“This sucks.” Shasta sprawled across the couch and reached down to poke Shiki in the shoulder. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine.” Shiki twisted to look up at him. “Do you want to try and get out again?”
“No.” Shasta rubbed at his arm, where a large purple bruise curved across his skin just above his wrist. “But I guess we have to.”
“It’s that or sit here and wait to starve,” Shiki said gently.
“Hey, I can hope for a dramatic rescue.” Shasta swung his legs off the couch and got to his feet, holding a hand out to Shiki. “Maybe if I distract it, you can get away.”
“Or I can distract it and you can get away.”
“Never. If I go, you go with me.” Shasta wiggled his fingers. “So let’s try to make a break for it. Again.”
They approached the front door together and Shasta unconsciously tightened his grip on Shiki’s fingers when he heard the low snuffling outside. It had chased them in here and now it was keeping them here, trapped inside the house. The last time he’d tried to sneak out, when it was dark and so quiet his own breathing sounded too loud, he’d barely opened the door before it launched itself at him from out of the shadows. He’d caught another glimpse of something blacker than the moonless sky, uncoiling itself endlessly, before he’d thrown himself back inside and slammed the door. He hadn’t even realized he’d hit his arm until Shiki saw it the next morning and told him off for trying to get out alone.
“Back door?” Shiki asked, but his voice was doubtful. They’d already tried to get out through the front door, the back door, and all the windows; and each time it had been there, waiting, and making the occasional eager grunting noise. Neither of them had been able to open a gate or step from the between world back to somewhere real, and their phones got no signal.
“It’s all around the house,” Shasta muttered. “Like some sort of giant snake. How do you fight a giant snake? With a giant mongoose?”
“...Would that work?” Shiki asked. “We could create one.”
Shasta thought about it for a moment, biting his lip against a sudden urge to start laughing. He almost had it under control, then he glanced at Shiki and couldn’t hold it in anymore. The noise that escaped him was strangled and hysterical enough to cause Shiki to look at him in alarm, but that only made Shasta laugh even harder, until he was doubled over clutching at his ribs and wheezing for breath. Eventually his laughter trailed off into hiccups, leaving him with sore stomach muscles and bright red cheeks.
“Giant mongoose,” he said in response to Shiki’s raised eyebrow. “It’s at least a little funny.” He swallowed a snicker and took a deep breath. “I’m good.”
“You’re something all right.” Shiki ruffled his hair. “It still doesn’t help us get out of here.”
“Maybe not, but I feel better.” Shasta laced his fingers together and stretched his arms up over his head. “So we can’t get out the front door, the back door, the windows, or by opening gates. What’s left?”
“We stop trying to run and fight it instead?”
“Anything else?”
“No. Not unless you want to sit here, like I said. And I don’t think we can afford to sit here for much longer.”
“Your mother will come looking before much longer,” Shasta said, but doubtfully. “I guess we don’t really want her to stumble into its path though.” He stared at the door, though he wasn’t really seeing it. “Maybe... Come up to the attic with me.”
He spun on his heel and headed up the stairs to the landing, where there was a trapdoor in the ceiling that led up to the attic. He let Shiki, who had a good four inches on him, reach up to pull the ladder down, then headed up it. The lights came on automatically as he reached the top of the ladder and he paused a moment to look around at the cloth-draped shapes stacked around the area. They were a little dusty but otherwise it was surprisingly clean up in the attic, even though he hadn’t bothered to come up here for a while. He pulled himself up onto the floor to let Shiki come up after him and started hunting through the mess, hunched over to avoid whacking his head on the low, sloped ceiling.
“I didn’t know you were such a packrat,” Shiki said, looking around with interest. “When we’ve gotten out and it’s safe to come back, I want to look around up here.”
“Yeah, yeah. You’re looking for a round object about this thick.” He held his thumb and forefinger about an inch apart. “It’ll look like glass filled with smoke and hopefully be in a box.”
“Hopefully?”
“Well, you never know. I just kind of toss things up here.”
Shiki rolled his eyes but he was smiling a little. “I hope it’s in a box then.”
Shasta stuck his tongue out at Shiki’s back, then returned to digging through the boxes and containers of random junk he’d picked up on his travels. He pushed aside a standing mirror with a sheet draped over it and snatched up the small box behind it, only to be disappointed when he found it only contained a chunk of pale green glass with some sort of winged insect inside it. He tossed it back into its box and set that inside, beginning to wonder if he’d lost it after all.
“Got it,” Shiki called to him. “I think.” He pushed himself up from the box he’d sprawled across in order to reach something in the corner, and presented Shasta with a black jewellery box.
“Does this mean you want to marry me?” Shasta asked innocently.
“Don’t be a brat.”
“So you don’t want to marry me?”
“Neither of us are marrying anyone if we don’t get out of here, so open the damn box.”
Shasta grinned but he took the box and opened it up, his grin broadening as he saw the exact object he’d been looking for. “This,” he said, holding it up so it sparkled in the light, the purple smoke inside twisting in a spiral, “is a one-time Get Out of Jail Free card. There’s only one little problem.”
“Of course there is. Spill it.”
“I have no idea where we’ll end up. Or if it’ll even still work, but mostly I’m worried it’ll drop us twenty thousand feet into the ocean.”
“If you have any better ideas, I’m listening.”
“Kamikaze run outside.”
“I said better ideas.”
“Nope.” Shasta reached out and took Shiki’s hand, pulling him in closer. “Ready?” He didn’t wait for Shiki to answer, throwing the smoke-filled glass at the floor.
It shattered and the smoke billowed up around them, far more than could have possibly been contained in the glass ball. It smelled bitter and made both of them cough as it irritated both nose and lungs. Shasta pulled the collar of his shirt up over his face, feeling Shiki wrap both arms around his waist so they wouldn’t be separated as the floor vanished beneath them. There was a sickening sensation of dropping nearly ten feet, then they landed on hard ground. Shasta stumbled a little at the sudden stop, catching himself against Shiki, and looked around as the smoke began to clear.
They were standing on flat frozen ground speckled liberally with frost that gleamed gently underneath the light of a huge silver moon. Great black mountains capped with pale snow heaved up into the velvet blue sky in the distance, but otherwise there was nothing to see but the frozen plain all around them.
“Do you know this place?” Shasta asked, watching his breath turn white in the cold air.
“Does it matter?” Shiki glanced anxiously over his shoulder. “Hold on tight, I’ll get us out.”
For a moment Shasta thought it had all been for nothing and that they had only gone from the dubious safety of his house to somewhere completely open and exposed. Then the frozen landscape bled away from them and became the familiar street outside Kaede’s house. Shasta exchanged a relieved grin with Shiki and they both started up the path to the front door.
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