fence and squeezed through and tumbled onto the grass that Miss White liked to keep green, short, and even.  They were safe here, Miss White owned the wooden fence and it stretched all the way around her yard.  But for how long?  Not very.  So they kept going, moving through the bushes with strong-smelling flowers to hide both sight and scent.  Ginhoshi was still ahead, her silver tail guiding them through the maze of green leaves and bright flowers.  But Ari froze in place and she could have sworn that her heart had jumped up her throat when a high voice cried out.

“I see you in there, you rogues!  Come out!”