by Brian Olsen
“No!” Alisa jumps up. “No, there are humans inside it!”
“OH!” He whips his hand back to his chest. “SORRY! AGAIN!”
As the rest of us get to our feet, Mr. Liefer suggests, “Perhaps I should fetch Ihsan?”
“Maybe.” Alisa grips some of her braids. “I hate the idea of locking the giant up again. This isn’t his fault.”
“WHAT?”
“We’re trying to figure out what to do!” Alisa yells. “This city is too fragile for you!”
“JUST POINT THE WAY OUT AND I’M HAPPY TO GO. SOMEWHERE WITH NO HUMANS UNDERFOOT, PREFERABLY. MAYBE MY FAMILY WILL BE WAITING THERE.”
“But you still remember us, don’t you?” Mrs. Liefer asks. It takes me a second to realize she’s talking to Emmet and not the giant. “You remember growing up as Emmet Liefer? As our son?”
“I do,” Emmet answers. “I remember all of it.”
“Then…then why…” She groans. “I don’t understand. It’s hardly a big deal in this day and age for people to have more than one set of parents. You don’t need magic for that. We wouldn’t have asked you to choose! Surely if you’re our son, you know us well enough to know that.” She puts her hand around her husband’s back. “Ronald had an entire life before the Moment, before Claudia and me, and I accept that. There are people he knew, people he loved in that world. I’m ready to embrace them. Welcome them into our lives.” She touches her heart. “I’d be happy to help you find your birth parents, Emmet.”
“AW.” The giant beams down at us. “I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT’S GOING ON BUT THAT SOUNDED SWEET. LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER, EMMET. YOU SHOULD DO…WHATEVER IT IS SHE’S ASKING YOU TO DO, I DIDN’T GET THAT PART. YOU NEVER KNOW WHEN THE WORLD MAY CHANGE AGAIN AND YOU’LL LOSE HER.”
“I already did!” He kicks the ledge, knocking free a loose chunk. “I already lost my mother! No. No, I didn’t lose her. I gave her up! Gave her up to protect the world! I’m all alone!”
Mrs. Liefer reaches for him. “But you’re not alone!”
“Helen,” Mr. Liefer says softly. “Don’t.”
“You have parents, right here!” she continues. “Parents who will love you if you’d just let us remember! Give us our memories back. Put things right and we can—”
“I don’t love you!” Emmet shouts.
Mrs. Liefer’s face goes pale.
“HARSH.”
“I’m sorry,” Emmet says more quietly. “I don’t. The aspect of the Moment that created new memories for us. It didn’t take for me like it did for everybody else. I have the memories of growing up with you both, but not the emotions. To everybody else who went through the Moment, their second life feels just as real as their first. But not to me.” He points at Liefer. “Rahk and I didn’t even like each other before! And I end up as his son? It’s a cruel joke.” He sighs and runs his fingers through his hair. “Despite it all, I’m fond of you both. I really am. Claudia, too. But you’re not family to me. I knew I wouldn’t be able to fake it. Couldn’t pretend to love you as a son should. You’d see through me eventually. Know something wasn’t right. I thought it would be kinder to make you forget.”
“You were wrong.” She touches his cheek. “This world may be less real to you. But it’s all I’ve got. Those memories of you, that love I felt for you, they’re mine. They belong to me. You don’t have the right to take them away.”
“I was trying to spare you pain.”
“It’s my pain. Your parents, your birth parents, wherever they are, they don’t remember you. They don’t love you. That must hurt. But would you sacrifice your love of them? Memories of your happy times with them?”
He rests his hand on hers. “No.”
“Then don’t take mine from me. I want to remember my son.”
He steps away from her, closes his eyes, furrows his brow, and waves his hand. “Memory.”
Mrs. Lifer gasps. Mr. Liefer cries out and takes a step back.
Next to me, Alisa inhales sharply.
“You, too?” I whisper.
“Like a dam breaking,” she answers. “And I don’t even know him that well. I can’t imagine what it’s like for them.”
“THOSE CITY GUARDS ARE COMING BACK,” the giant says. “MORE OF THEM.”
I run over to the far side of the roof and look down at the street. So many flashing lights. Police cars and fire trucks and ambulances. People in uniforms with guns. Somebody spots me and points, and I jump back. “I think we’re out of time.”
“Okay.” Alisa claps her hands. “No choice. Giant? Sorry, I never got your name.”
“GUMBLEFINK. WHAT’S YOURS?”
“I’m Alisa. I think we have to—”
“ALISA? ARE YOU SURE YOU’RE HUMAN? THAT’S A LONG NAME FOR A HUMAN.”
“I’m sure. We need to get you out of here. I have a friend, a logomancer, who can put you somewhere safe.”
“NOT THE ENDLESS MOUNTAINS AGAIN? THAT PLACE WAS EERIE.”
“No, he can create someplace more comfortable this time. It’ll be temporary, until—”
The building shakes again. Alisa, dangerously close to the edge, almost loses her balance, but Mrs. Liefer darts forward and yanks her to safety.
“OH! LOOK!” The giant points behind us. “I KNOW HER!”
A giant woman has appeared on Massachusetts Avenue. She’s got dark brown skin and wears ragged furs like Gumblefink’s, although hers cover her chest.
“WHAT THE—?” She squints. “GUMBLEFINK? IS THAT YOU?”
“DILLYFLOP! HELLO! I THOUGHT I WAS ALL ALONE HERE!”
She steps towards him. “WHERE ARE— OH!” Screams come from the street below. “OH NO!” She slaps her hands to her cheeks. “I STEPPED ON A HUMAN! OH, I’M SO SORRY! THEY’RE EVERYWHERE!”
“I MET SOME NICE ONES! THEY’RE GOING TO HELP US!”
“OW!” Gunshots. Dillyflop covers her face with her arm. “STOP THAT!” She slams her fist down on something below her, causing a loud crunch of metal. A siren flairs once then goes out. “THEY’RE SHOOTING ARROWS AT ME OR SOMETHING! IT HURTS!”
“WELL, YOU DID STEP ON ONE OF THEM.”
“I SAID I WAS SORRY!”
“Go get Ihsan!” Alisa yells at Mr. Liefer. “Hurry!”
“Grab on, Helen.”
Mrs. Liefer takes his elbow. He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and says, “Space.” They disappear.
“I could make the police forget about them?” Emmet suggests.
“The squashed bodies might be a reminder,” Alisa points out. “But if Ihsan can make a new prison for them, maybe we can get this under control.”
The building shakes again. The three of us grab one another to steady ourselves.
“It’ll have to be a pretty big prison,” I say.
More giants are appearing. On the campus, among the buildings, up and down the street, in the plaza. They pop into existence, one by one, visible as far as I can see, all over Cambridge.
A giant man appears on the street about a block down. He screams in distress at the sudden change in surroundings and stumbles backwards. His heel catches a car and he topples, his arms waving in the air for a second. It’s almost comical.
Then he falls. He lands on a single-story storefront housing a sandwich shop. The roof collapses, sending rubble flying and a cloud of stone dust into the air. The restaurant is crushed. Along with anyone inside.
More crashing sounds, all around us. More gunshots. More sirens, and cars honking. More screaming.
Emmet lets go of us. “There are too many of them for Ihsan. We’d have to recreate the Moment to undo all this damage!”
“Ah!” Alisa grabs her temple and drops to one knee. “Oh! Slow down! Mrs. Winarski, slow down!”
“Mrs. Winarski?” I crouch down with her. “Zane’s mom?”
She bites her lip. “Through the emergency telepathic link I set up. She’s… Oh!” She drops to a seated position and holds her head. “Oh, no!”
“What is it?”
/> “She’s in Philadelphia. She says… Oh, God!” She rocks back and forth. “And Mrs. Montgomery, in Seattle! And…and Ihsan’s wife, in London! It’s all over!” She grabs me, digging her nails into my arm. Her eyes are wide and panicked. “They’re everywhere! All over the world! He did it!”
“Who did what?” Emmet asks.
Alisa closes her eyes and lets me go. She rubs her temples. She must be answering everyone who’s yelling for her help, so I stand up to give her some space.
“The Common King,” I tell Emmet. “This was his plan. He’s let the magical creatures out.”
“Out of their artifacts?”
I look out over Cambridge. It’s being destroyed. By perfectly innocent creatures, who mean no harm at all. Causing terror because they’ve been released into a world that no longer has a place for them.
There’s no making people forget this. There’s no saving the lives that are being lost, right now.
This is the end of our world.
Twenty-eight
The leprechaun’s head explodes in a spray of blood and brains, cutting our conversation short. The surprise of the gunshot, and the shock of his sudden death, freezes me on the spot.
Mr. Green tackles me to the ground, scraping my face on the pavement. He covers me with his body while gunfire erupts all around us. I thought we were farther away from the fighting, but it must have moved on while we’ve been trying to negotiate peace. It’s night here and although our immediate area is well lit by streetlights, it would have been easy for us to miss movement in the distance.
“Crawl, Chris.” Mr. Green slides off me. “There, behind that car.”
The bullets are flying low, since leprechauns are only about three feet tall, so we keep our bellies on the ground as we make our way to relative safety. The gunshots, and the shouting from both human soldiers and leprechauns, lessen as the fighting moves on again.
Alisa’s father and I are in the city of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. It’s the first time either of us has been to Africa. Shame we don’t have time to sight-see. Seems like a nice city, if you can ignore the war being waged in its streets.
“Over here!” Lily leans out of an open doorway and waves to us.
Mr. Green and I cover our heads and bolt from the protection of the parked car, hurrying inside. Lily pulls the door shut behind us, then checks the street from a window.
We’re in a hotel. A fancy one, too. No sign of any people. The guests and staff probably cleared out of the lobby hours ago and are hiding deeper in the building.
Mr. Green grabs me roughly by the shoulders. “Are you all right?” He pats down my sides. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine, Mr. Green.”
He touches my forehead. “You’re bleeding.”
“That’s not my blood.”
He winces. “Ah. Right.” He puts his hands on his knees and takes a deep breath. “This is madness. Complete madness.”
Lily comes away from the window. “Doesn’t sound like you had much luck.”
“Not really,” I answer. “Emmet was right about the leprechauns not knowing the Common King’s face, so I was able to talk to a few of them. But it sounds like they don’t have leaders. No single leprechaun is going to be able to convince all the others to stop fighting.”
She nods. “I found the same problem.”
“And I couldn’t get anywhere near any human authority,” Mr. Green adds. “Whenever I caught sight of someone in a uniform, they’d scream at me. I couldn’t understand them but they obviously thought I was an American tourist too stupid to stay off the streets.”
“Why did they even start fighting?” Lily asks. “Leprechauns aren’t hostile.”
“The humans don’t know that.” I rub my face with my hands, then wipe some of the leprechaun blood off on an upholstered armchair, leaving a dark smear. “And the leprechauns are fighting back pretty effectively. They’re fast, and stronger than they look.”
“Maybe the book can help?” Mr. Green suggests. “Maybe there’s something about leprechauns we overlooked that might be useful.”
From the bag around her shoulder, Lily hands him a copy of Creatures of Myth and Legend. It’s a copy of a copy of a copy, really. She made a bunch.
He opens the book. “Oh, that’s not going to work.” The pages are goopy. A few chunks of melted pulp drip onto the lobby rug.
Lily takes it back from him. “I was afraid of that. It’s been months since I made that first copy. The more complex a duplicate is, the shorter its lifespan. It’s decaying.”
Huh. Something just occurred to me. Technically, aren’t I a copy?
Lily catches my expression. “Relax. You’re a special case. Six logomancers made that hot bod of yours, not me alone.”
“So I’m not gonna melt?”
“I mean…maybe? Eventually?” At my renewed look of horror, Lily laughs and smacks my back. “But not until long after you’d be dead from old age anyway.”
“I’ll try to last that long. I’d much rather die of natural causes than pull a Wicked Witch of the West.”
Lily’s smile drops. “Yeah. Me too.”
Mr. Green puts his fingers to his temple. “Alisa’s not answering. I’m trying to tell her we can’t do anything more here, and she should send Zane or Mr. Liefer to pick us up.”
“She’s stretched thin,” I say. “Coordinating everybody.”
“Hm. I’m going into the restaurant. It should be a little quieter there. I’ll try again.” He starts towards the back of the lobby. “You kids stay away from the windows! Come running for me if the shooting gets louder.”
“Will do,” I answer.
Lily sighs. She drops the melting book to the floor, then pokes at the soupy mess with her toe. “This sucks.”
“It’s just a book. We have enough people with their memories back now that we probably don’t need it anymore anyway.”
“Yeah.” She takes a deep breath through her nose and puts on what I’d swear was a fake smile. “I’m going to…uh. I’m going to check the street.”
“Mr. Green said to stay back.”
“Yeah, well, Mr. Green isn’t my dad.” She heads towards the front of the lobby, but when I follow, she snaps at me, “I’ve got this, okay? Just give me a damn second to myself.”
I let her go to the window alone.
She’s stressed out. We all are. It’s been a couple of hours since all the magical creatures were released. We’ve spent the day broken into teams, teleporting around the world, trying to minimize the damage. Without much success.
I crouch and touch the book’s cover. A bit of it sticks to my finger when I pull away. Blegh.
On top of all our new problems, Lily’s probably still reeling from the trauma of so many of her duplicates getting killed. She acts like it wasn’t a big deal, but I know it upset her. There’s a link between Lily and her copies. She felt it when they died.
Huh.
Wait.
No. It can’t be.
Think this through.
We arrived in the king’s hotel. Lily was in one piece. She split off a copy to help Zane and Andy move the artifacts. She split off another copy, which she sent back to tell them about the second room with magical artifacts. The remaining Lily came with us, split herself into a bunch more copies, and attacked the Common King. He killed them all, leaving only the two who stayed behind in the conference room alive.
Oh, no. Oh, no.
Lily comes back. She’s a little more composed, but her eyes are puffy. “All clear. No soldiers, but no leprechauns, either. Mr. Green’s right, we can’t do anymore here without wading into the middle of a battle.”
“Lily.” I look down at the book, then back at her.
Her expression hardens. “Chris, don’t.”
“Are you the original Lily, or a duplicate?”
Her head drops. She covers her face with her hands and her shoulders shake. I grab her and hold her.
“It’s the same,” she
says through soft sobs. “We’re the same. I’m Lily Deng in every way that counts. Except one. The only difference between my body and the original is that the original’s wasn’t made with magic…and mine…”
She takes a rattling breath and gently pulls away from me. She lifts her hands from her face. Her left cheek is drooping. The bottom of it hangs below her mouth. She tenses the muscles in her face and pushes the cheek back into place with her fingers.
“Oh, Lily. I’m so sorry.”
“The original Lily died in the hotel. I’m holding myself together as best I can, but my body isn’t like yours. I made it on my own. It wasn’t meant to last forever.”
“Can Kenny—?”
She shakes her head. “Too late. The spell that made me has already been cast. There’s nothing for him to amplify.”
“Come on. We’ve got so many different types of logomancy at our disposal. Between all those words, we can find a way. If you and Kenny work together, with Andy maybe—”
“Not until we’re done. I can hold myself together until then.”
“But we don’t know how long that will be.”
Her jaw sets. “I’m not burdening my mom with this. Or anyone else. We’ve got much more important things to deal with. Promise me you won’t tell anybody, Chris.”
“I don’t like it.”
“I didn’t ask if you liked it, jerk. I asked you to promise.”
I close my eyes and shake my head, but I say, “I promise.”
She hugs me. “Don’t worry,” she says in my ear. “This doesn’t mean I’ve given up.”
“It better not.”
“Hey, you know I’m way too much of a hard-ass to end up as melted goo.”
Mr. Green runs in from the restaurant. “I got through to Alisa and told her where we are. Zane should be—”
A shadow portal forms on the wall. Zane pops out and beckons us in. “Let’s go, let’s go! All aboard the Zane express.”
Lily picks up her bag and follows Mr. Green through the portal. I pause to kiss Zane, and notice the dark circles under his eyes.
“How are you holding up?” I ask.
“I have had all the coffee.”
“You’re doing great.”
