Russet’s eyes were still, fixed on the paper. The dichotomy in his mind was particularly vivid at the moment. In an unnerving realization, it seemed all of his thought on this topic was gushing down the darker branch. Much darker. His current chemical balances simply would not permit the thoughts. He buoyed himself out of the grim rumination. “Nope! Not at all, regrettably.”

“Oh well.” She toyed with a fancy hairbrush on the small mahogany table beside her. “I thought for sure once I met him, he’d be able to tell me something. Even inadvertently, which would help me understand all this. I thought he might recognize my locket, or something. But he doesn’t seem to know anything.”

“Maybe you are just not asking him the right questions.”

“… I haven’t asked him anything, actually,” she was embarrassed to admit.

Russet paused, shrugging off the remark. “I’ll say this about the man. He’s charged with saving me from certain pulverization. And in giving me a little more time in this mortal coil, I was able to make your acquaintance. I’ll always have that owed to him.”

“That’s true,” she said, feeling herself blushing faintly. Russet, rather innocently, made it hard to concentrate. His eye contact was the kind that could really derail a train of thought. No matter how sturdy the locomotive, it was no match for those two crisp, glacier-blue landmines on the track ahead.

What should she do in such a situation? What does one do, she’d put to herself. She’d never liked a boy before, so the playbook was as blank as one of her new sketch pads. She was forced to defer to the common wisdom on the subject, or at least her perception of it, which suggested that waiting for the male to express his feelings first was a sound guideline. In any case, it wasn’t as if (to her limited awareness) there were a lot of pizza parlors to hit up, per some formulaic stab at a “date”, even if she were inclined to take more initiative. What could she really do? It seemed doing what they were doing, staying friendly and getting to know each other, was the best and only option.

She returned to the matter at hand, which was no less confusing, but more comfortable through familiarity. At least she’d spent years thinking about it, as opposed to only a few days, as she had in the matter of romance. “Could she have been wrong?”

“Your sister, you mean?”

“Yes. Wrong about Herbert. Maybe he isn’t relevant to any of this? To knowing what the locket does, or why she died, or what we’re doing here?”

Russet leaned forward, and with some measured meaning to his voice, said, “What are you doing here, if I may ask? Aside from proving yourself a beguiling storyteller?”

She hesitated. Something else occurred to her. “That reminds. Does the name ‘Tristin’ ring a bell?”

“Tristin? I’ve never met her. Mind you I haven’t met many people.”

“No, Tristin is a guy. Sounded like a young guy. I only heard his voice. I spoke to him over a radio. He’s the one who told me about this summer camp, and told me to come here. He didn’t tell me anything about himself. He just said we’d meet when I got here. But I haven’t heard from him at all. Tristin Sheeth. You sure it doesn’t sound familiar?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know. I am proving to be a wealth of un-information, today! At least I’m consistent. Maybe if you changed your line of questioning to something dry-cleaning related? I have a whole slew of answers when it comes to getting a gravy stain out of a lace doily.”

“When I soil one of my many doilies, I’ll know who to go to.”

“Have you been practicing any of those laundering spells I taught you??” Russet became animated.

“Yes. My shirt has never felt so soft, and it smells like honeysuckle,” Beatrix said as she stroked her short sleeve. It was like the pliable ear of a newborn lamb.

Russet watched her enjoy the unlocked magnificence of her fabric. She smiled back at him as he silently puzzled over the pretty girl. An alien feeling had been gathering momentum. Was it attraction? Was this what it felt like? He’d had so little experience with girls, the feeling of falling for one was confined to his feeble efforts of speculation. The flimsy pageant played out in his mind like a Disney World parade, with no real texture or emotional gravity to anything. It was just something that happened plainly through a sequence of maudlin clichés, because it was something that was supposed to happen.

The reality of it, if this indeed was ‘it’, was more exhilarating. But also disquieting. How should he act upon it? When it came to everything else, he knew exactly how he felt. Fashion. Magic. God. Those things were resting on sturdy foundations. But this…

“Anyway, I regret I can’t be of more help. But now that you have told me these things, I would relish the chance to help you solve this riddle.”

“That would be great!”

Russet picked up the locket. “I can say with certainty at least that this is an article of magic. I think it is very powerful, but I can’t imagine what it does.”

“It’s been plaguing me for years. There is something kind of captivating about it though, isn’t there?”

“That’s a testament to its power. Much the way you probably have a similar feeling about your ring. I’ve noticed the feeling with my wand, too.” He patted the instrument’s holster. “I am convinced we will get to the bottom of this. Maybe we should consult with Grant on it? He knows a lot about these things. He taught me everything I know about magic, you know.”

“Oh?” Beatrix again felt not only guilty, but now somewhat foolish for stonewalling Grant, keeping him locked out of the fort with her opened doll. Maybe if she’d been more trusting with him, she’d have had answers sooner. “So you would like to see him now?” she asked.

“I think it’s about time we pay the old man a visit. He’s probably worried sick about me.”

“Okay. Let’s go see what he thinks.”

Russet’s mouth grew around a tremendous yawn. “How about in the morning though. It’s awfully late, and I’m beat.”

“Um… alright,” Beatrix reluctantly agreed. She wasn’t the least bit tired and was sort of itching to get going, but had to acquiesce. “Do you think we should bring Herbert along, or should we leave him out of it for now?”

There was no response, but for the low swell of a charismatic snore.

“I know you said most of the kids are gone. But if I didn’t know better,” Grant said, as he surveyed the cluttered underground lair of fort Pizzahut, “I’d say you were the only two members left.”

Daniel twiddled apprehensive fingers in the frills of his puffy shirt. “Um… do ye know better?”

Grant thought about it. “No, not really.”

“Well, ye were right. ‘Tis but the lady and m’self. Someone’s got to stay about the place and guard the treasure, after all.”

Grant was organizing a collection of small bones into orderly rows and columns. They might have been human finger bones, scattered on a dusty table. The table looked like the sliced-off top of a huge barrel. The lair’s décor on the whole was barrel-themed, as well as chest-themed, as well as anchor, rope, cannon ball, and map-themed. If Pottery Barn were run by pirates (and who knows, it might have been in Jivversport), it would have been the chief contributor to this chamber’s interior motif.

“Treasure?” Grant asked inattentively. “Would that be all the endorsement dollars collected over the years?”

“Nay. All that’s long since been swindled ‘way from us by the scurrilous Thundleshick. We’re protectin’ something far more valuable than a few doubloons.”

Grant yawned, tuning into the fact that he hadn’t slept in more than 48 hours. He shifted his knee, bumping the table, jarring the phalangial bones out of rank. He exhaled in aggravation, and set about recomposing them.

Samantha sat in a nautically-purposed net suspended from the ceiling as if it was a hammock. She was polishing off a third slice of pizza, storing excess crusts in her pocket. Nemoira was using her telescope to roll out more dough for another pie, while quietly muttering pirate-specific profanity. She was having a devil of a time with the stuffed crust spell, and was this close to giving up.

“The pizza is terrific, miss pirate lady. It is the best I’ve ever had. I’m sure my brother would agree.” Nemoira smiled and tipped her cap without turning away from her work. Samantha became sullen. “Oh, where is he? What do you think could have happened to him, mister Grant?”

Grant was startled out of a creeping slumber at the sound of his name. “I’d like to find him just as much as you, Samantha. Remember, I entrusted him with something I need back. Uh… not even to speak of the fact that he is a member of our team. No man left behind, right?”

“Isn’t it possible,” Daniel supposed, “that if ye gave him somethin’ valuable, that might a’ made him a target for some rogue?” Grant looked dismayed at the plausible notion. It hadn’t occurred to him, but then, he wasn’t used to thinking like a pirate.

“Oh no!” Samantha said. “We must save him from the rogue!”

“Now just a minute. We don’t know that.” The reassurance betrayed Grant’s own concern, though. Thoughts of scuttling, claw-clicking and small whinnies produced ominous kaleidoscopic patterns in his imagination. “Simon will be fine for a little while out there. He is an orphan, after all. He’s used to making it alone in the world, isn’t he?”

“Not without me! We always stick together. Come on, we have to go look for him now!” Samantha was out of her nautical hammock and tugging at Grant’s sleeve.

Grant said, fighting off a yawn, “Aren’t you tired?”

“No! Come on!”

“Samantha, it’s dark out there. The best hope for Simon is to wait until tomorrow. We’ll leave first thing in the morning. I promise.”

Samantha glowered at him as if he’d just run over her favorite doll with a lawnmower. “I would like my marble back, please.”

“What? Now, Samantha…”

“Please?”

It was silly, but Grant found he suddenly felt the shame of a cop being stripped of his badge and gun. He took the marble from his pocket and gave it to her.

“I’m going to go find my brother!” she said before disappearing into the cavernous hall leading up to the pizza oven door.

Grant sighed, then lumbered to the vacated hammock. He collapsed into it. “Alright. I guess we have two missing kids to find tomorrow.”

He began to doze, but was again jarred out of it by Samantha’s voice. “I am leaving a trail of bread crumbs so you can find me! And Simon too when I find him!”

Grant turned away from the voice and grumbled to himself. “Orphans…”

It was the following morning, and to Russet’s eye, Beatrix appeared to be standing upside-down and smiling. Her smile was in fact only an illusion caused by the fact that she appeared to be upside-down. It was in fact a frown. Russet was lying strewn over the side of his bed, his head and arms dangling over the edge. His glassy eyes bulged from a pasty face.

She’d had a sickening feeling she knew what to expect in his room. She woke up to discover Fort Crossnest in worse shape than ever before. Smelly, unidentifiable rubbish choked the corridors. Fluorescent bulbs flickered stuttering sentences which, in bulb language, were the equivalent to the ravings of a lunatic. Large sheets of paint peeled off the walls revealing moldy concrete. Stampedes of rats escorted even larger, less common vermin through the halls (some might have been identified by the zoologically astute as the rare whelping sewer snoogerfitch). Whatever magical forces were holding together the tidy appearance of the fort had become extinguished, and then some.

Russet’s room looked like a trailer park after taking the brunt of a tornado, one especially vindictive towards affordable blue-collar residences. The armoires were reduced to gnarled, angry chunks of splintered wood. It looked like an alien had laid eggs in the hefty armchair, and the offspring had made a savage exit before skulking into a vent somewhere to leak phlegm. The many vials of lotions and fragrances had all simply exploded. Russet was tangled in a heap of frayed, shredded bedding, breathing shallow breaths, otherwise motionless.

Beatrix’s heart sank upon encountering the scene. She managed to reconcile with the sobering reality of Russet’s crash enough to address him. “So I guess this means you’re not feeling up to seeing Grant today?”

Russet gurgled something without moving. Beatrix leaned in closer to interpret the guttural sound. “nhhrghh…”

“Huh?”

He slowly mouthed the nonexistent words. Beatrix leaned in further. “nrrr…”

“I’m sorry, Russet, I can’t…”

“Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo.”

Herbert stared at the Vend-O-Badge machine. If you looked closer, it might have resembled the stare a hit man gives to a poor slob who’s up to his neck in gambling debts and mafia loans. If you looked closer in the other direction, towards the Vend-O-Badge, you might have noticed a number of bullet-sized pockmarks in the resilient glass façade. The badge with an iconic depiction of two spiraled incisors remained pinched by the coil, taunting Herbert with its immobility.

“Herbert…” Beatrix had entered. Herbert put his finger to his lips.

“Shh. I think it’s sleeping.”

“What? The machine? How do you know?”

“I’ve got a feeling. I know how this piece of crap thinks.”

“Oh. Well, I wanted to talk to you about…”

“Hold the thought. Can you give me a hand?”

“With what?”

“Magic. I need you to get that badge for me. Like, magically, somehow.”

“Hmm.” She considered the proposition. It was plausible in theory, but then, it was quite an ornery machine. “I guess I could try to magically duplicate the snoogerfitch. Or I could have, if it were still around for me to get a good look at. What happened to it, anyway?”

“I have no idea what happened to the wretched thing. It crawled off somewhere, I guess.” Herbert gestured towards the trail of blood on the floor leading out the door. Beatrix made a troubled face at the thought of a wounded, toothless feral snoogerfitch scampering about the fort.

“What did you have in mind, then?” she asked.

“I don’t know. You’re the sorceress in training, aren’t you? Can’t you levitate it out of there or something?”

Beatrix looked at her ring, making the dubious calculations of an amateur magician. She got an idea. “How about this.” She walked to the computer station and examined the morass of archaic, dust-clogged wires. When she found one she deemed suitably useless, she yanked it out. She brought it to the Vend-O-Badge while coiling it into wide loops.

“Open it up,” she said, more like a question than an order.

Herbert was at the ready with his trusty VHS copy of Hook, which was proving to be far more useful in this newfound phase of its existence than it ever had. The slumbering machine’s wide mouth was carefully propped open. Herbert backed away and watched Beatrix with interest. She fed one end of the cord into the slot, then directed the energies of her ring inside.

The cord began to dance like a charmed snake, and slithered up towards the stubborn badge. The cord sprouted further similarities to a limbless reptile, most notably a fanged mouth with which to pry loose a badge. It struck the badge as if lunging at a succulent rodent, and descended with the prize in its mouth.

“Wow! That was so easy!” Herbert said. He admired the shimmering badge with light piercing two tiny fang holes. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that sooner. I must be an idiot.”

Beatrix noted the gracious absence of the pronoun ‘we’ in the statement, and accepted it as a form of gratitude, knowing Herbert. “It’s a little tough to get used to, isn’t it?” she said.

“What is?” he asked.

“Magic. Or the whole ‘doing pretty much anything your imagination can come up with’ aspect of it. It makes you wonder why any of us still have problems left to solve.” She became pensive. It was the type of remark that often kick-started an inner soliloquy. Herbert wasn’t about to wait around for it.

“Hey, it all comes down to ability, just like anything else. Practice makes perfect. Those better at magic get more of what they want than those who suck. And even in a perfect world, where everyone used magic perfectly and got everything they wanted, people’s desires are always at odds. So if one guy gets everything he wants, it means some other guy is getting a raw deal because of it. There’s no such thing as a utopian society, I don’t care how many dancing monkeys or magical feather dusters or enchanted kazoos you’re packing.”

“You think so?” she asked, but the question betrayed her own agreement with the remark. On some occasions she reflected on the unexpected parallels between her own thought process and Herbert’s. She’d always considered cynicism and pragmatism to be cornerstones of her worldview. But Herbert seemed to take it to a different level.

“Yeah. Absolutely. Anyway, speaking of getting things we want… How about you get us some more badges with your cool snake trick? If Thundleshick thinks three badges are impressive, wait ‘til he sees, like, fifty.”

As the lively cord-snake went on an all-you-can-bite badge spree, Beatrix presented a casual change in subject. “So, I’m going to go see Grant today. To get Russet’s medication.”

“Whoa, check these ones out!” Herbert was like a kid in a candy store, fixated on the windfall of vibrant badges. He ogled one bearing an iconic depiction of a unicorn with musical notes levitating from its open mouth.

She continued. “I’ll be taking the doll to find him, wherever he is.”

Herbert remained engrossed. He felt like he’d found a way to crack a Vegas slot machine. “Okay.”

“I guess you’re going to see Thundleshick with all these badges, then?”

“That’s the plan. Carmen told me how to get to his castle. Speaking of which, she’s made herself scarce lately. Wonder what she spends all day doing in this dull place…”

“I was sort of wondering that myself. Anyway, I imagine it’ll be a long hike to his castle. I was thinking we could do something like this. I’ll go get the medicine and come right back. Then you could take the… well, one of the sub-dolls, for lack of a better word. That way you could instantly travel back here. It might come in handy if you get into trouble.”

“That sounds…” Herbert was mystifying over a badge bearing a crank-operated wire whisk, and a plump udder. “That sounds like a pretty good idea.”

Herbert cradled the heap of badges to his chest and beamed with the pride of a new father. “Thanks a lot, Beatrix. That was awesome. It’s amazing none of those idiot campers ever thought to do something like this.”

“Maybe there was some kind of code of conduct against it. Like a scout’s honor thing. Or maybe they were just afraid of having their hands chewed off.”

With that, the copy of Hook cracked, disintegrating into plastic bits as the slot snapped shut. The machine was briefly agitated, but quickly settled back into the dull purr of its slumber.

“So…” Herbert asked conversationally. “How is Russet, anyway?”

If there were invisible elastic bands holding up her facial expression, it was as if they’d suddenly been cut.

Herbert watched the doll, formerly red and held by Beatrix, now blue and hovering in midair. It fell onto her bed.

He slouched onto the bed next to the freshly-teleported doll. It seemed to him as if it should be emanating steam from the trans-dimensional journey, maybe like the DeLorean from Back to the Future does just after Marty gets back from dicking around with his parents’ prom in the 1950s. He looked around uncomfortably. He’d never seen Beatrix’s room, and it was an odd feeling being left there by himself. She was such a private person, he couldn’t imagine she would be thrilled leaving anyone alone with her stuff. This, more than anything, told him that she did not intend to be gone long. Maybe a few seconds, even.

He’d had no intention of snooping in any case. Snooping in a girl’s room struck him as a low-reward, high-risk scenario. On the one hand, you might find exciting artifacts quite mysterious to the male universe, such as peculiar clasps and instruments for channeling long hair in certain ways, or cryptic products for which absorbency is a touted virtue. Herbert just wasn’t interested. But when it came to articles in plain view, he thought it was hard to classify those items as contraband. In the same way that it was a stretch to say that scooting down the bed a couple feet to get a better look at them could be considered snooping.

Herbert was surprised to see the doodles. But to be fair, he was surprised at the very notion of artistic inclination in any human being. It might even be speculated that his curmudgeonly lack of creativity could be to blame for his impotence with magic. Unfortunately, Herbert wasn’t quite creative enough to make this postulation himself.

The more he looked, the more he found the sketches charming. There was something innocent and unassuming about them. They were the byproduct of a quiet, idle girl simply trying to pass the time, not meant for any kind of consumption outside her own. Though each drawing was scattered haphazardly on the pages and seemingly unrelated to each other, Herbert found they all told a story together. It was a tale of a dashing boy with a gun and an eye patch, his trusting subordinates, and a myriad of whimsical creatures for them to study, tame, conquer, and in all likelihood, slaughter, for the bountiful riches and magical lore they might supply. Herbert smirked as he turned the page.

But on this page, the story took an abrupt and disturbing turn.

It was not a drawing at all. It was a black and white photocopied image of himself, mingling with text. It plainly listed personal information about him, such as his blond hair color and blue eye color, and some less complete information, such as his unknown date of birth, his unknown social security number, and his unknown place of residence. Herbert felt his fist tighten around the crinkling piece of paper.

“Beatrix…” he hissed, again invoking his Seinfeld-angry-with-Newman impression.

He didn’t know what this document meant, or why exactly it made him mad, but he was certain that she was being dishonest with him from the start. And the more his fist tightened and the more he paced the room, the more dishonest she became in his mind. He stopped and stared at the doll on the bed.

“Alright, you want me to take one of these dolls? You got it.” He opened the blue doll. He then removed the smaller doll inside, and as he’d seen Beatrix do before, split it into an identical red doll and blue doll. He put the drawings and the document back on the small table, along with the newly-created red doll. He pocketed the blue doll, and left the two halves of its larger parent lying on the bed.

He left the room, and proceeded to the lowest point in the fort, per Carmen’s instructions. Уровень 37. Nobody knew what that meant, or how to pronounce it.

With the sunrise over Jivversport, the ludicrous hidden bird population cracked the silence. Samantha watched the cobblestones as they passed beneath her. Her weary face relaxed into a more satisfied expression. There was one. Then another. She’d recognize that trail anywhere. Those were Simon’s bread crusts.

What did she tell him? Keep a spare crust in reserve at all times, in case of emergencies. She felt proud of her younger brother.

The trail led her into the cellar of a deteriorating, sinking stone building. Simon’s tenacity in maintaining the trail surprised her. She sloshed through the black water of the murky catacombs, but became silent when she heard voices ahead. She crouched behind something that looked like a crumbling, bearded statue.

Terence shot a humorless glance towards Simon. “The pieces cannot move backwards.”

“Uh-huh! It can when it is a king!” Simon said, leaning forward to make his move. The rope tethering him to a statue tightened in resistance.

“That is not a king. A beetle used to king one of my pieces recently crawled on to one of yours,” Terence explained. It did not sound like the first such explanation in the course of the game.

“Really? Which one?”

“That one there. The curled up grub.”

“That was your grub? I thought it was mine!”

Terence exhaled over the checkerboard drawn onto the floor with a piece of white stone. It was frustrating enough handling a hyperactive orphan boy without also having to manage the ambiguities of a game played with an assortment of stones, grubs, and lethargic beetles. In retrospect, the whole exercise seemed incredibly stupid, since he could have just magically created a fine checkerboard set. However, Simon’s enthusiasm in gathering up the ingredients for street checkers had preempted the thought.

Samantha breathed harder at the sight of her captive brother. She removed the shiny marble from her pocket, and lobbed it into the darkness behind the crustacean guard. Clicks echoed from unseen stonework.

Terence about-faced with a terse snort. “I’ll be right back. Do not move the game pieces. I will know if they are different.”

“What if they move by themselves?”

Terence scuttled away to investigate. Simon shrugged, and mindlessly picked up a beetle and some sort of larval cocoon. He crashed them together as if they were kamikaze aircraft. “Pchoo, pchoo! Pshhh! Pow, pchoo! Pch—huh?”

“Shh! Keep quiet, Simon!” Samantha whispered as she untied the rope.

“Hi, sis! You found my crusts! Hey, do you want to play a game with me and mister horsey crab?”

“No, Simon. We have to go. Don’t you realize you’ve been captured by a rogue?”

“A rogue?”

“Yes! Now hurry, before he sees us!”

“Okay. But first I have to get something. It belongs to mister Grant.” Simon squirmed out of the loosened rope. He grabbed the red doll.

The two children froze at the terrible sound rumbling from the darkness. It sounded like a deep, brooding whinny. Samantha grabbed Simon’s shirt collar. “Run!”

“Why can’t orphans leave behind a sensible trail?” Grant lamented. “Like fixed markers. An arrow drawn on a wall, or string tied to a post. Anything that doesn’t get blown around by the wind or eaten by birds would be fine.”

Grant scoured the pavement for signs of a dwindling trail, cursing his orphan tracking abilities. His nautical partners supplied little help. “Is that a crust there, mate?” Daniel said, spotting a fleck of white near a gutter.

“I think it’s just a pebble,” said Grant, who suddenly sprinted towards a flock of bobbing pigeons. “Hey! Shoo! Get away from that bread!” The feathered pack of diseased creatures scattered into the air. Grant found the vacated pavement empty.

He threw up his hands. “Where would you guys be if you were a couple of lost orphans?”

“Couldn’t say, mate. Ye can be sure though there’re more places to get lost beneath the streets than above.”

“I was afraid of that. So do you have a map of this place I can look at?”

Daniel made a face like he’d just walked in on his own surprise party. It was one topic sure to get a pirate fired up, sort of like asking an avid stamp collector if he happened to have anything kind of interesting or unusual that one might put on an envelope. “Do I have maps, ye ask? Do I ev…”

“What’s she looking at?” Grant cut him off. Nemoira was looking through her telescope down an empty street. She lowered it from her eye.

“Do you see something?” asked Grant.

Her gaze was fixed. “Regrettably, you may have what you’re looking for soon.”

“What do you mean?” Grant walked to her vantage, and saw nothing. A crestfallen Daniel was putting rolls of yellowed maps back into his satchel.

The ground shook. At the end of the empty street, smoke rose from the source of the explosion. Dust from the ancient buildings around them was shaken loose, sprinkling gently on the ground. The glass storefront to a Coldstone Creamery® shattered.

Grant looked at Nemoira decisively. “This way, then.”

A four story brownstone building sailed upward like a rocket, riding above its trail of crumbling brick, ash, and fire. It reversed direction and plummeted. It crushed the hood of a vacant gas station, disintegrating into a textured cloud of gray. The blast knocked the orphans to the ground. They picked themselves up and resumed their frantic flight.

Terence scuttled with a terrific velocity for such a small creature, much the way the speed of an ant is considered tremendous when scale is taken into account. He walked up walls, across roofs, and underneath awnings upside-down. One claw opened, cradling a swelling ball of fire. The projectile obliterated a building placed in his path. His red eyes momentarily wandered into the sky as a flock of birds decided a different preening location might be in order. As he did so, the upper half of a museum was sawed off diagonally by ocular lasers. The ornate roof slid down the sliced slope, then collapsed into the structure beneath.

“We’ve done it now, Samantha,” Simon huffed. “I should have stayed to finish the game with the horsey. Now he’s mad!”

“Keep… (huff…) running… (huff…) I told you he was a… (huff…) rogue!”

Behind them, a high-pitched noise grew to a crescendo. It was an otherworldly neigh, the kind you’d expect from the great black steed mounted by a warlord commanding an unholy army. Windows exploded from the sonic assault. The façade to a stretch of row houses leaned forward under its brunt.

Samantha skidded to a stop in front of an alleyway entrance. “Simon, turn here!”

The children bounded through the winding alleys, dipping into cellar windows, out back doors, down sewer grates, and up to the street again. These were the standard alleyway evasion tactics of a practiced street urchin. They took to it as if fleeing from a red-faced vendor after pilfering a loaf of bread. Terence’s path of destruction was inexorable, though. They knew soon there’d be no alleys left through which to wend.

Simon and his burning lungs were about to complain to his sister, when he felt something jostle in his hand. It was the doll. It twitched, and then again. He dropped the doll to the floor of the dim alley. “Oh, no! Samantha, help! I need to protect that!”

Samantha looked up at the tall walls squeezing the alley, feeling no more confident in their permanence than if they were theater props. “Forget about it, won’t you? Let’s go!”

Simon opened his mouth. The doll was no longer red. Nor was it on the ground. It was now blue, and cupped in Beatrix’s hands. She stood there processing her new surroundings. And her new company.

“Simon?” she said.

“Beatrix! It is you! I knew it!”

Samantha’s disbelieving eyes showed signs of tears. She ran to Beatrix and hugged her around the waist. “We knew you’d come to save us.”

“Um…” Beatrix started, nonplussed. “I’m happy to see you guys too. But what the heck are you doing here?”

“We’re running away from the horsey crab rogue,” answered Simon.

“The what?”

“Yes, we have to go now. He is ruining the village, and he is very dangerous!” Samantha warned.

It did seem there were signs of trouble. There was a sulfurous smell in the hazy alley. There was a growing rumbling, as though they stood over a subway train rolling beneath. She couldn’t have known it was the sound of structurally weakened buildings collapsing nearby. And she couldn’t have known that the source of this destruction was now clicking through the alley towards them. It stood no higher than her shins.

“What’s that?” Beatrix asked, with understandable innocence.

“That’s him! Oh, Beatrix, please! We should run away!” warned Samantha.

“Really? It doesn’t look that dangerous,” she said, but instantly felt foolish for blundering onto such famous last words.

“He is chasing me, Beatrix!” Simon pulled at her garments.

“No, son,” Terence said. “You have nothing to worry about. I’m not chasing you any longer. I am chasing her.” His eyes glowed like red laser pointers in the direction of Beatrix. She inched backwards.

“Oh crap.”

Herbert took a final moment to look around before climbing down the iron ladder into dark well. The chamber was enormous, enclosed by smooth concrete walls curving to form a domed ceiling. The concrete was tinted with layers of caked-on muck, perhaps a kind of algae. The saturation of muck ended at a blurry horizontal line several dozen feet above the floor. To Herbert, this was evidence that the chamber had been filled with water. Above this line was a label in very large, faded lettering which said “Уровень 37”. Herbert couldn’t read Cyrillic, but presumed the word roughly translated to “level”.

He held the hand rail, and backed on to the iron ladder. The pillowcase tied to his holster swung behind him and dangled into the darkness. Inside was a flashlight, a bottle of orange soda, an assortment of dubiously-gotten merit badges, and a crude map to Thundleshick’s castle based on Carmen’s instructions. In his right pocket was the blue sub-doll.

His metallic footsteps echoed against the mossy, dripping stones.

Between gasps, Grant mentally cursed his decision to leave the doll with Simon. He cursed thinking it was a good idea to let it out of his sight. And for that matter (after pausing for another gasp), he cursed allowing that crafty girl to elude him in the first place. He wasn’t sure why his thoughts were being staggered by his struggle for oxygen. Maybe in truth, his mind was out of breath too.

He turned a corner, adjusting his course towards another loud explosion. The pirate counselors kept pace behind him, their fancy metal accessories jangling in their loose clothing with each step.

“Been waitin’ on this for years,” Daniel said with a challenging grin. “High time these Slurpenook scalawags took to our streets for a proper showdown. Their skulkery in shadows has turned my stomach, no less’n the choppy waters of monsoon season.”

As he jogged, Grant marveled at the bottomless supply of nautical aphorisms and “Piratese” peppered throughout Daniel’s casual parlance. Was there a handbook on it somewhere? Daniel unsheathed his shiny dagger and waved it at the sky. Nemoira glanced to her side.

“Daniel, will you please put that away?” she said.

“Nonsense! Best prepare ye for battle, woman. It looks to me as if the villains’re taking us across the south side. If we head for town square, we’d surely cut em’ off!”

Daniel flicked a long braid over his shoulder and blazed a trail into a crooked alley between storefronts.

BANG.

Herbert shut his eye and made a face like he was popping his ears. He hadn’t expected the gunshot to be quite so loud. It seemed the noise had ricocheted around the cramped space bound by the walls of the subterranean cave.

He gave the limp creature a little kick. Its prickly torso and flaccid bat wings tumbled end-over-end down into a narrow underground stream. He shined his flashlight on it. Were those corkscrew teeth? He sighed. They even had a little serration. He thought if one were inclined, it wouldn’t be too difficult to round up an assortment of indigenous animals and cobble together an exceptionally diverse Swiss army knife using the prodigious dental yield.

He pointed the flashlight at the path ahead of him, and tapped it when it flickered. It was supposedly a magic flashlight, since it was retrieved from the same cardboard box of mesmerizing wonders from which he obtained his gun. Maybe the thing was horribly potent. A sort of battery-operated portal for ruthless demigods, the one final piece critical to a cruel magician’s sinister ambition. But Herbert would be damned if he was going to coax any grim enchantments out of the mystical Black & Decker.

It wouldn’t be long now before he’d reach a critical juncture on his map. One or two miles, perhaps. What did that say? The things that came from Carmen’s fancy peacock feather quill pen were almost as difficult to solve as the things that came from her mouth. They looked like initials.

Ahead, there was an indistinct flapping. The flapping was leathery, like several pairs of flimsy bat wings producing the commotion of haphazard flight. Herbert reached into the pillowcase and retrieved two merit badges. He wadded them up, and shoved one in each ear.

BANG.

BANG.

If Jivversport was dense with the decay of commercial enterprise, then town square was the jewel of economic depression in its crown. Storefronts packed themselves tightly among each other like boxes in an overcrowded warehouse. Some seemed practically inserted into rectangular grooves carved out of ancient, likely historic stone buildings, through either lapse in zoning protocol, or the greed of corrupt civic administrators. Or maybe the venerated artisans centuries ago had intended all along for a Bath and Body Works® to occupy their baroque stone carvings.

Missing letters punctuated the signs of otherwise easily recognized franchises. Cr//te & Bar//el®, Old Na//y®, Tac// Be//l®, to name a few, which by sheer coincidence, were once the frequent shopping haunts of pirate-types. The first two for obvious reasons, to service nautically-themed décor and apparel needs, and the latter-most of course to cater to the legendary zeal for Mexican food shared by all rugged seafarers.

It was quiet. Over distant rooftops, black smoke pooled into the sky, like ink drops into a glass of water, upside-down. Town hall loomed over the square, menacing in its great stature, and in its abundance of gothic fixtures. It seemed to be weighed down by gargoyles and statuary, like a crazy man’s coat with too many strange trinkets affixed to it. Grant strained to view the top of the spire. Atop it was a statue of a man in a suit.

The face of the building erupted. An enormous twisted metal javelin punctured it from within, and exited its stone and glass chest. The mangled piece of rollercoaster track thundered into town square, smashing the non-functional fountain. It halted, still enough for Grant and the counselors to see its car still intact and affixed to it, and the Batman emblems decorating the ride.

The rest of the building came down.

The party maneuvered in time to evade the tipping spire and its statue. The spire was demolished on the cobblestones, making a sound like a huge payload of porcelain dishware hitting the ground. The statue too was shattered. Grant, crouching against the cloud of dust, could make out a centuries-warn engraving on its base. It was an eagle, and the letters “//o//al////////aga//”. Grant began to wonder if anything in this village was spelled in its entirety.

Through the dust-choked void left by town hall, three unimposing figures fled into the square, stumbling over the stones with all the grace of baby waterfowl. Daniel and Nemoira readied their weapons, but eased their grips. It was the orphans, followed by a taller, slender girl.

Beatrix’s expression of surprise matched Grant’s, though amplified through the adrenaline of flight. “There you are!” she said, winded.

“Beatrix…” he said. “I see you’ve figured out the doll, finally.”

Through her look of urgency, there was a hint of culpability. She couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic, or just naïve. “Oh. Yeah, I guess I got the hang of it.”

“What the hell is going on here?” he asked, preemptively gripping his sword’s hilt.

“I’ve come back to tell you I found your friend. But that can obviously wait. We really should get out of here.”

“Who?” Grant said absentmindedly. “Oh, right, right. Russet. How is he?”

“Grant, the pirate was right,” Samantha spoke up. “Simon was kidnapped by a rogue! I helped him escape, but now he’s furious with us. We have to go!”

“Uh-huh!” Simon affirmed, as if vouching for something by which he’d sworn all his life, such as a quality panhandling mug, or a reliable brand of bootblacking brush.

“A rogue?” Grant’s sword was already unsheathed. “You mean the little horse-thing?”

“Yes!” Simon said. “But he does not make a small whinny at all. I would say he makes a very big whinny.”

“None of this matters.” Beatrix had decided to take charge. “Everybody come here and touch the doll, quickly. It’s time to go.” Her hands shook as she prepared to operate the doll. But then it was gone. It was riding a small, hot projectile, whipping this way and that until settling into the town hall’s remains.

Through the fog of demolished architecture, there was something crawling over the rubble into the square. It was the least imposing form yet.

Herbert waded out of the knee-deep water onto a dry landing of rock at the foot of a staircase. He climbed the stairs. There was an open doorway in the rock wall facing him. A hanging lantern flickered the shape of the doorway on to the ground with warm light.

With his hand on his sidearm, he passed through the door and found himself looking up right away. There was another metal ladder, this one of studier construction. It traveled up a small tunnel a great distance. To the side of the ladder was another door, just as rugged-looking as the one he’d passed through. Adjacent to both doors was an old wooden sign with hand-carved letters.

◄ F.C.

► T.C.

▲ W.H.

The left arrow pointed in the direction he came from, so he presumed it stood for “Fort Crossnest”. He gathered “Thundleshick’s Castle” was to the right. This guess was reinforced by the fact that climbing a ladder was not in Carmen’s instructions. Progressing through the other door seemed like the logical choice.

The “W.H.” left him unsettled, though. On another occasion, he might have chalked up to coincidence the fact that the letters were also his initials. But given recent events, not the least of which was discovering the unusual video recording, he wasn’t sure what to think about it.

Cool, musty air poured from the vertical tunnel. Something was drawing him up there. He didn’t know if it was mere curiosity, or something more insidious. He started to feel ill at the thought of what might be up there. Maybe it was inevitable. It might be his inescapable peril. Or worse yet, it might hold his destiny—a threshold to even grander adventures.

Without dwelling on it for another moment, he headed through the door, towards “T.C.” If all went according to plan, adventure would be a thing of the past. A blemish on an otherwise spotless record, nothing more.

“It’s just as I told ye. A wretched Slurpenook agent. He’s probably after our heads for a new badge from his dark master. Mark my words!” Daniel flailed his silver dagger and made as if to charge the creature. Nemoira restrained him by the loose end of a colorful kerchief.

Terence rolled his eyes. “Yes, that’s what I want. A merit badge. All glory to Fort Slurpenook and whatnot. You there, pirate boy. Do I look like an imbecile to you?”

Daniel wasn’t sure how to respond.

Terence proceeded. “All of you disperse. There’s no need to bring harm to yourselves. I’ll have a few words with the girl, and that’s all.”

“The problem is,” Grant summoned his most nonchalant voice. “I owe her one, so I can’t let that happen. Also, you’ll have to pardon me if I suspect you have more in mind than polite conversation.”

He had the look of one who wasn’t going to hold anything back this time. He had a feeling he couldn’t afford to.

He raised the sword, now burning as if being tempered by a blacksmith. The huge broken stones from the town hall rose into the air at once, levitating and spreading to fill space evenly. They too began to glow bright red, as their hard edges softened, appearing gelatinous. Each stone soon became a globule of molten rock, trimmed with fire. With one motion, Grant brought the full volley towards the tiny target.

Terence’s deceptively nimble claws deflected each piece towards the skeletal remains of town hall, reconstructing the building out of red-hot bricks. The building stood strikingly similar to the way it had before, though now smoldering at hundreds of degrees, and wobbling under the suspect rigidity of molten rock. The building sagged as it cooled. The final missiles, the blazing statue bits, were reassembled and carefully positioned on top of the spire.

As Terence was distracted with the process, like crowning a Christmas tree with an angel, Grant brought his sword down on the small adversary. The furious finishing move, however, was halted; the sword was immobile between pinching claws, as if stuck in stone.

Grant felt his internal organs rattle from the concussive force. He flew backwards through the air, riding the front of a mighty sonic neigh.

“Sam, Simon! Help me find it! Hurry!” Beatrix and the orphans scurried to retrieve the doll in the fresh absence of the cluttering debris.

At a distance from the fray, Daniel’s dagger quivered in his hand. They were not the jitters of fear, but of resolution.

“What are you doing?” Nemoira asked. But she already knew. Her expression pleaded with him to reconsider.

“Lass, there comes a time when a man’s got cause to leave his blood on the deck.” His dagger traced steady, wide circles in the air. “Ye’ll understand, one day.”

The sky condensed with swirling, black clouds, flickering with sporadic pockets of lightning. The black whirlpool spread, projecting darkness onto the melee below. The combatants paused, craning upward at the development. Something lurched from the eye of the dark storm, something large, like a ghost ship emerging from fog. It was a great trident, maybe the one wielded by Neptune himself.

The trident stopped. It slowly retracted itself, back into the darkness. Just like that, the clouds dissipated.

There were two small holes in Daniel’s forehead. Piercing the holes were two steady beams of red light. The lasers traced back to their sources, each from a small horse nostril. Daniel’s eyes rolled up, revealing white. He pitched backwards, dead.

Nemoira’s cheeks were already wet. She sank next to the body, and covered his eyes.

“I got it!” Samantha yelled, waving the doll.

“Good work!” Beatrix said, rejoining Samantha. “Everyone, gather around the doll, quickly.”

Grant lumbered to his feet. Each organ felt like it was individually masticated by a large herbivore, and then sewn back into his torso. He hobbled towards Beatrix, but the hobble became an urgent sprint. He dove, knocking her to the ground. The flaming, severed head of the town hall statue scorched past them, detonating moments later.

He looked at her through a pained grimace, though his eyes nevertheless appeared to be asking politely if she was alright.

“Thanks,” she said. “I’m okay. Here, let’s go already.” She held out the doll. The hands of Grant, Simon, Samantha and Nemoira all found the doll. Beatrix twisted it.

Her lower lip dropped a bit.

She twisted it again. And again.

“Herbert!” she hissed, unwittingly invoking her own Seinfeld impression.

It had been hours since he’d removed the doll from its mother, and its red sibling, so to speak. Herbert held the glossy blue item as he plodded up the absurd quantity of stairs.

He felt guilty. Maybe Beatrix had a good reason for the deception. Whatever she was up to, perhaps it didn’t warrant being stranded indefinitely with some guy named Grant. After all, wasn’t she only trying to help Russet? It was more than he could say he’d ever try to do.

The stairs were shallow, and offered generous room for the feet. He noted what they lacked in height, they made up for in contributing to the most gratuitously long staircase in the universe. The stairs spiraled lazily and gradually upward, presumably to the surface where he would find the castle. He’d already been walking for miles, all upstairs. He was soaked in sweat, and had left the empty orange soda bottle littered somewhere around mile two.

He looked at the doll again. He considered for a moment returning with it and putting it back together.

But he’d come too far already. And soon he’d be home.

As he thought this, daylight ahead greeted him. The closer he came to the opening, the more he could make out what looked to be the forms of a castle. Though it seemed the forms were bleary, and somehow unaccountable for how they were attached to the larger structure. Maybe it was just a foggy day.

Though he was tapping one of his little exoskeletal legs on a cobblestone, Terence’s demeanor was otherwise patient. He wore a big smile on his elastic horse face.

His audience looked wholly defeated, with the exception of Simon, who was distracted by a lame pigeon bobbing around in circles nearby.

Terence’s claw became malleable and soft, and bloated into a plump tentacle, complete with suction cups. It wrapped around Beatrix’s neck, and lifted her wriggling body into the air. Grant felt for his missing sword, no longer in its sheath. Nemoira extended her telescope. It shimmered with magic as she readied herself to wield it like a baseball bat.

Terence’s smile dissolved. Short puffs from his nose became longer, deeper. Soon little streams of sulfurous vapor spilled from them, and the puffs were accented by clouds of flame. Nemoira’s grip loosened around her weapon. Her posture slackened. She knew they were goners.

A singsongy, metallic voice broke the atmosphere of impending demise.

“Tender me answers, or those of their ilk,”

“To the riddle I’ve sung, should you give it a listen!”

The puzzled group looked around. Terence sniffed back and forth. There was no one to be found nearby. He again focused on his captives, drawing a deep, almost serene breath.

He released a great cloud of nasally-produced fire. But as quickly as it expanded, destined to engulf the party, it had shrunk into nothing. It was sucked into a small point a few yards from Terence, close to the ground, swallowed.

Swallowed, literally, by a hefty can of soup with a jagged mouth and eyes. Pleased with itself, the can embraced the self-conscious posture of a thespian.

“Tender meat bathed in an ocean of milk,”

“The soft portions sprung from its carapace prison,”

“They temptingly swim, slathed in buttery silk,”

“Rescued by spoon should the need be arisen!”

Grant coughed. He wiped a few drops of blood onto his sleeve. Nobody spoke. Aside from Simon’s silly smile of gradually dawning recognition, the scene resembled a dining party which, upon receiving the bill, found it to contain not a tabulation of menu items, but an array of crudely scribbled phalluses.

“Mister Soup!” Simon waved.

“Yes, undersized man? What is the answer is what you would care to supply me with?”

“Lofthter… fithk,” said the voice from above, currently being strangled by a tentacle. Lentil repostured himself so his eyes pointed upward.

“Yes, what was that? What solution is it you wish to give is what you…”

She interrupted, loosening the grip of the slimy collar, raising her head up. “Is it… lobster bisque??”

Lentil’s face scrunched with delight. He began a self-satisfied jig.

“Uh… was she right?” asked Grant. A small huff came from Terence’s mouth, which was hanging wide open.

It was so fast, they could barely follow it. Maybe only a flash from the can’s metal reflecting the sunlight. The tentacle was severed by a razor-sharp mouth. Beatrix fell, choking. The cylinder, midair, flipped and came down hard on the small, recently amputated creature. He stomped on Terence repeatedly. Terence protested, muttering at the unintelligent pest.

CLONK CLONK CLONK.

“Chilis of fury, chipotles of doom!”

“Stop.”

“Bring scalds to the tongue, pains that you’ll hope-end!”

“No more rhymes about… ow… soup, please.”

“It fills me with worry you’ll have to consume…”

“Relent with this idiocy at once.”

“This can of five-alarm whoopass you’ve opened!”

“OW.”

CLONK CLONK CLONK.

Lentil halted his clonking assault, and focused his eyes as if narrowing upon a bee that had landed on his nonexistent nose. If being cross-eyed made him appear any less dignified, it was only by a smidgeon.

The air in front of his face warped, like a spatial pinch. And then he released it, along with some magnificent pent-up magical energy with a POP.

The small lobster-form hurtled miles through the air, towards a distant mountain range. Everyone sat in silence, watching the dumb can.

Part 4

Herbert didn’t know what to make of what he was looking at. It was recognized as a castle easily enough, in the same way that if you viewed one through a prism, you’d likely be able to guess it was a castle. A spire floating here, an archway drifting there, a winding stone staircase meandering over there—the astute ear can tell when a building is attempting to speak Castlish, even if the structure itself seems far from fluent in the tongue.

However one decided to categorize the thing, it was vast, and somewhat nauseating for Herbert to look at. He monitored a particularly active tower looming above. There was no clear way it connected with the rest of the structure, save a bit of indistinct stonework boasting dubious spatial properties. It lurched forward, tipping slowly, as if destined to fall forward. It then quietly disappeared, as if dissolving into space. Numerous (literally) flying buttresses jockeyed to fill its place.

The only features that appeared to be stationary, luckily, were the grand doors of the front entrance. If this building could be said to have a formal “front”, that is. Locating the front was a task similar to identifying the corner of the Oval Office (a challenge which some former presidents would have their less intelligent visiting diplomats undertake).

Herbert went in.

The streets of Jivversport had regained their characteristic void of activity. All was silent but for the footsteps of a beleaguered troop, and a metallic clonking on cobblestones bringing up the rear.

Beatrix looked to her side at the pirate counselor. She’d been leading them through the streets, but had barely said a word since the catastrophic town square melee.

“Maybe we should say something to her,” Beatrix said softly to Grant, who walked on her other side. “She looks miserable about losing her friend.”

“Maybe.” He thought a moment. “But I’m pretty sure that’s how she always is.”

“It’s okay,” Nemoira said. “I’m not upset about Daniel.”

“Oh?” Beatrix said.

“It’s fine.” She cracked a faint smile. It might as well have been an eruption of euphoria by contrast. “I know where he is.”

“Miss Pirate?” Simon said, while channeling every ounce of his orphan resolve into the task of avoiding the gaps between cobblestones. “Where are we going?”

“If we’re to get to Fort Crossnest, by sea is the fastest way.”

“Yay!”

This was news to the others as well, but then, they wondered why it should be. What other means of travel would a pirate be likely to offer, or anyone, for that matter, who was in the process of leading them to the town’s seaport?

Dormant hulks of metal and wood littered the shallow waters. Conspicuous among them, even before Nemoira guided them to it, was a smaller vessel, burdened with an overabundance of colorful sales. What The Rubicund Wayfare lacked in certification from a competent maritime engineer, it made up for with the nod from an eccentric interior decorator.

They boarded the ship.

Thundleshick’s castle wasn’t the type of place you wanted to get lost in. Luckily for Herbert, his short, knuckle-dragging guide led the way through rambling halls with an earnest diligence, if also a gruff temperament.

Upon entering the castle, he’d been met with a grand hall. Grand was just a word affixed to it though, much the way any lower-income household technically possessed a master bedroom. It sort of resembled Count Dracula’s gothic, capaciously-built sewer. Lounging about were several dozen monkey bellhops. Their little red vests and hats were, putting it kindly, gloriously unlaundered. Through the shrill hoots of primal intimidation, one monkey calmly separated itself from the pack and gestured for Herbert to follow.

As the simian led Herbert on what had proved to be the beginnings of an epic journey through the dark, pungent halls, he had to wonder. Had Thundleshick been expecting him? Had he appointed this taciturn, mite-ridden sentry to lead Herbert to him? What plot was the perverse old bastard hatching now?

The monkey slowed, then planted himself with the stoic discipline of the Queen’s personal guard. It raised its furry paw and pointed. Herbert looked into the dark corner he was being shown, squinting to make it out. There was a lump. A very smelly, dark lump, of not-so-mysterious origin. It was a pile of fresh primate feces, one over which the small ape had clearly invested some amount of personal importance.

Herbert slouched. He supposed, now that he was officially lost, he’d have to find the campmaster himself. All wasn’t hopeless, though. For starters, he could follow the odor that smelled even worse than the monkey shit.

The salty breeze was refreshing. It whipped Beatrix’s long hair about as she looked into the abnormally blue sky. Impossibly puffy clouds levitated, not high above the ocean. They all occupied distinct shapes, doing the lion’s share of the work for the daydreaming sky-gazer. One of them looked like a white sculpture of a bearded southern gentleman holding a pale and corralling poultry. Another was a giant wearing a tunic of leaves, lovingly tending to a field of produce. And yet another was a smiling cherubic man holding what looked to be a small grill. The man was either Buddha, or possibly former heavyweight boxer George Foreman.

She began to realize these weren’t so much randomly whimsical manifestations so much as strategically placed advertisements. The effect was nevertheless mesmerizing. Beatrix now and then had to remind herself that this was in fact quite a magical place, even if most of the time, nothing all that magical was happening, and when there was, its application tended to be a bit crass.

She looked back down at what she was doing, which was making unsuccessful attempts at healing Grant’s wounds. Grant, too, was looking skyward, but with a more pointed objective. With one hand he pulled on his eyelid, and with the other, gingerly poked about the iris to remove his contact lens.

“Anyway, yeah, it just started getting so frustrating after a while,” Beatrix said, returning to her train of thought.

“Huh?”

“Russet. The way he was acting. He obviously has a serious problem, which is why I came looking for you.”

“Oh. Tell me about it. But believe me, just because you give him his pills doesn’t mean he’ll actually take them. He’s an awfully stubborn fella.” Grant paused to sneer at the small malleable lens stuck to his fingertip. “I think these things are shot. They’re filthy. It’s a shame he’s not around. Cleaning things magically is sort of his specialty. I’m afraid I’d just butcher the prescription in the process.”

Beatrix strained her face as she made another futile effort with her ring. “Damn. I’m still not having any luck with healing magic. I guess there’s another way Russet would be useful now. If he were feeling better, I mean…”

“Don’t worry about it. I‘ll be alright,” he said, poking at his sore ribcage.

She reclined, relaxing on the deck of the ship. The cacophony of busily flapping sails overhead was hard to ignore. Through the racket was the giggling of orphans and the various noises particular to a living can of soup. The three were playing some sort of game on the other side of deck, and even from a distance it seemed clear the children were having trouble getting the soup to understand the rules, or anything not soup-related for that matter. To the other side was Nemoira, leaning against a rail. She watched Beatrix and Grant with a sullen expression.

“Why is she looking at us like that?” Beatrix whispered to Grant. He shrugged, still preoccupied with his contacts.

“My apologies,” Nemoira spoke up. “It’s the curse.”

“What?”

“I believe you both share the curse of the Mobius Slipknot.”

Grant stopped what he was doing. With one stinging eye shut, he glared at Nemoira. “What do you know about that?”

She was silent for a moment, reluctant to continue. She then explained, “It is a type of locket, of complicated design and purpose. When assembled and wielded improperly, as I suspect it was, it can have effects on the memory.”

“What kind of effects?” Beatrix asked.

She turned to look at the ocean. “If you can’t remember, then you may surmise the answer yourself. It’s probably best you don’t know, anyway.”

Beatrix found her instinct to remain quiet on the subject overwhelming. But as she ruminated on the locket, and her resolution to be more forthright about things, she found the gumption to confess. “I… I think I have this… Mobius Slipknot. Or, part of it at least.”

Grant’s look of surprise was compellingly genuine. What his face could not conceal, though, was his intense interest. “You do? Where?”

“It’s back at Crossnest, somewhere safe. Actually, to be honest, this was the other reason I wanted to see you. I thought you might know something about it.”

“Maybe.” He stood up, and said as casually as he could through his wince of discomfort, “I’ll take a look at it when we get there.”

“It should be no time at all,” Nemoira said. “We’re here.”

Off the bow, a rocky landmass approached. The ship neared a cave entrance.

Grant frowned at his used-up contacts, then flicked them into the ocean. With little pleasure, he pulled from its case a pair of stylish black-rimmed glasses. He put them on with no less trepidation than if they were the mandatory goggles preceding a punitive pie to the face.

After spending hours wondering if he was getting lost in the unpleasant castle, Herbert was now sure of it. The room was a dead end in his fruitless search. It was a cramped hovel with a low ceiling. Just a sliver of daylight pierced a murky window. Bowls and plates supporting ancient food products covered the floor. Crates of miscellaneous knickknacks teetered on heaps of dusty old furniture. It might have served as a storage room, or a garbage room, or both.

Or, Herbert suddenly thought, it might serve as a bedroom. In the corner was a damp mattress, with one rumpled sheet and an uncovered pillow. Judging by the torso-shaped depression, it looked recently used. Herbert became wary. He looked around, his assessment of the room becoming more of precaution than curiosity.

He backed into a crate, jangling its wares. Something familiar caught his eye. It was a ceramic frog atop the crate. He was sure he’d seen it before. Other items about the room were familiar as well, such as a crystal swan on a nearby shelf, and a broken cuckoo clock on the floor. He’d be damned if that “2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney: Women’s Gymnastics Competition” DVD didn’t ring a bell, too.

He became aware there was someone in the room with him. This awareness was mostly experienced in the nasal passages. He dropped the DVD case.

The cheerful voice spoke. “Ah! A fellow patron of the female athletics. A firm thigh and supple rump are guaranteed to stir the competitive spirit, don’t you agree?”

The strange remark was accompanied by a number of agile motions from a pair of unkempt eyebrows, and a quantity of winks not usually attempted by someone who hadn’t recently suffered a stroke.

Herbert’s open mouth slowly became a thin, irascible line.

“Thundleshick.”

Russet’s slouch was so pronounced, the end of his cape mopped the floor of the corridor. It had been hours since he’d heard from anyone in the fort. Had they all ditched him? Was his company really that difficult to bear? Such rhetorical questions were the bread and butter of those practiced in the art of self-loathing. He shook his head viciously and made swatting motions at his hair in a seemingly involuntary act of repudiation.

Even Carmen was nowhere to be seen. But then, no one was really sure where she lived in this labyrinthine facility. For such a vivacious personality, she guarded her privacy well. He shuffled in the direction he surmised might hold her quarters, but wasn’t holding out much hope.

Behind a door, there was a noise. He stopped, and heard nothing. The hair on his neck stood on end.

[Stop. You. Rucksack.] The sounds chimed in his consciousness.

“What?”

[Let me out of this prison. Free me from this tyrannical wench.]

“Hey…” Russet held his cranium. “Get out of my head!” He waited a moment for the voice to resume, but it didn’t. He watched the door with caution. Again, in his mind, there was a swell of thought. A visceral, menacing rumble.

[rrrrrrrRRRRRRRRRR…]

With a yelp, Russet turned and fled.

Thundleshick stooped in front of a greasy oven. He was attempting to peddle some of his legendary toadloaf to a reluctant Herbert. It was a sales pitch well-rehearsed, but never perfected. “Are you sure you wouldn’t care for some? It’s just above room temperature, you’ll find.”

“No thanks.”

“You must be eager to stray from the refrigerated ethnic fare you and your bunkmate chums enjoy. Just a nibble…” He offered a tool that sort of looked like a garden trowel. It supported a quivering helping of the pale material.

Herbert slapped it out of his hand. “Enough with the toadloaf business. Why don’t we just cut the crap.”

Thundleshick was startled by the outburst, and made a face like he just sat on something that could pop the tire of a monster truck. Herbert went on.

“I don’t like you. You’re some kind of repulsive, magical old man. Okay, so maybe you’re not a wizard. I don’t know what you are. Maybe you’re just a pompous bum who thinks he’s better than everyone else, and who thinks he can keep children hostage for as long as he damn-well pleases, chuckling to himself in his stupid castle like a stupid, smelly jerkoff. What kind of summer camp is this? Where do you get off? Who do you think you are?”

Herbert paused to catch his breath, reddened by his tirade. Thundleshick stood speechless, with a kind of fatherly sympathy in his eyes, as he twirled a bit of his moustache hair between his fingers. Herbert composed himself.

“Anyway, I’m sorry. I just had to get that off my chest. I’m not here to make friends, or kiss your ass, or anything like what all the other campers probably do. I’m here because I just completed like fifty of your idiotic quests, and by my understanding, this more than entitles me to go home.”

He tossed the limp pillowcase into Thundleshick’s arms. As the campmaster peered inside, an expression of unadulterated, childlike glee spread over his face like a rapidly advancing fungus. He was so happy, he began to weep. And then he laughed.

“Boy, this is tremendous! How ever did you collect so many?”

“Well,” Herbert said, dusting off his embellishment cap. “It wasn’t easy. You have no idea how many snoodleflips and blungthumpers I had to shoot to collect those. It was pretty gruesome.”

“This tickles me to no end. Boy… Wizardy Herbert, you must surely have had a wealth of wisdom in your upbringing. I feel I too have been touched by the sagacity of your parents.”

“Yeah, they’re alright, I guess. So what do you say? Is this gonna cut it?”

“Oh, yes, yes, my word. I should say all this entitles you to a stiff reward indeed. One moment…” Thundleshick was suddenly a blur of effluent elderly energy. He scurried to the other side of the room. In his excited haste, he bumped into Herbert, nearly knocking him over.

“Oof… hey, careful.”

Thundleshick’s busy hands upset piles of junk. Herbert quizzically observed the furious search. “Hey, what are you doing? Can’t you just, you know, wave your wand, or do a dance, and just transport me home? What are you getting there? Something like a… shooting star I ride back to New Jersey?”

“Yes! Yes!! Ah-ha, here it is, here it is! Been saving it for an occasion just as this one. I only hope you appreciate the amenity as much as those of us for whom chronic nether-regional chafing is a maligned way of life.”

Thundleshick beamed as he presented him with the hefty 24-pack of Charmin double-quilted toilet paper.

The Rubicund Wayfare bobbed through the rough waters of the cave passage. The waves were loud in the narrow tunnel, but became silent when the space opened more generously into a cavern. The water was calm, almost like glass, and in the center was a statue. Its pose appeared designed to roust the passions of a patriot, while its face wore a certain severity, the kind ensuring commitment to political and militaristic resolve.

Nemoira stood on the bow, pointing her telescope toward the statue. A beam of light projected from the lens. The statue began to glow, and then turned deep red. The subterranean lake bubbled. The surface of the water lowered.

In Fort Crossnest, a low gurgling sound filled the great chamber labeled “Уровень 37” in weathered paint. The wide circular opening in the floor began to overflow with dark, foamy water. The water level rose to match a hazy line of scummy demarcation on the wall.

From the large tunnel in the chamber, opposite the entrance to the rest of the fort, the ship sailed in.

Herbert was waiting for the punch line he knew would never come. Irony to this man was likely as distant a stranger as a hot shower. Herbert’s eye made fierce stabs at the toilet paper, and then at Thundleshick’s beaming face. His hand drifted toward his sidearm. Thundleshick’s puffy, smile-bolstered cheeks appeared to deflate.

“What’s wrong, boy? If you’re worried I’ve been too generous, think nothing of it. Your valor has been proven beyond question.”

Herbert took a step forward, scowling poisonously at the awarded toiletry. Thundleshick’s eyes moved back and forth, as if following a schizophrenic pendulum.

“Hmm… Boy, this is not the first time you’ve encountered such a luxury, is it? You wouldn’t need… a demonstration of its use, would—”

“No, I sure as hell wouldn’t!” Herbert backhanded the soft, bulky package. It skidded to a stop nearby the small mound of jiggling toadloaf. “Now give me the real prize. I know you can get me out of here. I know you’ve got… powers.”

Thundleshick’s face spread into the smile of a complacent sage. A smile that typically concealed wisdom, but in this case, likely only concealed centuries of dental misery, and wads of meat so large and so old, one of them might be pointed out by a tour guide as the birthplace of a famous 19^th century poet. “Ah… I see. I shouldn’t be so surprised to find such pluck in your spirit. Then it’s more you want!”

“No, I don’t want more. I don’t want any Kleenex, or a bottle of Toilet Duck, or any Depends adult undergarments for that matter. I just want you to please… send… me… HOME.”

Thundleshick placed a brown, turd-like finger to his lips and became pensive. His eyes twinkled with a realization. “You… still haven’t seen yet?”

“What? Seen what?”

“Yes, your vision is still impaired. It’s plain as day.”

“What are you talking about?” Herbert became conscious of the eye patch pressing against his left eye socket. He reached up, as if to touch it, but his hand quickly dropped again to the vicinity of his sidearm.

“I believe I have just the thing.” Thundleshick groped within his grisly tunic, producing a small vial. It looked like something a medieval apothecary might keep in great supply. “Take this, young Herbert. It will help you see again.”

Herbert’s livid hand snatched it away. He approached the campmaster, becoming more agitated with every gift that had nothing to do with transportation to his house, or at least somewhere in the tri-state area. “I can see just fine. I don’t need one of your bogus remedies or stupid elixirs. My eye patch doesn’t bother me, and it’s my business anyway. Now are you going to send me home, or is this going to get ugly?” Herbert’s hand unfastened the securing strap of the holster, and settled lightly on the gun’s grip.

Thundleshick took a step back, his brow wrinkling with wretched folds of intimidation. He dwelt on Herbert’s bullying tactics, which were enough to cause even a powerful magician to freckle at the advance of a slightly-built, temperamental teen boy. But then, Thundleshick’s natural cowardice wasn’t to be overlooked, nor was the powerful weapon clinging to the boy’s hip.

“I… I believe I can arrange some sort of transport accommodation,” Thundleshick stammered. “Could… could you just take a step or two to your right?”

Herbert immediately looked at the floor to his right. “You mean you want me to stand over that little trap door? You must think I’m a complete id—”

“You might want to tuck and roll at the bottom.” Thundleshick’s smudgy sausage-fingers twiddled furiously as if playing a tiny piano. The small hatch swiftly relocated itself beneath Herbert’s feet. There was the sound of wooden shutters snapping open. Everything went dark.

Beatrix climbed one of the many staircases in the jaundiced, ever-flickering light of Fort Crossnest. She was nervous about seeing Russet again. Who knew what he’d gotten himself into while she was away. But whatever trepidation there was, her excitement outweighed it. She was happy to be helping him.

“Grant?” she asked, sort of sheepishly. “Do you think I could take a look at Russet’s medication?” Was it petty of her to want to be the bearer of good news? She didn’t know. After all, she was the one who went to the trouble of getting it for him. Grant handed it over without a word about it.

Higher up, Russet moped through the corridors, massaging his head. The voices had subsided for now, but only served to leave his own tormented inner voice with the stage to itself, chewing the scenery like an off-Broadway ham. Shouldn’t Beatrix have returned by now? She must have washed her hands of him completely, and he couldn’t blame her. He wished he could have seen her at least once more before she disappeared from his life.

He leaned against a wall and slid down to the floor. He took out his wand and gave it a bored examination. He played with it farcically, sneering, as if lampooning an effete orchestra conductor. In his current state of mind, he’d have better luck cajoling magic from a toilet brush (a non-magical one, at least). He felt like an idiot when he thought about his prior gusto with magic, and the way he behaved in general during his fits of exuberance. It disgusted him. Only a complete jackass would act like that. He threw the wand down the hall.

A hand picked it up delicately. The corner of Russet’s mouth turned upward slightly. Beatrix smiled back.

“There you are,” he said. “It’s been… well, I’d lost track of how long!”

“Hey, Russet,” she replied. “Yeah, I was gone for longer than I…” She trailed off. Russet was on his feet, approaching with a wide grin. The closer he got, the more apparent it was he was not looking at her, but a step or two to her left. The place where Grant stood.

“Hi, buddy. Good to see you, finally,” Grant said wearily, but with a sincere smile. Russet threw his arms around him for an impromptu brotherly hug. Grant returned the gesture, or maybe humored it, as he glanced at Beatrix with look of mild embarrassment.

“Um…” Beatrix began, feeling taken aback by the reception. “I have your pills… if you want them.”

“Oh. Many thanks, Bea!” His shimmering eyes flashed at her, then returned to Grant. The two of them were already striking up an animated conversation, presumably as if they’d never parted. Lack of medication aside, Russet appeared to be in a better mood already. As much as she wanted to think so, it was hard to believe this development had anything to do with her.

Herbert felt like he was walking through a poorly kept zoo. The sounds of agitated creatures filled the cavern-like room, a place he assumed was a kind of dungeon. A very loud dungeon.

The menagerie’s hootings only became emboldened as the fittest systematically conquered and consumed the weak, and celebrated with the triumphant swelling of throat sacks and flaring of proboscises. Over there, a baboon postured over the broken frame of some kind of iguana. And sitting there atop a suitcase was a beefy tomcat washing itself nearby the remains of something that was optimistically a rat, but more realistically was a Chihuahua judging by the collar.

There was a substantial heap of suitcases and backpacks in which the beasts burrowed tunnels and built whelping nests for their young. Herbert began to suspect it might not be a dungeon so much as a luggage room. And then again, it might not be a luggage room so much as a place serving as dumping grounds for an overabundance of goods confiscated from mistreated children.

This notion gained further plausibility when he encountered a navy blue suitcase. It was the very one he’d surrendered to a helpful simian paw only a few days ago, just moments before being persecuted by large skeletons.

Herbert’s heart sped up. There was nothing special in it of course. It was hard to get bent out of shape over parting with a few pairs of socks, and a few reluctantly-purchased tools of the accounting trade. But there was one thing, something he’d thought he was glad to be rid of once and for all. Now, though, his thumping heart suggested otherwise.

He crouched to unzip the suitcase, but noticed he was still clutching the vial thrust into his hand by Thundleshick. He stood up and put it into his jeans pocket. He made a face, feeling around inside the pocket, then checked the other one.

The doll was gone. The bastard picked his pocket.

Herbert looked up into the great, dark void, unable to detect a ceiling, let alone the trap door from which he fell. Who knew how long it would take him to get back to Thundleshick’s chamber from here, or if it was even possible in this architecturally capricious castle. There had to be another way. Indeed, from a distant source there was daylight, perhaps an exit to the swampy castle surroundings. At least he might be able to start again from the main entrance.

He sighed, and sifted through the contents of his luggage. He tossed aside a small pocket ledger, moved a neatly folded pair of underwear, and with both hands, hoisted an antique adding machine, once belonging to his great grandfather, over his head onto the floor behind him, where it broke apart noisily. He stopped.

There it was.

The pages were stained, folded in places. A simple manuscript, bound with black rings. The cover was a plain white piece of paper. It had no title. If it did, it was covered by a black rectangle where the title would be.

_______________

One

He’d been plagued by an unsettling obsession with the manuscript for as long as he could remember. He couldn’t explain the fascination. Other than the fact that it was littered with black rectangles blotting out parts of the text, it was quite a mundane work of literature.

In fact, it was awful.

Herbert flipped it open and read a random excerpt.

“_______ was astonished! He had never even seen a manticorn before which was half unicorn half mantitee. Although more like mostly mantitee, because it was just a mantitee with a horn. It’s blubbery body rolled around playfully in the shallow water beckonning with his big fat flipper. Magic eminated from it’s horn, the magic power was so overwelming. It almost rivaled the power of the fabled ______ ________! He almost fainted but then came to his senses and approached with his hacksaw towards…“

Herbert winced at the copy. He rolled up the manuscript and tucked it into his pocket. He thought about Thundleshick as he tugged on a part of his M9, making a perfunctory locking sound.

The son of a bitch was going to pay.

Russet’s mouth had become a runaway locomotive, and all Grant and Beatrix could do was stay off the tracks. “Mind you, it’s hard to find anything in this place. I’ve been muddling through this postindustrial labyrinth all day. Seen neither hide nor hair from old Herb. Of course he’s a sensitive fellow and does like to keep to himself. Oh, how I would like to introduce you to him, Grant. I believe you’d get along famously. Maybe he is in here,” Russet bludgeoned on as he followed Beatrix around the corner and into her vacant room. “No, I guess not. Guess old Herb’s given us the slip again. What did you say you wanted…”

Grant raised his hand in a limp plea for conversational mercy. It was all too clear to him Russet had returned to his rosy temperament. He opted to lean on verbal affectations like “old Herb” rather than talk like a normal person, a practice which had come to tax Grant’s patience like an old mule. Over the years, in spite of his well wishes for his friend, he’d concluded he preferred the other Russet. “It’s okay,” he said. “We’ll find him when we find him. For now it would do me to just rest in a safe place.” He took a heavy breath, wincing from internal injuries.

Beatrix knew exactly what to look for on entering the room, and had her suspicions confirmed right away. “I don’t think he’s in the fort.”

“Why do you say that?” Grant spotted the two halves of the blue doll lying on the bed. A red sub-doll was standing on the table. “Ah… he’s taken the other half somewhere. Do you… do you think he’s taken this Slipknot thing from you as well?” Grant voiced the troubling thought, then coughed a bit of blood onto his pants.

Russet broke in. “You’re right, I’ve been silly. We should all rest and relax. What’s the hurry? I suppose I became overexcited with your return. After all, we became separated so quickly after our arrival! There’s so much that’s happened that I’ve wanted to tell you. And I trust so much you’ve seen I want to hear about.”

Russet eased on to the bed next to Grant. He continued warmly, “No worries. Take whatever time you need. Maybe we can watch a film later via this compound’s extensive home theater resources. Like we used to. There are many titles you have never heard of, and I believe you will enjoy wholeheartedly. Some of them include the urban gyrations of various street performers!” With this, Russet slapped Grant on the back. Grant recoiled at the threat of physical contact. But he found the moment he was touched, he instantly felt better—completely rehabilitated.

He sat up, feeling better than he had since he’d arrived. “I’ve missed you, friend.”

Russet’s expression suddenly seemed serious. “I wouldn’t trade the adventures I’ve had here for anything. I prayed for years to leave one day, have adventures with you, and meet new people. But it’s hard not to pine for the simple times we had in the old haunt. Honestly, I can’t wait to return.”

Beatrix watched the two as if she were lurking in the jungle, spying unseen on a couple of extremely rare apes. She’d been about to answer Grant’s question before the conversation was again derailed by Russet. She didn’t know what to say anymore. This was all so weird.

“So wait,” she finally said. “You two used to live together?” Russet turned, smiling an affirmative at her. She paused. She didn’t know why she found this peculiar. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe if they knew aspects of her own living arrangements, they would find it odd too.

“Where?” she asked. But the two were already rampantly trading tales from their respective adventures. She exhaled, and looked at the red sub-doll neatly standing on her secret printout of Herbert’s data. She decided that all boys were crazy. She didn’t understand any of them. As she unfocused at the muddy photo of Herbert, she considered that in some cases, she only managed to create enemies. She’d been careless and foolish.

She picked up the doll and twisted it, and to no surprise whatsoever, nothing happened.

Somewhere in a filthy parlor, halves of a blue doll lay opened. A fat, spotted hand picked up the upper half, and from a sticky-looking bottle of scotch, filled its volume with brown liquid, as if a shot glass.

Another hand cracked open a DVD case covered in photographic celebrations of virtuosity in women’s gymnastics. The DVD was fed to a stout black box which whirred in appreciation. A bemused, purple pair of lips met with the rim of the inverted doll half, and downed the liquid.

Herbert’s eye felt naked in the searing daylight. His efforts to relocate the front entrance to the capricious castle proved fruitless, like looking for a quarter he’d dropped on the beach before the tide. He had no choice but to walk back to the fort, haunted by the abject failure of his mission. For all his guile, he no longer even had his doll for the return trip. He’d never hear the end of it from Beatrix when he returned… assuming she’d even make it back herself.

And for that matter, assuming he’d make it back himself.

Herbert stood at the juncture he’d previously puzzled over, with the sign pointing in three directions. Through the door in the direction of the fort, the stairs descended several steps, then vanished into dark, salty water. The pathway was flooded. He squatted at the edge, as if ruminating on some tactic hidden in the recesses of his memory for removing millions of gallons of water from a cave.

What could have happened? Maybe a spontaneous subterranean spring, or a cache of ice somewhere melted all at once. He could have no way of knowing. Even if left to his own cynical imagination, the irony of sabotage by unwitting friends from afar still wouldn’t have occurred to him.

He looked up, in the direction of “W.H.”, as the sign indicated. He swallowed, putting his hand on the cold rung. Destiny suddenly felt like a ball and chain around his ankle, and it weighed heavy on the climb.

Gilbert’s face was red, and his plump head perspired like a slow-cooked roast. His hands were stuffed into the pockets of his ill-fitting shorts, with a demeanor made progressively less nervous by Counselor Marlevort’s apparent disinterest in killing him. Hence the sweat was not on account of nerves, but a symptom of being surrounded by a sea of bubbling lava. “Does this have anything to do with your big plans?” he asked, strolling alongside the counselor on the broad deck of the aging, heat-scalded aircraft carrier.

“What?”

“Those missiles or whatever. Isn’t that what this is all about?”

“No. This has nothing to do with that. I was talking about my final form. Bouncing some ideas off you. Is that okay?”

“Yeah.”

“I still haven’t decided what I’ll call it,” Slinus said with earnest concern. He fingered the fog of ash from his glasses. Gilbert said nothing. He continued. “I’m torn between ‘Final Stage OmegaSlinus’ or ‘Marlevort Prime’. I think they’re both pretty good.”

“So you turn into something, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“You mean like in anime or something?”

“Yeah, pretty much like in anime. A big monster or something. I’m still designing it. I’ll let you have a look at the mockup sometime, if you like, Gil.”

Gilbert wrinkled his nose. “I think that sounds pretty stupid. Why would you want to model your powers after something in a Japanese cartoon?”

“I like anime. A lot of it is really intelligent and well drawn. If a little over the top as well.”

“Is that why you chose this place as Fort Slurpenook? Because it’s over the top?”

“It certainly is over the top, isn’t it?”

“And really hot. Sort of unnecessarily so…” The shapes of sweat under his arms were beginning to resemble sizeable continents on a primitive world map.

“It so happens that this ship is the centerpiece in a powerful naval fleet. It makes sense to command from within a concentration of military strength. The fleet also happens to float in lava because this is a magical world and in a magical world you will find many such marvelous and whimsical realities present. Did I ask for this sea to be made of lava? No. Do I mind that it lends the perception of a kind of brutal severity to our forces? No, I’ll take that. Do I think a cool ocean breeze would be nice while strolling on the deck? Well, yeah. But I don’t get out that much. And the skeletons don’t seem to complain.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want to take us on.”

Slinus smiled.

“Who are we fighting, anyway? Aren’t they all pretty much dead?”

Slinus was lost in thought for a moment. “I think everyone should have a final form, personally. Something… something like part-huge monster, part-confusingly religious icon, like a great angel of death or something like that. Sort of sickening and beautiful simultaneously. And dripping in strategic areas maybe, with weird goo, or maybe raw power. I don’t know. It should have lots of concealed blades too, hidden somewhere, knotted in organic viscera.”

“Sounds really disgusting.”

“I’ve seen everything worth watching of course. But it’s been ages.”

“I think I saw a few episodes of Cowboy Bebop a few years ago,” Gil offered. “It was alright.”

“Yes, that was good. It’s been decades since I’ve seen it.”

The estimation seemed fishy to him. “Really?”

“Yes.”

“How old are you, anyway?”

“I seem to recall tales about a young man. I believe his name was Bebop, or Cowboy Bebop. Or maybe it was a nickname. And there was some sort of wayward broad. A bitch on the run with nothing to lose.”

“That doesn’t sound right at all.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Slinus conceded.

“I would have thought that one grows out of these kinds of nerdy fascinations after living for centuries. Like, gathering wisdom with advancing years, or such.”

“Oh for God’s sake, I’m not centuries-old. Who do you think I am? Thundleshick?” Slinus had trouble containing the laugher brewing during the delivery of the remark. A fit of chuckling followed.

Gil made a face. He wasn’t sure why it was so funny. “Where are we going?”

“We are going to see Allen Pycroft.”

“Oh…”

“He’s never all that cooperative over the phone. It’s time I pay him a visit. He will have some intelligence for us,” explained Slinus as the two of them ducked into a small airplane.

“Will it be cooler there?”

“Considerably.”

“As you can see, mate, there’s not a heck of a lot to see on this tour. And I do apologize for the general disrepair of our surroundings. I have been meaning to spruce the place up again for some time.”

“It’s fine, Russet,” Grant reassured. “Really, you don’t need to take responsibility for everything all the time.”

“Be that as it may! Behold, this is the main attraction. Working television, computer, and many other attractions to titillate. Why, just over here, look. Warriors at your command, fighting for your cause. Each shrunken and made one with great iron staves of agility. They spar and vie for one and only one orb of conquest and take no pleasure in anything but sweet victo…”

“Easy, man. It’s just a foosball table. Laying it on a little thick?”

Russet felt himself reddening. “Yes, maybe. I guess one develops a fondness for the place after some bit. It only becomes natural I suppose to embellish upon its grandeur for a newcomer.”

“That reminds me,” Beatrix broke in, like a perfect stranger interrupting a private conversation on the street. “Where’s Carmen been?”

Grant turned to her. “Who?” Russet made a limp shrug, and returned to his spirited tour of the room.

Beatrix slunk over to the desk quietly. She felt invisible, as if the victim of a magic spell a thousand times more potent than one of her evasive illusions. She sat in the computer chair and swiveled as the two boys whittled away the time with chatter, Russet’s tireless mouth bearing most of the load.

“I do wish you could have been here and experienced our adventures with us. We’ve been through so much, and it would have been all the richer for your presence. And oh, if Wizardy could be here too. He’d without question have some madcap scheme for us all to hatch. The conniving rascal! Did I by chance mention the time old Herb had me for whatever reason summon a dragon? A dragon of all…”

“Russet!” Beatrix was on her feet again. Her patience for his scatterbrained emissions was spent. Especially for listening as he described the memories she’d thought were special to just the two of them, now related as merely tolerable diversions when weighed against the vacuum of Grant’s absence. And if she had to listen to another “I do wish” this, or an “old Herb” that, she was going to flip out like a ninja in a swarm of bees.

“Yes, Bea?” was Russet’s tempered reply.

She paused, fuming at him. “Have you taken your medication yet?”

His silent, unchanging expression said no.

“She’s right, Russet. You’ve gotta take it. You know that.”

Russet went into a stroll, theatrically prefacing what were likely going to be some terrific excuses. “I know, I know. I really will. I mean, I had meant to, honestly.”

“But you got distracted, right? You were feeling great, so what’s the point? Is that it?” he said with a rehearsed kind of patience which somehow seemed more subtly scalding than any direct rebuke.

Russet examined the prescription bottle with ambivalence. “Well… yes! I feel terrific! I’ve done so much better here. Since I got here, I mean. I really think it’s done wonders for me, and the new friends I’ve met, they’ve been great. Bea, here. Beatrix has helped me so much! If only you knew! I really think I can lay off the pills for at least a little while. Just for a bit!”

“My ass, I’ve helped.” Beatrix stomped over to Russet and snatched the bottle from his hand. She opened it and rattled a pill from the container. Russet nervously held out his hand, offering to take it.

Beatrix held up the pill, viewing it closely. She brought her foot down hard on Russet’s shoe. Russet yelled briefly, but was soon muffled by Beatrix’s hand. She popped the pill in his gaping mouth like he was some tragic clown puppet’s moaning head in a carnival stand, and she was greedy for prizes. With the other hand, she flicked his throat with a glowing ring finger, causing him to swallow through a startlingly effective spell most useful to veterinarians.

She turned and stormed out of the rec. room, suddenly finding herself in agreement with Russet in wishing Herbert were there. He probably would have gotten a kick out of that.

The large bag of kibble may have at one point been a ruthlessly pragmatic and underwhelming prize for a completed camp quest. Carmen plunged the metal scoop into the frayed opening of the bag, and resurfaced with a heap of spilling dog food. She deposited it noisily into a bowl on the floor.

[Do not feed me dog food anymore. Give me a burrito. Or let me starve.]

“Shh!” Carmen hissed with a slight jerk of the head.

[I’ll take a bite of your neck too, all the same. You are a stupid girl and I hate you.]

“Shhh, shhshhshh. Stupid!—Lunch time doggy. It’s lunch time for the doggy!” she sang.

Pycroft, in his considerable duration of imprisonment, still had not figured out the workings of his captor’s mind. It had long since been apparent his psychic commands would never go heeded. That much was clear. What he didn’t know was whether the girl simply refused to obey them, or had trouble understanding them, or in the tangle of her unusual synapses, was mistaking them for her own troubled thoughts. More tricky to diagnose still was whether his increasingly rancorous ultimatums were competing against, or chaffing with, some serious mental illness indigenous to the landscape. It didn’t help the matter one bit that he was such a dreadful psychic mastermind in the first place.

Gray, jagged irises fixed on her through the bars of the cage as a canine paw unceremoniously tipped the bowl of kibble on to the floor. A pale, bald head ducked down and began to crunch.

“Good doggy! It’s a very good doggy for not spitting at me today! That deserves a treat.” She pulled a long peacock feather from her belt, and with a flourish, manufactured a hard, curled piece of faux-bacon. Pycroft eyed the morsel with disdain.

[You will puncture a vein with the pointed tip of your terrible avian plumage. Do you hear? You will do as I say.] Pycroft mentally voiced the fruitless edicts over a mouthful of gravelly food. His heart wasn’t in it.

{Are you there?} The lucid voice rang in his head. He choked a little.

[Yes. When were you planning on helping me to escape?]

{Sympathy for your situation is not scarce. You are the victim of prioritization. Currently I suffer my own incarceration. you realize this.}

[You were never going to help me. I hate you. You are worse than this dumb girl.]

Pycroft pressed his face on a thick bar, his sickly skin wrinkling against it. His cage was one of many in rows along a dim, damp hallway. It looked like a sort of kennel, which may at one point have sheltered any number of fanciful beasts. The kennel was empty, but for one beast. It might have been considered fanciful from one perspective, but from all other perspectives, it was just sad.

{Of course if you wanted to escape, you could have done so easily by severing one of your limbs, or even biting off one of your toes.}

[But that would hurt. Also, I hate you.]

{Then you will have to wait.}

The trap door opened into a cloud of mold spores. Herbert crawled out of the hole in the floor, resting his hands and knees on a thick netting of vines and creepers. The plants were everywhere, embedded in the wooden floor and furniture, covering up the windows, and caked against the walls. Walls, which ran smoothly, uninterrupted around the perimeter of the room. Was the room a circle?

Herbert stood up. Whatever this room was, it looked like it had been left unattended for centuries. There wasn’t much to see in the faint light poking through the vines on the windows. The windows, beneath their vinery, seemed rather grand to him, large and stately. In fact, the more he took in the surroundings, whatever lay beneath the growth seemed to allude to a sense of grandeur. Something that held a certain authoritative elegance when viewed in its prime. There was a large desk. There were flags behind the desk, spotted with mold. Were they American flags? Those colors didn’t run, Herbert thought, but they did apparently rot under the right conditions. There were paintings on the wall. Through their weathered appearance, he could make the portraits out to be…

He realized the room wasn’t a circle. It was an oval. And the letters on the sign in the juncture below, to his relief, were not meant to be his initials at all. This was the White House.

He positioned his eye in front of a gap in the vines on the window. The glass was too dirty to see through, or to confirm his hope against hope that this somehow meant he’d returned to his country. Why there would be a poorly maintained replica of the White House somewhere in the U.S., he didn’t know. But the notion of such a thing occupying this magical dimension was even less explicable to him.

The room seemed to have no power. He looked along the walls, hoping for a way to illuminate the room. There was a switch. Next to the switch, resting in the corner of the oval office, was something strange.

Herbert stood by the switch with his hand poised to flip it, but pausing first to examine the large object. It was a box of grimy, vine-tangled glass, similar to a phone booth, but with no apparent way in or out. Herbert could see something inside. Something dark and motionless, somewhat like a human figure. Herbert put his hand on his gun.

Above the object was another smaller box. It also was made of glass, but had electrical components to it. A cable, presumably for power, ran out its back, along the wall and into the mount for the switch.

Herbert shrugged and flipped the switch.

He squinted against the surprisingly bright overhead lights. Hundreds of insects came to life as they all at once scuttled for darker sanctuary in the vines. There was a soft beeping noise, which sounded as if it ticked the seconds. This was confirmed when Herbert saw the smaller box above, which had lit up like a digital clock, and was now counting down. 05:59:56… 05:59:55… 05:59:54…

Herbert cautiously engaged the larger glass box, wiping a streak of scum from the surface. There was a figure inside. It was a statue. It was smooth and featureless, like a kind of mannequin made of dark stone. There was a circular hollow in its chest, where the heart would be.

Dry vines snapped under Herbert’s feet as he wandered to the desk. He made a vacant assessment of the ancient office supplies and documents, then turned to look at the clock again. He dwelled solemnly on whatever event was supposed to occur in six hours. Luckily, he thought as a Twinkie-sized cockroach crawled over his shoe, the temptation to hang around that long probably wouldn’t be insurmountable.

Allen Pycroft’s breath took form in the cold air in front of his wet black nose. He concentrated over a small potted plant as his soft, pink human hands made dexterous pruning motions about it with a little pair of scissors.

Counselor Slinus’ tone was conversational. “How do you get that thing to grow in here?”

“Since you won’t permit me to use magic, I decided that what little I could muster ought to be put to use.”

“It’s quite lovely. A bonsai of some sort?”

“Not that I expect you to appreciate incantations meant to promote the well being of living things.”

Pycroft’s words were surprisingly clear and well-formed considering they emerged from a canine mouth. People always tended to take in stride the notion of talking dogs, even though the floppy, broad-snouted lips and big teeth hardly seemed conducive to human elocution. The elegant canine snout was affixed to a handsome gray-furred canine head, which in turn was attached to a canine’s upper torso. The only human aspects of him, aside from his elocution, were his hands, and everything from the waist down, which was covered by a nice pair of pants.

The pants sat on a frosty chair, and the hands busied themselves over a table, which was white with frost. They were the only pieces of furniture in the sizeable walk-in freezer. Next to the counselor, Gil stood shivering.

“What a ridiculous thing to say. It’s basically my chief concern. What do you think all my work is about?”

{Promoting the well being of yourself alone is not quite what I meant.}

“Stay out of my head, Fido.” Slinus pointed his handheld computer at Pycroft with his thumb poised over a touchscreen button. Pycroft raised his hand calmly, and with the other hand felt the collar around his neck, as if to visibly register the threat. He turned his yellow eyes back to the plant.

“And since we’ve wandered into the subject of obedience, don’t you have something for us? We did come all this way, after all.”

“Yes,” Pycroft responded.

“Well? What of your other half? Isn’t he at Crossnest?”

“Yes. He has also confirmed that the youngsters you seek are there as well.”

“Oh. Why hasn’t he done anything about it yet?”

“It appears he has been imprisoned in the kennel for some time.”

Slinus suppressed a snort. As he punched rapid commands into his device, he made an effort to sound short-tempered again through his bemusement. “I don’t know why I’m surprised. Jesus Christ, can’t you people tell me these things sooner?”

Gilbert rubbed his arms for warmth, transfixed by the prisoner. Most of Marlevort’s minions tended to be wretched freaks of nature, and altogether unpleasant company. But for whatever reason, Gil found in himself a great deal of pity for Mr. Pycroft. He asked softly to the counselor, “Why isn’t he allowed to use magic?”

{Because he fears me.}

The voice entered his head, like a stray echo of unknown origin in a room of complex acoustical mechanics. He looked at Slinus, who seemed not to have heard it.

“There,” Slinus said. “I remotely opened all of the cages in Crossnest. He should be able to make some progress now. Next time you talk to him, tell him to find the Slipknot and get out of there. And failing that, at least capture those kids. Seriously, it is absolutely ridiculous it’s gone on this long. It would have saved us both a lot of trouble if you had told me all this sooner. Your minor acts of rebellion are petulant and tiresome.”

“Do you really think my correspondent will be able to accomplish the task? Even you would have to agree that my abilities are more suitable.”

Slinus widened his smile, exaggerating the lines on his face, which were unusually severe for a young man’s complexion. “Who knows, maybe he’ll get lucky and have his head cut off.”

As the counselor and his cohort turned to leave, Gil looked back at the prisoner. His glance met with a potent pair of animal eyes, deadly still in what they transmitted silently. Gil nodded in sleepy accord.

“At least a part of me will be free from a cage,” Pycroft quipped.

“Hey, that’s the spirit!” Slinus activated the electrified collar once for good measure before exiting through the heavy refrigerator door.

The documents on the oval office desk looked older than the constitution itself. Some were loose notes penned in chicken scratch. Others looked like more formal memorandums, vaguely pertaining to military operations, none from which Herbert derived much meaning. There were also doodles here and there on the curled stationery. They looked like the renditions of an aspiring cartoonist. They weren’t very good.

There wasn’t much in the drawers, but the one item of interest was a real find. It was a colonial flintlock pistol, and looked reasonably authentic. It had a wooden grip, a brass-colored barrel, and was generously trimmed with ornate silver metalwork. He held it firmly, aimed it with mock resolve, closed the eye hidden behind the patch (as if it served any purpose), and squeezed the trigger. There was an impotent “click”.

Herbert flipped the pistol by the loop around his finger, and tucked it into the waist strap of his holster. If he was going to steal anything from the government building, it might as well be something of ostensible value.

He leaned back in the cracked leather chair, blinking his bad eye a few more times. He thought about what Thundleshick had said, and the vial he’d given him. Could he really trust the deceitful sorcerer? Still, what motive could he have for giving him a bogus remedy? It made him all the more curious. And if it really did work, he thought it would be nice not to have the damnable strap squeezing his head all the time, or for that matter, to be able to just once take a shot in a game of basketball that did not miss the hoop by at least six feet. The gym class nickname “Wizardy Airball” was sufferable for only so long.

He pulled the anonymous manuscript from his pocket and dropped it on the desk. From the same pocket, he removed the vial and uncapped it. He raised the eye patch to press against his forehead, leaned back, and tapped a drop of the liquid into his blinking eye.

The fierce burning was instantaneous and overpowering. He might as well have been pouring hot sauce into the orifice. He shouted and dropped the vial.

After moments of eye-rubbing and obscenities directed at a wily old campmaster, he cracked his eye open. He saw nothing from it. The magician had bested him again.

He looked down at the vial he’d dropped. Some of the liquid had splashed onto the cover of the manuscript. There was a curious change where the drops met the blacked-out title.

_iza__y__er__rt

One

He tentatively placed his finger against the moisture and smeared it about the rest of the hidden letters.

Wizardy Herbert

One

The bowl of kibble was overturned. The tracks left by four wet paws ran a trail on the corridor floors until they were dry and no longer visible.

Carmen had followed the tracks back to the kennel, and regarded with dismay the unlocked, empty cage. She dropped the toy she had brought for her pet. It squeaked as it bounced.

Herbert stared at the title for a moment in an eye-stinging daze. As the liquid evaporated, the letters again faded to black.

He picked up the book, and the vial which he recapped, regarding them both cautiously. His mind turned to all the other words in the book which were blacked out, and then it turned to the bit of liquid remaining in the vial.

He left the vial standing on the desk. He watched it suspiciously for a moment.

He sat heavily back into the chair, which reclined with a rusty squeak. And then an ominous mechanical clicking noise.

And then a BOOM.

The chair had automatically secured him to it with restraints, and blasted off through the ceiling of the oval office.

As the smoke of freshly burned rocket fuel cleared from the now-silent room, the faint beeping could be heard, by no one in particular.

05:36:23… 05:36:22… 05:36:21…

[Rucksack.]

“Huh?”

[You. Rucksack.]

This was only making Russet’s headache worse. He didn’t know if it was a side effect of the medication, but he always began feeling this way when he took it. It may have been akin to reducing altitude in a plane too suddenly, and the sensation from the differential in pressure all at once. At least the pills could be said to trigger a “responsible” nosedive, one that was not punctuated with an orange fireball and blackened metal filling a crater in some vacant rural expanse.

“My name is Russet. Stop talking to me, okay?”

[Get something for me. I command you.]

“No.”

[Yes. I command it. You will retrieve the Modulus Splitnotch.]

“You mean the Mobius Slipknot?”

[Whatever. Get it.]

“No way. Shut up.”

[You have to. I command it.]

“Get it yourself.”

[I don’t know where it is. You do. Get it for me.]

“I do not! Moron.”

[Anyone who is affected by its power can know where it is. Trust your instincts and find it.]

“So you know that much about this thing, yet you don’t know its name?”

[Yes. Now find it, Ruck… Russ… sack.]

Russet was about to continue the pointless dialogue, but in spite of himself examined his own mindscape for whatever it was he could allegedly detect. Maybe it was the reduced turbulence afforded by the medication, but there was something there. Something faint, but nagging. And there was directionality to it. The direction, not surprisingly, pointed to Beatrix’s room.

He found his way there and entered, and engaged in a practice which seemed new to him. It was a kind of sniffing with his mind. He gravitated towards a vent high on the wall. He dragged a chair over to it. But he didn’t stand on it. Something wasn’t right.

He thought for a moment, then dragged the chair a few feet to the left, and stood on it. He waved his hand in front of a blank region of the concrete wall. Then knocked on it. The knock did not sound like concrete, but metal. The patch of blank wall dissolved to reveal a second vent, concealed by a simple illusion. He opened the vent and removed the locket.

[Very good. You are detestable, but have been a useful pawn. Now bring it to me.]

Russet examined the locket, turning it over in his hands. He slipped it into his pocket, hidden away behind his cape. “No way.”

[You will give it to me. This is my command. do you understand?]

“You have got to be one of the crappiest psychic masterminds of all time.”

[When I find you I am going to bite you in the face.]

“Pff.”

High above a range of spiky, snowcapped mountains, Herbert sat in his rocket chair with the same expression one might have after recently deflating a whoopee cushion without the use of one’s hands.

The White House, archaic-looking, though otherwise identical to the genuine article, nestled among the rocky peaks. He swiveled his head to get a sense of the majestic panorama, hopeful for the sliver of a chance that these might be the Rocky Mountains. That hope became slimmer when he noticed an object near the forested horizon, small and distant, spinning in place. It was the holographic beacon.

Beneath his hand, Herbert noticed a small control panel had revealed itself on the chair’s armrest. He used it to navigate the noisy piece of furniture towards Fort Crossnest.

[Be reasonable. What use could you have with the object, Rustic?]

“Russet. I’m going to hold on to it and keep it safe. For Beatrix.”

[The other male is after it too. Your friend, Granite.]

“Well, if Grant needs it, then I guess I’m protecting it for him too.” He thought about his friend, and the sense of fondness that was present when he entered his mind. He found that feeling tempered while on his meds, blunted by this form of uncomfortable sobriety. Was it truly such a deep friendship, or just a kind of loyalty to his older brother-figure? Grant had always tirelessly looked out for him. But then, hadn’t that also been what Beatrix had done ever since he met her? In the sterile conditions of his mind, he found he could better analyze these feelings, as if in a laboratory. Yet conclusions were no more forthcoming.

[You can’t protect it for both.]

“Watch me! Or better yet, go screw yourself.”

[Which side are you on?]

Russet paused, then muttered to himself, “That’s what I’d like to know.”

He stood by the bedside table. Under the doll, he was surprised to find a number of cartoon sketches, among which was a nice rendering of himself. He smiled briefly. He felt confused. There was a knot in his stomach when he thought of Beatrix and her kindness. Guilt? He was not depressed, but felt like he should be. He knew there would be no elation to be found in anything, either. Not any time soon. This thought somehow depressed him on a more fundamental level than any palpable depression. He wished he hadn’t taken his medication.

He picked up the doll. For some reason, the thought of the great Campmaster Thundleshick and his infinite wisdom entered his mind. Was there anything this magnificent man couldn’t do? In an act of spontaneous curiosity, he twisted it. He vanished. The unsupported doll fell to the floor.

In a third-floor room, there was a pair of queen beds covered in rumpled, untucked sheets. There was a boy lounging in each bed. The two of them lazily absorbed the sales pitches from loud infomercials.

“I don’t understand what’s so amazing about this blender. If anything, it seems less useful than the average blender.”

“What are you talking about? It’s the Magic Bullet!” Russet endorsed enthusiastically. “It probably has all sorts of horsepower. Did you even see how fast they made that chicken salad??”

Grant considered the extraordinary boast. “Why the heck would you use a blender to make chicken salad, anyway? Besides, the compartment seems unusually small. Like if they’re making salsa or something, when they call for tomatoes or onions, it’s always a cherry tomato, or a pearl onion. So they can fit them the stupid thing.”

“I fail to see the problem with that.”

Grant wrinkled his nose at what he regarded as a needlessly phallic appliance. He looked at Russet, who was rapt in the program, and decided not to voice that particular grievance. Grant picked up the remote and changed the channel to a live broadcast of the 2000 Summer Olympics women’s gymnastics competition.

The boys listened to the sounds of feminine athletic exertion and the slapping of gym mats with chalked extremities. At the sight of a snug leotard, bunched in strategic points about a muscular frame, Grant raised his eyebrows and said to his friend, “Nothing wrong with that now, eh, buddy?”

Russet folded his arms with stylized impatience. Grant smirked at the ten year-old boy, who in his estimation was probably not quite mature enough to appreciate such spectacles. Then again, only several years his superior, Grant barely was either. In any case, he thought those girls were all a bit freakishly muscular, and made for targets of admiration in the same way a workhorse pulling a plow was to an equestrian.

“Could we please switch it to HSN now? This is boring.”

Grant handed over the remote. Russet hopped eagerly through the channels, passing by in the blink of an eye some form of animated entertainment.

“Hey, was that Cowboy Bebop?” Grant wondered.

“Dunno! Maybe.”

“Was it one we’ve seen?”

“I think we’ve seen enough of what you want to watch for a while.” Russet settled on footage of a slowly rotating object so gaudy, it could only have been obtained by mugging a gypsy, a pimp, or most likely, some cross-pollination of the two specimens.

“Sweet Jesus, only six hours left for the Epiphany Collection! My God, could that price be slashed any lower?”

It was always hard for Grant to tell if Russet enjoyed watching and commenting on the Home Shopping Network ironically.

Grant was descending the other side of a heavy sigh at the prospect of another gauntlet of televised sales pitches when he glanced at Russet’s prescription bottle on the bedside table.

“Looks like you’re empty.”

“Oh. Right.” Russet didn’t remove his gaze from the shimmering bargain jewelry.

Grant waited for the obligatory pause to subside. He continued, raising his voice over a particularly aggressive endorsement from satisfied consumer, Deborah in Pensacola, Florida. “You should go refill the prescription now.”

Russet turned, his expression flattened out. “I wonder why you insist on using that word? There is no prescription. Or doctor. There’s just you.”

Grant stared back, holding up his end of the well-rehearsed game of chicken. Russet went on. “It’s always been just you. I wonder how you even know this is the right medication for me.”

“Just go.”

Beatrix wandered down the corridor with the shell-shocked look of a bombing survivor. She’d been to her room to retrieve the locket, hoping Grant might provide some insight into the artifact. It was gone.

At an intersection, she nearly collided with Carmen, who wore a similarly spooked look.

“Hi,” Carmen said. Her greeting was not the usual assault of nervous energy. “Is everything alright?”

“Hi. I… I think I lost something.”

“Yeah, me too.” Though they’d both found accord on this issue, Carmen seemed less than forthcoming with high-five offers.

“I should probably go see Grant and Russet about this.”

Carmen nodded. “I should probably go find my pet.”

“… Pet?”

Russet trotted downstairs to the sprawling empty hotel lobby. His shoes squeaked on the floor, echoing through the ghostly space. His whole world—all that he could remember, at least—was one of empty rooms.

He walked by the shelves supporting handy tourism pamphlets on historic colonial attractions, and pushed through one of the heavy front doors, meeting the howling ocean wind. He made his way down the valet driveway and turned, walking alongside the fragment of the city park. The empty, rusted parked cars were commonplace to him, invisible. He turned at the corner to face rows of storefronts and apartment buildings, obscured by salty mist with greater distance. He entered the pharmacy.

He pressed a hand on the counter and threw his legs over it, leaving a handprint in the dust. The shelves were amply stocked with hundreds of forms of medication, most of which were useless to the only two people who occupied any building in a block and a half radius. Russet unscrewed the lid to the larger store of Divalproex, and refilled his container. He at times contemplated bringing the whole thing up with him. But this way, it at least allowed for that possibility of running out, even if it only briefly escaped his friend’s diligent watch.

He left the store and walked down the street to the asphalt edge, an abrupt termination of the road. The ocean stretched uninterrupted to the horizon. Its gentle waves made sloshing noises on the base of the urban platform, about five yards below his feet. It was five yards of savage concrete and uprooted rebar, harboring knots of barnacles and pockets of green, scummy growth. He sat down, his legs swinging over the edge, and unfocused his eyes at his orange bottle towards the water below.

“Hey. What’s up?”

Russet turned around, surprised to hear Grant’s voice. He looked back at the water. “Do you think we’ll ever leave this place?”

Grant had never heard him ask that. In fact, any time Grant would bring it up, Russet tended to change the subject. “Why do you want to know now?”

“I don’t know. I just think it might be fun to be able to meet other people. Couldn’t we take a boat? Or fly?”

“I’d like nothing more than to leave too. But I’ve never been sure exactly where we are. Or how far we are from land. We could be in the middle of the Pacific Ocean for all we know. If that’s the case, taking a boat would probably result in getting lost for weeks at sea, and probably dying out there.”

“Oh…”

“Flying could take days too, and I just don’t have the magic capital for it. I’ve never been good with flying spells. Maybe if I gave myself big wings like a dragon…” Grant thought about it for a second, as if the idea held the slightest morsel of promise. He shook his head. “I’m sure you could pull it off, if you weren’t on your meds. But how long would it last before you crashed? Uh, literally, I guess? Do you want to take that risk for both of us?”

“I guess not.”

“Besides, I don’t know why, but magic just isn’t quite as potent here on Earth.”

Russet turned and made a funny face at him. “As opposed to where?”

“Oh. Never mind.”

“Is this really all there is? If there’s so much more to the world, why can’t I get to see it? To be able to visit the places I’ve seen on TV. To be able to buy some of the merchandise. It’s like…” He paused. “It’s like I’m missing out on a future I can’t have, and a past I can’t remember. All the while I’m stuck in a present in which I can only function on these damned horse tranquilizers. Why can’t I remember anything other than living here alone with you? About my parents, or where I grew up, or how we even got stuck here? Or…” Russet stopped. Most disturbing of all to him was, when he tried to think about it, he couldn’t remember anything prior to that day. And for some reason, he didn’t want to. He couldn’t even bring himself to ask.

Grant broke in, as if reading his mind. “Some things aren’t worth remembering fully. Better to enjoy the moment.”

They paused. It was quiet. Not even seagulls. There were never seagulls. This told Grant more than anything how far from land they probably were.

Russet was standing up. “Maybe it won’t always be like this. Maybe some day I’ll get better completely, and I’ll be able to use all the magic I want. Then I can take us both anywhere.”

“I hope so.” Grant rested his hand on Russet’s shoulder. “One way or another, I promise we’ll get off of this stupid island, if you can call it that. It will be soon.”

“Splendid. I’d love to meet other people.”

Grant tussled his friend’s hair, ruining hours of work spent in front of a bathroom mirror. “Hey, since when do we even need anyone else, buddy?”

Russet laughed, and looked into his friend’s reassuring eyes. He trusted him completely, and knew Grant’s promise would be upheld. Though neither could have known it would take another four years to uphold it.

Herbert held the phone up to his ear. “No, nothing yet.” He pushed the hang-up button a few times as if it served any purpose, probably on account of the fact that that’s what they sometimes did in movies.

Grant sat on the floor in front of the odd mailbox-sized machine the phone was hooked into. The front hatch to the clear plastic case was open. He operated on the peculiar mechanical parts inside, which all seemed designed to accommodate the two discs with ‘3π’ labeled between them. After some inscrutable adjustment, he said, “Okay, try again.”

“Hey, I’m getting a tone now. Nice!” Herbert began dialing his home phone number. “I guess you’re pretty good with machines, aren’t you… Grant, was it?”

He nodded. “Uh, yeah. I’ve had to fix a few before.”

Herbert finished dialing authoritatively and continued, “You have to be able to take things into your own hands. You can’t count on all these idiotic miracles or fat old magicians to solve all your problems for you. That’s what I’m learning.”

“Couldn’t agree more, Herbert.”

“It’s nice to finally talk to someone around here who’s not totally out of his gourd. Not like your lunatic friend, Clove. No offense. Or that counselor girl who’s completely batshi—hey…” Herbert halted his ramble. “Why isn’t this thing ringing yet?” He looked down at the machine which had allegedly been repaired. The two discs were spooling slowly.

“Give it a second.”

Herbert nearly dropped the phone at the surprise of the voice behind him. The tone was less than relaxed. “Herbert. You’re back!” Beatrix didn’t look exactly pleased to see him, and Carmen didn’t look like she exactly… saw him. She was spacing out, biting a nail.

Herbert was about to say something, but detected activity on the phone which required his attention. He held up a finger to the girls. “Hang on, can’t talk now. Oh. Yeah, Carmen, I’ve got a bone to pick with you about the quest. Oh, and you too, Beatrix. You’re not off the hook either. We need to have a little talk.”

Beatrix sank very slightly in contrition from the rebuke she knew she probably deserved. Carmen’s reaction was somewhat different. “I forgot all about it! My gosh, the quest! How did it go? What bounty did you receive?!”

On another occasion this would have been a good story to tell through a volley of ad hominem and reddened facial expressions, an occasion to which Herbert would have risen with aplomb. He was on the phone though, so a pithy summation would have to do. “He gave me some rolls of toilet paper.”

“Oooooh. That is awesome! You know, good TP is hard to come by around here. Good job, Junior Camper Herbert! High-fi—” Herbert shushed her and listened.

It was the same kind of sound he’d heard over the phone before. It was a low-pitched sound gradually becoming louder, higher in pitch. The noise reached its peak, then began sliding down again, as if over a lazy hill of sound. This happened again, as Herbert concentrated. Then again. They were happening faster, at a higher pitch, until the entire hills of sound were short, rhythmic, increasingly frequent “bips”.

biiiip biiip biiip biip bip bip bip bip bip-bip-bip-bip-bi-bi-bi-bi-bbbbbbbrrrrrrriiiiiiiiing.

Herbert waited.

riiing.

“It’s… ringing. Finally.”

Beatrix sidled over to Grant. She glanced around, as if participating in a theatrical brand of espionage. Samantha and Simon were in the rec. room, over by the couch amusing themselves with the box of magical trinkets. They waved to her. The soup can was there too. It appeared to be in the middle of a moronic face-off with the slumbering Vend-O-Badge machine.

She whispered to Grant, “I can’t find it. The Slipknot.”

He whispered back. “What? What do you mean?”

“It’s gone. I lost it.”

“Well, where did you last see it?”

Carmen had sidled up as well, ready to deal her own persuasion of dire intrigue. “Guys, I think we have bigger things to worry about. He’s… loose.”

riiing.

Someone picked up on the other end. “Hello?”

Herbert jumped at the unmistakable sound of his father’s voice. “Hey, quiet guys! Hello? Dad?” He waited for a response which did not come. “Hello?? Dad, are you there??”

“You’re going to have to wait a little while. For the disc to finish spooling,” Grant said.

“And why is that, exactly?”

Russet found himself amidst a small mob of smelly, agitated primates. The way they gathered around him in this dank castle parlor, he surmised they’d all been preoccupied with the doll shortly before he arrived, possibly evaluating its comestible properties. His sudden appearance was a rude and frightening occurrence, as most unexpected things are to savage, brainless apes.

With a look of disgust, he made a snapping motion with his wand, effecting one of the few spells his current condition would afford. There was a loud firecracker noise and a bright spark from the tip of his wand. The apes went into shrieking flight for cover.

It had been several minutes and Herbert was still waiting for his dad to answer. The last thing he’d heard from his father was, “Oh, hey, champ. Yeah, I’m here. I can hear you. Can you hear me alright? Honestly I’m surprised to hear from you so soon!” In fact, he’d heard it several times already, since Grant had showed him how to replay the audio from the last transmission.

It was becoming difficult to focus on why these peculiar constraints even existed. Herbert found it hard to monitor the phone for another response from his dad, carry on a conversation with Grant about obscure telecommunications phenomena, and filter out the distractions in the room all at once. Lentil was now emitting yapping noises like a small dog, directed at the badge machine. The orphan kids, to Herbert’s lament, had discovered and wound up the Singe Vilain, and now sounded as if they were auditioning for an edgy comedy series on HBO.

Between fits of obscene language, Simon tootled away inharmoniously on a flute, causing a swarm of cockroaches to march in well-disciplined phalanx. He remarked on his handiwork. “Whoa, &β#$© coool!”

“Simon, give me a ∑@%& turn with the &β#$© magic flute.” He capitulated and gave his sister the instrument.

Herbert held his head, as if to contain the throbbing agent inside trying to escape. “Okay. Can you explain this clearly? What does this weird magical phone machine do?”

“Actually, it’s not magical at all,” Grant replied. “It’s a simple magnetic tape device for recording sound. There is a delay in the conversation because it needs time to spool the audio signal from Earth, and then compress it down before playing it back. Or I guess more accurately, it just plays it back at a higher speed.”

“What?”

“Similarly, it needs to record your end of the conversation, and then play it back over the receiver in slow-motion.”

“Why would it need to do that?” Herbert looked as if he was humoring the vivid spiel of a lunatic searching for converts to his new religion. One that conservatively involved aliens, Pokemon trading cards, and the ghost of Colonel Sanders.

The discs reversed direction, and sped up. Herbert’s father spoke over the phone. “Yes, Herb. Your mother made some dinner and now we’re settling in for the evening here. How was the bus ride to the camp? It was a long day of travel, so I’d guess you’re tired, huh?”

“What? What do you mean? That was days ago. What… what day do you think it is it?” Herbert looked at Grant, then said into the phone, “Hang on dad,” though it was pretty clear by now he didn’t really need to buy any time from his father’s end of the conversation. The discs had reversed direction and slowed down.

Herbert held up his hand, making a “do I really need to ask?” gesture at Grant. “Uh…” Grant hemmed. “Right. The phone has to work this way because of the time differential between the two worlds. Time moves slower on Earth than it does here. By a factor of 3π, to be precise.”

“… Oh. Well 3π, no Δ!%§®. How could I not &β#$© know that.” The Singe Vilain had begun whir its way across the room on sputtering plastic legs, carrying with it its sphere of influence. The little army of cockroaches followed it like the grand marshal in a kind of pocket-sized pestilence/obscenity themed parade.

“Go monkey! $*©#@ go! Ha, ha!” Simon exhilarated.

“Look at the little &β#$© troops!” Samantha said between spirited toots on the charmed instrument. “They are so $!#¢® cute!”

Herbert put down the phone and calmly strolled across the room. He raised his foot, and brought it down on the toy monkey. The roaches broke rank and scuttled about the debris of cheap Chinese plastic bits. The orphans frowned.

“Anyway,” Grant said, “It’s like this. For every minute that passes on Earth, a little less than ten pass in this realm. Similarly, for every year that passes there, almost ten years go by here. Think of it like two rivers, one fast, the other slow. We’re on the fast river.”

Herbert turned to Carmen. “I’m not sure why I’m asking you this, but does this sound right?” She nodded. Herbert shook his head. “Why didn’t anyone tell me this??”

Beatrix’s face seemed to share his concern. She said to Grant, “Yeah, I’m kind of wondering when you were going to get around to mentioning this too.”

“I guess I thought you knew already. Or had figured it out. I don’t know. I’ve had a lot on my mind, looking for… Russet.”

The discs reversed direction and sped up. Herbert held the phone to his ear. His father spoke. “It’s the third, isn’t it? (Dear, what’s the date? Isn’t it the third?) Yeah, June third, your first day of summer camp. So Herb, I imagine by now you’re privy to the big surprise. I hope you’re not too crushed about not having to do all those accounting drills.” By William’s tone, Herbert could tell he was rather amused with himself. “Well, tell you what. When you get back, I’ll make it up to you. We can sit down as a family and we can all get a head start on the taxes for the next fiscal year. You’re on spreadsheet duties all the way, champ. That’s a promise. But in the meantime, maybe you can do your old man a favor and try to have some fun. I hear that Thundleshick guy has a few things up his sleeve for—”

“Dad!” Herbert tried in vain to interrupt the audio recording of his dad’s monologue. “Dad! Enough with the accounting stuff, da— Dad! I’m trying to tell you some—Oh, jesus.”

He held the phone in front of his face, grimacing at it with frustration. Not being able to get to his father was nothing new. Chalking up the miscommunication to a pronounced multi-dimensional time schism barely occurred to him. Anyone well acquainted with his family relationships might not have had the thought either.

Herbert scrunched against the door in the back seat of the car, trying to ignore his family. They were on their way to Florida for a winter vacation, and from the periphery of his awareness, his parents and brother might have been attempting to sing together. He couldn’t be sure though, as he’d done his best to filter out the intolerable behavior by focusing on the strange book he’d found recently.

“_______, where do you hope the Allotment Socks shall send you?” _______ asked

“Hmmmmmm I don’t know” _______ was so confused by this new place and all of these new friends and new adventures “I hope they send me to the one which values friendship above all else!” _______ said, he sounded brave and heroic.

“HA!!!” ______ scoffed arragantly. “As if you have what it takes.” He was brash and haughty and nobody liked him.

“Don’t listen to him _______ his arragance will be his downfall.”

The reading experience for Herbert was the cerebral equivalent of biting into a lemon. He wasn’t sure which was more difficult to endure—the manuscript, or his family’s relentless good cheer.

“Hey, Herb, we could use some backup,” William said from the driver’s seat. “What are you reading there?”

“I think it’s one of his Valera books,” Seymour said. “Did you know he’s obsessed with a girl’s book, dad?”

“It’s not Vera.” Herbert said. “It’s something I found in Louis’ old room.”

“Oh, yeah.” Donna smiled at him from the front passenger seat. “I think it’s wonderful that you’re taking an interest in your brother’s work. What do you think of it?”

“It’s… um...” Herbert fumbled for a diplomatic word. “Enthusiastic. So what happened to him, anyway?”

Seymour leapt to change the subject as if putting out a grease fire in the kitchen. “Hey! What should we sing next! My vote is for Camptown Races!”

His father gave a mock-salute into the rearview mirror and began counting “a one, a two…” to jumpstart the old-timey melody. Seymour relaxed back into the leather seat and basked his parents’ good cheer. He whispered towards his brother, “Let’s not do anything to bring them down. They’ve been so happy lately.” He paused, putting a dash of something into his expression which made him seem slightly maniacal. “And it’s all thanks to you, Herbert.”

Herbert looked faintly nauseated. The remark confused and irritated him. Before he could ask for a clarification, Seymour had turned to contribute his boisterous vocals and suspect harmonics at the lyric, “All the doo-dah day!”

Herbert redoubled upon the poor fiction in his lap. He had nothing in common with his current travel mates, and was dumbfounded to think he shared any genes with them at all.

From what he could decipher about the book, through the copious CIA-style omission of certain names and items, it was about children. The children in the book tended to be adopted orphans, and though they were all harrowingly one-dimensional, cliché-spouting nitwits, at least they were free from the bondage of family lunacy. And for this, Herbert envied them with all his heart.

The phone was back on its hook. He hadn’t made much progress with his father, and before hanging up in frustration with the faltering mode of communication, he issued the statement, “Okay, look. Can’t talk now. Summer camp is magical deathtrap from hell. Thundleshick lied and picked my pockets. Weird time vortex. Send help if possible. Will talk later. Bye.”

The room was silent. Herbert tapped the top of the recording device’s plastic case as he thought about what to do. But something wasn’t quite right in the rec. room. Everyone felt it, but couldn’t place it. Herbert spaced out into the corner of the room. Then he saw what it was. There were now two Vend-O-Badge machines. One of them had a broad, jagged metal grin, and a pair of eyes just above it, spaced far apart from each other.

It was Lentil. He stood next to the other machine, smiling quietly, and looking quite pleased with himself. Herbert ogled the pair with a distant look in his eye utterly unique to those who behold unspeakable stupidity.

He decided the stupid event was not worth commenting on. And in any case, he just realized he had something more important to address. He was mad at Beatrix.

“Anyway,” he said sharply. “Beatrix, what gives?”

“Huh?”

“Don’t you have some explaining to do? I think you know what I’m talking about.”

“Oh, um…” She was momentarily chagrined, but then found her own wellspring of righteous indignation. “I could ask you the same thing! That was a pretty mean trick, opening the doll while I was gone. Do you realize you almost got all of us killed?” She overemphasized the word to wring the literal meaning from it.

“Well, sorry. I just wasn’t sure if I could trust you. What, are you stalking me or something? What do you want from me?”

“I wanted to tell you…” She trailed off. Her handle on the situation was unraveling.

“Tell me what? Where did you get that info about me?” Herbert was hiking up his volume with each inquiry. Grant and Carmen traded askance looks of discomfort.

“It was hard to come by. I finally got it from a place that had extensive archives on kids with sketchy documentation.”

“Sketchy documentation? What the hell does that mean?”

“I was going to tell you everything, Herbert. I really was.”

“Tell me what? What are you talking about?”

“Well, for starters…” Beatrix took a breath, and blew a strand of hair from her face. “You’re adopted, Herbert.”

Herbert’s face drew from a great pool of emotive possibilities, but came up empty.

“$*©#@.”

The others looked around, wondering if the Singe Vilain had been reassembled and wound up.

It had not.

“Are you sure you want to do this? It’ll probably be dangerous. Not to mention a lot of hard work.”

“Yeah, J.” ‘J.’ was how Beatrix referred to her older roommate, Jamal.

“It’s that important to you? Guess it must be. It’s all you seem to talk about, finding this kid.” Jamal did not take his eyes off the notepad he was writing in.

“So where is it?”

He paused his pen-work, and looked up at her from his slouched position against the wall in their attic room of the North Jersey Orphanasium. It was a franchise on the rise, with branches sprouting up all over the tri-state region. They were being filled to capacity at an alarming rate, largely thanks to marketing brass’s ground-breaking Refer-an-Urchin® Bonus Points program.

“Nearby. Why don’tcha write this down.”

Beatrix stood outside the bleak warehouse on a raw winter afternoon. She uncrumpled a sheet of loose-leaf paper containing Jamal’s directions, on the back of which she’d earlier scrawled a few notes in haste.

Wizardy(SP?) Herbert

summer camp?

…

Tristin Sheath Sheeth

A high pitched voice made her jump and recrumple the note back into her pocket all at once. She recognized the faces right away, and gave them a bright smile. “Hi, guys. Long time no see!”

“Beatrix! Yay! Hi!” Simon beamed.

“What have you been up to lately? Are you still, um… living on the streets?” She wasn’t sure what the best way to phrase that question was. Luckily, she’d found conversing with simple-minded orphans wasn’t exactly a diplomatic minefield.

“Yes. But it has been okay,” Samantha said. “We have fun adventures sometimes. Did you find a home yet?”

“I… sort of. I guess you guys are here for the same thing as me, then?”

“The word is that this is a warm place to stay with things to eat. And maybe, if we are lucky, a place to be adopted by new parents. If you don’t mind doing some work first. That is what the other orphans are saying.”

“I guess we’ll find out. I suppose this place must have information on all sorts of kids like us, wouldn’t you say?” Beatrix rhetorically posed.

Simon nodded vigorously, though it could just as easily been in response to the question, “Do you think puppies should be given the right to vote?”

“I’m so happy to see you, Beatrix. It has been such a long time!”

“Yeah! We haven’t seen you much since…” Simon though about it. “That really weird and sad day.”

“Simon!” his sister hissed. “Inxnay on the eirdway… um… dayday.”

“Wasn’t it on Christmas? A bunch of Christmassesses ago?”

“Shh!”

Beatrix laughed. “Shall we go inside?”

On the other side of a chain link fence, a man in a trench coat watched them from a distance. The trench coat reached the ground, concealing his feet. He had a gray, prickly moustache. His lips curled upward at the children as they departed. He twitched his proud, substantial nose.

The Rubicund Wayfare rocked gently in the dim light of Level 37. Nemoira was tying a knot somewhere, likely in keeping with the onerous maintenance regimen for the ship’s preposterous plethora of bright sails.

She paused midway through a knot so complex, it could only be executed magically. (One of the very few tasks actually warranting a magical merit badge, which ironically, was not rewarded by one.)

“I know you are there.”

[What?]

“I can feel you. Poking around in my head.”

[Silence, boat woman. (chomp chomp) I command it. (chomp chomp)]

“I can hear you chewing too. Really, must you make chewing noises in your mind as you eat?

Elsewhere in a dark corner of Fort Crossnest, Pycroft sat up from his meal, startled, as if being spied upon. He snorted, wiped the blood from his lips, and delved back into the masticated snoogerfitch carcass.

[You should mind your own business. (chomp) Why don’t you go back to doing uninteresting things with rope on the Rubberband Wafer?]

“The Rubicund… never mind. I don’t see why I should correct you.”

[You are ugly. And you are dumb.]

“And you are up to no good. I’m going to find you and stop you.”

[I command you to shut up forever.]

She said nothing. This response made Pycroft nervous.

It was another quiet afternoon in the attic. The only sound was that of pens on paper. It was as if the two writing implements were conversing with each other in a hushed, scribbly tongue.

Beatrix interrupted the conversation with a mildly exasperated sigh. Jamal stopped writing. “Something wrong?”

“I just can’t seem to draw anything good today. I should get out with the sketchpad more often.”

“Know what you mean. I’d get out myself. It’s cold out there, though.”

“I wonder if any art schools would let me in with work like this. Of course, it’s not enough just to get in. I’d need a scholarship.”

“Can I see?”

“I don’t want to distract you. Aren’t you pushing a deadline?”

“Right. As if people are camping out in lines around the block to read it. Lemme see.”

“Well, I want to read it. I don’t suppose you’d let me sneak a look before it’s done?”

“Not a chance,” Jamal said, taking the sketchpad. He brushed a few dreadlocks over his shoulder, settling in to evaluate the art. He made the face of one who’d just received a terrible insult. “You’re insane. These are all awesome, as usual. What’s really buggin’ you there?”

She shrugged.

“You still looking for that guy? Wizard-what’s-his-name? You haven’t really mentioned it for a while. I’m starting to worry.”

“Sort of. I know his name, and that’s about it. I just can’t find him. He’s not listed anywhere.”

A Xeroxed sheet of paper slipped out of the pad has he flipped through it. He squinted at the photo of Herbert. “This is him?”

She nodded.

Jamal’s look of puzzlement did not fade. It cemented into one of concern. “I’m pretty sure I know this guy. Or met him, some time ago.”

“What? Really?” Beatrix hurried to his vantage, as if his recognition could some how rub off on her, like a form of contagion.

“Yeah. The eye patch kid. I knew his brother, years ago. At least I thought he was his brother. I wasn’t actually sure if they were related. He was an odd kid.”

“Do you know where he lives?”

“I know where his brother lives. Or at least used to. I haven’t heard from him in ages. Louis Eggwood. Another odd kid, sort of an aspiring writer, you could say. Really… enthusiastic.”

“Eggwood?”

“Yeah. This says this guy’s last name is Herbert. Maybe that’s why you couldn’t find him.”

“Must be.” She looked at Jamal. She didn’t need to ask. Her look said it all.

“Alright, let’s go. I’ve already missed two deadlines. What’s one more.”

Herbert leaned forward, groping for a way to summarize, almost as if cognizant of his duty to brief any tardy invisible listeners. “So this guy named Sheeth basically said you should be looking for me? And that I’m the key to everything you want to know? Was he more specific?”

“No,” she replied. “I don’t think he was sure if he’d be able to meet me here at all. He might have been in some sort of trouble. I honestly don’t know why he wanted to help me.”

Grant crossed his leg in a compellingly casual manner. “Do you have any idea who this Sheeth fellow is?” ‘Fellow’ was a compellingly casual word.

“No. Someone from here, I’d guess. We were cut off before I could find out more.”

“What, so this was a phone call?” Herbert asked.

“Uh… sort of.”

“I don’t want to alarm you, but have you considered the possibility that this guy just wants the Slipknot?” Grant said. “And as long as we’re on the subject, we probably ought to be looking for it before it falls into the wrong hands.”

Somewhere in Herbert’s mind, he knew Grant was right. The portentous warnings of the puffy shirt episode, the mysterious window into what was possibly his future self’s demise—it all added up to something disturbing, a call to action for a reluctant hero. But Herbert wasn’t thinking about any of that. He was casting a wistful look at Beatrix.

“So, you’ve really been looking for me all this time?”

She replied with a demure nod.

“You should have said something.”

Herbert’s reprimand was disrupted by something akin to déjà vu. Elsewhere in the room, the two orphans giggled as Lentil hopped around on peg and coaster feet, spitting out badges. He blurred his vision in Simon’s direction. There was something familiar about this.

The omnipresent din of the suburban Newark-area shopping mall seemed to help Jamal focus on his writing. He was glued to his pad, mostly managing to tune out the ridiculous clandestine spy games of the others sitting at the food court table. Beatrix craned her neck to see around a large potted plant, getting a view of the Office Depot’s entrance. Samantha and Simon mimicked her effort, fiercely striving to earn the sidekick badges awarded to them on good faith.

“See him in there?” she asked.

“I stopped watching,” Jamal replied, not lifting his pen. “The thrill of observing someone shop for office supplies was too much for me to handle. I’m afraid if he buys some printer ink cartridges I might pass out.”

“Well, you followed him all the way here with us. Aren’t you a little curious to know about him?”