The Singer of Worlds

Chapter One: The Statue and the Gate

Stone and vine,

God and shrine,

Sun and moon,

Nail and tomb

Young Danny Keys could not rightfully be accused of being lazy, not even by her harshest critics. When she woke up in the mornings she swept up the dirt in the halls before being allowed breakfast; there were four floors and many halls. Then she was allowed less than ten minutes to eat the warm waffles or sweet-rolls leftover from the kitchen. The instant those ten minutes had passed, she had a variety of chores to do that were placed solely on her shoulders with nobody else to help her. Most often, of course, it involved cleaning up after her stepsisters, which required something more than one pair of hands; a bulldozer would be more useful.

Her stepsisters were, in number, three, named Alisa, Charisma, and Starr, respectively in order from oldest to youngest. All three had been handed the world on a silver platter the moment they were born, and had most likely sent it back once or twice for being too tough or gamey and had complained to the chef (in this case, the Almighty chef).

There was the statuesque Alisa, soon going off to college, there was the somewhat shorter and therefore complex-ridden Charisma, and, lastly, there was little Starr, the bane of Danny’s existence. They were the Thorntons. Their mother had also been a Thornton before marrying Danny’s father, who was a Keys. Now she was the estimable Gladys Thornton-Keys, formerly a wallflower and now noisily running the lives of most members in society. Sadly, and unfortunately for Danny, only a month after the convenient marriage of the two rich divorcees, the great Eric Keys died in his sleep.

The doctors all said it was due to a heart attack, but Danny could not remember any man stronger or healthier than her father. He had always been full of vitality. Now he was just a name on a large gravestone. The dull gray, stone surface also bore the words “Too magnificent a man for this world”. Danny did not think that at all; her opinion was that magnificent men should be left in the world to make everything around them better. It was not a sentiment that her new stepmother seemed to share, because she had only been in mourning for a month before her glorious reemergence into the pages of Society. She had been called an “admirably kempt woman who refused to let tragedy keep her down”. Danny did not remember Gladys shedding a tear past the very public funeral. It had only been six months.

Danny was not really “Danny”, at least, not on her birth certificate. Her full name was Danarre, but she did not feel that that name suited her ratty jeans and dirty shoes at all. “Danny” matched much more seamlessly with her personality.

Nobody in her family called her Danny. They only called her Danarre, and it seemed like the only time they ever said her name at all was when they needed her to do something.

On that particular hot July morning, Danny awoke to the voice of her stepmother, piercing what should have been an early morning stillness. She blinked and rolled over to squint at her clock as her eyes struggled to cope with the glaringly brilliant sunlight. The big, digital numbers read ‘7:15 AM’.

As she announced loudly after receiving a mumbled response from her stepdaughter, Gladys wanted the pool deck swept so that she could lie out and enjoy the sun before peak hours. After ten was when the sun’s rays would then begin leeching precious nutrients from her papery skin, and the older woman detested the thought. She was very solicitous when it came to her outward appearance.

Danny privately thought that it was unlikely that the health of her stepmother’s skin would comfort the woman when she was suffering from liver failure. Gladys claimed to be merely a social drinker; because any comments on Danny’s part that voiced her doubt on that matter would have earned her a new load of chores that would, from thereon, become her daily duties, Danny kept her thoughts on that subject to herself. Gladys resented the imposition on her family that Danny had proven to be and wasted no opportunity to punish her for the intrusion. In Danny’s mind, though, the members of her stepfamily were the interlopers.

Danny stumbled to her dresser after clumsily stooping to gather a pair of wrinkled shorts from her hardwood floor. She tugged a gray t-shirt from a half-open drawer and haphazardly yanked on both articles of clothing. If she had bothered to look in the dingy mirror on the wall beside her dresser, she would have seen a pale, tired-eyed girl with hair resembling yarn that had been savagely beaten in an epic battle with some beast possessing numerous sharp claws. Gladys simply compared it to a bird’s nest, but Danny maintained that, as a bird’s nest is the product of planning and careful, meticulous work with some sort of purpose in mind at the outset, battle-weary yarn was a more apt analogy, as one could not possibly suggest that there was a definite reason that her hair looked the way it did. Her copper curls simply did not respond to Danny’s futile attempts with a comb, and so those instances when she actually tried to straighten her disgraceful hair were becoming fewer and far between.

She clumped it up into a sorry-looking bun and forced a cap over it. It was a bit tight, but she would get no peace today if Gladys had to wait, so she could not pause now to brush out the tangles that had made themselves quite at home in the past two days.

That it was for her benefit did not, however, prevent Gladys from commenting acidly on her stepdaughter’s procrastination in dealing with her dishabille.

“Is it any wonder why I do not allow you to circulate with the guests at our functions?” she demanded in exasperation, as if Danny’s absence from her parties was from her design instead of her stepdaughter’s simple, obstinate refusal to attend. It was one subject that Danny never gave in on, despite Gladys’s attempts to force her through punishment. Not that Gladys wanted Danny’s presence, but many people who had known the Keys before Eric’s demise were curious as to Danny’s whereabouts when somebody had mentioned they hadn’t seen the girl in weeks.

“Sorry, Gladys. I was sleeping.” Danny always kept her responses short and polite and perpetually apologetic and humble. If she dared to speak back, she would be punished far more severely than was warranted, and she despised the smug looks on her older stepsisters’ faces when she was attending to some additional miserable chore. She lifted the broom she had taken from the kitchen so as to head off any more of Gladys’s griping.

“At this hour?” Gladys asked in disgust, shading her eyes with her hand as she peered at her stepdaughter. She then turned her attention out over “her” property; she was most certainly trying to see into their neighbor’s backyard. Mrs. Munson had the perfectly manicured lawn that Gladys was never able to emulate, even with the best lawn service and it had her mad with envy. “It’s no wonder why you’ve never excelled in school. I told your father he needed to stop promoting such laziness. God rest his soul.”

She was distractedly continuing the conversation, with the bulk of her attention on the property beyond the fence, but even on those rare occasions when she did give Danny her undivided attention, she always managed to sound insincere when she spoke of the late Eric Keys. She was a far less believable actress without the cameras on her.

Danny swallowed her furious response to her stepmother’s mention of her father as Gladys draped a towel over the purple lawn chair beside the pool. The robe she wore was very tightly wrapped around her spindly body.

The deck was covered in green pollen, Danny noted as she shifted her grip on the broom as if unconsciously preparing to go after her stepmother like a croquet ball. When swept, it would just respond by drifting around in the air for a moment before settling back down on the nearest surface. But Danny still did what Gladys had told her, and began sweeping; it was not hers to question why. As expected, her attempts were ineffectual.

“Oh, will you look what you’ve done?” Gladys complained, swiping at the pollen that had settled on her chair. It stuck to her hand and she grew very irritable as she started sneezing. She looked disgusted and alarmed, and wiped her hand off on the bottom of the chair. “Please, just go to the kitchen, where you can’t do any harm. The only thing that cook is good for is keeping you in line, after all.”

Danny ignored the spiteful insults of her stepmother, happy to be allowed breakfast without any further cleaning. She quickly left while the woman was muttering about a new caretaker, leaning the broom against the railing and pulling the porch doors open to bang against the chimes. Danny pondered the significance of Gladys’s words as she neared the kitchen. What use was a new caretaker? The grounds staff was already far more extensive than necessary or prudent, and crotchety old Mr. Hoover, who had been in the employ of the owners of the Manor—formally the McCulloch Manor—for nearly sixty years, ran almost everything.

She momentarily forgot what she had been thinking about when the delightful odors from the kitchen wafted towards her. Mrs. Sanders looked up from stove when Danny entered, her entire face creasing into a big smile. Having been a part of the staff at the Keys Manor since before Danny was born, the cook saw her as her own daughter, and Danny, in turn, saw her as the mother she’d never known.

“The madam must be pretty distracted over the hiring of that new hand if she let you come here so early,” the plump, ruddy-face woman said with a wicked glint in her eyes. She chuckled to herself as the hissing on the stove intensified.

“She just out on deck. I annoyed her with my unsatisfactory sweeping skills,” Danny protested with a small snort as she leaned back on the high counter, mystified as to the complexities of adults. She was fifteen—very nearly a woman—but the actions of her elders still confused her.

Mrs. Sanders rolled her light blue eyes. “Simply put, the new caretaker is quite young.” She said nothing more; she only tucked her tongue in her cheek and went back to the pancakes sizzling in her cast-iron skillet. Danny was silent for a few moments as she thought.

“Is he making her feel younger than her years?” she hazarded, feeling quite silly sitting there and discussing Gladys’ love life or lack thereof, but still managing to sound snide.

Mrs. Sanders winked and remained silent, except for a low humming a she flipped the four pancakes. They were a lovely golden brown. Danny slid into a tall stool at the high counter as she waited for the cook to finish.

“When will this new, young caretaker begin work?” she asked, even though she wasn’t really interested. The knowledge that the man had her middle-aged stepmother feeling frisky would have spoiled the most handsome man. Besides, even though when it had just been her and her dad living here, the servants had been like family, she didn’t know half of the people working here now. Half of them were disgusted with the upper classes in general and the Thornton-Keys specifically. It was the proletariat against the bourgeoisie once again.

“Today? Wednesday, Friday? Who knows? Not I. That silly woman’s given him leave to make his own hours this first week. All’s I can say is that she must be pretty desperate…”

Mrs. Sanders must have remembered that she was discussing the subject with a fifteen year-old girl. Disappointed though Danny was at the older woman’s abrupt silence, she did not push her to continue. She accepted the three pancakes that Mrs. Sanders slid over the counter with profuse thanks and promptly slathered them liberally with syrup. She did not bother with butter because she had always been unable to understand why people needed both condiments.

“I don’t understand why she’s getting all giddy,” Danny said, chewing fiercely and swallowing. A glass of milk appeared at her place and she nodded her gratitude. “I mean, she can have anyone. She’s rich! It’s not like she’s looking for a father for her children—if there’s anyone who cares less what her daughters think, I haven’t met them.”

“Yes, well, maybe you’ll understand when you see him.” And Mrs. Sanders turned a little red and put more pancake batter in the skillet.

Danny did not hold high hopes for that. She’d always been unimpressed by all the boys her friends pointed out to her, and the one or two boys her age who had actually approached her had been promptly turned down. The way she saw it, anyone her age who was dating was simply playing at being an adult. She unsuccessfully tried to hide a smirk at the cook’s discomfiture and continued plowing through the pancakes.

In the end, she couldn’t finish the last one. After three bites out of the perfect circle, she set her fork down with a sigh of contentment.

“Is that all? I can remember when you could eat five of these without slowing down,” Mrs. Sanders said with a shake of her gray head. “A pity, it is.”

Danny giggled, her countenance lightening somewhat. “You kept feeding me more cake last night, so it’s hardly my fault.”

“Oh, but it’s a new day. No, that’s alright. You just go on outside and play.” She made shooing motions with her plump arms before wiping some flour off on her apron. The girl laughed. She hadn’t been told to ‘go out and play’ since she had turned twelve. She went up to her room; up the big front steps in the foyer, down the taupe hallway and up the twisting staircase that led to her door.

She half-heartedly brushed her hair then, but it did little good. Danny’s hair, in conclusion, was unmanageable, and she mostly accepted it now. She jammed her cap back on and decided that she might head out into the forest and get lost awhile.

At that thought, she recalled how long it had been since she’d last gone out into the woods. The last journey was at least nine months before, before her father had died and Gladys had become her only parent. Her thoughts then wandered, as they often did, to her real mother, who had divorced Danny’s father twelve years ago and vanished without a backward glance.

Those thoughts were interrupted by the banging and yells that announced the awakening of either Alisa or Charisma. Danny willed them to forget that she existed, but it was probably, as always, useless. She stood in the light that spilled through her window onto the floor and peered out at the street. Alisa’s boyfriend was waiting at the curb in his yellow Lamborghini. His name was Todd, and Danny hated Todd. So did Starr, and Todd had the bite marks on his ankles to prove it.

Danny actually got along better with the little menace than she did the rest of the Thorntons. Starr had a refreshing quality to her that Danny kindly described as honest. If Starr didn’t like people, she gnawed on them. She didn’t pretend to like them for the sake of propriety. That would no doubt change as she grew older, but Danny hoped that she had corrupted the child at least a little.

Danny took a cold water from the small refrigerator next to her computer desk and slumped down in the wooden swivel chair that went with the desk, pondering the clear sky. It was such a pretty day. Normally she might be inclined to call up her friends. But Tamara had moved away in the early spring, and Doris and Beth, the twins, had been rather aloof for the past few months. Their coming out party would be in a few months, and Danny guessed that their parents had been desperately seeking to make them proper young ladies, which meant no exploring the swamp and no breaking into abandoned buildings.

So she was forced to enjoy her own company, and that was rarely any fun.

After the yellow car pulled away and sped down the street with Alisa’s blonde hair fluttering in the wind, Danny pushed open her window and climbed out onto her tree without even thinking of what she was doing. It had been “her tree” since she had discovered that it was the perfect climbing tree at the age of six. Her father objected continuously throughout the years; his fears proved to be well-founded when she fell from the lowest branch and broke her arm years later.

Now she was more careful, if perhaps not wiser. Danny quickly descended through the branches and hit the ground, feet-first, with a thump. She was heavier than she had been the first time she’d shimmied down the trunk, even though it had still been with somewhat less grace than a cat. She was on her guard for any servants lurking about in the shrubbery, but she needn’t have been; very few bothered to prune the bushes where there were no windows, because Gladys was not about to go traipsing through the dirt to check if everything had been done to her satisfaction.

Her tree was therefore surrounded by a variety of wildly out-of-control bushes, and she put a few between her and the view of the deck, where her stepmother still reclined in idolatry. She heard the rumble of two voices, but couldn’t make out the timbre or determine the genders of the owners. One of them would be, of course, Gladys.

She was afraid that somehow, in the way evil stepmothers have, Gladys would discover she was there and make her attend to some chore now that she was thoroughly rested and no longer concerned with pollen.

She managed to make it quickly past the pool deck without incident, and recognized the other person on the deck as Mr. Hoover and saw that he was gesticulating wildly. Gladys had to be in the midst of firing the poor old man, and Danny felt a surge of anger. He had nowhere else to go, was without prospects and had just lost his wife the year before. Perhaps Gladys did not understand the sorrow involved in losing a life’s partner, but Danny fancied that she understood it in a very small way. In the way of anyone who has lost a loved one, Danny felt a kinship with the old man that she never could have in the years before her father’s death.

Just as she saw her stepmother’s white face rise above the railing and slowly turn in her direction, she melted into the line of trees that ran along the very back of the garden.

Immediately, she found herself immersed in absolute quiet, and she had to stop and marvel as she caught the breath she had lost in her stealthy caper across the lawn. She’d forgotten how quiet it was in the forest. The occasional bird chirped, but it was muffled, like on a morning filled with freshly fallen snow, and she was completely cut off from the noise of the outside world. Danny bent down and hefted a sturdy stick. She absently picked off a few fungus growths. It thumped the ground with each step she took, as she set off deeper into the trees.

She had no goal in mind and was content to simply wander the paths that twisted through these almost pristine woods.

Even after such a long absence, she knew the forest well. She had no trouble finding her way—at least, not at first. The trails were familiar, and the light fell on the ground in a way that brought back memories. The woods were speckled with bright rays of sun and dust motes floated like fairies within them.

The problem arose when she came to a fork in a rougher section of the path that she had never seen before, and the birthmark below her collarbone began to tingle uncomfortably. Startled, she scratched at it, having almost forgotten it was there, but the tingling did not cease. Danny gave up trying to discover the source of the feeling and continued forth, albeit with a little more caution. She was alert for more recognizable surroundings but not for a second did she think about turning back.

She took the left fork, because it seemed friendlier, and her choice felt somehow significant, as if she could not turn back now. The further she went, the more unsure she was that she had any idea where she was, and the feeling she was stepping into something she would not be able step back out of increased.

The lack of surety vanished the moment she stepped out into a clearing. She knew that she was lost now.

Two statues, mirror images, loomed before her, as tall as buildings. Far more imposing. They were perhaps sixty feet high and maybe fifty feet apart. The trees surrounding them had enlarged somewhat from the normal size of the other trees within the forest, because they dwarfed the statues that would have otherwise risen into the canopy.

Danny could only gape for the first few moments she stood there. She could feel her heart beating through her spine; the statues and the brilliant light flaming around them produced an ethereal sensation inside the clearing and she could not think, much less move. She dropped the stick as her hands went slightly numb, and did not notice that it was no longer deadwood, but a polished, smooth staff. It took her a second more to realize that the rapidity of her pulse was due to excitement, not abject terror. She was not afraid, only thrillingly energized and somewhat skittish, like she had eaten too much sugar.

She did not even scream when the statue on the left blinked slowly, revealing solid gray orbs for eyes, and though Danny could call herself many admirable things, brave had never really been one of them.

The two statues were made in the likenesses of soldiers, with two enormous spears clenched in their blocky hands. Both wore helmets that were dissimilar from any she had seen in her history books, and their uniforms bore emblems on the right breast that were equally unfamiliar. Their faces were stern and unyielding, each graced by an aquiline nose and with a heavy brow that was creased in a frown of concentration. The one awakening, for lack of a better word, slowly separated his lips and his expression shifted slightly. Dirt, pollen, and leaves rained from the stone of its body. The voice that seeped from him made her jump in alarm as her nerve-endings buzzed with some alien sensation.

“The noble blood of Aelthyne requests passage into the third world.” His voice grated like shale and she was too busy trying to breathe to protest that she had, of course, not asked anything. He must be referring to her, and yet what was this “blood of Alethyne” business?

“The blood of Aelthyne is always permitted entrance into the third world,” the other statue responded, his voice rumbling like an avalanche on a mountain. Danny had been closer to this one, and leapt away when he suddenly spoke, her legs almost giving out beneath her. She was shaking as if a chill had taken her, but it remained a hot July day.

For a moment, nothing happened to account for the ancient cadence of what they had said or the feeling within her that something paramount was happening besides the fact that the statues had come alive. She looked around her and then back at the statues, whose’ eyes were closed now and who showed no signs of that life. She might have thought that she had imagined that brief occurrence. Then she glanced at the space between the statues and noticed a shiny, unreal quality to the air that spanned it.

She approached it nervously, surmising that she was supposed to and very curious as to its origin. Danny pressed her hand to the air and found a resistance; the surface of the resistance held a moment and then slowly gave, as if she was sinking her hand into jell-o. The substance was like ice and it chilled her down to the bone with a severity and swiftness that astonished her.

The instant she snatched her hand back, the cold was gone, as if her skin had not been affected and the cold had been sent directly to her brain. She glanced up at the two statues, hoping for some kind of guidance. She received none. Their faces remained still and abiotic.

Danny took a deep breath to calm herself, and watched the air begin to roil and ripple slightly with a breeze that she could not feel. It had to be coming from the other side, and that thought decided her. There was that brief thought of adventure.

Clenching all of her muscles, she jumped through the cold all at once. There was an icy shock, without the pause that a sudden sensation usually takes to register itself to the senses, and she wondered if that was what it felt like to die; it felt like the all-encompassing sensation of the body shutting down that one would expect of death. Then she felt nothing of that same, death-cold. Peeking out from eyes that had been squeezed tightly shut against the ice, Danny caught her first glimpse of her surroundings.

It looked precisely like the forest behind the statues.

Nonplussed, she rubbed her hands together, wondering what to do next. However, when she turned her gaze up at the statues once more, one was missing a head—the neck ended in jagged stone, and cracks ran down the chest. The other was missing a spear, his arm ending in an uneven, broken wrist. She gasped in shock at this sudden change, and the noise seemed strangely loud. The forest was still hushed, and she could no longer hear even a few birds. She pressed her hand to her mouth and her eyes darted around, her mind unable to accept what her eyes were telling her.

It was colder, she realized, rubbing her hands together again. Where was she? It seemed like it was the same forest, but the climate had changed, and there was a crisp smell to the air that was so unlike the muggy, dry feel of the summer air she had been feeling only minutes before. The air behind her house had also always been slightly thick with smog and smoke; the feel of this air was so clean.

She recalled the words the statues had spoken, thinking that perhaps she could glean information from those two short sentences. While the word Aelthyne was strange and foreign, the talk of a third world had her suspecting something that she otherwise would never have entertained the thought of except in her wildest dreams—that she was in a wholly separate world from the one she knew.

She rubbed her arms now and moved forward a few paces, trying to reconcile herself with that idea.

With a strange sound like grinding air, the perfect square of shiny air disappeared. Danny rushed to it and hesitantly reached forward, finding no resistance, nothing. She swallowed hard, knowing and trying to accept that she was in a place that was not her home. And she was left alone in this strange land with no knowledge of how to return.

After nearly fifteen minutes spent standing still and white next to the old, crumbling statues, she gradually began to stumble away from them. Her legs were stiff and the ground was uneven. Danny repeatedly looked back over her shoulder, until finally she could not even catch a glimpse of the ruined statues.

A small snowflake settled on her nose and she shivered as she turned resolutely forward. It was a lot colder. It felt like January, and she had just left the heat of July. Her feet grew tired and frozen as more snow began to fall and she continued through the forest in what she hoped was a straight line. The trees were much bigger here, more like the trees in the statues’ clearing than the ones of the rest of her forest. Those trees must have been transplanted or something. The branches rustled above her but still no birds sang. The snowflakes gradually covered the surface of her hair.

Danny was extremely relieved when she staggered onto a well-worn break in the forest. Deep ruts were dug in the packed dirt there, and she crept to the center of the path and looked ahead of her. The road twisted out of view, but it clearly led somewhere. The leaves around her began to frost as she made her way in the direction of a majority of the tracks around her feet. Her fingers grew numb and she resisted the urge to try and crack her knuckles, knowing it would be painful and fruitless. Goosebumps covered every inch of her, and her skin felt tight as it became patchy and red.

After what felt like hours, the snow steadily piling atop itself, she saw smoke rising from a patch ahead. It was silhouetted against the snow-grayed sky like a specter.

Not long after, she came upon a gigantic dip in the land. Nestled comfortably in the little bowl of land was a noisy, foggy and pretty town of brick and clean-cut stone. This evidence of people here was more startling than anything else had been. Danny was suddenly scared and doubtful of what she should do next. The town was very large, stretching past her sight. Picturesque terra-cotta roofs and the tips of fir trees rose above the height of the solid-looking stone wall that surrounded the village.

Almost of their own accord, her feet sent her lurching ahead. She reached the small, gated entrance of the town and passed by the one guard without a word exchanged; he did not glance sideways at her, instead concentrating straight ahead of him. Danny studied him a little nervously, wondering what he was guarding against, before she progressed through the light crowds.

She reached a fountain with two twin gourds pouring streams of water while three gray nymphs gestured with wide grins. The water within the fountain was icing over on the top and some children were poking at it and giggling.

Frozen over and dusted with snow, she hugged herself as she scrutinized the town. It was growing a little busier, but was not crowded enough to be uncomfortably smothering. She received a few strange looks—not surprising considering her attire—and almost began to cry.

It was much louder and less isolated here than it had been in the forest, and the laughter and excited tones slowly calmed her to the point where she was merely sniffling and wondering where to go.

Suddenly, a jolly man materialized from the bustling people and stuffed a rolled piece of parchment into her hand. A round red nose and wide smiled graced a plump face topped with twinkling eyes and beetle brows. His voice was loud and booming, and shook her out of her vague trance.

“Welcome, traveler! Welcome to Midcap!”