Emily stepped around me as though I were a muddy spot on the path and reached for a yellow and orange daffodil. Then a spotted tiger lily. Then a purple and white gladiolus.
I moved in front of her again. Though my heart was breaking, I repeated, in my most please-please-please voice, “Emily!”
She made to sidestep me once again, and I threw my arms around her, basket and scissors and all.
And she finally opened up to me.
“Geez, Grace,” she complained, and disentangled herself. She didn't exactly push me away, but she made no attempt to hide how peeved she was that I'd crunched her basket. She picked up the gladiolus and frowned at the stem, which now bent at an angle. She snipped the broken part off, but this made it significantly shorter than the rest. “It probably won't work now,” she muttered in a disgusted tone.
“Flowers here work?” I asked. Of all the things I could have said, this was not what I would have guessed would be my first question for her. But apparently we needed something more to connect than simply my being overjoyed to find her.
Evidently, “Flowers here work?” was a stupid question.
She sighed, then glanced at the flowers she'd gathered. This garden was a jumble, with an assortment of blooms. Our grandmother had been a gardener, both in Rochester and at her winter home in Gainesville, Florida, and I recognized that many of the flowers in this garden bloomed under different climate conditions and at different times of year from one another. Emily held up a finger—I guess to forestall my lunging into another hug and crushing some more of her precious flowers—then leaned over to clip a bluish-purple iris. She tossed the iris into the basket.
And the iris disappeared. Along with the other irises that had been in there.
Emily lifted the mass of remaining flowers to show me the gold coins accumulated at the bottom of the basket. “A coin,” she explained, “for every ten flowers of the same kind.”
“Wow,” I said. “That's amazing.”
I guess she picked up on the sarcasm.
“What are you doing here, Grace?” she asked.
“What am I doing here? I'm here to help you, you idiot. What are you doing?”
“I'm gathering flowers,” Emily said, walking around me, as though that explained all and I could go home now.
I followed her as she meandered down the path collecting blossoms. I wanted to say, “Mom's worried sick.” I wanted to say, “I've been worried sick.” But when it became obvious that Emily had finished explaining, I backed off from the Big Questions, such as “You don't want to die, do you?” Instead, I asked, “So what do you do with all those coins?”
“Duh!” A black-eyed Susan apparently completed a set, for it disappeared as Emily added it to her basket. “You were in the house, weren't you?” she asked. “Wasn't that you in the kitchen? Tell me it wasn't that overbearing Ms. Bennett eating my cookies and opening my windows.”
“That was me,” I confirmed.
Once again, the conversation seemed to have reached a dead end.
“The house...?” I urged her, since that—at least—seemed like something she was willing to talk about.
“It didn't build itself,” she said. “It didn't furnish itself.”
“Okay,” I said. This explained nothing. “Emily,” I asked, “what's going on?”
Emily sighed. “Follow me,” she said, then added—making no attempt to keep me from hearing—“Yeah, like I could stop you.”
There was a wall of bushes—tall, taller than us—and that's where Emily led me. It was only when we'd come to a space formed by two of the bushes that I caught on. “A maze,” I said, seeing the path before us. “A topiary maze.” “Yup,” Emily agreed. “Just let me get a couple things here, then we can sit down and talk.” She turned right, then left, then left again, and there was an urn of lavender chrysanthemums. Emily cut off all seven of the flowers and tossed them into the basket.
“Two more,” she said. Either she'd helped design this maze or she'd navigated it quite a few times, for she seemed entirely familiar with its twistings and turnings. We came to another pot, this one holding hollyhocks. I thought I was doing a good job with hiding how impatient I was getting, but maybe not, because she said, “You can save us some time.” She pointed the way we'd been walking. “Around that corner”—it was a right-hand turn—“then take the second left, and there's a vase holding a gerbera daisy. If you can get that for me while I pick these, then we can go back and drink some lemonade on the porch and discuss things.”
“Okay,” I said.
It only worked as far as “take the second left.” There was no vase.
And when I retraced my steps to the pot of hollyhocks—which were all still there, by the way—there was no Emily, either.
Chapter 5
Amazed
WELL, what kind of idiot was I? One of the first things Ms. Bennett had said to me was that she had followed Emily into the game to try to talk her out, and Emily had refused to listen. Why had I expected her to listen to me?
It wasn't as though Emily had accidentally gotten stuck in here. The note she'd left behind proved that. For whatever reason, she had chosen this. What had made me think she was just hanging around waiting for me to lead her home? Especially after her cool reaction to seeing me. If I'd been paying proper attention, I'd have taken the hint when Emily asked whether it was me or Ms. Bennett who'd been watching her from the kitchen. Ms. Bennett probably wasn't so easy to fool.
Okay, well, I wouldn't be, either, next time.
I would just backtrack along the path we had taken into this topiary maze, find her again, and not be so readily put off. Right turn. Left. I would just backtrack...
Oops, wait a minute, that couldn't be the way. Make that another right. Hmmm ... Was that the urn the chrysanthemums had been in? I thought so, but there was a rosebush growing in it. Which either meant flowers here could change—entirely possible—or this was a different urn we hadn't passed before. Also possible. Two right turns and a left ... Or was that a right and two lefts? Neither way led to the pair of tall bushes that had formed the entry.
So ... forget trying to backtrack. I had to figure my way out without relying on my demonstrably bad memory of how I'd gotten here.
Oh, yeah, and I forgot to mention: I hate mazes. They just strike me as aggressive pointlessness.
At least fifteen frustrating minutes later (not to mention a whole bunch of bushes and urns full of flowering plants), I was seriously considering announcing to the Rasmussem people that I wanted to get out. They could pluck me out of the maze, then drop me off in Emily's vicinity, which they seemed pretty good at. But it would take several minutes for me to revive into reality and then be put back under into the game world, which would be like another hour for Emily. I had to believe that the longer she spent in this world, the harder it would be to get her to leave.
And that eventually (hours and hours from now, I could only hope, and by that I was thinking real hours, not these fleeting game hours), the Rasmussem equipment would somehow fail. Ms. Bennett hadn't explained—at least not to me—what exactly that approximately-eight-hour time limit meant. Maybe that the machine/brain interface would somehow burn out Emily's brain. Or put her into an irreversible coma. Or she might starve to death. Okay, probably not that last, I reassured myself. They could always hook up an IV. Truth be told, I hadn't wanted to know—still didn't want to know—the specifics. I was scared enough already. It was sufficient that I knew I had to convince Emily to come home, whatever her reasons for wanting to lose herself here.
While I was thinking about all that—and wondering if the Rasmussem people could read my moods and feelings (severe embarrassment: would I have to explain that I'd lost Emily mere moments after their expensive equipment had found her for me?)—I became aware of a sound. Music? It was kind of like the high notes of a harp. Or a xylophone. Or ... maybe ... a music box.
And yet ... not.
I made a right-hand turn and
found myself in a little clearing. So, my keen instincts had led me to the exact center of the maze rather than back out. There was a pretty little park bench complete with its own canopy to provide shade, and, directly centered, a water fountain—not the kind you find in school halls and near public restrooms, but the ornamental kind, with a fat marble goldfish spouting an arc of water up into the air and down into a blue stone bowl.
The musical noise I was hearing came from there, along with the relaxing splash of water. I took a step closer, hoping the water would look clean enough to drink, because I was hot and thirsty, as well as cranky. I suspected this world was too nice to have poison or even bacteria-infested water. But I was really hoping the only fish was the marble one. It would be hard to bring myself to drink water—even virtual water— from a bowl that had fish swimming in it—even virtual fish. My brain could tell me one thing, but my gag reflex was already making its point of view clear.
No fish.
Sigh of relief.
“Hello. Welcome,” a tiny voice called out.
“Hello, hello,” came another voice, and I knew it was another, despite the fact that it sounded just like the first, because the greetings overlapped a bit.
I became aware of two little creatures sitting on the tail of the marble fish. They were about as tall as pencils, and beautiful. Pixies, fairies, elves—something like that. They looked human—if you didn't hold their iridescent wings and hair the color of sherbet against them.
While my own hair was sticking to my sweaty face, occasionally stinging my eyes or getting caught in my teeth, the pixie girls' hair (one green like lime, the other a soft raspberry-purple) billowed prettily in the breeze. They also had gorgeous dresses that appeared to be made of flower petals. Sure, my dress had been okay to start with, but it had gone from being cute to being a nuisance—too much fabric for a warm day, and the grass stains would never come out of the hem. I had taken off the flower-and-ribbon crown the third or fourth time it tipped down over my eyes, and I'd left it around an urn I suspected I'd passed several times already.
“Hello,” I answered the pixie girls.
They giggled. Mystery solved. That had been the almost-music sound I'd heard earlier.
“Wishes for coins,” one—or maybe it was both—of them told me.
I remembered the butterfly coin I'd caught by the gondola. I took the coin out of my pocket. “What kind of wishes?” I asked.
“Any kind,” the raspberry-sherbet-haired pixie giggled.
Lime giggled, too. “Whatever you want. The more coins, the more you can wish for.”
“I only need one. Can you send me to wherever Emily is?” I congratulated myself on being clever enough to ask beforehand, and not waste a wish on something they couldn't grant.
“Yes,” they both agreed, indicating by their laughter that nothing could be easier, nothing could make them happier.
Though other things here had annoyed me in their excessive girlyness, these two were just so sweet, it was hard not to giggle right along with them. But I wasn't here to be charmed by how cute things were. “How does this work?” I asked.
“Coins go in the fountain...” Lime told me in her gleeful little voice.
“...and wishes get granted,” Raspberry finished. Giggle, giggle.
Together they said: “That's what we're here for: to grant wishes.”
The quest games I was used to playing weren't this straightforward. I tossed the coin into the fountain. “I wish to be sent where Emily is.”
The musical quality of their laughter filled the clearing. Sparkles danced before my eyes. My skin tingled. The topiary maze faded around me.
Then the sparkles dissolved, and I found myself on the very edge of a large chasm. The ground beneath my feet shifted, crumbling. I looked for something to grab hold of, but there wasn't anything.
There wouldn't have been time, anyway.
The ground, a thin lip of earth overhanging that deep, deep expanse, gave under my weight. I bumped. I bounced. I slid. I scraped. Down the face of the cliff, faster and faster I fell. Only after losing half the skin on my hands and knees did I manage to catch hold of a scraggly bush.
Damn pixies.
My arms were already beginning to shake with the strain of supporting me as I dangled in the air. I had to look down to try to find a solid place to put my feet.
There was a whole lot of down.
Heights are another of those things I hate.
Just look straight ahead, I told myself. Straight ahead was rock and dirt and one itty-bitty bush.
One of my little silver ballet flats had been scraped off my foot without my even noticing. Still, I told myself, that actually might work out for the best. I tried to dig my toes into the ungiving surface.
I had yet to find a toehold when the bush that anchored me gave up on the whole hopeless situation and came out of the ground. I caught a dizzying flash of sky—which told me that I was tumbling through the air.
That couldn't be good.
Then I felt a fizzy sensation, like when you're drinking ginger ale and it goes up your nose—except this was all over. I'd had that sensation when I'd played other Rasmussem games—the kind not meant for little kids—when I'd received grave injuries in a swordfight or some other misadventure. It was the Rasmussem equivalent of dying, and it meant the game was over.
Chapter 6
Adam’s Report
THIS TIME I definitely woke up confused. My mother was shouting—and under normal circumstances, my mother is not a shouter—but she was obviously furious. “What the hell were you thinking? How could you be so stupidly thoughtless?”
Sure, I'd been foolish, first walking out of eyesight of Emily, then trusting those treacherous pixies, then ... what? Not holding on to that sad excuse of a bush tightly enough? Faulting my lack of upper-body strength didn't exactly seem fair. Still, I managed to squeak out, even before opening my eyes, “Sorry. I'll do better next time, really.”
And then I did open my eyes just in time to see Mom swing around to face me. Her color went from bright, angry pink to what-have-I-done gray. “Oh, sweetie,” she said, her eyes filling with tears as she rushed to take my hand. “No, no, I wasn't talking to you. My poor brave, sweet sweetie.” She was patting my face, being careful of the lead wires that were still connected.
Someone else was also saying she was sorry, and for a moment I thought it was Emily. Had Emily come back, too? Because as far as I was concerned, she did have a lot to apologize for.
But then I realized the speaker was Sybella.
She continued, “I never thought ... I mean, a gamer would know...”
Ms. Bennett interrupted: “Sybella, why don't you get Adam to come in here, please?”
Without argument, Sybella left. She looked relieved to be going.
To my mother, Ms. Bennett said, “I am so sorry, Mrs. Pizzelli. That was such an unfortunate thing for her to say, but in the context of games, she never stopped to think—”
“What happened?” I asked. “Has something gone wrong with Emily?” Duh. Of course I meant: Has something gone MORE wrong with Emily than that she won't come out of what has to be the world's most boring and irritatingly insipid total immersion game—sort of Barney Visits Candy Land and Goes to Visit Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood?
Mom said, “That stupid girl—”
“It was an honest mistake.” Ms. Bennett turned to me and explained, “Your signal went flat, and your mother asked what happened, and Sybella said that you'd died.” To Mom, Ms. Bennett added, very emphatically, “There is no way Grace can be in physical danger here, Mrs. Pizzelli. We told you that already. Yes, Sybella didn't think before speaking, but that's because she didn't take into account your lack of familiarity with gaming. Characters die—and recover—all the time in the context of games. Far from wanting to upset you, Sybella was trying to put your mind at ease.”
Mom had been too badly scared to be willing to forgive so quickly. “Still—”
“Still,” Ms. Bennett said, “she's gone. Adam will help us out from now on.”
Mom is basically a nice person, so—mad as she was—she couldn't help asking, “You're not saying you're firing her, are you?”
Ms. Bennett, basically a clever businesswoman—one who knew she was facing the real chance of lawsuit regardless of what Mr. Lawyer Kroll might want everyone to believe—countered with, “Do you want her fired?”
Mom considered, then said, “No. I just don't want her in here with us anymore.”
Ms. Bennett nodded. “Done.” She returned her attention to me. “So what happened?”
“Murderous pixies,” I explained.
With a quick glance at Mom, Ms. Bennett assured both of us, “There are no murderous pixies in Land of the Golden Butterflies.”
“Yeah, well, tell that to the ghoulish pair of whatever-they-weres that dangled me over a cliff.”
“Do you mean mountain gnomes?” Ms. Bennett asked. “Are you saying they actually held you up over a cliff and then let you drop?”
Gnomes made me think of those little statues people have in their gardens: solid, chunky bearded guys.
“No, these were more like Barbie dolls,” I said, “but with hair the color of jelly beans.” In what I have to say was a pretty good imitation of their oh-so-cute wee little voices, I said, “Ooo, let us help you: wishes for coins.” Admittedly losing some of the quality of my impersonation, I finished with a certain amount of bitterness, “Never mind that we'll take your money, then drop-kick you from a great height.”
“Sprites,” Ms. Bennett said.
Sprites ... pixies ... whatever. I thought she was being intentionally contrary in refusing to respond unless I got the words exactly right.
She asked, “What do you mean, they drop-kicked you from a great height? They actually pushed you?”
“Well, not so much pushed,” I had to admit. What was this sudden need for precision? Had she been taking lawyering lessons from Mr. Kroll? “But they told me I could have a wish, and I asked if they could send me to where Emily was, and they said yes, and instead, they sent me over a very tall, steep cliff.”
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