Inside the flat a fruity voice was reading out a list of figures which had something to do with the production of pig-iron. The voice came from an oblong metal plaque like a dulled mirror which formed part of the surface of the right-hand wall. Winston turned a switch and the voice sank somewhat, though the words were still distinguishable. The instrument (the telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely. He moved over to the window: a smallish, frail figure, the meagreness of his body merely emphasized by the blue overalls which were the uniform of the party. His hair was very fair, his face naturally sanguine, his skin roughened by coarse soap and blunt razor blades and the cold of the winter that had just ended.
“Oy! We almos’ there or wha’? My toes is gettin’ fross’bite o’er here,” Ivor grumbled. “Nearly,” said the White W—
In the far distance a helicopter skimmed down between the roofs, hovered for an instant like a bluebottle, and darted away again with a curving flight. It was the police patrol, snooping into people's windows. The patrols did not matter, however. Only the Thought Police mattered.
“Finally,” Ivor said as he closed the wardrobe door behind him. Once again, we were in the bathroom stall. Even though we weren’t yet in Fiction, we were still in the book world, and I felt a little stronger already.
“Randy?” Alan the Lion called from the other side of the door. “Did you find him?” Without waiting, he pushed the door open with a giant paw and peered inside. “Oh thank Aslan,” he said, relief washing over his furry face.
“Yes, yes, it’s just lucky that nice—beautiful, fashionable, and funny—young woman was there and happened to know exactly where to find Peter. She was typing something in a frenzy when I arrived, but she actually didn’t seem terribly surprised to see me.”
“Why did you just say that?” Alan asked, cocking his shaggy head to the side.
“Say what?”
“‘Beautiful, fashionable, and funny.’ Seemed a little forced, to be honest.”
“Hm. I’m not sure.”
“Well, we’d better be off then. Peter, are you feeling good enough to walk for a while?”
I nodded and followed Randy and Ivor through the bathroom door, Terrill trailing behind me. I gave Alan a high-five as I passed.
“See you again soon,” I whispered.
“We’ll see!” Randy called over his shoulder.
Randy was adamant that we get as far away from the entrance to the Real World as fast as possible, perhaps even to High Fantasy or Romance, just to get me jolted back to normal. So we went ahead and took the fast way to the car (no descriptions), and by the time we got there, I could see why. Looking in the passenger side’s visor mirror, I could see that my face still looked a little too detailed and haggard for books. So he tossed my backpack onto the passenger side floorboard, buckled me up, and turned the siren on. I assume he then sped all the way from Nonfiction to Fantasy, but I don’t know, because almost as soon as I was buckled in, I drifted off to sleep. I didn’t so much as dream about the nightmarish Real World*.
*No offense.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“He’ll have one more, please,” Randy said to the waitress, a petite, big eyed, green nymph with long purple hair. She batted her eyelashes seductively and walked back into the brick building. I rolled my eyes.
“Did we really need to come all the way to High Fantasy/Romance? I feel fine—great—fantastic—now, by the way!”
Randy peered at me over the top of his own drink, a steaming mug of black coffee, and shook his head.
“You’re still a little bit too unattractive for Fiction. One more Fantastical Frappe should even you right out.”
I held up the spoon on the table and looked at my reflection, which, honestly, was just how I normally looked. I didn’t feel like arguing though; I was SUPER JAZZED about my new plan.
“Hey, Randy! Whoops!” I’d accidentally flung the spoon at him. “Listen, man, I’ve got this plan. It’ll be great. We can go back through the wardrobe, like, tomorrow. We’ll bring Jenny and all the rest of the characters back! It’ll be great. It’s great.”
Just then the waitress came back with my fifth blue pastel Fantastical Frappe and set it on the table.
“How much sugar is in these things?” Randy asked her, eyeing my drink. She leaned forward over the table and murmured, “I don’t know sir, do you want me to find out?”
Randy reddened a bit before she walked away, smirking. I’ve never been a big fan of High Fantasy/Romance, but Randy had thought it was probably the furthest from the Real World.
“So here’s the deal, R Man, Rando, Randable the Anim—”
“Stop it.”
“Okay, so here’s the plan. You know how you said we might need all the help we could get from people? I think you were right. So what we do: we gather up a whole bunch of characters. You, me, Terrill, Ivor, Ed or whatever, and whoever else wants to help us. We go back through Narnia and when we come out on the other side, we find the authors who wrote all the missing characters’ books, you know, before they stopped existing, and we tell them all about them. Or at least plant the seed. They can rewrite the stories! We can bring out the backstories that they were erased from! They’ll have to believe us.”
Randy was watching me cautiously. Perhaps it was because I was standing on my chair.
“You mean these backstories?” Randy asked as I sat back down, still shaking with energy. He’d opened my backpack, which was sitting on the otherwise empty chair next to him and pulled out the manila folder.
“I knew you were up to something when I discovered you’d replaced these. It just took forever to cut through all the red tape to get out there and see what was going on.”
Again, I couldn’t imagine there were any problems like these in the Real World.
Randy just sighed. “What were you going to do with these things, Peter? And what do you expect us to do with them? Take them out and show them to people in the Real World? I don’t think they’re going to believe a bunch of strangers shouting about some alternate version of realty; they’ll think we’re crazy.”
“But they do remember, Randy! At least a little bit. Listen, Destiny Out There is the one who gave me the idea, because she’d mentioned that her husband, Albert something—”
“Albert Stein? The man who wrote Jenny’s books?”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said, hopping down from the chair. At the next table, a knight with his helmet pushed back was locked in a kiss with a brunette elf woman; they broke apart and glared at me. “Anyway, the guy has these flashes of memory—kind of like when you wake up, and an hour later, you sort of remember what you dreamt that night. But then it’s gone. She even said that people will dress up like the characters Out There, or refer to them or something, but immediately not have any idea why. These memories are already there, just buried and blurred. We just have to remind them. I really do think they’ll believe us.”
I stopped spinning in circles around the table, then, and sat back down. Randy had moved my Fantastical Frappe to his side of the table.
“It’s a thought… But what about Destiny, Peter? I really don’t think your Conflict would be against Destiny herself, if she didn’t pose a major problem here. She could kill you, Peter.”
“Nah,” I shrugged. And shrugged and shrugged and shrugged. “This is fun. But—hey—no, hey, I think it’ll be okay. She’s just one woman, after all. As long as I have some help next time I go out there, I’ll be fine. We’ll have to show up at her house, take her by surprise, maybe throw her in the basement, and then talk to old Albert about rewriting Jenny’s books. I didn’t see him when I was there. Odd, really. Oh well—Hey look, a bird!” I’d just noticed a little blue and rather familiar-looking bird perched on the back of Randy’s chair—perhaps a stowaway from Nonfiction. Excitedly, I lunged toward it, and with an indignant squawk, it flapped its feathery wings and took off.
Randy motioned for the check, looking a bit embarrassed. As
he tucked the manila folder back into my backpack he said, “Well, it’s something to think about. But we do have plenty of time to come up with a plan, Peter. Before I dropped off Terrill and Ivor they mentioned that you’d planned on ditching them and trying to bring back the missing characters on your first trip Out There.”
“Narcs…”
“Peter, first of all, I don’t think that word means what you think it means. Second, please stop shrugging. And third, do you have any idea how dangerous that would have been? You couldn’t have known how your body would react to being in the Real World—you didn’t even know you wouldn’t be able to use magic! Jenny and the others aren’t going to become any more gone than they already are, so you can afford to wait until we come up with a well-thought, safe, and—Peter, are you alright?”
My head was drooping forward and my eyes were heavy.
“Fine. Think all those Fantastical Frapes just kind of… you know. Energy crash.” I was suddenly exhausted and not just a little bit nauseous. “Let’s head home—I need to get some sleep.”
Randy nodded, put a twenty down on top of the bill, and scooted his chair back without waiting for change. He probably wants to avoid the flirty waitress, I thought idly. He hadn’t been married in years, but even so, he still acted like he was sometimes. Maybe it was because of his two kids, Brent and Molly. I’d have to ask him about it sometime.
“Yes, you’ll need plenty of sleep before tomorrow.”
“What happens tomorrow?” I asked, pushing myself up to stand. Images of my comfy bed flitted through my mind. I walked behind him through the outdoor seating area, beneath the glowing grapevines hanging from the archway.
“School, of course. And I know you’ve only been gone for five days, but you’ve already missed quite a bit of work. I have your assignments at home—you can get them done over next weekend. It’s Sunday, by the way.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me!”
“No, really; yesterday was Saturday, and now today is Sunday.”
“No, I mean—school? You expect me to go to school while all of this is going on?” I opened the passenger door and dropped heavily into the seat.
“Of course you’re going to school, Peter. You’re a Boy Wizard. School’s a part of every Boy Wizard book—no matter what evils are pressing in.”
I rolled my eyes, and leaned my head against the window, my beard itchy against my neck, my greasy hair a mess, and the wrinkles around my eyes felt like there was grit embedded right in them.
I’d never felt less like a Boy Wizard in my life.
The next few days were tough, to put it mildly. All I needed was rest after my stint in the Real World, but I was forced into several late nights in a row, just trying to keep up and catch up with my school work. In Conflict, I had to turn in an outline of my conflict versus Destiny, now that I knew what “Destiny” really meant, and fill in a flow chart with options. Example: I will research various ways to resolve my conflict before acting. If yes, move to the circle to the left, if no, follow this arrow… I will resolve my conflict. If yes, move to the circle to the left, if no, follow this arrow… I will likely be killed in an attempt to resolve my conflict. If yes… You get the idea. (And just to let you know, “killed” was not the most objectionable option. There was also “burned alive,” “eaten by a giant,” and “suffocated in a vacuum,” just to name a few.)
In Creatures of Horror, I found that the class had already moved on to a new villain, some character called Pennywise, who I’d never heard of. So when I walked into the classroom that first day back at school, I was mildly surprised and secretly thrilled when I saw that there was a clown at the front of the room: big red hair sticking out all around his head, bald on top, wearing the whole colorful outfit and everything. I even thought it might have been one of those Welcome Back, Peter, We’re Sorry You Almost Died singing telegrams. But then he turned around to face us, and that’s when I screamed for about a solid minute. I’m not a big Horror reader myself, so of course, I hadn’t read It. Even if I had, I wouldn’t have been prepared for the thing’s rows of spiky teeth, its yellow, cat-like eyes, or its terrible one-liners. I probably wouldn’t have slept anyway that night, because OH MY GOD A CLOWN THAT EATS CHILDREN—but to top it off, Proffesor Uk assigned us five chapters to read from It, plus a report on Pennywise’s early childhood.
And that was just Monday. Tuesday and Wednesday weren’t much better. I’d caught up a little bit on my homework, but was given even more by Professor G and Mattie (read the first four chapters in Advanced Spellwork: A Work Book and complete the end of chapter worksheets, and the less formal but still necessary task of Practice Summoning! What happened out there? Why are you so wiped out? You can’t even distance summon right now! What—
The full note from Mattie, written on my assignment sheet, can be found in Appendix C, if you’re so interested. And by Appendix C, I mean the garbage can in my bedroom, as there was no way I was going to hold onto a piece of paper that just reminded me of how weary the Real World had left me. Sure, I looked Fictional again—a little more animated, somehow, and still shiny (because come on, we all know I’m being written by now), but it had set me back. I was getting better and better with practice again, but it had zapped my energy—and energy is needed for magic.
So by the time Thursday rolled around, I was more than exhausted. I was… well, I was really exhausted. My descriptions were crap, my speling, embarassing, and I could hardly pay attention long enough to
“Peter,” Professor G said in the closest thing to a snap I’d ever heard. He always seemed so amiable, though he assured us that when push came to shove, he could be quite imposing. And by push and shove, I mean, facing a giant Balrog.
“Peter!” Circe and the professor said at the same time. “You’re not paying attention!” And they were right. I looked down at the dark, wooden table and saw that it was covered in thick, green goop. I’d, once again, exploded my book worm rather than casting a spell so he’d recite Shakespeare.
“Srry, guys, I’m justso tired.”
Ganda—I mean, Professor—ah screw it, you guys know who I’m talking about. He merely looked down at me, his face a mixture of concern and impatience, and walked back toward the front of the room where he wrote our weekend homework on the board. Circe, however, was watching me intently.
“Your Destiny is really taking a toll on you, isn’t she, Peter?” She smiled languidly, clearly loving this. I, however, didn’t have the patience for it.
“Screw you, Circe. You knew perfectly well what was waiting for me Out There and you did nothing to help me. And here—” I unzipped the outside pocket of my backpack and removed the little glass jar. It was only then I noticed that it no longer contained blue smoke, but a small clear, blue jewel. It also seemed to be pulsing with something, quite literally, otherworldly. “Here’s your little magic jar. I hope it’s ruined.”
With that, I gathered my things and walked out of the classroom.
“Peter, wait,” Circe called from behind me. I could hear the rustle of her long robes, and wondered if it wasn’t somehow magically amplified. I mean, the hallway was pretty crowded and loud.
“Peter!” She caught my arm just as I was pushing my way through the double doors exiting the building, out into the courtyard. I spun to face her.
“Don’t you see what this means?” she hissed. She was still holding the small jar, and when she spoke she shook it, the little jewel clanked delicately inside.
“Nope,” and I started to walk away again. I was meeting with Mattie early that day to get some practice in.
“Peter, stop!” And with that, I did. And so did everyone and everything else in the courtyard. I was frozen mid-step, my thumbs looped around the straps of my backpack, the heel of my left foot on the ground and my right leg lifted and bent, ready to step forward. In front of me a group of Young Adult girls—probably a coming of age series in the works somewhere Out There, as they were all pretty shiny—were stan
ding, stock still, in a close circle. Some of them were stuck mid-gesture, others mid-eye roll, and one, stuck for all to see, rubbing a spot on her face uncomfortably. I couldn’t see what else was going on, so I just stared at the girls, wondering for a moment who the main character was. Then behind me, I heard Circe’s robe moving along the concrete.
“You’re not frozen, Peter,” Circe’s voice said in my ear. I couldn’t turn to face her. I couldn’t even move my lips to mutter a spell. It was infuriating. “Time is just moving much slower right now. Sure, you can hear me and think at a regular pace, because I’m allowing it. But for everyone else, the seconds have just slowed down. One second at this rate will last approximately one year.
“This,” she said in my other ear. Then she stepped in front of me, holding out the little jar, which was now empty. “Is Real World Magic. We think we can play around with time in Fantasy or Sci Fi or even Greek Mythology – but it’s nothing, nothing, compared to what they can do Out There. So you see, this is why I needed your help. I’d heard stories about the magic of the Real World; but until now, it was just legend.” She was smiling evilly, looking around at the frozen bodies around her. I noticed one of the girls in the group in front of me was frozen in the middle of crying, and realized that one tear would take a year to trail down her pale cheek. It broke my heart.
“So if you’re going to be a good boy, Peter, I’ll remove the spell. Can I do that?”
I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, I thought.
“Good then,” she smiled.
Just as suddenly as time had seemingly stopped, it resumed. I, the only one in the scene who had felt the difference at all, fell forward immediately and landed on my outstretched hands and knees just where Circe had been. But she was gone.
I got up and dusted myself off, my right hand raw and bleeding. The girls in front of me were talking animatedly once again, not sensing anything out of the ordinary, and the girl who’d been crying had already hastily wiped away her tears.
The Actual Account of Peter Able Page 8
