Glitch Kingdom

by Sheena Boekweg

He seemed so focused, his eyebrows furrowed.

  I leaned back. “How does a prince know how to start a fire?”

  “I’m capable of far more than you give me credit,” he said. He snapped a branch in his bare hands and wouldn’t look at me.

  I folded my legs under me. “I’m sorry.” I sighed. I’d called him all sorts of names. I’d become exactly the kind of bully I hated. “I’ve been really scared and angry and I guess I took it out on you.”

  “It’s all right. In truth, I wouldn’t have gotten through this without you. Whatever this is.” He glanced at the sky and then back at the branches in his grip.

  “You’re handling all this better than I expected.” There was so much he couldn’t understand.

  He broke the branches and placed them in the firepit. “Despite not drinking the seer water?”

  I grinned. His eyes softened. But I turned back to my inventory as if this jar of peaches I’d found in my father’s tunnel were fascinating.

  If he drank the seer water, then he’d remember who I really was.

  Before the game started I’d caught him arguing with his mother in the hallways of Stonebright Studios. At the time, Nao Takagi was my hero, and he seemed so ungrateful for this chance I’d fought so hard for, so when he stalked past me, I shoved my shoulder into his. He’d looked me up and down and sneered so dismissively.

  Once he drank seer water, he’d stop flirting with me.

  Which was clearly what I wanted.

  I stood and hunted around the campsite for anything promising. Some kind of environmental decor that also held items inside, like a treasure chest, or a barrel, or … A glint of light sparked within a large hollow log. Great. I really wanted to smash something. I kicked the thing harder than necessary, and it shattered into chunks of wood pieces.

  Inside, I found a frying pan. Score.

  I loaded the shattered wooden pieces in the pan and carried it back to the fire.

  “Here,” I said.

  He leaned back. “Perfect.” He assembled the wood pieces into a tepee, with kindling and underbrush underneath.

  I grabbed a striker from my bag, or match, I guess, and gave it to him.

  He slid the striker against the stone circle. The fire lit his cheekbones with a warm yellow glow. Then he lit the kindling with no trace of hesitation.

  This wasn’t his first time making a fire. “You go camping a lot?”

  He bent on all fours and watched the flame take hold. He blew softly on the fire, and the wood caught.

  “Often as a child.” He sat up. “Not as often as of late. My father and I would scout locations in case of a Savak attack.”

  “Of course.” I sighed. These memories weren’t true, just a past planted to make the game more immersive.

  Ryo sat next to me on a log, his focus on the flames. “I loved it. We’d catch fish in a stream, and at night we’d sleep under blankets like peasants. And as the stars woke, my father would tell me stories under the light of the moon.”

  He cleared his throat and stared into the rippling flames.

  Moon. Singular. How much of that memory was real?

  He waggled his eyebrows. “Though it wasn’t this romantic.”

  I shoved his shoulder with my own. “Two whole minutes as a human being. That’s a new record.”

  “All hail the triumphant victor!” Grigfen shouted from the wood. He lifted a dead bird by its claws.

  “Well done.” I left the blanket at Ryo’s side and took the bird from him.

  Ick. I placed the bird, feathers and all, on the pan, poured some of the peach juice, sprinkled a few sprigs of pine into the pan, and shoved the thing in the fire.

  The flames overtook the bird and the space filled with smoke. When the choking gray cleared, the bird looked like something Martha Stewart would serve for Thanksgiving. If only cooking was this easy in real life. My dad and I tried to make Thanksgiving dinner last year and we nearly burned the whole house down.

  I used the blanket as a potholder around the handle and placed the cooked bird on a rock. The pan was barely warm. You’d think it would be burning hot, but crafting never made much logical sense. I pulled off a leg and took a bite.

  That bird was the most delicious thing I’d ever had.

  “Anyone care for a ghost story?” Grig asked.

  I rolled my eyes. “You are so on brand it’s ridiculous.”

  Ryo licked his fingers. “Yes, I’ve had quite my fill of ghosts for the time being.”

  Grig laughed and then grabbed the other vulture leg and made his way to the other side of the fire. “So what I’m hearing is that you are looking for a ghost story.”

  I sat back on the grass and offered the blanket to Ryo. He’d had the worst time of the game so far, and he needed comfort more than any of us.

  His expression seemed guarded. “It’s all right, Dagney. This cloak is not only the most hideous thing I’ve ever seen, it also doubles as a wool blanket.”

  Oh. I took the last bit of meat from the bone. Why would I be disappointed? I threw the bones in the fire.

  Grig lit a sphere of ghostlight below his face like it was a flashlight. Dork.

  “It is pitch-dark,” he said, “and you are likely to be eaten by a grue.”

  I stood. “I’m going to sleep.” I scouted for a spot with the fewest number of stones and plucked the empty bag to use as a pillow.

  “I think I’ll join you,” Ryo said as he crossed to the other side of the fire from me.

  I punched the bag to make it softer and covered myself with the blanket.

  “No stories this time, then,” Grig said. “That’s fine. My feelings aren’t hurt at all.”

  “Grig,” Ryo said.

  “No, no. You rest up. I’ll take first watch.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “I napped on the horse. I’ll wake you if I get too puggled.”

  Okay, if he was sure.

  I lay my head back on the bag but didn’t close my eyes. The encroaching dawn had brightened the sky. The sunlight sent an unearthly red glow over everything it touched. A river of soft green grass waved in a gentle breeze. Each blade slightly different, each blade drawn with precision. How much time went into designing each blade of grass? How much time had Ms. Takagi spent on this game that was trying to kill us?

  Grigfen hummed and Ryo …

  Across the flickering fire, Ryo lay with his back to me. He didn’t make eyes I could ignore. He didn’t try to make a pass I would shut down. He slept as though I were just another teammate on this adventure.

  I grumbled under my breath. That was exactly what I wanted. He treated me as an equal. I’m glad he’d listened when I told him I didn’t want any flirting.

  Stupid boys making me feel weird ways about them.

  Ryo rustled a little. Then he stilled and his breaths grew even.

  I glanced over. My heartbeat roared behind my ears. Louder than it had when we were in danger, louder than when I’d crossed that bridge.

  But he never looked back my way.

  It took a long time for my heartbeat to slow enough so I could fall asleep.

  And when I woke a Whirligig hovered over my head.

  I changed my mind. I hated everything.

  14

  GRIGFEN

  The crick in my neck almost woke me.

  It stirred my dreaming, breaking the darkness behind my closed eyes. Dark like an unlit laptop screen, startup memory humming, ready to start up a new game, or load a new world, or best of all, seconds away from seeing my Bluebird again.

  She’d smile, tuck a strand of tightly curled hair behind her ear, and say, “Hi, Grig.”

  And I’d melt into a lumpy puddle all over my keyboard.

  Sunlight burned my cheek, but I didn’t wake. Gears squeaked and wings hummed, but I kept my eyes closed.

  “Help me!” Dagney shouted. And that did it. My head bonked against something hard and splintery, like wood.

  I opened my eyes
.

  Spoiler alert, it was wood.

  I’d apparently not kept as good a watch as I’d hoped, because I’d fallen asleep next to a tree, and now something metal and round floated right over my sister’s head.

  I sat up. The mist that covered the forest around me should not have been green. It should not have glowed like ghostlight, or have sung an undead song. While I’d slept, I’d drawn ghosts to me. Soft spirits of deer, birds, and bears nestled around my legs and slept by my side.

  And those ghosts had drawn a Whirligig to suck them up. And the Whirligig had brought two Whirligig friends, floating behind it in the fog.

  I leapt to my feet and touched the red prayer dots down the line of my nose.

  Let’s show these things what a Devout could do. I cracked my knuckles and threw my open hands in front of me like I was trying to catch a ball. The ghostly beasties at my side woke. Their bones, ripped from the forest behind, came to a hover in the air in front of me.

  Meanwhile, Dagney had flung her massive bag up over the Whirligig above her head and tackled it to the ground, holding it down with the handles. The bag squeaked and beeped, rustling against the leather as she cursed the thing out.

  One of the other two Whirligigs’ ghostlight flashed red as it scanned the mist with a sharp beam. Only the beam wasn’t coming from it, it was sucking the light into it. A ghostly bunny looking at me with its endless eyes twitched its little bunny nose, then its ghost was gone, sucked inside the Whirligig.

  Not my ghostly bunnies! I hummed the words of a hymn and shot bones at the machine. They thudded and cracked the metal.

  Boom, you garbage machine.

  Something creaked, and then small metallic arms and swirling knives folded out, spinning like an oscillating fan with sharpened blades.

  Aw bollocks. “Ryo!” I shouted. Why hadn’t all our noise woken him?

  He jolted awake. He plucked his sword from the ground next to him and raised the thing.

  “Don’t hurt them,” Dagney said. “We can sell them!”

  I sighed. Exactly the kind of thing a Merchant class would think about a spinning death machine.

  The Whirligig I’d struck came straight for me, blades spinning and slicing at me like I was a loaf of bread. I jumped backward, the blades barely missing my robes and cutting my arm. Och.

  I slid my robes over my shoulder so my hands were free and shot a burst of bones into the gears. They spluttered until the gyroscope inside it stalled. It crashed to the ground.

  I stomped it with my boot. “You’re going to have to sell this one for parts.”

  Across the firepit, Ryo’s sword clanged against the metal of the other Whirligig, its whirling blades slicing sparks against his sword.

  A ghostly bear nudged its head against my arm. “Go on, bear.”

  I gestured forward, and the bear leapt over Ryo, swatting the machine to the ground in a burst of ghostwind. The Whirligig crashed and the ghostly bear played with the thing within its translucent paws and ripped pieces of metal with its teeth, spitting and clawing, until the ghostlight at the center broke free and back into the mist. The gears stopped spinning.

  Good beastie.

  Dagney wrestled with her bag. “I’m going to need your Charisma now, Ryo.”

  He lowered his sword and crossed to her side. “What can I do?”

  “The Mechani serve the royal family, so this thing is programmed to follow your instructions. If you can reset it, it’ll be worth a lot more with the peddler; maybe we could even get a better sword or two for it.”

  “A battle-axe would be grand,” I said.

  “I call dibs,” Dagney said. She gave us both a look. “Don’t destroy it.”

  Once satisfied, she opened her bag. The Whirligig emerged, slightly frazzled, red tinted light dim inside its gears, gyroscope spinning slowly as it searched about for an attack.

  I held my ghosties back, but ready.

  Ryo placed his hand against the metal. “It’s all right,” he murmured. “Nothing’s going to hurt you. I’m Prince Ryo. My mother is very proud of her Whirligigs. I know you’re simply doing your job.”

  “Your mother is the head of the Mechani?” Dagney said.

  Ryo shrugged. “All my secrets find their way out around you.”

  The red light inside the Whirligig shifted ghostlight green, and then Ryo’s purple. His XP raised.

  He tickled under the Whirligig’s base. “It’s kind of adorable. In a stabbing kind of way.”

  I cocked a grin. “Your favorite kind of adorable, innit?”

  Ryo cleared his throat and I snorted. Teasing these two was a particular joy.

  “Well, I’m sufficiently rested.” Ryo retrieved his horse’s reins. “You want to come with us, Pumpkin?”

  Dagney adjusted her dress. “No, we can’t keep it. That thing is a battle-axe with my name on it, and if you get attached, then I won’t get it.”

  It fluttered its wings over to Dagney and spun its gyros prettily.

  Ryo followed. “She doesn’t mean that, Pumpkin. You’re more than your value.”

  I gestured the ghosties back into their forest. “Did you name it?”

  “No. It is not a pet!” Dagney curled her fists. Ryo grinned at her and her hands uncurled. “Oh, you’re teasing me again.”

  “Never.” He usually smiled at me after a teasing or a prank, but I might as well not have been there.

  “You are just teasing, right?” she asked.

  “Nothing I do is ever serious, Lady Dagney.” He climbed on his saddle. “This way, wasn’t it?”

  “West!” Dagney collected her items back in her bag.

  The Whirligig hovered over Ryo’s shoulder as he turned his horse into the afternoon woods.

  I picked up a pair of boots and handed them to Dagney to repack in her bag. “I’d have named the thing Artoo.”

  “It’s not a pet.” She shoved the rest of our items in her bag and huffed away. “Do not get attached!”

  “Too late for that, innit?” I said with a pointed look at Ryo’s back.

  “No.” She shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m talking about you having the hots for—Ow!” I rubbed my arm. “I’m telling Da you punched me.” I grinned.

  She shook her fist and stepped up into the stirrups and then kicked her leg over the plain brown horse. “Nothing is happening. You don’t have to worry about me.”

  I pet the neck of the gentle horse I’d napped on earlier. She was black with a speckling of white spots on her hindquarters.

  I mounted my horse and nudged her with my heels, following after Ryo. “I’m not worried about you; I’m worried about him. I don’t know how many of these memories are true, but I’m the same person I was before the game, and I think he is too. And I’ve never seen him like this before. You can’t see the way he looks at you, but his heart is not something you can sell, or stab—”

  “You know nothing about me.”

  “No?” I had so many memories of her. Memories I’d never lived. But somehow I remembered standing outside her door and knocking after some bastard from the court had made fun of her. I remembered her tears as she opened the door, her stubborn refusal to tell me who it was. I remembered the day she stopped crying, the day she stopped coming with me no matter how I’d asked. “So I don’t know that you’ve been bullied enough to grow spikes, but inside you have a gooey center?”

  She scowled. “Nothing is happening, because he doesn’t even know me. This”—she pointed at her body—“isn’t the real me.”

  I didn’t know what to say to help her here. “I’ve seen the real you, and you’re quite fetching.”

  “I know! I like who I am. I’m fine. Don’t talk to me about this stuff.”

  I sighed and dropped the subject. This was a bigger issue than I could help her with in one conversation.

  “All I want is for us all to get out.” I lifted a branch for her to guide her horse under. “But
there’s no guarantee here. Look at the sky. The source code has corrupted. They should have woken us instead of sending messages through the seer water. We shouldn’t still be here.”

  She paled. “So since we might all die, we should all make out while we still can?”

  “Ew. Dagney. Gross. I’m your brother; you can’t say things like that around me.”

  She snorted.

  The sun lit the trees and glowed against Ryo’s loyal Whirligig. It felt like he stood at the edge of a cliff, and I didn’t like being this far away from him.

  But Dagney needed a push.

  I stopped walking and she turned. “I just lost my granddad.” I let out a heavy breath. “And the thing about losing people, what hurts the most, isn’t that I loved him. It’s all the times I chose not to.”

  She stared at the trees.

  I nudged her arm. “Take the risk, love.” She stared after Ryo and bit her lip.

  I grinned, tapped my heels so the horse moved to a gallop, and caught up with Ryo. Dagney’s horse trailed after us.

  In the woods, beneath a pine tree, a Historian stood. I believed she was the same one from the catacombs. She raised her hands like she was telling us to stop.

  I tugged Ryo’s arm.

  Dagney joined us, taking Ryo’s other flank.

  The Historian pulled a branch from a tree and wrote in the dirt with the stick. I dismounted and stepped forward.

  Lurcher twenty steps west. Go around.

  It was nice of her to give us a warning. And that shortcut in the Abbey gave us loads of breathing time. Whoever she was, she was trying to help us. So heartbeat of mine, calm yourself.

  “Hello,” I said softly.

  She lifted her hand to below her chest and wiggled her fingers in a small wave.

  I inhaled sharply.

  Ryo and Dagney moved closer.

  But I almost sprinted. It was her. It had to be. I pulled off her mask. Behind the mask was a blank silver sphere. No eyes. No mouth.

  But I recognized the way she moved her hands.

  “Bluebird?” I asked.

  Static interrupted her feed, sending sparks across her raven feathers. She disappeared in a rip of lightning and I was left holding the carved mask.