The Threshold Child by Callie Kanno Read Free Book Online

the
uneven ground to the two remaining guards.
    She misjudged her footing as she ran and stumbled slightly. It
wasn’t enough to throw off her attack, but the pain in her ankle hindered her
agility. She did her best to push her discomfort to the back of her mind as she
came to her human targets.
    The first one received a sharp blow to the side of his head,
rendering him unconscious before he had finished drawing his weapon. The second
guard proved to be harder.
    Adesina had to move quickly to evade the sword wielded by the
remaining guard, clenching her teeth against the pain of her twisted ankle.
They circled each other slowly, each assessing their opponent. Almost as if by
luck or fate, the guard’s footing on the gravel gave ever so slightly. Adesina
was moving before he could blink. She took advantage of this momentary loss of
balance to sweep the guard from his feet entirely. Another sharp blow rendered
him unconscious as well.
    Once again, Adesina had to repress her smile. The triumph she felt
didn’t last very long, as her throbbing ankle brought her back to reality. She
retrieved her darts, limped over to the chest and picked it up. It was quite a
bit heavier than she expected. Curious as to what it held, Adesina undid the
latch and looked inside.
    There were two crystal-like stones, each about the size of her
fist. When the light fell upon them, they slowly turned from a soft pink to a
deep red. Adesina furrowed her brow thoughtfully as she closed the lid to the
chest.
    She turned and walked back to the puzzle room, expecting the door
to close behind her again. This time, however, it did not. On the opposite door
there was a small plaque with four words engraved on it next to a set of four
dials. Each of the dials was numbered to one hundred.
    Adesina’s eyes quickly scanned the words in front of her. They
were written in one of the more obscure dialects of the far south. Her
knowledge of those dialects was limited, but she did recognize the words: moon,
child, anagallis, butterfly.
    The moon has a twenty-eight day cycle. She spun the first dial,
and stopped on the number twenty-eight. There was a faint click as it settled
into place. Adesina felt a bit disappointed at how easy this door would be.
    It took nine months for a child to be born. She turned the second
dial to nine, but nothing happened. She thought about what she had learned in
her anatomy classes. Technically a woman was pregnant for approximately forty
weeks. She tried again, this time stopping on the number forty. There was
another faint click.
    Anagallis was a flower with five petals. Adesina turned the third
dial and heard it click on the number five.
    A butterfly’s life span was six weeks. Adesina tried the number
six on the fourth dial, but to no avail. Six weeks was forty-two days. She
tried again with the number forty-two.
    The door swung open. Adesina walked through and continued onward.
The way back through the rest of the obstacle course was more difficult with
the chest in hand and with her injury. She had a couple of close calls with the
arrows as she crossed the first area. Clutching the chest between her legs, she
swung carefully from rope to rope, all the while trying to keep her motion
random enough to avoid getting shot.
    The closely set poles were easy to get across, as was the tight
rope strung between the two platforms. The individual poles and the draping
fabric, however, were very difficult to manage. Adesina had to do them
one-handed, using the other to hold tightly to the chest.
    The last area seemed empty, but Adesina had the feeling that
something was amiss. The three unconscious guards lay where they had fallen,
but the small servant girl was nowhere to be seen. As soon as Adesina stepped
into the open, three guards sprung from their hiding places with their weapons
drawn.
    Without a moment’s hesitation, Adesina hurled the chest at the
head of the nearest guard. It struck him with a sickening thud and he dropped
to the