The Stranger: The Labyrinths of Echo, Part One

by Max Frei

  For a brief moment it seemed to me that I had died many years before. Then I began to feel wracked with a longing for death—a peculiar kind of nostalgia; but a tiny part of the phlegmatic, sensible Max was still alive in me. So I got a grip on myself—or, rather, the sensible kid gathered up all the rest of the Maxes, all howling in a frenzy of morbid longing.

  Sir Melifaro, who until that moment had remained blissfully ignorant, was now also on the alert. He mumbled gloomily, “Not the cheeriest place in Echo, Chief. Why did you drag me in here? Bring on the music and the girls!”

  Then Sir Juffin spoke in a voice that sounded like it came from someone else:

  “Back off, boys! This time my pipe is going off the scales!”

  The dial on the pipe was calibrated to detect magic up to the hundredth degree. This should be plenty, as even during the romantic Epoch of Orders, masters who had greater abilities were few and far between. So if the wand was going “off the scales,” the magic here must be greater than the hundredth degree—say, the 173rd or 212th. From my perspective, it was all the same at that point.

  “What’s going—?” Melifaro tried to ask, but Juffin shouted:

  “Clear out! On the double!”

  In the same instant, he tugged me by the leg, and I crashed onto the floor, just in time to notice Melifaro’s legs flying up in a bizarre somersault as he jumped out of the window. Well, almost jumped out. The sound of shattering glass rang out, and shards flew everywhere, but Melifaro’s flight was broken off abruptly. He slid down onto the floor, turned around, and started walking slowly away from the window.

  “Where are you going, you fool! Get out, I say!” Juffin shouted, but without much hope. Even I understood that the fellow wasn’t walking of his own accord. I thought I could see a spiderweb, glistening like cold crystal, envelop Melifaro. His face became completely childlike and helpless. He looked at us from someplace far away, from a dark, intoxicated distance. He smiled awkwardly, blissfully. Slowly, he walked toward the source of the web that had ensnared him, toward what had recently been the large, antique mirror.

  Juffin raised his hands above his head. It seemed to me that a warm yellow light flared up inside him, and he began to glow like a kerosene lamp. First the spiderweb that enveloped Melifaro became illuminated; then Melifaro himself grew bright. He stopped and turned toward us. Now he’ll be all right, I thought. But the warm yellow glow faded, and died. Melifaro, still smiling his beatific smile, took another step toward the mirror’s dark maw.

  Juffin bunched himself up into a tight mass and started hissing. The spiderweb shuddered, and several threads broke off with a strange sound that made my stomach churn. In the darkness, the thing we took to be a mirror started to shimmer and shift. Two empty eyes were staring at us, gleaming with the same crystalline chill as the spiderweb. Something that looked like the face of a dead ape materialized around the brilliant, fiery eyes. In the place where mammals usually have a mouth, a gaping, moist darkness appeared, repulsive and yet captivating. The cavernous black hole was framed by what appeared at first to be a beard, but peering closer, I saw with horror that the “beard” was alive. Around the creature’s hideous mouth, hairy growths like spider legs wriggled madly, writhing of their own accord. The creature gazed at Melifaro with a cold curiosity; it didn’t seem to notice us at all. Melifaro smiled, and said quietly, “You can see that I’m on my way.” And he took another step.

  Juffin tore off like a whirlwind. Screaming in an unnatural, strangled voice, and beating the floor rhythmically with his feet, he crossed the room at a diagonal, then again, and yet again. The rhythm of his stamping and shouting, oddly enough, comforted me. I stared transfixed at this dizzying shamanic frenzy. The spiderweb trembled, then faded and went dark. I watched the mirror creature follow Juffin’s every move with its fading gaze.

  It’s dying, I thought calmly. It was always dead; but now it’s dying—how very odd.

  Juffin quickened his pace; the pounding of his feet became louder and louder, his cries became a roar that drowned out all my thoughts. His body seemed disproportionately large and dark to me, like a huge shadow, and the walls of the room shone with an azure light. One of the small tables suddenly rose up into the air and dashed toward the mirror, but burst into pieces halfway there. The splinters of wood mixed with the shards of broken glass.

  Then I realized that I was falling asleep . . . or dying. If there was one thing I had never had any intention of doing, it was dying in the presence of a dead ape with a hairy mug.

  Then, from somewhere in the depths of the room, an enormous candlestick flew out with a shrill whistle. It seemed to be aimed directly at my forehead. I was suddenly possessed with fury. I jerked violently, and the candlestick crashed down, an inch from my head. Then it was all over.

  Well, to say that it was “all over” was an exaggeration. But the light, the spiderweb, and even the “smell of a foul death” were gone. The mirror again looked like a mirror—but it didn’t reflect anything. Sir Melifaro stood motionless in the center of the room among the domestic ruins. His face was now a sad, lifeless mask. The crystalline spiderweb drooped in dull, stringy, but completely real fibers that looked like spun sugar. Melifaro, poor fellow, was completely wrapped up in the sticky mess. Sir Juffin Hully sat next to me on his haunches and examined my face intently.

  “You okay, Max?”

  “I don’t know. Better than him, anyway,” I said, nodding at Melifaro. “What was that?”

  “That was magic of the 212th degree, my friend. What did you think of it?”

  “What do you think I think!”

  “I think it’s all very strange. Technically, you should be in the same condition he’s in.” We both turned around to gaze at the frozen figure of Melifaro.

  “Tell me, you did begin to fall asleep, didn’t you? What happened next?”

  “To be honest, I didn’t know whether I was falling asleep or dying. I thought . . . I didn’t want to die in the company of that monkey. Dumb, wasn’t it? And when the candlestick flew at me, I finally got furious—at the stupid piece of iron, at the monster in the mirror, even at you, for some reason. And I decided, no way, I’m not dying here! And, that’s about it.”

  “Well, you’re a piece of work, kid! Until now it was thought to be absolutely impossible; and then he up and gets offended! And refuses to die, to spite all his enemies . . . Funny. But all the same, how do you feel?”

  Suddenly I wanted to laugh. Who does he think he is, Doctor Dolittle? But paying attention to my sensations, I realized that I really didn’t feel quite right. For example, I understood perfectly what had happened here. I didn’t need to question Juffin. I already knew that twice he had tried, unsuccessfully, to conquer the strange power that resided in the mirror. The third time he simply made the world in the room stand stock-still. I even knew how he had done this, although I couldn’t have repeated it even to myself. I also understood that now it was impossible to destroy the creature in the mirror without harming Melifaro—the spiderweb had bound them together like Siamese twins.

  At the same time . . . at the same time I was tormented by other, unrelated, questions. For example, how would Sir Juffin look if I took a splinter of glass from the broken window and dragged it across his cheek? And what would his blood taste like? And . . .

  I licked my parched lips.

  “Max,” Juffin ordered sternly. “Get a grip on yourself, or else you’ll crack up. I can help you when we leave this room, but it would be better if you managed on your own. Compared to what you’ve already done, it’s a piece of cake!”

  I fumbled around in the basement of my soul in search of the small, sensible fellow who often comes to the rescue during emergencies. It looked like he wasn’t home.

  Suddenly, I thought of some old B-movie about vampires. The main characters had faces white with greasepaint and mouths unappetizingly smeared with blood—like babies left with a good-for-nothing nanny and jam for breakfast. I imagined myself in t
hat guise: Max, the regular guy, beloved of girls and house pets. At first I felt ashamed; then I burst out laughing. Juffin joined in.

  “What an imagination you have, lad! Oh, you kill me!”

  “It’s not my imagination, I just have a good memory. If only you could see that movie!” I cut myself off abruptly, and asked, “Wait, you read my thoughts, too?”

  Juffin, unperturbed, confirmed my suspicions. “Sometimes. If it’s necessary for the task at hand.”

  But by then I wasn’t even listening to him. I was consumed again by the desire to take a sip of his blood. One small sip. My stomach knotted up in a spasm of hunger. I couldn’t think of anything but the taste of Juffin’s blood. Ugh, how vile! I’m getting obsessed!

  “Am I losing my mind?”

  “Something like that, Max. But it’s doing you good, it seems. You know, I think that if you were able to withstand my curse, you can certainly deal with your own madness! I can cure you, so if you’re in trouble, let me know. But . . . you know . . .”

  I did know. Along with madness came the secret knowledge, which I had so suddenly come to possess. And the circumstances were such that the qualified help of a psychologically unbalanced vampire were far more useful to Sir Juffin than the confused bleating of the normal, ignorant Max. On the other hand, if he accidentally cut his hand, I could . . . again, I started to drool. I feverishly swallowed my bitter saliva, grabbed a shard of glass, and slashed my own palm. Sharp pain, the salty taste of blood—it brought me an unprecedented sense of relief.

  “Could you help me up, Juffin. My head’s spinning . . .”

  He smiled, nodded, and held out his hand. I stood up, wondering how I could have spent my whole life at such dizzying heights. The floor was on the other side of the universe, if anywhere. Leaning on Juffin for support and carefully shuffling my benumbed feet, I moved out into the corridor.

  I knew what was in store for us. The powers summoned to life by the curse of my protector had upset the balance of the World. Nothing to write home about, even by the standards of the Left Bank—but on the scale of the house! Any closed space is immediately saturated through and through with this harmony-destroying radiation. We had to “stop life” in the place right away, already gradually losing its contours, to restore order to it. There was no time to spare.

  All that happened is still right before my very eyes, though at the same time the memory is vague.

  At first we seemed to roam aimlessly through the enormous house. The people in gray tried to run away from us, although some of them snarled at us and bared their teeth.

  Sometimes they behaved even more bizarrely. In the large salon with the fountain, where Sir Makluk had received us the first time, two boys executed an intricate ritual dance in complete silence. They gracefully ensnared themselves in what looked like neon streamers. When we approached them, however, we saw with horror that the streamers were their own intestines, which the boys were pensively drawing from their own stomachs. There was no blood—and no pain, either, apparently. The viscera glistened in the twilight of the huge hall, reflected in the streams of water from the fountain.

  “There’s nothing we can do to save them,” Juffin whispered. With a careful gesture he suspended the scene. Now that the curse that stopped the World had been carried out, there was no need to start the whole process all over each time. The curse followed behind Juffin like the train of a garment, and I, in some way, helped him carry it. The only thing to do was to wrap each room as we came to it in the shadow of the curse, forcing people to freeze in the most eccentric poses.

  We wandered through the house; our journey seemed to have no end. Sometimes I was beset by the thirst for blood, but I was too preoccupied by warding off the attacks of the frenzied household items hunting us down. More than anything else, I was insulted by the attack of a thick volume of the Chronicles of Uguland.

  “Hey! I read you, you jerk!” I shouted indignantly, fending off the assault of the savage fount of knowledge with a weighty cane with which I had sensibly armed myself at the start of our campaign. Sir Juffin put a stop to this scene, as well.

  In one of the rooms I saw my own reflection in a mirror and shuddered. Where had those burning eyes and sunken cheeks come from? When had I become so emaciated and haggard? I had eaten not so very long ago! Actually, from Count Dracula’s point of view, I had never eaten anything worthwhile. Ugh! How disgusting! But it wasn’t too difficult to keep myself in check. A person grows used to everything. We’ll leave it at that.

  We roamed through the house. It seemed that was the way it would always be from now on: time had stopped, we had died, and ended up in our individual, honestly earned purgatory. In one of the rooms, we came upon Sir Makluk himself. He was occupied with domestic duties: he was industriously rolling up an enormous bookcase, with all the books inside it. The most amazing thing was that he was already halfway finished. The old man turned to us and asked amiably how we were doing. “Soon everything will be well,” Juffin promised, and Sir Makluk froze in the middle of his monstrous labors. Yet another statue in this newly established wax museum. A youth in gray was shuffling around on the threshold, quietly snarling and clapping his hands rhythmically. In a moment, he froze, too.

  Then we walked through the empty corridor, and it seemed to me that I was lagging behind ourselves, because for a fraction of a second I observed the backs of two heads. One belonged to Sir Juffin, and the other was my own.

  “Are you tired, Sir Max?” Juffin asked with a smile.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I replied mechanically.

  “Sure. What is there left for us to do here? Get ready. Soon you’ll be fine.”

  “I already feel pretty normal. Everything has passed, except for the nausea.”

  “That’s just hunger. A couple bucketfuls of my blood and it will disappear like magic!”

  “Very funny.”

  “If I didn’t laugh I’d retch at the sight of you. Have you looked in the mirror?”

  “You think you looked any better when you hissed at the monster in the bedchamber?”

  “Yes, I can only imagine. Onward, Max! We both truly deserve a breather.”

  We went out into the garden. It was already getting dark. The bright round orb of the moon lit up Juffin’s weary face; his light eyes shone yellow. The yellow light enveloped me, and I thought stupidly, surprised: Why do people need eyes! Aren’t lanterns enough for them? That was my last thought. To be honest, I could have gotten along without that one, too . . .

  Then I looked at my wounded hand, and blacked out.

  Do you think I came to a week later in a soft bed, holding the hand of a pretty nurse? Think again! You still don’t understand what it means to work for Sir Juffin Hully. Do you think he’d let me lie around unconscious? Not he!

  They brought me around immediately; true, in a very pleasant way. I found myself slumped against a tree with my mouth full of some amazing potion. Kimpa was kneeling at my side with a cup, which I reached out for eagerly. Another gulp of the reviving liquid was administered to me.

  “Yum!” I said. And then demanded, “More!”

  “That’s enough!” Juffin insisted. “I’m not stingy, but Elixir of Kaxar is the strongest tonic known to our science. Black Magic of the Eighth Degree! But I didn’t tell you that.”

  “And who could I possibly tell? You, I suppose.”

  “You never know . . . Well, still hankering after a little blood?”

  I listened attentively to my body’s voice. It wasn’t calling out for blood. Then I turned my attention to the other aspects of my existence. Hm, newly acquired wisdom also nowhere in evidence. Although . . .

  “Looks like there’s still something left from all that happened—though not like back there, of course.”

  Juffin nodded.

  “That shake-up did you good, Max. You never know what’s coming. Boy, what a day it was! But all joking aside, Melifaro is in deep trouble.”

  “Those pathologi
cal specimens back at the fountain are in it even deeper.”

  Sir Juffin waved his hand indifferently.

  “It’s too late for them already. Helping the others will be as easy as one-two-three. But Melifaro, poor lad, has only a small chance. Let’s go home, Sir Max. We’ll feast, mourn, and think.”

  At home, the first thing we did was to consume everything in sight in the kitchen. This revived me even more. The process of meditative mastication stimulates mental activity. My own, at least.

  Just before dessert a belated ray of enlightenment visited me. I sat suddenly upright in the armchair, swallowed a piece of something that went down the wrong way, started coughing, and reached for a glass of water. To top off all the other misfortunes and mishaps of the day, I mistook a jug of the strongest Jubatic firewater for regular water, and chugged it down in one burning swig.

  Juffin observed me with the interest of a research scientist.

  “Whence this sudden passion for alcohol? What’s gotten into you?”

  “I’m an idiot,” I admitted despondently.

  Juffin rushed to console me. “Naturally, but don’t be so hard on yourself. You have plenty of other abilities.”

  “I completely forgot about our witness! The little box! I had planned to chat with it at my leisure, but—”

  Sir Juffin’s face underwent a sudden change.

  “I also have plenty of other abilities. And now is just the time to think about them. An inexcusable blunder! You had every right to forget about the box—but me! I always suspected that the dimwittedness of Boboota Box was contagious. All the symptoms are there—I’m terribly sick. Go get your treasure and bring it here, Max. Let’s see what it can tell us.”

  I went to my room. One of my slippers was lying on top of my pillow. On top of it, Chuff was dozing peacefully. I gingerly touched his shaggy ruff. Chuff smacked his lips, but didn’t wake up. And he was right not to—this was no time for waking up.

  I found the little box at the bottom of one of the drawers, and tip-toed back out. My hands trembled slightly, for some reason. I felt a foreboding in my heart. What if it didn’t want to talk this time, either? Never mind, Juffin would think of something. He would shake the soul loose from it. I wonder what the soul of a box looks like? I cleared my throat, and the heavy feeling in my chest began to dissipate.