“I’m not the one with the weird pseudo-crush on this kid. If you really want to go out on a date with him, why don’t you just go ask him?”

“You’re such an ass, J.”

“Maybe you could fashion a bouquet out of manila envelopes and Post-It notes.”

“Beatrix, there he is!” Samantha blurted, ecstatic to provide critical intel. “It is the one-eyed boy!”

“I see him. Thanks, Samantha.” She watched the boy, who was examining a shopping list. He picked up a clipboard from a bin, and gave it a bored inspection for a price tag.

“Why does he wear an eye patch?” Simon wondered. “Is he a pirate?”

“Haven’t you ever read any spy novels?” Jamal replied. “In the world of espionage, you’re bound to run into rogues like him. They frequently wear eye patches, tattoos, or even prosthetic limbs. I bet he reeks of bourbon, and perhaps the sea.”

“He is a rogue?” Samantha said with a look of wonder.

“Will you say hi to the rogue boy, Beatrix?” Simon asked.

“I don’t think I’m ready to talk to him yet. He’s supposed to know something about my sister. But I don’t know anything about him, or if he was involved with her death. I don’t know if he knows who I am, or what.”

“Do you know who you are?” Jamal said while dotting the end of a paragraph and turning the page. Beatrix wasn’t listening.

“Simon, why don’t you go talk to him?”

“Me?????” Simon’s mouth looked like it was preparing to catch an egg.

“Yeah. I’m sure he wouldn’t know you. Maybe you can try to get some information. Especially about the summer camp. Simon? Wait…”

Simon was already sprinting toward the store as if they’d just announced a drastic sale on pie filling, and he was a famished boy made of dough.

Russet bumped into a teetering heap of garbage, causing it to bend like a willow yielding to a stiff breeze. It toppled, releasing every bit of its pent-up potential for noisy commotion on the stone floor. Russet spat a curse into the darkness.

He was sure this must be Thundleshick’s castle. Except by some mishap, he’d been transported to this musty dump of a spiderhole rather than his prestigious royal chamber. If he’d been thinking more clearly, it would have occurred to him that wise old magicians weren’t actually kings, and didn’t sit on a throne. And if he could see more clearly, he might have noticed the wise old magician himself smiling at him through a small window in the wall.

Russet found an open bottle of scotch on a messy table. He lifted it to his nose and flinched at the fumes.

“I’d had designs on a drink myself,” the melodious voice spoke. “The soft palette’s been mighty dry today.”

“Aah!!” Russet was startled.

Thundleshick remained motionless, beaming at him through the window. He seemed serene, at peace, just as Russet pictured wise old magicians to be. Only less hygienic.

“Thundleshick? Wow. I hope you’ll pardon my intrusion, sir, but…”

“Have patience, good boy. I’ll entertain your concerns in a moment, once I stand up from my throne. ”

“Wait… sorcerers have thrones?”

The question was answered with a flushing noise, and the sound of swirling water.

Herbert knew he was being watched by the young boy standing approximately eighteen inches from him and looking right at him, but chose not to acknowledge it. He simply went about his casual shopping, considering whether the pocket calculator was cheap enough to put into his basket.

Simon was holding something he hadn’t looked at yet. He made his best effort to initiate unsuspicious banter. “Hi, um, hey! Do you know anything about these…” He looked at the item he was holding. “Office deep pot brand… recky leed… leether-etty… um. This thing here?” He asked, regarding the Office Depot® Brand Recycled Leatherette Twin-Pocket Portfolios, Teal Pack of 10. Simon had only begun to learn to read recently. He was a sharp boy, and Beatrix was a decent tutor, but some of Office Depot’s retail products were a mouthful by anyone’s standard.

Herbert looked down at the boy, and after a moment, dealt him a smirk. “Hey, kid. Are you stocking up for Accounting Camp too?”

“What’s a Counting Camp?”

“Hmm. Guess you’re not as big a sucker as me then.” Herbert reached for a red-brimmed visor from a bin, marked at a discount. “What do you think. Should I get one of these, just in case?”

“Yes!”

“What the hell are these things for, anyway. What do they even have to do with accounting? Are we going to be crunching numbers on the beach?”

“I have never been to the beach before.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you haven’t kid.”

“Do you like the beach? Is it fun? Also, can you really ‘crunch’ numbers??”

“Hey, kid, what do you want from me?”

Simon’s resolve instantly crumbled. He was sure the jig was up. He looked back at his food court HQ for visual assistance. Beatrix quickly covered her face, ducked down, and ran away. Jamal looked up from his work.

“Do you know those people?” Herbert asked. “Why’s the black guy with the dreads looking at me?”

Beatrix was already out of view. But not taking any chances, she ran all the way to the restroom corridor and turned the corner. She’d hardly had a moment to reflect on her silly overreaction when she nearly bumped into a tall man in a trench coat. With his moustache and silvery hair, he looked dignified. With his coat that was so long, it covered his feet completely, he looked creepy and somewhat deranged.

“Ah, little girl! I smelled that you would be here soon.”

“Excuse me?”

“My name is Burt Hastings, and your name is Beatrix Tipplepot, is it not? Yes, it is. It is a pleasure to meet you.”

“Uh… yeah…” Out of kneejerk formality, she offered a handshake, but quickly regretted it. Caught in the act, she had no choice but to leave it there, a proposition which seemed to momentarily stymie Hastings. He considered the hand, approaching it like a riddle to overcome, like a dog with a towel over its head. Beatrix noticed his hands were firmly stuffed into his coat pockets, unmoving. On closer inspection, she saw that the sleeves were actually sewn into the pockets.

Hastings finally stooped down, bringing his rosy cheek to her hand. He smiled, and nuzzled against it affectionately. It appeared that in his mind, this was a serviceable substitute for the gesture. Beatrix recoiled in revulsion.

A startled Hastings hissed through his nose, but regrouped, keeping his head at her face-level. “Young lady, if you come with me, I will show you a land of magic and wonder and…” Beatrix was already winding up for a punch.

Her ring-fingered fist planted squarely on his nose. It gushed with blood. He gasped, hobbled backwards a bit, and vanished into vaporous smoke. His trench coat flattened on the ground, and a yellow piece of paper followed it, floating downward. She picked it up.

MAGICAL SUMMER CAMP

It really “spells” fun for your child!

• Enchantments

• Camp Quests

• Friends for a lifetime

• “Other things as well!” …

Depart from Greyhound bus terminal at Newark Penn Station

The fun begins June 3, 2004!

Call (201) 555-2328 (leave message for Elwin)

“Hello? Hello? Are you there, Mr. Marlevort? Confound this technology.”

After a moment, the voice in Hastings’ ear spoke. “I’m here, Burt. Do I really have to explain about the time differential each time we speak?”

“Yes, that’s right. The time whatsit. Anyway, how are you, sir?” There was a pause. “Hello? Sir?”

“Oh, Jesus.”

“Ah, there you are. Anyway, I have located the youngsters. The boy, who I’m sure as you know was recently persuaded into a journey by Mr. Thundlesmell. Or, that is, Thundshick. And now, the young lady as well.” Hastings again mistook the ensuing pause for displeasure from his boss. He frowned beneath his moustache. “… Mr. Marle—”

“Still here. Nice work, Burt. And it only took you what, several decades? I’m busy, so I’m not going to wait for your reply to this remark. I’ll trust they’ll be here shortly. Of course, the others will need to be rounded up as well. I’ll have Terence work on it.”

“Very good sir. And may you have a pleasurable evening.”

Hastings twitched his nose.

“… Sir?”

Grant entered the room and froze. Although the suite was dense with furnishings and esoteric knickknacks beyond most people’s ability to keep track of, Grant recognized something was different right away.

On the highest floor of the hotel was a room referred to as “The Cloudspindle Suite”, according to the guestbook Grant had found in the lobby. The book had last been updated around the same time which Grant surmised the hotel ceased to function, and which he also presumed the building spontaneously found itself in the middle of the ocean for reasons he couldn’t begin to fathom.

He enjoyed the solitude of the suite, at least the relative solitude compared to sharing an entire desolated hotel with one other boy. As far as Russet knew, this room was still locked, or “magically sealed”, a property most will agree makes a door more definitively unopenable. Grant enjoyed more than just the quiet time, though. It presented an opportunity to piece together a puzzle about the room’s former resident. The dust-covered globes, the arcane tomes, the specimens of unusual dried flora; they stirred visions of a well-traveled man of sparkling intellect, and judging by the charmed items lying about, of some magical acumen.

Today he would not contemplate the man who was probably named Cloudspindle, though. His eyes were fixed on a new development on the desktop. It was the bright red Russian doll. Someone had taken it from him and placed it there.

The charred remains of the knobbed device remained on the desk, as it had been when he last saw it, including its cracked tubes and burnt wiring. Soot covered much of the desk’s surface, and a trail of small tracks lead from the soot to cross over a fresh white sheet of paper. They were small footprints, and quite numerous, in a scuttling pattern as a crustacean might leave behind. On the paper was a note, written with a handsome flourish.

Come to the camp at your leisure. The girl will be there. I know you are looking for her.

T. Rothschild

Beneath Mr. Rothschild’s signature sat the red doll. Grant picked it up, regarding it with wonder. And then, with a sense of profound excitement. Could it really be that after all these years, the doll finally worked again? It seemed whoever possessed its counterpart had finally closed it, and furthermore, used it to come here and leave this note. It was the only explanation he could think of.

He had a strong impulse to try it right now for fear that the window of opportunity might pass quickly. But he dared not use it until he was ready. It was time to let Russet know they were going on a trip.

“Look, there.” Beatrix was pointing to the open vent in her dorm room. Positioned underneath it was a chair. “Whoever took my locket found that vent, which I guarded with an illusion.”

Herbert offered his take on it. “Well, I haven’t seen Russet around at all. Maybe he took it.”

“It’s hard to believe he would,” Beatrix said. “That doesn’t sound like him.”

“What does this thing do, anyway? Why’s it so important?”

Grant was at the bedside table, looking at the doll. “If Nemoira was right, it has some effect on the memory. I’d be able to get a better idea if I got a look at it.” He put the doll down. “Anyway, I think Beatrix is right. I don’t think Russet would have stolen it.”

Herbert eyed the doll. Something occurred to him. “Wasn’t that doll a different color when I left it here?” He picked it up and weighed it with his hand, as if he was a pawn broker assessing its value. “Hey, this thing should lead right back to Thundleshick. That jackass stole it from me. I’d almost forgotten, I wanted to go back there and yell at him some more.”

Without hesitation, Herbert twisted the doll. There was no result.

“Why do those stupid things never work when you need them to?” Beatrix said.

“Tell me about it…” Grant muttered.

“I’m going to keep looking for it.” Beatrix moved toward the exit. “Maybe Carmen found it.”

As she exited, Simon ducked behind a turn in the corridor, hoping not to be seen. He was curious to know what all the concern was over. Concern evidently important enough to exclude younger children from. This was always the most fascinating kind of concern.

“You’re wasting your time!” Herbert yelled after her. But she was already down the hall. “It was Russet! Trust me. That kid’s got problems. He took it out of the vent, then probably escaped using the doll. Now he’s probably wandering through that disgusting castle with the doll open, so we can’t follow him.”

“I really think you’ve got Russet all wrong, Herbert. Sure, he’s got his problems, but he’s a great guy.” Grant was earnestly trying to clarify. It seemed to Herbert that Grant took this issue to heart more than anything else he’d heard him talk about, so he decided to stifle his sarcastic retort this once. “In spite of how surly he can seem, he’d really do just about anything to help someone out. You’ve just got to give him a chance.”

Herbert shrugged as he lifted the doll to his nose. “Why does this thing smell like my dad’s nasty liquor?”

The two scotch-filled halves of the blue doll clinked together for another toast. Russet threw back his third shot with little worry over any result that might follow mixing alcohol with powerful antidepressants, and without a thought given to his singular prior experience with booze, a spectacle that would come to be known as “The Mini-Fridge Incident”.

Thundleshick coughed as he blustered out some more liquor-buoyed mirth. “Son! This swells my heart to learn of your grand times had. The purpose of my camp is to capture the romance of boyhood, just as you’ve described. It’s the reason I lift this old bag of meat out of bed and dress it in a robe. I am sorry to admit, on lonelier occasions I seldom summon energy for the latter.”

Russet was too drunk to thank God that today was not such an occasion. He slurred his way through another obsequious remark. “Anyway, I jus wanned to espress my… deep appreciation for what you are doing for chilren. It’s… it’s so beautiful, really. So tha’s all I wanted to say.”

Thundleshick smiled, waiting patiently. After a moment, Russet reached for the severely depleted scotch supply.

“Are you sure that’s all that is on your mind, boy?”

Russet’s eyes darted beneath lazy lids. Thundleshick went on with a tone of compassion. “Concealing a heavy heart is much like stowing an expensive chandelier beneath your smock, suspecting none the wiser.” He neglected to mention he’d once attempted this, leading to a series of events which made it presently difficult to set foot in the state of Maryland.

“Oh. I’m that tra’sparent, am I?” Russet laughed to himself. “I guess I have my lonely occasions as well.”

“Go on.”

“It’s my friend. He’s jus this… incredible guy.” His loose body language seemed to convey how remarkable Grant was more than his slurred speech was able to. “So smart and… though’ful and… I dunno. I don’t know how I really feel sometimes. I’m not sure how he feels. I think if he knew the things I thought about him sometimes, it would scare him. Hell, it scares me!”

“Naturally, boy. Naturally.”

“And now… And NOW.” Russet became animated in a way specific to the inebriated. “Isso complicated. With this girl. I like this girl…”

Thundleshick nodded sagely.

“For the record,” Grant said to Herbert as they strolled generally toward the rec. room, for lack of a better destination. “I think you’ve been right not to totally trust Beatrix. Seems like you’ve got a good head on your shoulders.”

“Yeah? Why?”

“The Slipknot isn’t safe with her. I know she thinks she owns it and has to protect it for some reason. But she can’t. Her motives still seem unclear to me. There are a lot of very nasty individuals trying to get it. And if it’s as powerful as it’s said to be, the result could be disastrous.”

“Nasty individuals? You mean Marlevort, or whatever his name is?”

“Yes.” Grant looked surprised. “I didn’t know you were aware of him.”

“I’ve started to figure a few things out. I didn’t really want to, but …”

“You’re lucky to have had as few encounters with Fort Slurpenook’s drones as you’ve had.”

Slurpenook. Herbert wondered why that word sounded so familiar. He reassured Grant. “She seems nice, and all that. I can’t account for her weird fascination with me. But I’m only trusting her, or anyone for that matter, as much as I need to. I’m looking out for myself here.”

They listened to their own footsteps echo through the dim corridor for a moment. Herbert looked at the doll in his hand, which he’d taken from Beatrix’s room. He put it in his pocket. Herbert again assured, perhaps more to himself than anyone, “I’m really just trying to get home.”

“I’m sure.”

“But…”

“But what?”

“I hate to say it, but I’ve got reason to think I’m going to be here for a while longer. Like, maybe a lot longer.”

“What do you mean?”

“Hey, do you know if time travel exists? Like, is it real, or is it impossible?”

“Time travel? I don’t know. Why?”

“I think there’s something you should probably see. Actually, Beatrix should probably take a look too. I mean, if that’s alright with you.”

Grant paused, considering. “Fine. But I think we’re in agreement here, yes? If either of us finds the Slipknot, we should probably keep it from her this time.”

Perhaps it was their engrossing discussion, or an orphan’s natural ability to sneak around unseen. Either way, Simon was shadowing them unnoticed by either. With each corner he snuck around and piece of debris he ducked behind, he caught another snippet of the mild conspiracy being hatched against his friend. Not merely friend, but one he considered a second older sister.

He didn’t look happy.

Grant entered the hotel room, pushing into the customary blaze of the Home Shopping Network aired at near-maximum volume. Russet was chuckling at something, perhaps the stupidity of a recent caller.

He noticed Grant’s smile, which appeared to him likely to precede a funny remark. He lowered the volume, and spotted the object in his hand. Some sort of red doll.

“Hey, buddy. What’s that?”

“Pack your bags, Russet. Looks like we’re leaving.”

Grant noticed the eyes of his friend, for whom emotion would never have to make a long journey to surface. They were already filling with tears of joy.

The empty scotch bottle rested on its side, as if the recent draining of its fluid had compromised its equilibrium. Russet snapped together the two booze-tinged halves of the doll, and put it in his pocket.

“I guess why I’m really here…”

His remark broke the silence, causing Thundleshick to snort out of his drunken doze.

“I don’ know how to put this.”

Thundleshick’s eyes offered a grandfatherly twinkle. “Tell me, boy. Speak your mind.”

“I was hoping… you know, what with you an your limiless wistom, do you by any chance know of…”

“Yes?”

“Do you have… a ‘cure’?”

“A cure, boy?”

“… for… ‘it’?”

“It? What, boy? If you’ve a stubborn rash of some kind, a blight of the skin…”

“No. These feelings I have. They feel so wrong. I’m tortured by them and don’t know what to do.”

“Ah.” Thundleshick produced a stern look behind the tangled, fibrous crisis on his face. It was the demeanor of one charged with forming a grave diagnosis. “You know, my elder brother struggled with this very challenge. Attraction to flesh of one’s kind, it’s a troubling demon.”

“I was jus hoping you might have, like, a magical cure for it. Jus make it go away.”

The old magician stroked his beard, as one might do to ameliorate a high-strung shaggy dog. “I will see what I can do.”

JERRY
I... I can't wear this puffy shirt on TV! I mean, look at it! It looks ridiculous!

KRAMER
Well, you gotta wear it now! All those stores are stocking it based on the condition that you're gonna wear this on the TV show! The factory in New Jersey is already making them!

JERRY
They're making these?

KRAMER
Yes, yes. This pirate trend that she's come up with, Jerry. This is gonna be the new look for the 90's. You're gonna be the first pirate!

JERRY
But I don't want to be a pirate!

Herbert stood up and turned off the portentous sitcom. Beatrix sat on the couch, still casting a vacant expression at the screen while fidgeting with her ring. Next to her, Grant looked as if he’d seen a ghost, and during the encounter, the ghost had taken the opportunity to share with him compelling photographic evidence of the Loch Ness Monster.

“There you have it,” Herbert punctuated. “Beatrix, what you mentioned a little while ago reminded me of the tape. I guess for reasons that should be obvious to you now. I’d been meaning to show you for a while.”

“What I mentioned… you mean about my sister?”

“Yeah. Right. ‘Sister’. Anyway, I just wanted to get your take on this thing. The whole ‘future selves’ thing.”

“Didn’t you say time travel doesn’t exist?” Beatrix asked. “I thought it was one of those weird rules.”

“Yeah, well, that’s what I want to know. What do you make of all this, Grant?”

Grant remained motionless. He then shook his head with a kind of fervent shell-shocked refusal, much like Jerry would upon being offered a meal prepared under questionable sanitary conditions.

“Huh? What do you mean? What kind of answer is that?” Herbert was understandably confused.

“I don’t like it at all.”

“Come on. How can you not like the Puffy Shirt episode?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know, man. It was a joke.”

Beatrix’s quiet rumination subsided. She spoke softly. “Herbert, you seem to be taking this very casually. Doesn’t it bother you?”

“It’s freaky. I’ll give it that. I admit I felt kind of sick when I first saw it. But now I’m not sure what to think. I guess the bottom line is, I have no idea what it is we just watched. At this point, I don’t see why it should bother me.”

“Because,” she concentrated, and said with a greater sense of imperative than he could recall seeing from her, “if those people are us, unless we do something about it, we are going to die.”

Her face again met the blank TV screen. Her thoughts turned to her sister, of what little she recalled. It was becoming clearer to her by the moment. She’d had it all wrong.

There was a dull rumble. Dust unsettled from above. Somewhere in Fort Crossnest, there was an explosion.

Christmas Day of 1998, though perhaps the most important day of Beatrix’s life, was one she couldn’t remember very well. She was nine years old, though she couldn’t remember her ninth birthday. She couldn’t remember Christmas Eve, for that matter. And she could not remember how she came to be in the passenger seat of this speeding car.

Simple forms in her field of vision seemed cold to her. Alien, hostile. The gray dashboard. The grimy mat beneath her shoes which she did not recognize as hers. The inscrutable surge of lines and shadow outside the passenger window. A similar surge in the opposite direction, lensing through the side mirror. Everything made her feel uncomfortable. It was all subtly loathsome through unfamiliarity.

Someone coughed. Someone next to her.

It was an older girl, perhaps in her late teens. She was driving the car. And she was speaking. Was she speaking to Beatrix? It seemed so. She was in the middle of telling her something to which Beatrix had tuned out, only now to tune in again. Something that sounded urgent.

She had a terrible hacking cough. It swept her short black hair across her pale face. She swept it to the side, away from her eyes, which looked sunken, surrounded by darker yellowing circles.

The fit of coughing waned. “I’m sorry, Beatrix. I’m sorry to have to tell you this, to throw so much at you all at once. I’ve been where you are myself, once. I just have so little time. It’s important you try as hard as you can to remember what I’ve said. Do you understand?”

Beatrix turned to the left with a calm motion.

“Who are you?”

The car slowed. It almost seemed like a physical expression of the girl’s mind slowing, faltering in the marathon it had been running for a long time. Her features relaxed. She knew then that she’d burdened the young girl in her delicate condition with too much, too fast. She had to simplify. And trust. This was not going to be in her hands much longer.

“I…” She managed a smile. “I’m your sister.”

Beatrix nodded.

“Do you remember any of what I just said, Beatrix?”

“Yes. You’re my sister.”

“Good. I’m going to tell you some things. Not many things, but they are important. Can you try to focus on them?”

“Yes. I think so.”

Her sister coughed again.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m very sick. But I’ll be fine. Thank you.”

“Where are we going?”

“I’m taking you somewhere safe to hide.” Without taking her hand off the wheel, she slid the ring from her finger and gave it to Beatrix. She then brought the ribbon for her locket over her head and handed it to her as well. “Take these. Wear them. Protect them. Don’t let anyone have them, especially that locket.”

Beatrix slipped the locket’s ribbon over her head. She examined the ring before putting it on. It had a large pink stone. There appeared to be a scratched-out engraving on the interior of the silver loop. As she watched it, it stood now in her awareness as the most familiar thing she’d yet seen. It made her feel more alert. Just a bit more human.

“Later, my hope is you will reunite with two other kids, two boys, both your age. One of these boys will have an eye patch. You’ll know him when you see him.”

“An eye patch?”

“It is important that you find them. From there, you’ll begin to understand things better. Why you are here. Why this is so important. But now, just hide. Stay safe.”

“The car had been regaining speed as she spoke. Her steering was becoming more erratic. She was sweating. She glanced at a sweaty hand, on which something was written and beginning to smudge. She muttered to herself angrily, repeating words Beatrix couldn’t make out. She began to address Beatrix again through an outburst of coughing.

“You need—” Cough. “You need to—” Cough, cough. “You—” Cou—

Her eyes were wide, bloodshot. Her last words were spoken with a chilling, monotonous voice.

SUPREMACY TO THE HEIR, BEARER OF THE ARDORSMYTE TINE.

She collapsed to the side, letting go of the wheel. Beatrix instinctively grabbed it. She guided the car up on to the curb, through a chain link fence and into an empty lot. The fence’s meshing bunched beneath the car noisily, slowing it. She put the car in neutral, pulled the brake, and soon it came to a stop.

She was quickly around to the driver’s side. She dragged her sister from the car. There was no pulse. Her skin was pale and yellow.

Beatrix touched her own face to discover it was wet. She was crying. She wasn’t even sure why. The memories were slipping. She struggled to hold on. Keep locket safe. Boy with eye patch. Hide.

She noticed the writing on her sister’s hand.

“Is she okay?”

Beatrix turned to see two young kids standing in the empty lot. A girl and a boy, no older than six and three respectively.

“She’s dead.”

The girl looked heartbroken at this news. “Oh no. I’m sorry. By the way, I’m Samantha and this is my brother Simon. I want to help you.”

“Thanks,” Beatrix said with a little sob. She lifted the limp arm and read the sweat-smudged marks. They were numbers.

14.151

“Who is she?”

“She was my older sister.”

Simon’s lower lip began quivering at the very notion of harm befalling older sisters in general.

Beatrix reread the numbers. She had a feeling that if she remembered anything from today, it should be this. She repeated them in her mind, again and again. 14.151… 14.151…

A few short police siren blips, sort of like hiccups, broke her recitation. In front of the lot, a squad car came to a stop with its lights whirling. She knew she’d have to answer questions soon. She knew she’d be taken somewhere else. She just had to focus on remembering. It would slip through her fingers if she let it.

Locket. Boy with eye patch. 14.151. Locket. Eye patch. 14.151.

“Stop! You are very, very bad! Go back to your cage this instant!” Carmen stormed down the corridor in her heavy boots and eclectically pattered attire. She carved a trail through her own clouds of thin, dispersing smoke from magical assaults—warning shots—slung moments ago from her peacock quill. She brought back the feather, as if about to cast a fishing line from it, and lashed the glowing tip against her fleeing pet’s rump.

[You disgust me, Carbon Purpleskinner. I will never return to your chamber of torments.]

“It’s Pearlskipper! Bad dog! Bag dog!”

[I command you to stop whipping me with the quill of a colorful pheasant. I—OW—command it!]

Pycroft’s mess of scrambling paws skittered around a corner. His claws dug into the floor, bringing him to a halt. Standing in his path was a girl holding a telescope. She was tapping it patiently into an open palm.

“I told you I’d find you.”

The lens came about to point at Pycroft’s creased, perspiring brow. The luminous shockwave knocked him a dozen yards down the hall, just past the rec. room’s door.

Herbert exited the room. “What the hell is going on out here?”

His eye followed the midair trail of smoke to the wretched form struggling to its feet. Or paws, he noticed. Though he observed an abundance of pink, bruised human flesh dominating the torso, little about the creature he would classify as human. From the waist down, it had the hind quarters of a canine. Its upper body was human enough, with the head of an agitated, ornery, and battered bald man. Its wrists ended not with hands, but dog paws.

Pycroft sniffed. He leered malevolently at Herbert. [I don’t need your pity, ugly kid. At least I can see from both eyes, Windsor Tea Hurt Bird.]

“What?”

[If I did not have to run away, I would kill you.]

Herbert drew his gun and aimed it at Pycroft’s head.

[Er…]

The lines in Pycroft’s face deepened. He bared his gray, rotting teeth. His yellow eyes flickered with a swelling, bestial energy. He growled.

Herbert lowered the gun slowly and shot him in the leg.

“AUGH.”

Beatrix stepped out of the rec. room. “Herbert, what’s…” She stopped at the sight of the wounded mutant. Pycroft’s glance connected with hers. With a terse sniff, he wrapped his wiry arm around her waist and threw her over his back. He made off in the direction opposite the two counselors, colliding with Herbert, knocking him to the floor. The pistol slid down the hall. Pycroft, securing Beatrix with a free arm, left a trail of blood behind a frantic three-legged hobble.

Nemoira and Carmen quickly took up pursuit. Herbert picked himself up and followed. Grant now stood in the corridor, trying to figure out what had just happened. Even Lentil, in his hulking Vend-O-Badge form, had poked out to inspect the commotion. They listened to Beatrix’s receding pleas for help.

“It looks to be a damsel in need of rescue is what it looks like,” Lentil said. With that, he began a thunderous march on peg and coaster feet down the hall. Grant ran after him, but couldn’t squeeze around the wide vending machine’s frame, which plodded steadily, no faster than an old woman with a shopping cart.

“Excuse me. Hey. Could you please get out of the way?” Grant had his sward drawn, prepared to aid the damsel in question. There was little daylight between the walls and either side of the brainless former soup can.

“This way! Adventure awaits is what is waiting for us.”

“Please… just… MOVE!” Grant pounded on the back of the machine. There was a squeaky metallic grinding. Lentil came to a dead stop. He was firmly lodged between the walls at a narrowing in the corridor, with little space above.

“Oh, come on!” Grant pounded again on the rear of the machine. He heard pounding on the glass on the front of the machine. It was Herbert.

“Hey, get this damn thing out of the way. I left my gun back there. You hear me, Lentil? Move it!”

Grant backed up, already looking for a different route through the maze-like bunker. He took off in another direction.

Simon snuck around a corner, still shadowing him. He kicked something. He looked down, spotting the handgun by his shoe.

“So when this is through,” Russet nervously grasped for assurance. “I won’t have these feelings and urges anymore, right?”

“On that I stake my good word.” Thundleshick Rummaged through a drawer. His deliberateness helped soothe Russet’s concern. He appeared to know just the thing for it, as if he’d treated other boys to this “cure” in recent memory.

“Ah! Here, my young friend.” Thundleshick gave him a piece of chalk. “Now, draw a door with it. On that wall right there.”

Russet looked at the white implement. “You mean sort of like they did in the movie Beetlejuice?”

“Perhaps!” If he’d seen the film, it was decades ago, a recollection long since obscured by an unaccountable stream of female athletics footage.

Russet drew the door. “And the knob!” Thundleshick reminded him. “Don’t forget the knob!”

“So I presume this doorway shall take me to another realm? Like, a… a lan of the dead, or something?” Russet asked, still battling the haze of inebriation.

“But of course! Not of the dead, mind you, but a realm of rugged masculinity and conventionally-adjusted libidinous impetus!”

Russet was about to ask what “conventionally-adjusted libidinous impetus” actually meant, but his question was stifled by an outrageously smelly burlap sack placed over his head.

“I can’t see…” Russet swooned from the awesome, overpowering fervor of the stench, but kept his balance. “Is this how it’s supposed to go?”

“Yes, yes. Now point yourself at that door. Like this.” He modified his posture for him by the shoulders. “Now, boy, fill your mind with manly thoughts. Visions of burly clout. A roaring motorcycle. Professional wrestlers clutching each other’s muscles for dominance. A friendly lady fitted with a swimsuit. Oh, yes, yes.”

“Um, ok.”

“Now, through the door with you!”

Russet drew a breath. His feet felt welded to the floor. He knew the strength was in him to run. It was in his faith. His faith to let go and trust God, to set everything right. Soon it would be over.

He ran as fast as he could toward the chalk door. There was the sound of bone against brick. Russet bounced backwards and dropped to the floor unconscious.

The fat old Campmaster stooped over the boy and proceeded to pick his pockets.

The distant noises of skirmish taunted Grant, flitting this way and that through the perplexing channels of Crossnest. It was like identifying the source of mocking laughter in a funhouse, designed to deliver your money’s worth in aggravation. He followed the trail of blood, and the scrambling footprints smeared within it.

There was a sound behind him. A small person crouched out of sight too late.

“Simon? Is that you?”

Simon emerged sheepishly.

The Beatrix-saddled Pycroft was backed into a dead end. Carmen feather-whipped her pet senselessly, unmindful of any collateral lashings to the hostage. Beatrix flinched with each strike.

“Bad! Bad! Bad! Put down Junior Camper Beatrix at once! No treat! No treat!”

[I’d prefer to subsist on my own stool. Get out of my way!]

Through the fog of Carmen’s relentless masochism, Beatrix saw something approaching from down the hall. It was lentil, who’d managed to dislodge himself.

“Hey!” she shouted. “You! Lentil, is that your name? Please help!”

Lentil was beside himself with delight, and added to the gusto of his clomping approach. It sounded like a dumpster fitted with low riding hydraulics.

“I’ll even answer one of your riddles. I’ll answer two if you can get her to stop whipping me!”

After a moment, Lentil produced with his lyrical voice something in keeping with his new theme.

“A glittering cache a lad’s valor inherits”

“Collects ‘pon a sash the boy boasts with aplomb.”

“They litter the stash of a youth seeking merit…”

Lentil stopped. He was lodged between the walls again. Beatrix slapped her forehead.

Pycroft took the opportunity to bowl over Carmen and run. He leapt over the badge machine, thinking himself scot-free of the harpy and her damnable feather. Nemoira, however, was waiting for him on the other side.

He eyed her extended telescope, and swallowed. A blade of stable pyrotechnics grew from the lens. She lopped his head off.

Beatrix, along with the head and torso leaking from the fresh incision, fell to the floor.

But she was not eager to spend any time lounging down there with the body parts, as both began to twitch. Fresh organic matter bubbled from the planes of decapitation.

“Hey, I’ve been wondering where you went. You didn’t see where the others went, did you?”

Simon shook his head slowly.

“What’s the matter? If you’re scared about all this noise, don’t worry about it. I’m going to take care of the troublemakers. Stick with me and you’ll be safe,” Grant said with the most confident big-brotherly tone in his arsenal.

Simon was silent. He frowned.

“Why don’t you help me look for them? You’re one of my sidekicks, remember?”

Simon bobbed his head and looked off to the side. Grant was puzzled by the uncharacteristic melancholy from a boy who would get excited if he received a series of bee stings in the shape of a funny face.

“Hey… what’s that behind your back?”

Simon suddenly sounded angry. “You’re going to take it from her, aren’t you!”

“Huh?”

“From Beatrix! You’re going to take her… the thing! Her thing! I know you are. I heard you say it!”

“Oh. Simon, you don’t understand. That thing is really powerful and dangerous. I have to…”

“No! It’s hers! Beatrix is my friend!”

Behind him, Simon squeezed the pistol’s grip, which seemed oversized in both of his small hands. He let go for a moment with one hand, wiped sweat from his palm on Donatello, posing amidst the fading Ninja Turtles on the front of his shirt, and quickly returned it to the grip.

Pycroft’s headless body staggered to its canine feet. Something was sprouting from its neck hole, something at which Nemoira made a face suitable for greeting ancient and unidentifiable leftovers in a warm fridge. It was a gooey, boney structure with teeth. It clenched shut, elongating into canine jaws. The rest of the head followed, flushing itself out with a coat of soft gray fur and pointy ears.

The abject severed head was busy with its own transmutation on the floor. Great knots of knitting bone and mending musculature flailed about from its neck. Soon the head rose, supported by its new body, the opposite of its wolf-headed counterpart. It had a pair of human legs, a canine upper torso, and human hands which it strategically placed in front of a part of its male human anatomy.

The two composite doppelgangers did not appear to enjoy each other’s sudden company. Sniffs were issued.

[So you’re here. If you had come to free me from that kennel, this might have been avoided.]

{You still don’t seem to understand the nature of our relationship. It really isn’t that hard to grasp.}

[You should have let me out of the ugly girl jail.]

{If you believe that experience was unpleasant, you should try being imprisoned within your revolting genetic material as non-sentient mutational potential.}

[I am taking the girl. The other ugly one. You have no claim on her.]

{You’d probably better let me handle it.}

[You will take her over my dead body. Which conveniently now belongs to you.]

Pycroft’s new head lifted one of its sagging dog lips, revealing a large white tooth. His mouth opened. A furious tongue of flame consumed his bald counterpart and caused surrounding metal fixtures to wilt from the heat. What remained was something black and twitching, like a scorched roast beef hooked up to high voltage.

Beatrix was tiptoeing away. Pycroft’s eyes, deep yellow and black marbles, rolled to follow her.

Before a scream could escape her mouth, she was draped over his back again, blistering deep into the fort at quadruple-speed.

Herbert, turning the corner, was again knocked to his feet, relegated to the role of the bystander in the high-speed chase, a class stocked by the melon vendors of the world, and street merchants prone to handling chickens. “Hey! Enough with the shoving already!” He muttered to himself, “I gotta go get my gun…”

Carmen gave Nemoira a purposeful look. She swirled her feather about in graceful motions, like a long banner waved by a Chinese dancer. “Counselors unite! By the Zenith of Mercury and the sprite’s quickened pulse! Bring to our soles swiftness, the celerity of a nude Grecian!”

The feather’s enchantment and the (likely superfluous) incantation produced sharp new footwear for Carmen and Nemoira, into which their boots fit snugly. Sneakers, vividly colored and energetically patterned. The girls matched Pycroft’s speed in his direction, grinning along the way.

While Carmen zoomed down the hall, Nemoira stopped. She paused to help Herbert up.

Herbert gawked at the girl in her funny pirate clothes and silly hat. He was particularly struck, for no reason he could explain, by the glass vial filled with dirt she wore around her neck. She watched him for a moment. Her silent appraisal felt intense to him.

“Hey. Um… have we met before?”

She said nothing, turned and ran.

The floor trembled beneath Grant’s feet. Somewhere below, the fort was being torn apart. They needed his help. More importantly, he couldn’t let them take her. But standing in his path was a young boy holding a gun.

“Simon, where did you get that?” On reflection, he didn’t care where he got it so much as where and under what circumstances he would put it down.

Simon was still. The berretta was suspended by a limp, noodly arm, pointed at the floor. The look in his eyes had a sort of immovable quality, somewhat robotic. It, perhaps more than the sight of the powerful weapon itself, held Grant in his tracks.

“Sorry, Mister Grant. You shouldn’t take it from her. I can’t let you.”

“Simon. Take it easy now.” He raised his hand as if to lower it on Simon’s shoulder. He quickly pulled it away. Simon’s perimeter bled into a crimson aura.

“Mister rogue horsey-crab was right. You are a liar.” He lifted the gun, aiming it at Grant. As soon as it became steady, this seemed to ignite thrashing tendrils of fire around Simon’s arm, and then wrapping about his body. His eyes, whites and all, pooled into wells of livid red. His voice changed in tenor. “I see who you really are.”

“In a swift reflexive motion, Grant grabbed the boy’s wrist and redirected the gun. His arm was hot, and surprisingly difficult to move. “Put it down, Simon. Can you hear me?” He struggled with the boy, whose possessing conflagration only intensified.

“Put it down!!!”

BANG.

A roaring boulder of fire flew by Grant’s ear and howled down the corridor. Grant flinched to his side. When he relaxed one of his eyelids to look, all at once, the fire was gone. It became sucked into Simon’s body, as if snuffed out in a vacuum. Simon’s face was still, his mouth open a bit.

Grant looked at the boy’s shirt. A trickle of red dripped from a hole Leonardo’s sneering face. Stuck in the hole, Grant found, was his sword, piercing clean-through the other side of the shirt.

Grant drew a short breath and quickly removed it the blade. Simon dropped the gun and fell.

“Oh God.”

He heard something. Like a suppressed whine. He turned around and spotted Simon’s mortified sister. He stood with his stained sword, rigid, unable to say anything. She fled in the other direction.

He looked down again. Simon wasn’t breathing.

“… oh God…”

The peacock quill yielded to the great momentum of the hot missile, then deflected it with a cracking noise. The seemingly alert projectile arched through the lofty volume of Level 37, and came about towards Nemoira. She stood at the ready on the docking platform, striking a batter’s stance. She knocked the sphere towards her ship, on which Pycroft stood. He ducked. A mast splintered behind him, dragging an entire circus tent’s worth of bright sails into the water. Nemoira brought a gloved hand to her mouth at the blunder. The vessel, her pride and joy, seemed as much a hostage to Pycroft as the girl slung over his shoulder.

{I don’t actually want to harm you youngsters.}

“Well you sure could have fooled me! Put me down!” Beatrix’s ring crackled with blue forks of electric current. She planted her fist in his furry neck and shocked him. He growled and snapped at her hand. He wondered how she knew precisely what would bother him most. Perhaps he was too good a telepath. Or perhaps it was just that he too closely resembled a badly misbehaving dog.

{You don’t even have it, do you?}

“Have what?” Though she knew what he meant. She found there was less room for misunderstanding when the conversation took place entirely on the stage of her own mind.

{This is good. It’s better you not know where it is. It will keep him searching.}

“Then why are you kidnapping me?”

{It can’t be said I failed to do what was asked of me.}

Carmen was swirling her feather over her head. “Nymphs of Olympus, hear my plea!” Vicious winds twisted in the chamber, causing the water to prickle with foaming white crests. The ship slowly turned within the dawning whirlpool.

Nemoira bit her lip at the sight. She gently halted Carmen’s whiling motion with the kindly patience of a caregiver in a psychiatric ward. “Perhaps we should not bother those nymphs just now?”

It was too late though. Wind dragged across the raging water. Both girls crouched, holding fast to the platform. The boat turned faster.

Pycroft aimed his open jaw at the high ceiling. A missile punched a hole through to daylight. Large slabs of concrete tumbled down, splashing into the water. The waves crashed against the ship, and swept the girls off the dock into the turbulent stew.

With the momentary distraction, Beatrix reacted quickly. She held up her ring and focused. The hole vanished, replaced with the appearance of smooth concrete. The hole reappeared several yards away. The deception was her last hope.

Pycroft’s powerful haunches expelled him from the deck toward the ceiling. He was not aiming for the phantom hole, however. He grinned as he sailed through the illusory concrete veneer, and took to the sky.

{A valiant try.}

“Darn.”

Nemoira surfaced in time to watch the Rubicund Wayfare’s final moments above water. She looked skyward at the hole, though it may have doubled as an excuse to curse the heavens for her misfortune. She swam to rescue her flailing, feather-toting ally from drowning.

Grant stepped on to the precipice above the dock in time to witness the mayhem subside. Herbert stepped in behind him, fastening the M9 into its holster.

“Looks like we’re too late. What happened? Is Beatrix gone?”

Grant didn’t reply.

“Hey,” Herbert lowered his voice. “Sorry to have to tell you this. We took a casualty back there.”

Grant turned. Herbert didn’t notice in the lighting how white he was. Or that he was shaking slightly.

“They got the kid. The boy. What was his name?” Herbert touched his forehead trying to recall. “Anyway, he’s gone. Poor kid.”

Grant nodded.

“You okay?”

Russet sat upright like he was a steel trap just sprung. He was soaking wet, and marinating in chilly sludge. All around him, fog crept low to the water. It was a swamp. In the distance, the silhouette of Thundleshick’s castle quietly shifted its shape.

He felt his pocket. The doll was gone. Had he misplaced it? He couldn’t remember.

His head hurt.

With a sudden panic, he felt beneath the back of his vest, under his cape. He was relieved. The locket was still there.

He couldn’t recall how he got here. Thundleshick… where did he go? Did they really drink that much? There was something about…

The cure. Had it been…?

The weak sun behind the overcast sky became blocked out by something. Russet was enveloped in a tall shadow.

“Master Thundleshick?”

Russet turned to find it was something only slightly less hell-bent on the misfortune of children, and considerably less frightening. It was a ten-foot tall, black-boned, green-entrailed skeleton.

The skeleton held its abdominal cavity and began to rhythmically convulse. A dribble of green phlegm stretched from its mouth. Even someone without expertise in diagnosing skeleton discomfort would probably be able to tell you the monster was feeling a bit under the weather. It doubled over the soggy boy.

Russet drooped. “Oh…”

Part 5

On an autumn afternoon, a flash of light flooded the bedroom, followed by a crack of thunder followed. Louis Eggwood, one many would describe as “enthusiastic”, especially when otherwise at a loss for words, rarely kept a heavy mood. Today though had been unusually trying.

He lugged his storm-soaked frame across the room and sank into the bed. It was an imposing frame for a fourteen year old boy, and had always been, even more so than his younger brother who wasn’t exactly shortchanged. He smothered his face in his meaty hands and listened to the raindrops hammer at the glass.

It seemed a kind of prayer, his head bowed in supplication to the hobgoblins of self-doubt. It released them from a confining realm as if something of occult tradition, like a shaman rapping a sick man’s chest with a painted feathery pipe. They responded to the invitation with their typical boons, vesting him with thoughts of futility. What was the use? Why did he continue to pour his creativity, his heart, into an empty sieve? He’d deluded himself into believing he could produce anything of worth. He was surrounded by those who ignored him at worst and humored him at best, and even on reflection he wasn’t sure if he’d placed those in the right order.

His shallow gaze found his bookshelf collection, and then an old Rutherford Trick pinup. Volume 10, Smirk of the Feckless Vagabond. Trick was a handsome rapscallion, clever to the point of vice with a wit more savage than his magic assaults. Louis would give anything to “sport” with him for treasure, as Trick referred to the activity. To be at his impetuous command, to be held in captivity by those fiery, intelligent eyes…

He stopped himself. The thoughts only brought him loneliness.

These authors were masters. With a deft hand they invigorated the objects of his fascination—magic, youthful adventure, camaraderie. He felt like a feeble parasite to their craft, their accomplishments, or at best benign, something limp and vestigial on an otherwise evolutionarily acute specimen. The feelings of inadequacy particularly circled in the shadow of his close friend, who’d already found his work in print. How he admired that work. At least he thought he was a friend. It was something else he didn’t want to think about right now.

No one could possibly understand what he was feeling now. And no one, it seemed, could mend the breach in his confidence, his natural good humor which buoyed every moment of his life until today. No one, he thought to himself with a note of dry humor, but those of his own creation. Those who lived in his mind. Those who knew him best because they were of him.

The somber rumination was just the sort to nourish a craving for a sign, for something awesome to happen that would forever change his life. It was ironically the same sort to cloud his perception enough to miss that very sign when it presented itself, as it did just now on his desk. He hadn’t noticed it when he walked in, and now, as he looked up, was too surprised by it to recognize it as such.

His manuscript, volume one, rested there opened. He hadn’t touched it or any of the other six volumes in some time. Had Seymour been in his room?

He loomed over the exposed pages. He wouldn’t let a breath escape. He cautiously appraised the words, once weary with his own familiarity, but now different somehow. Something wasn’t right.

One particular passage caught him, and he methodically dragged his focus across the letters, and that was the moment everything changed. The paper became warm. His bedroom again became brighter, but not due to the lightning outside.

In the flickering light and muggy haze of the Oval Office, if anyone were around to listen, few things could be heard. The flapping of moths. The hostile clicking of cockroaches, frustrated over the cessation of the comforting darkness, once decades undisturbed. And the soft beeping of a digital timer.

02:00:01… 02:00:00… 01:59:59…

There was nothing to see in the hole punctured from beneath through the mud and tangled tree roots. Level 37 was too far below and too dark. Grant traced upward the imaginary path through the sky on which the flying mutant had made off with Beatrix.

“You know what this means, right? We’re going to have to go save her,” Herbert said.

Grant looked at him quickly, and again at the sky. He didn’t seem ecstatic with the idea. Herbert may as well have invoked their duties as young Samaritan volunteers in the geriatric colonic ward. Herbert watched the young man of whom he knew little, and had little plans to ask. He seemed tired, and in some way he couldn’t describe, maybe more tired than anyone he’d ever seen.

“It’ll be dangerous. Slurpenook is well defended.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Plus, we still have no idea where the Slipknot is. I’m sure Beatrix didn’t have it. We still need to find it.”

“Right. Well,” Herbert assumed the role of a practical tactician. “I still say Russet took it. And who the hell knows where that fruitcake is. So either I’m right, in which case it’s likely he’s keeping it out of the hands of Marlevort for a while, even if he doesn’t actually know what he’s doing. Or, it’s just plain lost, in which case it’s just as lost to Marlevort too. Either way, there’s nothing we can do about it right now.”

“Russet… damn you,” Grant cursed to himself quietly.

“What I do know is Beatrix was just captured by a weird shape-shifting asshole. Beatrix is our friend, and she needs our help. That feels like a good enough reason to me. Anyway, that is what this summer camp is all about, right? Friendship?”

Grant gave him an askance look. “Didn’t you just want to go home?”

Herbert let out some air, exhaust fumes from lingering exasperation, and paused.

“I’m not going anywhere for now. It’s pretty obvious. Thundleshick is completely useless. No one can help me. A little while ago I left another message with my dad, but that’s about it. That’s all I can do. The only thing to do now is to make the best of things, and look out for each other.”

“You’re right.” Grant said, and appeared mentally to flip forward to Herbert’s page of resolve. “But this really isn’t going to be as easy as you think. Marlevort’s fleet is stationed in a sea of…” He stopped. “I know this sounds stupid.”

“Don’t worry. I’m used to it by now. What is it, lava or something?”

“Yes, actually.”

“Ok. Makes sense. I mean, they are all really evil, aren’t they?”

“We could sail there on a ship equipped for that kind of travel. I’d guess the sailor girl’s boat could do it, but she’s busy getting it above water and repairing it. It’ll be a good while before it’s seaworthy, I’d say.”

“Couldn’t we fly somehow? We might be able to use that office chair I flew here, but I think it’s probably almost out of fuel. Not to mention we probably wouldn’t both fit on it. Our surprise attack would probably look pretty retarded with you on my lap…”

“Chair? What?”

“Forget it.”

“Actually…” Grant said, suddenly more alert. “I may have an idea.”

The brig was like an iron sauna, broiling in the bowels of the carrier formerly named the U.S.S. Forrestal (and since renamed something more fittingly haunting and in keeping with its captain’s preferences). Beatrix was sure it had to be at least 130° Fahrenheit in the small prison into which she’d been dumped unceremoniously. Her clothes pined for one of Russet’s laundering spells as they became increasingly snug from sweat.

She passed the time studying her ring and contemplating its power. It appeared, through magical means at least, that escape was nonviable. She even struggled with the simple task of cooling the room down a bit. Grant seemed to have no trouble wielding a variety of “elemental” invocations, including frosty attacks. She wondered why she had trouble with it. She thought about the events surrounding her capture. The moments of distress and anger brought from within her a certain type of energy. As if all the electrons in and around her raced like a kind of breath, a particular life force bent to a primordial will in her. She lilted her hand to and fro, watching the little blue orbs sizzle, dance and pop. Magic sure was a fickle mistress, she thought.

The door opened. A black, bony claw dropped a boy in the room like a sack of potatoes. Appropriately enough, the boy’s name could appear on such a sack without alerting even the most curmudgeonly grocer’s suspicion.

“Russet.”

Grant adjusted the knobs on Zoe’s walkie-talkie as he and Herbert crossed the tarmac. The volume on the gadget decreased slightly. The antics piping through the speaker were a little much, and it had been a long day.

“I didn’t really follow much of that. Who’s talking through the radio? And what was going on in there with that crazy old lady?”

“I can still hear you, young man!” Zoe said through the speaker.

“Oh. Sorry.”

Grant disabled the device briefly. “Yeah. It can be pretty confusing at first. Let’s just see what’s in this hangar.”

“Now you will want to take a few more paces and take a left,” Zoe’s voice crackled. “You mean right, Ms. Z. They must go right. What? Oh, my sweet lord. No, Ferris. It is to the left. Are you sure?”

Herbert looked back at the cabin they came from. Through the window was the little robotic doll named Dott, who he found a bit creepy with her large camera lens eyes. She was indeed gesturing to her left.

“Yes, I am sure. I am directing them from our vantage point, from which the turn is a left. I know you love to run that wonderful mouth of yours all the time, but it would help if just this once the only voice you allowed from it was mine. Do you understand, silly boy? Yes, roger that Ms. Z.”

“Hey, is that it over there?” Herbert asked. “I see another one of those robots. It’s waving at us, and standing in front of a hangar-looking thing. Why don’t we just go there.”

“Yes, that is me. I am waving at you now. Hi, it is nice to see you. Oh, good, then. Go right in. The boys have taken great care to restore Banditsknife, and I think it marvelous that she should be put to noble use.”

VociFerris was similar in design and identical in size to his sister. As Grant had already imagined, he lacked the big perpetually focusing lenses, but had an active mouth, somewhat like a ventriloquist’s doll.

“Welcome, I am pleased to have your company. This way.

His manners are splendid, aren’t they? That is, when he is not being too clever. Why, thank you, Zoe. I work very hard at my mannersssSSSCREEE—(click.)”

Grant turned off the walkie-talkie to end the feedback noise from the other one, which hung around Ferris’ neck.

Inside the great space of the hangar the dust suspended in the air was sliced by bright, slanted columns of light from rusted holes in a porous ceiling. Waiting for them was the robot’s brother sitting on the floor quietly.

“This is Graham. He does not say anything, but he is really smart.” Graham perked up as his sensitive hearing detected his name. Unlike Ferris or Dott, he lacked even a trace of a mouth. His eyes were simple, like Ferris’, but what really commanded the admiration of a new acquaintance was his pair of ears, two sizable satellite dishes. His little hands busied themselves with adept motions of sign language.

“Hee-hee-hee! Pardon my brother. His sense of humor is sort of weird.”

“That’s fine. I couldn’t understand him,” Herbert replied. “So where’s the plane… the Hoboknife?”

Zoe broke in through Ferris’ mouth, a heavily taxed employee working double-overtime for two demanding bosses. “What was that? Ferris, what did my ears say? Never mind, Ms. Z. I have everything under control.”

Graham was already leading them to the aircraft, and it was soon visible before traversing much of the sprawling hangar floor. It was the lone gleaming wonder amidst a graveyard of rusting scrap.

“Whoa. An F-16?” Herbert held his advance, regarding the jet with a sort of inward obeisance. He could be exposed to a kaleidoscopic buffet of stunning magical wonders dredged from the most enchanted crevices of the cosmos, and greet them with a blunt yawn. It was not merely boredom. It was a fertile shell of malaise which, with tender care and steady incubation, would only hatch contempt. Weaponry however, great machines of war, their details, contours, schematics, measured analysis of destructive capacity, they would have his stubborn spirit arrested with the all the protest of a monk rapt in righteous peace.

Banditsknife struck Herbert as something of fable. Something not assembled, but chiseled from something unknown, born of living ore. The Fighting Falcon jet still wore some old parts, exhibiting traces of a once humbler existence. It now stood refurbished, lovingly maintained, and plated in lucid silver absorbing the hot spears of sun into liquid-like reflection. Herbert thought for a moment of his gun, plated judiciously in silver, and the latent ferocity it concealed. But considered more palpably, that is was meant for him—it spoke to him in a silent animal tongue. And he was being spoken to again.

“It’s nice,” Grant said. “It should get us there. We won’t be subtle about it, exactly, but it’ll work. So can one of you guys fly it for us?”

Graham and Ferris looked at each other with a flurry of signs and whispers. “Ah… I do not think it would be right if we left our mother alone here. She needs us very much.” Graham was nodding vigorously in support of the claim. “What? Now don’t be ridiculous. You boys are excellent pilots, and it is time to put aside our selfish ends to help these young men, particularly if it means finally delivering justice to that repugnant counselor.”

The little robots slouched expressively. “Ms. Z, you are right. But I am a little scared.”

“I think I can fly it,” Herbert stepped in. He reached to feel the belly of the plane. “I’m not sure how, but I think I can.”

Grant studied him. He knew it sounded silly to let a suburban boy with no flight training or even a driver’s license attempt it. But for some reason, he knew Herbert would back it up. “Alright. Let’s get her in the air.”

The Secretary stole a nervous look at his watch and walked a little faster down the carpeted hall. With the other hand he inspected his immaculate haircut, assuring that no strands had fallen out of place, which of course they had not.

Caspar Weinberger had been called to the Oval Office at the urgent request of the President. Could this be it? The Secretary of Defense wondered to himself, slightly audibly, was this the big one? He swallowed. It could only be the Russians. He heard it in his Commander’s voice. They had to be attacking.

He picked up his pace. His composure lapsed into a restrained, gracefully-aging white man’s jog.

Banditsknife zipped and corkscrewed agile patterns through the thin, high air at Mach 3. Atomized in its supersonic wake were puffy clouds, pink in the wash of a setting sun. Grant tensed every face muscle he was aware of and then some, as if concentration alone was holding himself together under the g-force brunt of yet another one of Herbert’s reckless and flagrantly unnecessary barrel rolls.

“Maybe you should take it easy on those controls, since I guess in the most strictly technical sense, you’ve never, ever flown a plane before. Like, ever.” Dizziness seemed to activate Grant’s sarcasm center of the brain.

“Hey, relax. Try to enjoy the ride. Anyway, this thing practically flies itself. I mean, I’m flying it, but it’s more like loose suggestion than direct control. Like it’s got a mind of its own. Kind of like riding a mythical mount, like a gryphon. Only cooler.”

“A gryphon, you say?”

“Like the sorority girls did one time. In… you know what, never mind.”

“I wouldn’t have pegged you for someone who’s into that kind of literature.”

“Well, no, but I mean… they ride gryphons around in pretty much all those books, don’t they? Or at least some kind of hideous beast like that long shaggy puppet-dog in The Never Ending Story. They’ve always got all this, like… enchanted wisdom.” Herbert spat the contemptible phrase.

Grant couldn’t offer a rebuttal on the volatile subject if he wanted to. His stomach was left about a thousand feet over his head. Herbert pulled up, leveling off to a view of sharp, toothy snow-capped mountains to the north. Not far beyond them were marshlands, presided over by Thundleshick’s castle. Titling the jet to the east, he found the forest concealing Fort Crossnest. He looked above, but the spinning holographic icon was nowhere to be found.

“Hey, what happened to the beacon?”

“Huh? What beacon?” Grant asked, stroking his stomach tenderly as if he’d just found out he was a mother-to-be.

“I guess maybe the computer got shut off with all the commotion.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask,” Grant switched subjects. “What’s with the gun?”

“Nothing’s with it. It’s just some magical berretta I found. Or it’s supposed to be magic. The only thing I can make it do is shoot bullets, stupid me. I’m pretty sure my future self left it for me to—”

“No, no,” he stopped him. “I mean the other one in your belt. The one that looks like an antique.”

“Oh, that. I thought it looked cool, so I took it. It’s not loaded, and as far as I know it’s not magic either. Of course I’m not exactly a reliable source on that. For all I know the damn thing is so magic it would make a unicorn weep. Oh, yeah, I also found it in this bizarre old replica of the White House, if you can believe that.”

“Hmm. Yeah, actually I can believe that.”

Herbert yanked the jet to a ninety degree tilt and whipped it south, dipping low to the ground. He encouraged the burners just a bit, and the aircraft kicked forward, the seat padding slapping the backs of their heads. The jet put even further distance between itself and the howl of its outrageous velocity. The landscape seared beneath them, an incomprehensible slideshow of rushing trees. The trees gave way to increasingly barren land, and then to ancient crumbling structures. It was all uniformly coated in a gently undulating surface, warmly colored by the reflected light, and glittering. The glittering was a frenetic dance of redirected light caused by their quick movement in the jet, as they caught the sun-spiked angles of countless tiny crystals.

“What is all this?”

“It was Fort Funnelbunk.”

Herbert tried to get a better look at the strange sand carpeting the landscape. “And what is that stuff?”

“Sugar.”

Both were a little dazed, and not much had been exchanged other than the basics of how they got there. Though maybe there was a greater impediment to words besides the oppressive heat and the rigors of capture. In any case, Russet broke the silence.

“What’s the matter, Beatrix? Aside from the obvious, of course.” He gestured to their enclosure, an oven in which one might not too badly undercook a chicken.

“I lost it.”

He didn’t need to ask. He brought the locket from beneath his cape and dangled it in front of her.

She smiled, suddenly feeling silly for being the least bit surprised. And then, she was happy.

The desert of ancient sugar had soon frittered away into the dusty land situating airport from which they took off, and then frittered again into real desert. Grant recognized it as the arid stretch just south of Jivversport he trudged across days ago. Before scorching over the city and across its northern bay, Herbert hooked a left over plain lands and then beyond to a northwestern forest. Sprouting from the middle of the forest was a structure which could be seen for miles. It was a very thin metal tower reaching several thousand feet above. Circling around its pinnacle was a wide metal ring the diameter of a major sports arena. Locals referred to it simply as The Mast, though this was not a term Grant bothered with as he satisfied Herbert’s curiosity.

“A silo?” Herbert repeated.

“Yeah. Though technically the silo part is underground. The tower is a shaft, serving other purposes, like creating the dimensional opening. There used to be a lot more of them a long time ago, I believe.”

“An opening??” Herbert jumped on that point. “So you mean it opens to another dimension, like Earth? Hell, why don’t we fire it up and fly through there?”

“Trust me. You do not want that thing to be ‘fired up’ by any means.”

“Oh, right. The missiles. These would be the magic nukes, then?”

“Right.”

He flew closer to the tower and swung around it. Aside from the improbability of the great floating ring platform which looked quite precarious, there was nothing fanciful about the construction. It easily looked like something that could have been commissioned by the federal government. Herbert was quite engaged by the thought of this unspeakable weaponry, of this military might veiled to the public. He’d been so busy trying to get home, he never paused to consider that this land guarded a rich and mostly inscrutable history, or that it harbored depth beyond superficial boyhood antics and absurd magical escapades. Stuff that was for other kids, not him. He never fueled speculation that legitimate, responsible agencies of the world might have invested this realm with their serious affairs. Still, he wondered why even the serious affairs found ways of being so downright silly.

It was cut and dried. Magic just ruined everything.

He guided the jet south of The Mast, skirting along the coast until coming upon a bleak, dilapidated marina, pointed out by Grant as the Slurpenook mainland docking site. He jerked a hard right over the ocean into the setting sun. Below, the blue water soon became black, hardened-looking, and then blossoming pools of red and orange here and there. The incandescent pools became more abundant as the ocean gave way to molten rock.

“I don’t quite get it. What exactly does a magic nuclear weapon do?”

“Pretty much what an ordinary one does. Though in some cases more destructive. And other cases, less, I suppose. They can wipe out a city, or even a small nation. But… magically.”

“You don’t say!”

“Unfortunately, yeah. It’s true.”

“I sort of gathered that. I mean, how does it differ from a normal bomb? You know, one that blows stuff up with atoms. And science.”

“Well, rather than wiping things out with a big fireball from a chain reaction, the blast does magical stuff. Like turn everything into sugar. Or butter. Or gingerbread. Stuff like that.”

“So in other words, the full gamut of things found in a bakery? The versatility is breathtaking.”

“No. Or… anything. Come on, Herbert, cut me a break. It could be toadstools, or feathers, or bat wings… You know how magic goes.”

“Yeah, I hear ya.” Herbert slowed the jet as he nursed a train of thought which rankled him by the moment. “So why did they even bother making the nukes magical anyway? How stupid is that? The result is the same. They both destroy stuff. Why bother with the ridiculous charade?”

“I don’t know, Herbert. I’d just consider it a rule of thumb. Sort of like a government. If it can spend money on something, it will. Just like if whatever powers that be can make something needlessly magic, they will. I mean, why bother having an ordinary doorknocker shaped like a lion’s head, when that lion can talk to you! It’s exciting. It’s fun. It’s whimsical, I guess. It all abides by its own internally consistent logic.”

“Ha! Yeah, right on, man! All that stuff is such bullshit. Who cares about talking lions??”

“Anyway, maybe the thought of being turned into butter strikes more fear into the heart of the enemy. I know I wouldn’t want to be turned into butter. Also, a magical bomb can be engineered for a lot of different purposes. Even non-lethal ones, theoretically. You could make one where everyone in the blast radius would… I don’t know. Magically grow a mustache.”

“I don’t suppose there are mustache bombs buried in that silo?”

“I sincerely doubt it.”

Herbert picked up the dark rectangular forms littered on the fiery horizon. It was a horizon now burning equally from bother ends, in sky and in sea. He gently tilted the plane, beginning a wide, tentative circle around the combat zone before heading in.

“So what actually happened? I’m still not clear on this. When was the war?”

Grant didn’t mind going on, since it seemed to keep Herbert’s flying less erratic. “Most of it took place in the 1980’s, by Earth time.”

“Huh. It all seems like such ancient history. All this went down before I was born.”

“In a way, it is, when you consider the time scale of this realm. It was almost two hundred years ago. Then, as my understanding of the history goes, something terrible happened. Some kind of disaster that caught both sides off guard. It left the armies decimated and the land in ruins. It seems it never fully recovered.”

Secretary Weinberger sat in front of the President’s desk, rigid with nerves, but patient. He listened to the gentle scratchings of a pen on a sheet of White House stationery. The pen put the finishing flourish on a crude cartoon horse, its third such creation on the page.

“What do you think, Cap?” asked President Reagan.

“They’re beautiful, sir,” Caspar said with genuine admiration. “But I have to confess, sir, I was under the impression that there was something urgent to discuss.”

Reagan calmly rested the pen on his desk and brought his hand to his chin. The atmosphere of the storied elliptical room seemed to change along with the man’s mood, as if in deference. “It’s the war. I’ve been dwelling on ways to end this awful conflict all afternoon.”

“It’s troubled me as well, sir. Candidly, sir, recent Soviet activity has me more than a little spooked.”

“Well, now, Cap, no reason to take their mischief to heart. The Russians will do as they’ll do. I’m thinking of the big picture. You’ll recall Star Wars?” he said with a coy turn in his lip, addressed to the very man he’d charged with implementing the bold vision.

“Of course. Damned stroke of genius, Mr. President. Infallible bulwark against annihilation. Only in America!”

“Well, yes. Thank you, Cap. But I’ll have to confess. I was never so much interested in its efficacy as I was in the power of its statement.”

“Statement, sir?”

“Oh, it’s no secret, old friend. I cut my teeth in Hollywood. I’ve always been a great proponent of the magic of image. Of illusion. That’s where real tactical power lies. It’s been my fond hope since I was a young man to breathe some magic into this stubborn dry soil. This obtuse rock, our home, planet Earth.”

Cap’s mouth hung open just a bit, as if it was about to dispense a ticket. He was starting to think he’d need a cigarette soon.

“That’s why I went into film, Cap. And that too is why I became president. To bring magic into the world. And with it to defend all that is good, as much as nature permits within its limits. Because, friend, of course we both know there’s no such thing as real magic.”

Dear God, Cap thought. Did the President just wink at him? He cleared his throat. “Sir, if you don’t mind my saying, at times I’ve thought your economic policies are pure magic.”

Reagan produced a humble smile. “Well, thank you. You know, the two subjects are far more closely related than you might suspect. But I digress.

“I’ve been accused of many things, and one charge I don’t protest is being a dreamer. I’ve tended to this dream for years. I remember like yesterday working with Mr. Lucas to put a face on the idea. To christen it with fantastic and frightening displays of military might, only cinematic though they be. But this statement, Cap. Its power was such that by the time our whisperings of the Federal Star Wars program reached Russian ears, by George we had their attention. Who among their paranoid ranks could divine the fact from the fiction?”

Caspar’s forehead complained with wrinkles. “It would explain why one of our operatives was interrogated for the details of the Death Star’s construction. We actually thought it might be some sort of espionage-oriented April Fool’s jape.”

Reagan shifted in his chair somewhat uncomfortably, squeaking the leather. Cap cocked an eyebrow. “Wait… sir, they were fictional films, weren’t they?” The President merely emanated his typical charismatic glow in response. His Defense Secretary’s perspiration was a little more noticeable.

“Well, now, don’t be silly. Of course not, Cap.” Cap exhaled. “But that’s not here nor there. Though it’s been a fine campaign if I say so myself, it’s essentially run its course. This Space Race has pushed outward the frontier, and both we and our enemy have staked our claims. But all symbolism aside, I fear henceforth there will be little return to the enterprise. As a nation we must forge on.”

“What do you have in mind, sir?”

“Well, I’ve been dwelling on a new frontier to claim. Though in truth, not new at all. Ancient, timeless, steeped in legend hidden to history’s recollection. One over which the Russians have scarce foothold yet, and will be quick to seek once prompted. And now that by God’s good grace you-know-who has been subdued, it will be open season. If we can beat them out there, they’ll surely start to destabilize. It’ll be the beginning of the end, Cap.”

Cap leaned forward. “Sir… who is you-know-who?”

“Best to let sleeping dogs lay, friend.” Reagan swiveled his chair and eased open a drawer. He bathed in the sentimentality of the items his hand caressed. Several frayed, weathered badges. A copper telescope and a compass. An assortment of Indian arrowheads. And an antique flintlock pistol.

“Today I was thinking. Recent events drew out bittersweet memories. I was reminded of something from my youth. I never told anyone in the administration of course. But at this critical juncture in history, now’s the time. Time to revisit it.”

“Revisit what, Mr. President?”

“Summer camp.”

Caspar allowed for a stoic half-minute to pass while he pondered the exact nature of his duty as the President’s immediate counsel. He finally spoke with a leaden tone. “Shall I get Mr. Lucas on the phone?”

“No, thanks, Cap. That’ll do. We need to begin recruiting. Recruiting young.”

His Secretary was incredulous. “Mr. President… I hardly know what to say. I’m afraid this is about to eclipse my field of expertise by some margin.”

“Well, rest your worries, Cap. Leave everything to me.”

Cap looked as if his chest were fit to burst with pride and admiration. “Sir, may I just applaud your astonishing bravery and leadership. We’d all be lost without it. God bless America.”

“Anyway, you can probably gather what happened after that,” Grant said, growing accustomed to raising his voice over the jet engine. “The Russian government couldn’t take the losses, and in the chaos of the aftermath, it collapsed. The U.S. held on and won the cold war. That would have been around a hundred and fifty years ago. Marlevort came on to the scene later, but his domination really threw a wrench into the reconstruction process.”

“What I’m wondering is,” Herbert said while calibrating a dial whose purpose was utterly mysterious to him. “Was it always a summer camp? Even during the war? I mean, was this magical war between global superpowers just a glorified series of capture the flag tournaments and s’more making competitions?”

“Who knows for sure. The way I understand it, by some time-honored tradition of the realm, it’s always sort of existed as a structured entity for childhood activity, whether the emphasis was on recreation, combat or what have you. I’m sure it’s taken many forms over the centuries. Marlevort distorted it all into something of his own design, for reasons probably beyond his control, I suppose.”

“Huh?”

Grant was silent. He looked off to the side, out of the cockpit glass and through the sulfur haze, where the ghostly fleet simmered in red. Herbert didn’t follow up on the point, though. He’d found something else lodged in his craw. “Another thing. Does this place have a name? Most magical realms have funny names. I’ve never heard anyone mention it.”

“The realm? I don’t think so. Look at it this way. Does our universe have a name? We just call it ‘the universe’, because it doesn’t occur to us that there are others. Our planet has a name. So does this one. Lots of names, probably, depending on who you ask and who’s still alive to call it that. I’ve always known it by its governmental classification, and a lot of locals seem comfortable with it too. Pretty dry stuff.”

Grant felt his head press into his neck as Herbert pulled up. “Okay, looks like we’re coming up on ‘em. Get yourself ready. I’ll approach from above.”

Banditsknife pointed straight up, punching through the plateau of volcanic smog into the clear twilight sky.

“I hope you’ll forgive my snooping. I had to take it, Bea. I had to keep it safe for you because someone was after it. Someone quite unfriendly.”

“I know, Russet. Thank you.”

He scooted back on their cot against the wall. He was still considerably hung over, and his face openly spoke to the condition. “Whatever else may be true, at least it’s with its rightful owner.”

She held the artifact, tilting it, catching light in its etchings. She’d guarded it for years, but now beheld it as something strange. Had she ever really looked at it? Truly been with it, feeling for its meaning and the power inside it? Whatever its purpose, that had only been of peripheral relevance to her life. It seemed to her in retrospect more emblematic of her secrecy. Her fear. Every worry she’d ever had. It had become part of herself, and it was a part she didn’t like anymore.

“I want you to keep it.”

“You do?”

“Keep it safe, Russet. I trust you.”

He took it with a little smile. “I’ll do my best. Though I wonder what it’ll matter if we can’t get out of here.”

Beatrix was hesitant to ask. His posture regarding their captivity seemed enough to suggest he wasn’t up to using magic. He did look off his game, perhaps due to the medication. It was as if he read her thoughts. “Nope. No ‘majyyks’. Sorry.” A sarcastic dazzle of his hand punctuated ‘majyyks’. He ran the hand through his sweaty hair. “The friggin’ booze isn’t helping things much.”

She had thought she smelled something on his breath. “So, um… how have you been feeling? Did your medication help?”

“Eh. The pills do their thing. You know, I’m sort of humming along.”

“I’m sorry I forced you to take them. That was stupid. I was…” she trailed off.

“You were right to be upset with me. I was behaving like a total jackass. I’ve just been so hopelessly confused.”

“Confused about what?”

“About everything. My whole life. About myself, and why I’m always so miserable. You probably think it sounds quaint, but honestly I feel like a horrible sinner.”

“A sinner? How so?”

His features clouded over with his troubled thoughts. His pupils twitched under narrowed lids. He said nothing.

Beatrix found herself alert, and rested her own emotion. Something was in Russet that ought to come out. Just maybe she could just listen, provide the space for it. Anchored in her clarity, she spoke. “Remember my dream? A few nights ago?”

“Yeah.”

“It already feels like a long time ago.”

“I know.”

“Well, anyway, wasn’t it you who said the only real sin is not knowing who you are?”

“Oh, God, I was so full of shit!”

She stifled a laugh at the outburst. She didn’t mean to find it funny. Why was it so easy to see through the absurdity of someone else’s problems? Was it patronizing to think so? Perhaps it became easier when she found a bit of distance from her own. In any case, her mild release of levity seemed to put the smallest crack in his shell. His mouth broadened slowly.

“You know, the silly thing about this is…” he said, pausing, his tone softened. “I was always so fond of you from the start. I never mentioned this to you, but I cannot remember ever actually meeting a girl before. I was so excited, and I thought you were so pretty and interesting and fun. It’s so completely insane that I made you feel sad and rejected. I’m really sorry. Honestly, from the first moment I saw you, all I really wanted to do was to kiss you.”

He looked down with the meek bow of confessor’s remorse. She ducked down a bit to catch his eyes, and for the moment, their glances met, stabilized in each other. She drew closer. Her pink lips separated, and hovered near his. They closed against them softly, joined by the slick of lip balm, the taste of sweat, and the hint of scotch.

Shortly, she pulled back. He didn’t move. Her smirk became a smile. She asked playfully, “Hey, what kind of lip balm is that? Strawberry?”

“I think I’m gay.”

She blinked twice. And then again.

“©#@%.”

Russet looked around the cell to see if she had brought along the Singe Vilain. She had not.

The walls shook. Somewhere, heavy artillery was being fired.

In Bel-Air, California, on June 5, 2004, All was quiet in the Reagan family home. Nancy sat by her husband’s bed and sensed a stirring.

She stroked his hand to let him know she was there, even if he wasn’t fully aware of it. Though his mind was locked away from her, imprisoned by the disease, she always knew her beloved husband’s spirit was strong. And from it, she drew strength too.

There was a whisper from the bed. “Mommy…”

“Ronnie?”

She could hardly believe what she saw. He looked at her warmly, his eyes alert and lucid. He was her old Ronnie again for the first time in years.

Spinning beneath Herbert’s corkscrew nosedive was the heat-scorched naval fleet, comprised of aging vessels once the pride of American and Russian forces alike. Anti-aircraft fire thundered from many flashing sources, rising into the dusk sky, finding no intersection with Banditsknife’s nimble evasive path.

“Let’s see what she can do.” Herbert’s raised voice instructed Grant from the front. “You ready back there?”

“Yeah. I think so.” Grant looked at the controls in front of him. Though they weren’t controls so much as they were stationary handles made of silver. They were mounted to a silver panel, central to many silver wires and filaments spreading through the craft like a nervous system. He wrapped his palms and fingers around them gently.

“And hey. No butter bombs, okay? Let’s keep it simple. Just straight up, honest to God ass-kicking magic.”

“Roger that,” Grant said as if he’d taken that order from superior officers on a routine basis. The metal parts he held glowed. It was pulling energy from within him and multiplying it. He was dealing with a serious weapon, his raised eyebrow seemed to note.

Herbert didn’t wait for the small cruiser to pass through any crosshairs. There weren’t even any crosshairs to be found. He had a feeling he wouldn’t have to aim. He pulled the trigger.

The modified gun barrels fulminated with violent bursts of light, an almost continuous, jagged serpent of white daggers. The swath lashed across several boats which were about as helpless as bathtub toys. They were explosively punctured. They spat lava upward through fresh holes and eased beneath the red.

Several nearby ships took to the air, as if great wasps spurred to flight by threat to the hive. Dripping from the underbellies was bright molten rock, gritty from a cooling and darkening cracked surface.

“Oh, awesome. The boats can fly. Hey, Grant, tell me, what the hell is the point of a flying boat? Why can’t they just stay put?”

“I’m trying to concentrate.”

As Herbert flew by, he noticed the decks were manned by a netherworldly crew, an assortment of the demonic, the skeletal, and the captive, a group comprised of understandably frightened Junior Campers.

Meanwhile, from the deck of the carrier a string of aircraft deployed efficiently into the sky. If Herbert were forced to guess at the appearance of the piloting parties, he’d probably have envisioned a smaller skeleton fitted with goggles of some sort, worn to protect the eyeballs it didn’t have. This would have been a pretty good guess.

He held her hand. His grip was weak, trembling slightly.

“You can’t go, Ronnie. It’s been so long since we could talk like this.” A tear escaped her blink.

“I have to go, Mommy. It’s time again for me to defend lives and preserve freedom.”

“What do you mean? What lives, Ronnie? Where will you go?”

“It’s okay, Nancy. It’s okay.”

“Can’t you just stay? Just a little while longer?”

The former President relaxed his face, forgiving a bit the creases of his longevity. “Well, it’s my duty. I’ve taken an oath. And I know in my heart man is good, that what is right will always eventually triumph and that there is purpose and worth to each and every life.” His gaze drifted up, just over her head, and into the distance. “I love you, Nancy.”

His eyes stood still. They remained open. But she knew he was gone.

00:30:25… 00:30:24… 00:30:23…

The swarm of jets was like a living, roaring showcase from one of Herbert’s military aviation books. He named each one with a sort of quiet ritualistic respect before gunning it down.

There was the stylish Russian-made MiG-31 Foxhound. And now it was glittering sheets of scrap metal fluttering through the hot air currents. And there, the American F-20 Tigershark, terror of the open blue. Though it performed in a marginally less terrifying manner once its wings were made to resemble cheese graters. The MiG-29 Fulcrum, a jewel of the Soviet air force. Moments later, Herbert wondered retrospectively if perhaps it had been filled with an unusually combustible type of fuel. He looked off to the side and flipped a mock salute to an F-18 Hornet spiraling below, whose function had been reduced to that of a multi-million dollar lawn dart.

He eased off the trigger, momentarily pensive as he barrel rolled under the hull of a lumbering airborne battle cruiser. “I hope I’m not shooting down too many of these miserable kids.”

“I somehow get the feeling you’re the only kid around here who can fly a plane,” Grant reassured.

“How’s it going back there?”

“Good. I think I’m getting a better feel for it.”

“Ok. Keep the wicked magic coming!” Herbert couldn’t believe the words from his mouth. He would have stopped to wonder if he was under the influence of another sort of toy monkey, but it was unlikely there existed a charm with such frightening power.

Grant closed his eyes. Banditsknife brightened, then spent itself on Herbert’s trigger. A missile hissed from the wing, ambling almost lazily, towards a battleship mingling with evening clouds.

The missile’s form hiccupped, in a way, and became ten missiles. Those missiles in a blink became one hundred. The U.S.S. Ghost in the Shell took the brunt of the volley and began its slow, smoldering descent like an ailing dirigible.

Two more missiles left the jet and spun downward to a patch of lava buoying a cluster of ships. The missiles vanished in the red soup. Following moments of loaded silence, the surface of the lava sunk to a concave shape a thousand feet in diameter. The ships drifted down the valley not long before a depth charge-like eruption pierced the center, claiming the ships in a furious orange-yellow consumption.

“Wow. Nice. Might be overdoing it a bit, though,” Herbert suggested.

“Right. Sorry. Try it again.”

The jet spat another three missiles at the fleet nearby the carrier. Again, the lava swallowed them, but now it rapidly blackened, cooling and perspiring steam. Ice crystals sprouted and spread, immobilizing ships. Others were pushed upward by large faceted peaks of ice, and vanishing into the geysering steam bath. The ice slowly grew around the carrier before ceasing its radial advance.

Herbert swooped low to the bed of ice, honing in on the carrier. He got a better look at its hull, which had been repainted to read “U.S.S. Neon Evangelion” in a less than official naval font.

“God, this guy’s just a huge dork, isn’t he?”

The dork in question had emerged from below. He strolled along the deck clicking a black staff on the runway with each step. In his other hand, a silver Zapper was drawn, swaying at his side.

00:00:02… 00:00:01… 00:00:00…

The small box above the booth-like glass chamber beeped several times and exhaled long-sealed pressure. Insects scurried away in protest.

The underside of the box opened, dropping a small red figure the size of a maturing fetus. It was featureless, without feet, hands or a face, and smooth, a consistency like clay.

It landed on the head of the similarly featureless statue in the chamber below. It clambered on to the shoulders, and then in front of the circular hole in the statue’s chest. It melted into a formless blob and entered the hole, sealing it flush.

Herbert’s finger twitched by the trigger. “That’s him? That’s the guy?”

“Yes. But I wouldn’t fire at him yet. Not head-on like this. I think we need a better plan.”

“What are you talking about? This is the plan. We’re here in a plane shooting stuff. I’m taking him out.”

“I don’t think you understand how dangerous he is,” Grant said, his voice drowned out by the roar of the very volley of missiles he hoped to dissuade. “I’m not sure why I’m even bothering,” he muttered. No one ever understood how dangerous anyone was, it seemed.

Slinus raised his staff and quickly the incoming missiles changed shape. It was a spindlier, bonier shape, with considerably more flailing motions than their previous blunt forms had sported.

Behind him, Gilbert cleared his throat. “Why are you always turning things into skeletons? I guess they’re pretty cool and scary or whatever. But doesn’t it ever get old?”

No one seemed more surprised at the sudden presence of airborne skeletons than the skeletons themselves. They reached their target and shattered against an invisible force field.

“I do what the Tine wills. It’s a fickle stick. Speaking of…” He pitched the staff to his subordinate. “Hold it for me a minute, won’t you, Gil?”

Gilbert bobbled it awkwardly, then held it at a distance from himself. “Do I have to? The thing kind of creeps me out.”

“Yeah, me too. But I can’t damned-well leave it on the floor, can I?” Slinus said while kneeling and taking aim with his Zapper at the renegade F-16. Herbert making a wide circle for another pass at the carrier. “Also, you might want to brace yourself.”

The high-powered laser salvo ignited the air like ground zero of a major fireworks display. The great heft of the Evangelion slowly tipped to its side against the mounting recoil. Banditsknife flitted this way and that with the spry maneuvers of a housefly. The torrential spray proved too much though and clipped a wing. Smoke streaked from the gash.

“This was such a bad idea,” Grant bemoaned.

“Hold on,” Herbert said, fighting with the controls. “I think I can keep it in the air.”

The Evangelion gently tipped back to its upright position, relieved from subsiding gunfire. Slinus appraised his target. He squinted beneath his large, unfashionable frames, exaggerating the harsh lines sunken into an otherwise youthful face. “Gil. Raise the Tine, okay?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The staff. Hold it in the air. And then wave it around a little, I guess. And try to look a little menacing, if it’s not too much trouble.”

“You want me to cast a spell? With this thing? I’m not your flipping familiar, Slinus. I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”

“Just hold it up. It’ll know what to do.”

“I hate my life,” Gil muttered while stirring the air with the grim artifact in an almost facetious manner.

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

From the surrounding uncooled portions of the sea, dozens of magma globules rose. Each became hotter, brighter, faster and more fluid. They all revolved about Herbert’s axis, getting faster and faster. They each sharpened and smoothed their forms into burning fighter jets. They’d soon prove to be quicker, less destructible, and far more copious than any Herbert had just shot down.

Worry took over his face. Even for a slow study like Herbert, the experience was long overdue; he was finally in over his head.

The Eggwood household’s television set was tuned into the round-the-clock coverage of President Reagan’s passing on Fox News. William hunched in observance, pitching in his quota to the solemn national consciousness of today’s armchair mourners. He lifted his glass from a spot on the coffee table recently vacated by a ceramic frog of dubious resale value.

“Guess you’ll be ‘trickling down’ from heaven now, eh, buddy?” This struck William as stinging political rebuke, in spite of how little it actually made sense. “I wonder what your boys up there will think of the Iran Contra thing.” William’s accountant would never find himself swamped in stubs for donations to the Republican National Committee.

He raised his glass in front of a wry smile. “All water under the bridge, Ron. I’m sorry to see you go.”

“Will!” Donna yelled from the kitchen. “There’s another message from Herbert here. Are you sure he’s alright?”

“Yeah, he’s having a blast!” he replied, impervious to the question’s merit.

“It doesn’t sound like it.”

“You know how he is. Man, what I wouldn’t give to be in his shoes. Lucky son of a gun.”

Sean Hannity’s grief-shaken voice filled the conversational gap. “… courage, strength, conviction, leadership… it just goes on and on, what comes to mind about this man. This… this noble, compassionate American. A great patriot. A beautiful man. He stood up to the scourge of communism, the blight of tyranny, the disease of liberalism. He gave us everything. Can we ever thank him enough? No, I don’t think so, Alan. What we owe this man… this… patriot. This true gentleman. A class act. A legend. What we… words can’t… Alan, I just…”

Sean struggled to keep his composure. He broke down and wilted into Alan Colmes’ arms, sobbing into his tie. Alan pursed his lips, briefly darting an eye at the camera, and gingerly stroked Sean’s soft gunmetal hair.

The casket passed down the street below through the hallowed silence. Men saluted. Rifles clapped. But the casket was empty.

“Herbert, it’s a lost cause. We can’t shoot any of these things down, let alone all of them,” Grant said of the self-repairing, gelatinous fighter jets.

“Hang on.” Herbert grappled with the controls as if trying to subdue a live cobra. “I can save the plane. If I can just avoid fire long enough to land…”

Banditsknife left strands of smoke from its various projectile-punched injuries. The multi-threaded trail extruded from its moving source, twisting and curling like a ribbon falling through a livid swarm of wasps.

The rear of the cockpit broke open with Grant’s sudden ejection. The noise shocked Herbert. “Hey! Come on, man!”

He dragged the jet out of the fray toward the dark mass in the sea he guessed was a craggy cropping of land. As he drew closer and leveled out, he could see more clearly it was a small black island on which sprouted crude, stout buildings, possibly old barracks.

Herbert swept a low arc to the lava, angled the nose up, skipped once on the surface and dredged a rocky gash in the soil from the shore inland. He unbuckled and spilled out of the smoking cockpit, plopping in exhaustion to a seat nearby.

He shook his head at the parachute in the distance, floating to the deck of the Evangelion. The fiery fighter jets were gradually returning to the lava. He wasn’t sure whether to spite his copilot’s cowardice or admire his practicality, but the thought was displaced by an odd presence in his mind. His eye wandered to the barracks. Was it coming from there? It was a chilly feeling, and vaguely animalistic. The thought of a frost-covered table entered his mind. Pink, frostbitten hands. The keen smell of old frozen meat residue. A plant?

“Wizardy Herbert.”

He looked up. Slinus stood over him. The Zapper was drawn to steady aim between his eyebrows.

Herbert’s expression suspended itself in a sweaty grimace. He appraised the counselor, the dark nemesis of his future self. His attire was ridiculous, yet vaguely sinister somehow. The black shorts, the black sash festooned with merit badges—they were the gaudy emblems of military decoration in this realm, it seemed. The long black hair was a dashing complement to his motif when gauged within the scope of some gothic nerd’s self-indulgent reverie. The thin framed aviator-style glasses would have rocked the fashion scene at a computer engineer’s convention in the 1980’s. His face looked scarred, stretched and textured, evidence of heavy and long-healed deformation. His eyes were motionless, matte-black, without spark. Behind them Herbert envisioned a boundless void, expanding and impossible to disturb. Like a growing, implacable illness, bleeding through its medium as ink dripping on tissue paper. Herbert’s death wouldn’t touch it. It wouldn’t even pause to notice.

“Marlevort.”

“So this was their plan to stop me. And it took a meager half-century to come to fruition. It’s kind of sad when you think about it.”

“What are you trying to do? Why do you want the Slipknot?” Herbert baited him with curiosity as his hand crept toward his gun. A voice took his mind’s stage.

{Don’t.} It was a feeling from the barracks again. His eye flirted with that direction again briefly and paused his hand.

Slinus didn’t budge. His reply was flat. “I’m not going to tell you. I’m just going to kill you.”

{Get away while you can. I’m taking care of this.}

Slinus’ finger hugged the plastic trigger. The sound of a spring depressing made a toyish “pop” inside the Zapper. In one motion Herbert took the doll from his pocket and turned it. The zap passed through the phantom of Herbert’s vanishing mass and melted a stone.

Slinus reholstered neutrally, unmoved, as if he’d narrowly missed the opportunity for nothing more than a tantalizing spam promotion. He turned to his side and sneered. The parachute had landed on the deck of his ship.

On New Year’s day following the Christmas of 1998, the ink on the adoption papers had barely dried. Herbert couldn’t remember his former life, nor was he cognizant of the thought that one existed. He drifted through the well-kept domestic spaces of the second floor seeking a quiet moment to himself, an aim he’d pursue not infrequently in years to come.

He entered his older brother’s room, the brother on which his sparse recollection had nothing to offer. Seymour, though, had culled a place in his awareness as a brother through several days prior of casual interaction; simply existing in proximity as a new brother was enough to convince Herbert’s passive sponge of the reality, and the same went for his new parents. But no one had spoken of his missing older brother, so for Herbert, he effectively didn’t exist. Yet here, Louis’ room, kept the way it had been for months, spoke the contrary.

The bedroom’s walls and furnishings boasted the telltale articles, the reclusive fascinations of—barring less flattering terms—a hobbyist. Pinups of severe-looking wizards (sic) battling through pose power alone great foaming crests of the sea lashing against his elements-ravaged perch. Or less direly, dropping a wistful gaze into a glowing orb which either imprisoned his most vile nemesis, or exhibited stubborn residue from a price tag which he couldn’t seem to scrape off completely with his fingernail. The bookshelves packed themselves tight with similar fare, and action figures stood atop guarding the library, soldiers so fearsome-looking, you almost wouldn’t suspect their one weakness was in easily being shattered on some patio pavement.

The desk held its own sort of mess, speaking to various forms of productivity. To the side there was an old Texas Instruments word processor. More central was a motley cabal of semi-painted Warhammer 40,000 models. They were painted so badly and so gaudily, the orcs resembled a band of savage clowns.

Herbert slid the drawer open. There was only one thing in it, and proved to be the only thing in the room that commanded more than a second of his interest (aside from a novel called “Vera Valera and the Secret Sorceress Sorority” once he finally gave the book a chance). For that matter, it would consistently prove to be the only thing in following years that felt meaningful to him. And divining the meaning of something so intrinsically stupid would prove to be the greatest challenge of his life.

He picked up the manuscript with the blacked-out text on the cover.

“Sweet Zombie Jesus…”

He looked at the doorway. It framed the chubby boy who called him his brother. He was pale and worried, which was beginning to strike Herbert as his signature look. Herbert flipped through the pages and said nothing.

“What are you doing in here again, Herbert? After…” He lowered his voice to a croaking whisper. “After you made me help you bury that guy in our yard??”

He was unresponsive. Seymour was incredulous at his new family member. “Are you still acting spaced out? Man, you have no idea what’s going on, do you. You haven’t… you still haven’t seen yet, have you?”

“Seen what?” he said, suddenly more conscious of the blindness in his left eye, and the subtle black field which shared fifty percent of his cumulative visual experience.

“The book you’re holding. Do you even know what it is? Honestly, it’s a blessing the other six disappeared. Good riddance.”

Herbert rolled up the book and slipped it in his pocket with nonchalance. He left the room.

“You shouldn’t read that, Herbert. It’s nothing but trouble!”

“Does Grant know you feel that way about him?”

“I doubt it. I mean, how could anyone else know if even I was unsure myself?” Beatrix might have pointed out that in retrospect certain clues could have made it obvious even to those who were spoon-fed porridge and easily flummoxed by mittens. But she wasn’t about to call that kettle black.

“Um… is he…?”

Russet shook his head. He’d liked to have held out optimism, but his friend’s jocular attitude towards female gymnastics footage didn’t leave much doubt.

Beatrix watched the metal floor. It no longer blurred the air with radiating heat. She allowed the silence to sink into awkwardness unprotested. She noted a felt sense of dejection, though muted. Perhaps it was tempered with clarity. It all sort of made sense now.

“It’s really cooled off, hasn’t it?” Russet motioned cordially for the change in subject. “Do you think we’ve sailed out of the lava?”

She shrugged. Russet fidgeted his feet beneath the cot.

“So will you tell him?” she asked.

“Good God, no. I’m not sure how I’m going to look him in the eye again, to tell you the truth.”

There was a squeaky report from a metal latch. The cell door opened. Grant stepped into view. Russet smiled with half his face and treated him to a self-conscious wave.

Louis had used the whole summer of 1996 to write his book, and on this balmy evening on his back patio he was tuning it with the final touches. It would be just a few decisive edits before he’d begin typing the manuscript. It was an editorial process that was, putting it charitably, rather cursory.

His younger brother Seymour joined him at the patio table drawing a diligence pulse from the Olympics games in Atlanta on the portable TV set. His saucer eyes took in every gazelle-like turn of finesse in Kerri Strug’s sculpted musculature, and they misted over in dewy admiration on witnessing her selfless gimpy-legged landing.

“Gosh. She’s so pretty. Do you think she would go on a date with me and let me hold her hand, Louis?” This was the best approximation of romance his young mind’s cipher would yield.

“Dream on, Seymour. She’s like a rich multi-millionaire or something, and you’re just a clueless little kid!” Louis dispensed the brotherly wisdom without leaving his notebook. His rounded frame, heavyset for a twelve year-old, hulked over the writing instruments which seemed small in comparison. He was never much for the female gymnastics part of the competition anyway. Though he was always eager to be reminded when the men’s wrestling matches began.

“There. I think I’m done.” Louis popped a knuckle and deflated in relief from the mounting exertion. He assuaged his weary mind with the thought that it likely wasn’t a typical breed of author that would spend all summer on a project.

“Cool!”

“I’m pretty proud of it. I mean, I don’t think it will sell as many copies as one of the Trick books. Well, not at first, anyway.”

“I love Trick! He always gets the treasure, and it’s great when he does. I bet your book is just as good though. Maybe better! I believe in you.”

“Thanks, little brother. Here, why don’t you find out for yourself?” Louis slid the pad across the glass table, while trying to resist getting too distracted by the sudden onscreen presence of a taught young man doing a backflip.

Seymour eagerly dove into an early excerpt.

The new campers were so amazed on what they saw they couldn’t even believe there eyes. The forrest was full of rope ladders and bridges with a lot of logs tied together and a lot of straw hut looking kind of houses like treehouses. it was kind of like an ewok village but cooler. There were so many wizards it was amazeing. The best wizard of all was the camp master and every one looking at him just new right away he was so old and wise.

The camp was so magical but every one new that day that the greatest magic of all was the power of friend ship.

“It’s…”

Seymour’s speechlessness consumed him. He new (sic) right away his brother had not created something ordinary.

“It’s incredible.”

Beatrix and Russet crept through the lower decks of the carrier while Grant tailed them closely. The sounds of battle subsided, and in spite of their immersion in molten rock, it was now actually chilly. There was little sign of activity aside from now and then a young Slurpenook member/captive cowering behind a bulkhead.

“Why is it so cold in here all of a sudden?” Beatrix whispered into her own cloud of faintly visible breath.

“Probably the ice,” Grant replied, who’d as a matter of practicality had thus far skimped on a number of details leading to their rescue.

“Huh?” she asked inattentively, peeking around a corner. She tiptoed ahead and down the hall, while Grant fell back and gestured to Russet.

“Hey, buddy,” he said softly. Russet didn’t meet his look and nodded a bit. “You don’t by any chance know if Marlevort got the Slipknot yet, do you? Has anyone found it?”

“It’s safe. I’ve got it right here, actually.” Russet kept his voice down too, following suit.

Grant showed relief. “Great. That’s great news, Russet. But it’s not safe as long as we’re stuck in this ship. Better let me hang on to it, okay?”

Russet hardly thought about it before handing it over. He was getting a pretty good eyeful of everything around him, the walls, their feet, the ceiling—all but his friend’s face.

“Yeah. Here.”

Scribe-Babies!® Creative Writing Summer Workshop (for KiDz!) was an institution humbly situated in the urban gutters of North Jersey. It was a fine way for poor inner city kids and troubled youngsters alike to get away from day-to-day struggles and gauntlet therapy sessions while flexing some imaginative muscle on paper. Jamal had won admittance non-deliberately through an essay which found its way on the right desk, and encouraged by his mother, took the bus from Harlem every Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. It was there he would finalize a project he’d been working on for the better part of a year, and it was there he met a kid who would become his biggest fan in the world who hadn’t given birth to him.

Today was the final session, and Louis brimmed with the good news.

“What do you mean? You finished the whole book?” Jamal tentatively accepted the manuscript thrust at him.

“Yeah! And since you’re…” There was a bashful pause. “Well, you are like my whole inspiration I wanted you to have the honor of being the first to read it.”

“Wow. I’m… I don’t even know what to say. Wow.” Jamal fanned his face with the breeze of flipping pages. “Usually something like this takes, like… longer.”

“I was just so excited and inspired. Once I started, I couldn’t stop! I was blown away by what you were doing. You know, at your age and with all the stuff you’ve been through. So I thought, hey! Why can’t I do it too! I don’t think it’s as good as yours by a mile, but I think it is probably still pretty good! I’d love to know what you think.”

Jamal already had it folded open to a passage. Although he’d already been familiarized enough with samples of the work in preceding summer weeks to issue a pithy verdict regardless of what he might find now. It would be the same pithy verdict he’d issue in a moment.

He said with an air of arragance some more things about the summer camp. His arragance would probably be his down fall, thats what a lot of people said about him. “Ha ha you silly fool, don’t you know the summer camp is divided in to 4 forts. Their’s the one that values freind ship above all else which is fort Crowsnest. which calls upon the power of the mighty crow. And there is fort Serpenook the fort of the mighty serpent or some times called snakes. They are the best one’s and relie on cunning and trechory to…

Jamal’s reading hastened to skimming after a point while he concocted a gracious response. He raised his eyebrows high and made long, slow nodding motions to denote the appearance of pleasant surprise.

“Wow… wow, Louis. This is really… enthusiastic.”

The pithy verdict filled the large boy with tingles of glee.

“And,” Jamal continued, “I guess, if I had to make one little …” Louis was earnestly receptive, craving the wisdom. But Jamal stopped, deciding to give up once and for all the hope of impressing on him the importance of striving for originality. It was time to let the youngster have his moment.

“Never mind. I think you made your momma proud.”

“I knew you’d love it! So hey, how’s your work going, man?” Louis accented the question with an awkward fist-to-shoulder expression of brotherhood.

“Oh, you know. Lookin’ to get it published, if I can. I’m not holding out a lot of hope, but you never know.”

“That’s great! I really hope you do. I want everyone to read it.”

“Yeah, thanks. We’ll see.”

Thundleshick’s startled hands dropped the tray of freshly-thawed toadloaf on the floor. Sitting there in his path was Herbert, smoking and ash-covered, clutching a recently twisted doll. The nervous sage took a small step back.

“Relax,” Herbert said, separating the doll into halves. “I’m not here to shoot you. Don’t get me wrong. I’m still pissed off at you. I’ve just got bigger fish to fry now.”

Thundleshick’s rigid posture eased, and he quickly seemed more paternally compassionate. He’d gotten really good at promoting that appearance, even if the only form of sympathy he tended to feel was for those heavily burdened by chronic robe-rash.

“I see. Tell me boy. Say… you haven’t by chance collected more badges to show me, have you?” He blinked his wide eyes quickly with the playful exuberance of a baby dear in a cartoon.

“No, I sure as hell damn-well haven’t.”

The Campmaster shrunk slightly.

“It’s one of your counselors. Marlevort. You are aware of this guy, right? And what he’s up to?”

He dipped his head in stern accord. “Yes, yes. Afraid so.”

“Aren’t you concerned? I know you love to wallow in all this disgusting moldy trash all day, and rifle through kids’ luggage and lord knows what else, but it is your camp, isn’t it? Can’t you do something?”

Thundleshick caressed his whiskers in a way that looked thoughtful. This was another look he’d mastered to mask feelings of guilt and overwhelming incompetence. “I suppose I should set the record straight, my gumptious young friend. The counselor and I… you see, he is in truth at this ship’s helm, while I keep loftier burdens, observing from above. In… you know, in the thingy you sit in above a ship, on which squawking fowl might perch. You might even consider my duties as that of a subordinate.”

“What? You mean you’re just a crony? You spineless son of a bitch.”

“Hmm. Perhaps not a crony inasmuch a free agent? Free in spirit, irrepressible, like a frolicsome wind, perchance finding its way to fill and billow the ruffledress of a plump-chested dairy maiden?”

Herbert made a face suggesting this semantic revision didn’t sit well with him. Thundleshick made a face suggesting his nonexistent collar was getting a little snug.

“Er… yes. That is, it was I who was recruited at his behest. It was many years ago to help the Counselor establish this wondrous camp. And increasingly since, I have enjoyed privileged autonomies for my service.”

“I guess I should have realized that. It’s pretty obvious you do just about dick-all for this camp. He seems to be the one with all the firepower. And ambition, for that matter.”

Thundleshick nodded, finding it hard to object. Though it nearly hit a nerve facing the insinuation that his seven acre fungus atrium was not a darned ambitious undertaking.

“Speaking of which,” Herbert remembered. “That’s what I’ve been meaning to ask. Why is Marlevort so hell-bent on this Mobius Slipknot? What does it actually do?”

Thundleshick perked up with nearly the enthusiasm he typically reserved for the topic of fungus. He scurried to a bookshelf.

The stone fist exited the glass booth to the sound of clinking shards. Small creeping vines dissolved from the statue’s coarse surface. The sleeve became cloth. The hand became flesh.

What was inside stood up.

Thundleshick leafed through the delicate pages of the old book. It was comparable in size to an unabridged dictionary, and filled with runes and dark iconography possibly serving as occult disclaimers. It appeared to Herbert to be solely devoted to the mysterious charm. There was an abundance of diagrams, some he glimpsed exhibiting its completed form, the locket clasping a sort of medallion in its central hollow. In others, the Slipknot appeared to be used in conjunction with open books.

“… in books?” Herbert partially echoed.

“Yes, the device can ensnare an unsuspecting bystander in the pages of a book, albeit with a variety of caveats.” Thundleshick busied his fingers with the pages forward and back in search of material supporting his narrative. Herbert labored to follow the magician’s circumlocution. The book wasn’t much clearer to him. Its pages were byzantine and dense.

“Once his essence is caught in the fictional stratum, he entirely dons the identity of the literary entity he assumes.”

“Assumes?”

Thundleshick continued scrambling through the brittle pages, flaking off trace amounts of stained yellow confetti from the probably very rare volume. He flipped ahead through a large section of worksheet-like pages complete with exercises. There were illustrated samples demonstrating how to use the locket, even with some in-book drills. There were indented story excerpts with some conspicuously blacked-out blocks of text.

“This thing has worksheet pages?”

Thundleshick answered with a nod. Toward the back, the volume became even more cryptic, with lengthy, fine-printed appendices and what seemed like hundreds of pages of tables jammed with tiny numbers and accounting statistics.

“Are those spreadsheets? What the hell does magic have to do with accounting?”

Thundleshick looked surprised, almost taken aback by the question. “Why, everything, boy!”

“Magic is so retarded,” Herbert grumbled to himself. The tutorial was somehow becoming more exhausting than his recent dogfight. “Anyway, go on.”

“Very well. Take for instance this case. The device through its hidden intelligence brings you into a book. Let us say the book is Peter Pan, and it brings you into the story’s realm as the titular character, Peter Pan himself. Within that dimensional cleft, you will believe you are, indeed truly will be Peter Pan. But your given name will supplant his, naturally. I would be read about as Elwin Pan, and live the tales of this rascal of eternal adolescent vim and woe to pirate kind! Ah to dream. Ah, anyway, and you… you would become… Wiz… err, um… Herb…”

“Herbert Pan? I think I get what you’re saying.”

“Yes, and upon releasing a character from the book, whether he was once a real person entrapped there, or was always fictional to begin with, the device will dispel him of all prior memories, whether experienced within the fictional plane or otherwise. All that remains is the basic notion of one’s identity, such as a name.”

Herbert was silent. He absorbed the details while ambling through his own mental tangent. He felt as if he was on the cusp of glimpsing some cosmic whole. It was an emerging insinuation of a great puzzle he was for much of his life never aware needed solving. Still, discovering the existence of a critical puzzle was a short-lived gratification. Discovering it had ten thousand pieces and most were still missing had a way of sinking in quickly. Lingering thoughts troubled him.

“And what about time travel?” he asked, steeling himself against further revelation.

“Time travel, boy?”

“Does it exist? Can the Slipknot bend time somehow?”

Thundleshick considered it carefully, as it calculating which block to remove in the late stages in a heated match of Jenga. “It’s a powerful talisman. I would not put many feats beyond its capability. The years spent in the halls of this persnickety palace have taught me that the nature of time is fluid, and it needn’t flow only through familiar veins. It flows just as readily through the canals of thought itself, and certainly, the pages of literature as well—”

Thundleshick’s discourse went on at some length, and Herbert was surprised to find himself arrested by it. He thought the old mage sounded uncharacteristically introspective and thoughtful. Maybe this was a topic on which he truly did have insight, and just maybe there was more depth to the man than he’d credited him with.

His philosophically waxing spiel was broken for Herbert, though, when he felt something moving. It was the doll. Had it accidentally come back together in his pocket, and was now being activated by someone from afar? Herbert gulped and looked down.

There was a fat spotted hand burrowing in his jeans. Thundleshick was picking his pocket again.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” Herbert pulled his gun.

Seymour felt his brother’s plump, blue-tinted wrist for a pulse. He felt nothing, confirming the worst. He’d never actually taken a pulse before, and he was doing it wrong. But rest assured, Louis was dead.

Seymour dragged on asthmatic gasps as he became acquainted with the feelings of grief and panic. It wouldn’t be the last time he’d encounter death, or even very long before it reared its head again. In just a few months, for instance, on a bleak Christmas day, he’d help a confused boy bury a strange man in a cape behind his shed. By then, he’d be well on his way to developing something of a rapport with mortality. It would prove a suitable primer for his own disappearance. Now, though, the flabby middle school student’s universe had been effectively rocked.

“Sweet Zombie Jesus…”

Louis’ rigid sprawl on his bedroom floor was not the most dignified final freeze-frame. But in the sobriety of afterthought, Seymour might have been grateful he hadn’t dropped dead while cosplaying at one of his conventions as some sort of damnable Elf Jedi Mage. His twisted torso warped the Mystery Science Theater 3000 print on his XXXL t-shirt. Beneath his limp, deli meat loaf forearm was trapped a copy of his manuscript, opened to a part in the middle. Seymour gently removed it, pausing briefly, for a moment thinking he heard a noise from behind the life-sized cardboard cutout of Kevin Sorbo as Hercules in the corner of the room, but dismissed it as a fabrication of stress.

He found a passage conspicuous on the page through its peculiar defects.

______ weilded the ______ ________ and could’nt believe how powerful it was.He said some brash things. “you fools don’t even stand a chance against me, my bloodline is pure and now I am un stoppible, he said arragantly. But some thing was wrong...........................

“Sweet Zombie Jesus… Sweet Zombie Jesus…” Semour descended into delirium, losing any regulation of the idiosyncratic outburst.

He left the room with the book. He had to tell his parents. But they wouldn’t be home from work for a while. He couldn’t bear the thought of watching them find their dead son on the floor.

It wouldn’t be an issue. When he would return, the body would be gone.

“You really need help, you know that? You’re mentally ill. Anyway, I don’t have the time or patience for your kleptomania today. Give it back.”

Thundleshick upset his brow as he considered the silent yet compelling argument the gun was making a short distance from his face. “You wouldn’t bring yourself to harm an old man, now?”

Herbert laughed. “Old man? You act like a child. You’re probably not even that old. What are you, in your late fifties or something?” He hadn’t received the memo that Thundleshick was no fewer than ten thousand years old, we are to believe unwaveringly.

“Also, I’d like to borrow that Slipknot manual, if you don’t mind.”

Thundleshick hugged it as if it was his pillow and he was being told a scary story at a slumber party. “Oh, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“What? Come on, just give it to me, you idiot.” Herbert grappled at the old tome with his free hand while the sage put up a pedantic flustered resistance. “Just… let… GO.” BANG.

Herbert tore a slab of pages from the book as the two separated from their fracas. He looked up at the hole in Thundleshick’s soggy hat. The garment responded to the bullet more like a kind of custard than cloth. Thundleshick held the kind of expression reserved for when a cranky bee lands on your nose.

Herbert shook his head, reaching down for loose pages freed from the book. “God damn wizards…”

Thundleshick whispered something to himself. Herbert barely picked it up. “Sweet Zombie Jesus…”

Herbert squinted his eye. He poked a glance up at him from his stooped position. “What did you say?”

Thundleshick toyed with his beard looking off to the side. Herbert took a closer look at him. He scoured the campmaster’s face, probing behind the grisly, dishwater-gray mane, beneath the slick, tanned leather of his face. The eyes…

“Seymour??”

Terence Rothschild scuttled up the slope of a mountain, vanishing into a shallow snowdrift and then out of it, shaking snow from his equine head and spitting it from his agile, rubbery lips.

He clambered to a dry patch on a rocky plateau and halted in a shadow. The shadow belonged to a well built man in a suit, with an American flag pin on his lapel.

“Oh. It’s you.” Terence sagged.

He was crushed by a well-polished shoe. The shoe twisted, grinding crustacean shell against rock. The man crouched as if to take flight, and disappeared with a boom, signaling the starter shot for several avalanches nearby.

Herbert’s pistol sank to his side. Feelings of hostility and suspicion directed at the scurrilous magician gave way to feelings of pity and compassion for his long-missing older brother. The feelings were short-lived, though. Like a tiny fly which takes to the sky for only moments to mate and deposit its sticky eggs beneath a leaf. Its brood soon would hatch, ushering a swarm of disbelief and irritation directed at the, in truth, non-blood-related overweight kleptomaniacal con artist.

“So you’ve been here this whole time? Since you disappeared?”

He answered with silent contrition.

“I can’t believe I bought into this. My stupid older brother posing as this horrible, nasty… wizard. Yeah, I don’t care if that’s not technically what you are. To me, you’re just an old wizard.”

Thundleshick gave him a judicious nod. He could summon no objection.

Herbert holstered the gun and relaxed on to a stool by the table. He rolled up the slab of paper and batted it into his palm as he thought.

“So what was the whole act about? All this…” he gestured vaguely, trying to surround and contain the gross fraudulence in the abstract with his hands. “You know. The ‘my boy, this’ and ‘my dear lad, that’ and that sort of pompous nonsense? It was all such bullshit. You were never wise.”

Thundleshick harrumphed a stab at justification. “Yes. Er… I’ve done my best to suit the role. I believed I’d finally found something at which I excelled. My only true aim was to perform in a way that might make my mother and father proud.”

“Yeah, well you sure did a number on them! Do you have any idea how sad they were when you vanished? That was two sons missing in, what, like six months?”

Thundleshick withered in chagrin. After a few moments, he drew a heavy breath. “Yes. You are right. Though for many years, I was indisposed.”

Herbert nodded. “Right. Marlevort, I guess?”

His quiet melancholy spoke an affirmative. Herbert had plenty of questions. Now that Thundleshick had aged into relative autonomy and seemed to come and go from the realm as he pleased, Herbert wondered why he wouldn’t have reunited with his family. He didn’t want to push it, though. Enough spoke for itself, and he thought plenty could be explained simply by Seymour’s gradual, savage affliction with twisted old man-itis. Plenty could happen in almost fifty years. And in this realm, plenty always did.

“I guess I was on the money, then. You’re, what, fifty-something now?”

“Fifty-nine today, actually. I was just about to celebrate with a jubilatory helping of toadloaf when you entered. Why, I supposed we might scrape much of it from the floor with a spade or a trowel and still enjoy. I trust it has remained chilly.”

“No thanks, I’ll pass.”

Awkward moments lumbered by.

“So are you going to give me that book, Seymour, or what.”

His brother lit up with an idea. “Ah, but I have something which is even better, my boy… er, Herbert. Sorry. Long lost dear brother!”

“Just Herbert will be fine.”

His hand plunged into his cloak and noisily molested its concealed unspeakables. Herbert perked with interest. The hand reappeared with a fistful of something. That something was quickly hurled into Herbert’s wide-open eye, bursting into a powdery puff.

“Arrgh!”

He blinked his searing eye. Through the blurry filter of tears he gave an embarrassed-looking Thundleshick a poisonous look.

“Er… I believe I withdrew stock from the wrong pouch.”

“Were you supposed to disappear just now? You suck, Seymour.”

“Ah, here it is.”

Herbert received another face-full. He disappeared in the cloud. When the eye-stinging subsided, he found himself standing in a different part of the castle.

Finding the surface of the carrier, Beatrix and Russet crept among the burning wreckage on the deck. Aside from the whipping and popping of flame, it was unsettlingly quiet.

“I think we’re in the clear,” she said softly. “I don’t see Marlevort around. Maybe we can sneak off this thing in a plane. Or a boat, maybe?”

“Agreed,” Russet said. “Though a plane will possibly be too noisy for any proper sneaking, I think. And a boat will have a hell of a time navigating through that ice, though on the bright side it does appear to be melting. But dash it if we don’t give it a try!”

“Shh.” She tried to calm his nervous blithering. “He might hear us.”

“I’m right here.” Slinus stood behind them with his hands in his pockets.

Beatrix made a startled noise. Her expression was the kind used by spectators of the humorously tragic, like an obese person involved in a scooter accident. Russet slouched.

“There are no planes for your daring escape, anyways. You can thank your pal Wizardy Herbert for blowing them all up. The guy is a rescue mission ace.”

She looked around at the aftermath of the incomprehensible pandemonium dealt to the fleet. “Herbert did all this?”

“He’s out of his mind, Bea. I’m telling you!” Russet hissed from the side of his mouth.

Not about to be out-staged in the department of mental illness, Slinus flashed his gunslinger’s quick draw, shifting to the ‘erratic madman’ gear in his psyche’s transmission. “Alright, shut up. Let’s go for a stroll back down to the brig. Not that I have much use for you, since neither of you have what I need.”

Beatrix winked at Russet, believing their conspiracy intact. He cringed.

She put up her fists like a boxer. She felt a little odd striking the pose in preparation for a magical duel, but it seemed like the fallback for one whose weapon was tiny and attached to a finger. She guessed Green Lantern probably did it all the time, not that she knew for sure.

“Hey,” she wondered suddenly. “Where did Grant go?”

Herbert rubbed his watering eye and brushed the insidious powder from his hair. He was having a hard time deciding whether he found Thundleshick’s antics more infuriating now that he knew it was just Seymour all along, or somewhat less so due to being just plain pathetic. He would deliberate on it later, and his older, older brother would just have to sweat out the final verdict authored by the hanging judge.

It was a particularly unstable part of the palace. The long, gloomy hallway stretched and buckled and swayed. Patches of wall became insubstantial, permeable. Buttresses, stairs and such architectural interjections poked into visibility, and pulled back like shy turtles.

He held his portion of the manual pried from the stubborn magician. He opened it and lighted the text in the vacillating glow of a not entirely stationary wall torch. The manual was a steep read, and the technicality of the diagrams was hard to penetrate. One set of illustrations addressed the way the Slipknot itself interfaced with books. Supporting text indicated the locket was able to trap itself into literature the same way it did with people, as Thundleshick described, swapping its own moniker with that of a key item in the fiction. This was pictorially demonstrated through examples such as Prynne’s Letter, Poe’s Heart, Yorick’s Skull, and most contemporarily, Rutherford Trick’s talking brass pocket watch he called Sassafras (or Sassy for short, a brand which the ill-tempered timepiece loathed). Furthermore, if arcane cartoons were to be trusted, when a passage is read depicting a character employing the item in question—Hamlet’s soliloquy, for instance—this activates its power, drawing the locket and its fictional operator out of the book.

Herbert stopped, walked several paces to catch up with the torch which had been escorted down the hall by shifting brickwork, and resumed his haphazard study.

But this was not all there was to the story, he thought, as any idiot could have told him who’d had a gander at the tome’s thickness. Once sprung from the book, the locket left residuals of its power in the fictional object it possessed. Thus any character using the object later in the tale could still be pulled from the book once that passage was “activated” by a reader, even absent the presence of the Slipknot in the book. These key passages were known as “plot slipknots”, mysterious places in the book marked by the charm’s subtle whim. Once the locket or character is pulled from a book, their instances in the full text are blacked out, never to be recovered from the story again.

In reading on, he gleaned that there was however a loophole to this rule (sometimes called the slipknot loophole by those who wanted to be deliberately confusing). The charmed potential of unread passages (or unslipped knots) was preserved in duplicated copies of the book. In any copy, triggered plot slipknots would release characteristically dumbfounded duplicates of the characters. Such was the reach of the charm’s power in fact, its fiction-animating properties even extended into all subsequent volumes of a book series if the locket was embedded in an earlier volume. The only thing that was not able to be duplicated through this loophole, as was impressed upon the reader with caveats of lumbering academic gravity, was the Mobius Slipknot itself. It would always ensure itself as one of a kind.

Herbert closed the book fragment. He was understandably overwhelmed, while the content of the manual, in stark contrast, was not overwhelmingly understood. But enough had been absorbed to jog something in him. A picture flashed in his mind, like a critical slide in a presentation blinked to its audience prematurely. But just as soon as it offered its tantalizing promise of revelation, it was gone. Nonetheless, he could see how all the moving parts, ever slowly, might start fitting together. The manuscript. His missing older, older, older brother. The camp. His future self. It was beginning to make sense.

His surroundings had become lost on him in the reading. He was sitting against the stone wall, moist with moss in spite of its ever rolling stone-like nature. The torch had drifted, and finally was swallowed by the wall snuffing out visibility. Gray, muted light from an indeterminable source let him see, barely. He looked down the black undulating throat of the hall into a chilling void. There was a distinct feeling to this castle when dwelt on, felt mostly in the chest. It was a feeling of deep sickness, nearly intolerable. He thought he heard his name whispered.

He traipsed down the hall, hands feeling forward, feet tentative on the slithering bricks. There was something ahead, sitting and slumped. He came closer and kneeled. It was a skeleton. Not the terrifying undead kind, but the sad, non-undead kind, a dried husk once armature to flesh. It was still clothed, in rags, though the XXXL t-shirt it wore had a deteriorating Mystery Science Theater 3000 image on its front. Herbert liked the show and smiled at the recognition. But he didn’t know who this was. Just another poor sap, deceased for decades in this lurching sewer.

Something spilled from the skull’s eye socket. An oozing black tar, though on hitting the floor, it became more like clay. It formed into a small, featureless figure without hands or feet, about the size of a maturing fetus.

It danced aggressively and erratically, threatening Herbert with quick fake-out lunges. He tried shooing it with the manual. It leapt to his head and clung. Herbert thrashed, yelling things, he wouldn’t remember later if there were words or noises. He felt an invasive, powerful sucking in his right ear. There was momentary deafness to all but ringing. The figure vanished completely into his ear.

He thrashed more wildly, bowing and swatting his head as if he was in a headlock by an invisible pro wrestler. The violation caused him to make strange whining sounds and spasms, though the spectacle was cut short when the floor beneath him twitched and then disappeared, dropping him in the dark.