The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep

by H. G. Parry

  “Stay right here,” I told him. “And for the love of God, if you can’t read it back soon, then get out.”

  I didn’t wait for him to reply. I ran. It occurred to me as I did so that he couldn’t both stay there and get out, but too bad. He was smart enough to work it out.

  The Jabberwock was lunging after the retreating characters, its great claws scoring the cobblestones. I saw Heathcliff’s head bump against the ground as the Darcys dragged him. The Witch fired a spell from the door; it hit the Jabberwock and glanced off harmlessly. Little Matilda still stood on the pavement. Her head darted sharply to one side, and a chunk of debris tore itself loose from the rubble and flew at the Jabberwock’s head. It bounced off; the creature shook itself with a snarl, and roared.

  “Hey!” I called loudly.

  The monster turned. Its nostrils flared in a shower of sparks as it took me in. I wanted nothing more than to run, but I didn’t. I stood there, braced myself, and tightened my grip on the stick.

  No time for second thoughts, or even for panic. It was on me before I had time to see it move, the burble of its motion filling the air. I lashed out with the stick, and the mighty jaws caught it and wrenched it from my hand. The impact knocked me down; the cobbles jumped up to meet me, and my elbow jarred the ground. It was just a fall, no worse than tripping over on the pavement, yet the momentary shock of pain knocked the breath from me.

  Above me, the Jabberwock was a mass of leathery skin. I saw the wet gleam of its teeth as it crunched down on the stick and splintered it in pieces. God. I was actually going to die.

  The gun. Heathcliff’s gun. Where was it? It wouldn’t do much good, probably. But I could try. It had a knife attached. Who said that knife couldn’t be a vorpal blade?

  “Stop it!” Charley’s voice came, sharp with command.

  The Jabberwock’s head snapped around to look at him. I turned as well, on reflex. Charley had come out of the ruined shop; he was a few feet from us. It was hard to see through the haze of fog and smoke, but I could make him out.

  “‘You’re nothing but a pack of cards,’” he said. Through everything, I dimly remembered the lines from the end of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

  The Jabberwock flickered, distorted, and screamed. The cry cut through the air, so deep I wondered if they could hear it out on Cuba Street, across the lines of reality. Then… it’s difficult to describe what happened next. The Jabberwock folded in on itself, a flurry of claws and flashing teeth.

  Yet it was not gone. Where it had once stood as flesh and blood, a void gaped. It was a great hole in the sky, cutting through air and brick and fire. It wasn’t black, but I couldn’t say what it was instead. I could see suggestions of color, suggestions of form, nothing my mind could catch hold of and name. It was unnatural, even by the standards of story. It made no sense. I felt cold and sick at the sight of it and yet, at the same time, I couldn’t look away. I knew I was seeing something impossible, and powerful, and wondrous.

  Around the mass in the air, the Street itself was beginning to alter, to shift, like the interlocking parts of a kaleidoscope. The air was superheated and sparse. I caught my breath, and the Street did the same.

  The void that had been the Jabberwock vanished. It was there in one eyeblink, and gone in the next. I felt the rush of a breeze, and on it the rustle of paper.

  Charley made a sound somewhere between a gasp and a cry, and stumbled. I scrambled to my feet just in time to see him hit the ground. Now I knew how his students had felt.

  “Whoa.” I bent down, and caught him by the shoulders; he was already blinking furiously, trying to wake up. “Careful.”

  “Is it gone?” He pushed himself to sit, with my help. I could feel him shaking. “Did that work?”

  “It’s definitely gone; that definitely worked,” I said. “Relax. It’s over. You did it.”

  My own words caught up to me a second later. The danger had passed so quickly, I still couldn’t believe it. Flames still licked some of the buildings; people ran to put them out. Buildings lay in rubble, and the road we were on was furrowed from the marks of hooked claws. But it was over.

  “You did it,” I repeated, more quietly. “What did you do? What did you read it into?”

  “I couldn’t make it mean anything. I tried. But it was meaningless. That was the point. So I just—I read it into nonsense. I made a complete absence of meaning. I think that’s the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. It was more dangerous then than as an archetypal monster; I’m not sure what it could have done if I hadn’t been able to…” He shook his head.

  “What did you do? I thought you couldn’t read back other people’s readings.”

  “So did I. I can’t, technically, but—I just thought that if I could truly reinterpret it, then it would be my reading, not theirs. I could take possession of it. And then I could read it back, the way I always have my own.”

  “It worked.” The import of that sank in a moment later. “Which means that the summoner can read away your readings, or anyone in the Street, doesn’t it? What else can the two of you do?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t know I could do that, until a moment ago. I just had to do something. It—did it hurt you?”

  “No, I’m fine.” Now that the shock had worn off, my body was aching from the fall; my elbow and probably other less mentionable places were going to be bruised later. I was grubby, and shaken, and sore. But I knew how lightly I’d escaped. “Nothing broken. You okay?”

  He nodded unconvincingly. “Just let me sit down a second.”

  He was already sitting, technically, but I helped him settle on the curb of the road, where he drew up his knees and buried his head in his arms. I felt a quick tug of worry, but was distracted by the crowds gathering around us. The fog had lightened, and the last of the Street’s inhabitants were beginning to limp from the houses.

  Millie pushed her way to the front, to my relief. When the second house had collapsed and I’d heard the cries, my terror twisted them into hers. Despite the tension between us, I realized, I had been almost as worried for her safety as I was for Charley’s.

  “All right, chaps?” she said to us breathlessly. “Close one, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I said. That was the understatement of the year. “Very.”

  “Is everybody all right?” Charley asked, raising his head. He didn’t quite look at her; I suspected his vision wasn’t yet in focus.

  “Not quite.” Her face was tense and dirt-streaked. “Heathcliff’s in a very bad way; I have him in the public house, and the Duke of Wellington’s with him. We’re still digging Lancelot and Sir Percy out of the rubble. But we’re all still alive. How are you?”

  He managed a smile. “Fine. Just my head’s spinning. What happened? Where did it come from?”

  “We don’t know,” Millie said. “Not from outside. It just appeared, in the middle of the Street. Started tearing everything apart. Flames raging, doors flying, the whole thing. Yet another thing we didn’t know was possible. It’s good to see you again, Rob,” she added, giving me an affectionate punch to the shoulder. It made me smile a little. “I told Charley you’d be back.”

  I thought about explaining that I didn’t have much choice, under the circumstances, but I didn’t. For one thing, I was very aware of the crowd of people getting close enough to hear what I was saying; for another, I didn’t think it was necessary to be a complete bastard all the time.

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “Why did the summoner do that? I thought they had the book back already?”

  “They do,” Millie said. “Or at least, somebody does. I intend to find out who. But this—I can’t say what they wanted. Perhaps just to threaten us, after we refused to give in to them last night. Perhaps this is just for show.”

  “Quite a show,” Uriah Heep said. It was the first time I’d seen him since the morning in Charley’s house. Of course, he’d pushed to the front. “From you as well, Master Charley.”


  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I snapped. I really had no time for whiny little Dickensian villains at that moment.

  To my surprise, it was Dorian Gray who spoke up. His hair was attractively rumpled, and a smudge of dirt accentuated one perfect cheekbone.

  “I believe it’s obvious,” he said. “I believe you said, Millie, that your summoner here was only able to send back those characters or objects he had already read out himself? Clearly, that’s not true—unless you’re saying that he was the one who sent that thing in the first place.”

  “Oh, dry up, Dorian!” Millie said, more resigned than angry. “Obviously, we underestimated how far a rereading could go. Under the circumstances, I think you should probably be a sport and thank him.”

  “Thank him?” Dorian said, with the rise of one perfect eyebrow. “As you just said, it was almost certainly sent here because we refused to listen to the warning we were given last night. That warning was against having anything to do with Charles Sutherland. He and the summoner are archenemies. He’s putting us in danger just by being here.”

  “He wasn’t here! He was at work. He came just now because I called him to help sort out our problem.”

  “Our problem,” Dorian said, “is that I’m not entirely sure we’re on the right side.”

  “I’m not trying to put anyone in danger,” Charley spoke up. “I’m just trying to help.”

  “Why?” Dorian said, turning to him. “Why would you care what happens to us? Why would you not take care of yourself?”

  Frustration crept into his voice. “Because I love this street! And because there’s more than just the Street at stake, if the other summoner has their way. It’s the whole world.”

  “As Millie keeps telling us,” Dorian shot back. “But it seems to me it’s the other way around, isn’t it? The rest of the world is at stake, if the other summoner took control. The Street would thrive. We won’t be in hiding anymore, tucked away in a crack in the world that doesn’t technically exist. We’ll open up and spill out across the city. We’ll be real people, with a real place.”

  “And what if the real world objects to our spilling over half the city?” Millie demanded. “What if they see that as an invasion, and try to get rid of us?”

  “Let them try!” Dorian exclaimed. For the first time, I saw his beautiful face alive with something like passion. “We have an arsenal born of thousands of years of literature. Imagine what we could summon in our defense? They have planes and guns; we can have those alongside starships, dragons, black holes, monsters. Fictional magic might not work in the real world, but teeth and claws and fire do. You saw what the summoner can do with a book of Victorian children’s literature.”

  “You’re talking about a war,” Millie said.

  “The war’s already begun,” Dorian said. “That was the first volley. We just need to make sure we join the right side before we find ourselves in the line of fire again.”

  “So far, the other summoner seems to have declared war on us as well.”

  “He’s declared war on Dr. Sutherland. If we were rid of him, we’d be free to choose whatever side we so desired.”

  I broke in then. “Nobody is getting rid of anyone.”

  “Tell that to the Jabberwock, Mr. Sutherland,” Uriah Heep interjected. He said it placidly.

  “What exactly is that supposed to mean? Your evidence that Charley is dangerous is that he just saved your lives? He did, you know. You’d all have been killed if he hadn’t been here.”

  “As Mr. Gray says,” Uriah said, with one of those writhing shrugs, “we wouldn’t have been under attack if he’d never been here.”

  The crowd was stirring; I think in confusion, rather than agreement, but I didn’t like some of the undertones. Neither did Millie. She glanced at them, then moved toward me.

  “I rather think you two had better go for now,” she said to me quietly. “Leave me to calm them down.”

  “Nothing I’d like better,” I retorted. “Come on, Charley.”

  I expected him to argue, but he stood unresistingly as I grabbed his arm and pulled him toward the crack in reality. The crowd parted to let us go. Dorian was the one exception. He stayed leaning against the wall, watching us with cool hostility.

  There was a parking ticket on my windshield when we returned to the car. I ripped it off and crumpled it up, still brimming with righteous indignation.

  “Dorian Gray.” I didn’t feel the need to add an epithet. It sounded like a bad enough word in itself. “Seriously, why do you want to help someone like that?”

  “He’s not responsible for your parking ticket,” Charley said. “Just for information.”

  I threw it at him, not in the mood to smile. “Shut up and get in the car.”

  The road was beginning to fill up with afternoon traffic; it took a while to get an opening, and when I did I realized I was going in the wrong direction and would have to swing around. It didn’t improve my temper.

  “Ungrateful bastard,” I muttered. “After what we did—what you did—”

  “Dorian’s all right,” Charley said. “I shouldn’t have lost my temper at him. He’s just scared.”

  “Well, yes, a Jabberwock just tore through his street. But that’s not your fault. You just saved his life.”

  “I just reduced that Jabberwock to nonsense and made it disappear. It wasn’t even mine, and I did that. What could I do to him? To any of them? What could the other summoner do? Their entire reality is under threat. How would you feel if you watched that, and knew it could be you next?”

  I hadn’t thought of that. “Could it be? Could you do that to Dorian?”

  “I don’t know.” He closed his eyes. “Neither does he.”

  I looked over at him. His face and hair were damp with perspiration.

  “Hey,” I said belatedly. “Are you okay?”

  He blinked, and opened his eyes with a worrying amount of effort. “Um. I think so.”

  “You think so?”

  “I don’t… I feel a bit strange, actually.”

  “Strange how?”

  “I don’t know. Just…” He trailed off. I realized, for once, that really was all he had to give me.

  “Okay.” I tried to sound reassuring, and not at all as though my stomach had jolted. “Well, you are a bit strange, so that’s understandable.”

  He laughed a little, then shivered. His eyes were drifting closed again.

  I shouldn’t have been too worried. It was probably reasonable to feel not quite normal after banishing a Jabberwock to textuality. But… when you ask Charley if he’s okay, he always says he is. He was that one motion-sick kid on bus trips who would keep quiet so as not to be a bother, no matter how often you tell them that it’s a far greater bother for the driver to have someone be violently sick in the back of their bus. I’d never heard “I think so” before.

  “I’ll be fine,” he added, as if reading my mind. I hoped he wasn’t. I’d had about enough magic from him for now. “I think I just need to lie down or something. I haven’t slept in a while. Listen, I’m sorry you were brought into all this.”

  “It’s no problem.” I forced myself to go on. “I shouldn’t have made such a fuss earlier. It’s a good thing Beth did have an afternoon class. Imagine if she’d been the one driving you when that call came through.”

  Charley frowned. “Is that what she told you? That she has an afternoon class?”

  “Something like that. Why?”

  “I don’t know. I’m missing something. But…”

  “Hey.” Something definitely wasn’t right. I’d seen Charley wrangle plenty of literary characters, and I’d never seen him like this. His words were coming too slowly, as if he was having trouble finding them; his breathing was coming too rapidly, as if he was having trouble finding air as well. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll be home in a minute, all right? Just… maybe try to stay awake for now.”

  “Mm.”

  “No, not like that!” I cast
a quick, alarmed glance in his direction. “Come on, you can do better than that. You’re Dr. Charles Sutherland. You just told a Jabberwock where to stick itself. You can do anything.”

  “You don’t actually think that.” He said it perfectly matter-of-factly, without accusation. He could almost have been talking to himself.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You don’t. You don’t think I can do very much at all. Apart from read. It’s all right. I don’t mind. I was just… saying.”

  I wanted to tell him that wasn’t true. I couldn’t quite bring myself to. Because it was: I had told him that, after all, over and over again, in different ways. I thought I believed it. But on the other hand, I really did think he could do anything, and resented him for it. And it occurred to me, suddenly, how contradictory those two thoughts were.

  “If that’s what you think,” I said instead, “then you’d better prove me wrong, hadn’t you?”

  “I’m trying,” he said. He was white as paper.

  Lydia was waiting outside when I pulled up in our driveway.

  “What’s happened?” she asked as I got out. “Your message just said you had to go pick your brother up because he’d passed out in a lecture hall, but it was nothing.”

  “You’re supposed to be at work,” I said foolishly. That message felt like a hundred years ago.

  “So are you,” she countered. “I came back at lunch, to make sure everything was all right, and you weren’t here. I phoned you, but it went to voicemail. What happened?”

  “Look, Lydia—” I started to say, with no idea how I was going to finish. It turned out I didn’t need to. By then, she had seen Charley in the front seat, and her eyes widened.

  “God.” She opened the door, and crouched down to his level. Her voice was suddenly gentle, though very firm. “Charley? It’s Lydia. Can you hear me?”

  He stirred, and his eyelashes flickered. Otherwise, he made no response at all. He hadn’t for the last couple of minutes, even though I was pretty sure he could still hear both of us. That didn’t count as unconscious, did it? He’d fainted a few times before with these things, when he was much younger, but he always woke up as soon as he hit the floor. It was never an actual problem.