by Ned Rust
CHAPTER 5
Observable Phenomena
Half a bottle of Clog-B-Gon drain cleaner, two liberal shots of Summer Shine dishwasher gel, a quarter bottle of Shopmark cooking oil, ten drops of Dr. Rainbow’s food coloring, a quarter bottle of Healthy Nailz nail polish remover, thirteen sprays of Today’s Gent cologne, the remnants of a long-expired bottle of Borominic cough syrup, ten Clarity Organics window cleaner squirts, three caps of O’Connell’s Pore-Reducing Cleanser, one dusty bottle of Miracle Klear eye drops, half a bar of Scottish Dingle soap, one quarter tube of Magic Tuba toothpaste, two Calcicon antacid tablets, two peppermint-flavored Agree mints, a few dashes of Toru’s Patented Super Hot Chili Sauce, half a cup of ammonia, and various sprinkles and dashes of other household liquids and powders didn’t—Patrick soon concluded—make for the world’s most active chemical reaction.
Despite the food dye, the concoction was a boring gray. And, despite the cologne, it smelled really, really bad—kind of like the men’s room at a highway rest stop.
He scowled down into the bland-looking soup. All his mixing and careful considerations had been for nothing. Here he’d had his first chance to cause a spontaneous reaction—bubbling, smoke, solid precipitates, anything—and it had been, as Neil would say, an epic fail.
Of course he hadn’t exactly had ideal laboratory conditions. So as not to press his luck, he’d chosen ingredients as much based upon the unlikelihood of anybody noticing they were missing as upon their likely reactive properties. And there weren’t any Bunsen burners, distillation tubes, graduated cylinders, Rotovaps, or Erlenmeyer flasks in the Griffin kitchen; he’d had to make do with the stainless steel sink, some measuring cups, and a whisk.
But Mom was always saying beggars couldn’t be choosers, and when would he ever have another chance like this? She would probably be back in a matter of minutes, and after this he was sure he’d not be left alone in the house again, ever.
He found some dishwashing gloves under the sink, wedged next to a box of copper pot-scrubbers, and, reaching for them, bumped the inside of his arm against the elbow-joint drainpipe.
“Ouch!” he yelled, falling back on his butt.
“What the—?!”
As he watched, the letters YA-WAY rose up on his skin.
Wincing but too startled and excited to cry, Patrick went back into the cabinet, grabbed the flashlight, and found the source of his red-lettered burn: the manufacturer’s name, JACKYAW-AYERS FOUNDRY, was stamped along the length of the pipe. It and the underside of the sink were hot as a teakettle.
He leapt to his feet and examined his concoction, now bubbling vigorously and giving off a milky, slightly greenish gas.
“Oh, yeah!” he exclaimed, reaching across the frothing sink to slide open the kitchen window. He should have thought to do it earlier—he wasn’t working in a fume hood, after all—but then he hadn’t been expecting a reaction quite this powerful. The heat, the bubbles, the gas … despite the lame selection of ingredients and equipment, he had touched off a seriously exothermic reaction!
As he grappled with the latch some of the stinging vapor reached his nose and he paused, trying to decide if he was going to sneeze or cough. Cough, his throat and lungs quickly made clear—it was definitely going to be a cough. His shoulders hunched forward and he brought the crook of his elbow to his mouth as a searing whiteness marched in from the edges of his vision.
He stumbled back from the sink, nose and lips burning like he’d bitten into the world’s hottest chili pepper. And then the cough came—a single, deep, rib-bruising bark that dropped him to his knees.
And no sooner had it subsided than another started to come on, and this was a problem because he couldn’t conceive of drawing enough breath to possibly let it happen. A keening tone filled his ears, and his eyes seemed to have been dropped inside a fluorescent bulb—everything was a swirling, brilliant, blue-tinged white.
And then—as if a magician had snapped his fingers—it all went away. His vision came back, he could breathe, and he felt strong and healthy and happy like he’d just had a great night’s sleep and it was either his birthday or Christmas morning.
He laughed with relief and decided to sit down on the floor. But somehow it seemed like gravity had weakened and, rather than taking the time to unfold his knees and tuck his legs, he chose to just sort of lean backward. The kitchen phone began to ring as he slowly toppled back to the floor. He wondered if he’d accidentally made chlorine gas … or cyanide … or some sort of powerful neurotoxin? He realized that would be bad … although still, pretty freaking cool to have done it in a kitchen sink …
The phone rang again and it occurred to him that he should answer it—perhaps it was Mom—but he was really busy sitting down right now, and anyhow, it was way too far away.
A brilliant green light filled the room as he fell backward toward the polished split-bamboo planks of the kitchen floor. It was the green of a late-spring field day, the shade of a Pentecostal chasuble.
His head bounced on the floor once, twice, three times. The light soon subsided, but the ceiling, the counter ledge, the window over the sink, the wooden-handled cabinets, the plastic-seated kitchen stools—everything around him—was turning green and slightly fuzzy, as if the entire room was growing a coat of Astroturf.
Then the phone rang a third time and Patrick closed his eyes, and kept them that way.
CHAPTER 6
Unique Qualifications
The heavy stone door slammed shut with a floor-shaking thud. Mr. BunBun shivered and turned on the censer, placing it inside the carved stone bowl of the font. He waited to see the first puff of smoke and then laid his furry brown body down on the straw-covered floor. He would soon be on his way.
He had expected to be more excited. This was, after all, the brink of one of the world’s most (if things worked out) historic journeys. He and so many other soldiers for the Commonplace, the book of the Minder’s wisdom, had worked so hard—and risked so much—to get here.
But rather than feeling like the hero of some poem about to embark upon an epic journey, he was starting to worry he was more a guinea pig about to be embarked on a laboratory experiment. Or, if not a guinea pig, at least a rabbit. He still wasn’t entirely comfortable with his BunBun nickname—weighing more than forty kilograms, gifted with the ability to speak, and possessed of a pair of antlers that would make a young deer green with envy—he was hardly a bunny. But his protests had only strengthened his friends’ insistence on the nickname; and what did he really care, anyhow? He was a grownup; he could take a joke.
What he wasn’t so sure he could take—at least any longer—was this particular situation. None of his friends and co-conspirators, after all, had ever done this. None of them had ever (except perhaps in dreams) even laid eyes on his destination.
Earth. It was supposed to be a world where poetry, art, and music still flourished—a world not yet enslaved by Deacons. But it was also a place where untold millions suffered from oppression, famine, and war. And it was where Rex Abraham, Decimator of Worlds, was even now plotting another apocalypse.
Which was why he was undertaking this mission.
But a lot of good it did him to have misgivings now. Now, after he had volunteered to wake up the people of poor, disconnected Earth to the massive threat at their door. Now, as he sat on the brink. Now, after he had said his goodbyes to all his friends and entered the nave. Now, as the heavy stone door had been sealed. Now, as the vaporous tendrils of transcense were beginning to flow over the lip of the ceremonial font.
He pressed down hard on his whiskered lip and blinked his rabbity eyes.
“Well, you’ve really gotten yourself into it this time, BunBun,” he said to himself. And then, thinking of his leaders, “I sure hope this is not another classic case of them not knowing what it is they do.”
Checking the time upon the device strapped to his furry wrist, he put back down his antlered head, closed his eyes, and went through the preparations from The Book
of Commonplace. Preparations he had rehearsed a hundred times in the past week alone:
One: Lie down on your back.
Two: Hold close any items you wish to bring with you.
Three: Close your eyes and relax.
Four: Do not struggle—let your impulses run free.
This last one meant that if his lungs wanted to cough, he should cough. If his eyes wanted to cry, he should let them cry. If his gut wanted to belch or fart, he should let it belch or fart.
Mr. BunBun didn’t quite do either of the latter, but as the first acrid wisps of smoke reached his face, he did cough: a single, rib-bruising bark that caused his antlers to scratch along the floor and his legs to kick straight out in the air. A keening tone filled his ears now and a swirling white—as brilliant and unnatural as fluorescent light—crept in from the edges of his vision.
He kept his eyes clenched shut as bouts of vertigo rocked his world. He was barely able to recall the last preparation:
Five: Keep your mind on your mantra.
His mantra! He scoured his dissipating memory. How could he possibly no longer remember it? How many times had he recited the thing—a thousand? Ten thousand?
And then—just like somebody pressed a button—it all stopped. The searing whiteness lifted and he could breathe, and he felt strong and healthy and happy like the morning of a festival day.
Had it happened? Was he there, on the other side?
His eyes fluttered open.
No. No, he was still in the smoky transubstantiation chamber. But a verdant light was gathering. He’d been told of this. Everything in the room—the stone pillars, the vaulted ceiling, the dais, the single-columned font—they all were becoming greener, and greener, and greener. It soon was as if everything was made of golf-course grass.
And then his Commonplace mantra came back,
“Ears are for Earth
Eyes are for Ith
And both in their way
Help the true become Truth!”
He closed his eyes and said it again. And again. And again. And then—finally—it happened.
CHAPTER 7
A Different Sort of Homecoming
A flat-faced fire engine dopplered by as Lucie Griffin reached the entrance to the empty, rain-soaked playground between Lexington and Sunset.
She was returning from the public library with a book on George Grosz, an old German painter whose cartoonish depictions of bloated, hypocritical adults had become her latest artistic fascination.
Propping the big flat book and the handle of her umbrella between her chin and shoulder to free her hands, she opened the gate in the chain-link fence. A police car roared by, headed toward Morningside, her street. Curiosity and a measure of something else seized her.
“There’s no way—” she started to say, but even as she peered through the leafless maples at the back of the O’Donnells’ yard, she could see the police car and also a fire engine—plus two other police cars and an ambulance—stopped in front of her house.
Lucie hated anything athletic and most especially the act of running, but she furled her umbrella, clutched her book to her chest, and sprinted harder than she had since she was a little kid.
CHAPTER 8
A Place of Sense
Something was nuzzling Patrick—some things, rather: things with whiskers, moist snouts, and malty breath. He opened his eyes and saw three collared sheep standing against a low gray sky. A donkey and a big brown cow, also wearing collars of blue seat belt–like fabric, stood a few paces behind. There was nothing the least bit threatening about any of them, but these were no ordinary barnyard animals. It took Patrick a moment to think it through, and then it came to him: the sheep, the donkey, the cow—their eyes were all too big, like manga characters brought to life.
Otherwise, he supposed, everything was normal enough. The wind was gusting, tousling his hair and the grass around him. But how, he asked himself, was the grass dry if it had just been raining?
And then it hit him—he was dreaming. He wasn’t really outside with a bunch of freaky big-eyed animals. He clenched his eyes shut, hoping to move to the next dream or even to wake back up, but the sheep’s nuzzlings were really starting to tickle. Giggling and lazily swiping at them, he rolled over to protect his belly.
“Hey you!” said a piercing, hooting voice.
Patrick opened his eyes and lifted his head from the grass. Standing just beyond the donkey, a big-eyed boy regarded him with rank disapproval.
“Who on Ith are you?”
Patrick considered whether the boy might have some sort of accent to be pronouncing the word Earth as Ith—like it rhymed with, well, with.
“And why are you in our yard, and why were you laughing—and why are your ears so big!?”
Patrick still didn’t know quite how to respond. First, he really wasn’t in the mood to speak. Second, he didn’t have big ears. And, third, it struck him that if anybody should be asking questions about this entire situation, it should be him.
He pushed up on an elbow and looked around. He’d assumed he was dreaming of a farm, or maybe a petting zoo. But this was somebody’s front lawn, and not a somebody he ever remembered having visited. For one thing, most people he knew had houses with windows and didn’t have plants growing on their roofs. It wasn’t an ugly building, exactly. But Patrick had definitely never seen it, or any structure quite like it, in his entire life.
Similar slope-sided houses lined both sides of the street, some also with blue-collared farm animals standing in their well-kept yards … and even upon their gardened roofs.
He turned his attention back to the boy with the tiny ears and the ridiculously, impossibly big eyes. The kid was now aiming a fancy-looking cell phone at Patrick—presumably filming him.
“Well?” prompted the boy. “Do you intend to answer?”
The boy looked to be Carly’s age—fifth grade or so—a pale, understuffed dumpling of a boy wearing brown corduroy pants and a too-big sweater vest squeezed up over his collarbones by his too-tight backpack.
Patrick also couldn’t fail to observe that the boy was wearing makeup.
Dream or not, Patrick couldn’t contain his surprise at that: “Are you wearing lipstick?” he blurted.
“I could have begun by asking why you aren’t wearing any,” said the kid, still aiming his smartphone at Patrick. “But frankly your ears are what demand the greatest explanation. I mean anybody, in theory, could have forgotten to apply cosmetics in the morning; but most people don’t wake up with fantastically large ears! Wait, is that a costume!? Are you an Anarchist!??”
“A what?”
“Don’t play games with me!! I’ve just escalated my feed for review by the cops!”
“Wait. What?” said Patrick, trying to think things through. Was he trespassing on the kid’s lawn or something? “Where am I?”
“You’re at 96 Eveningside Drive,” said the boy. “Right in my front yard.”
“96 Eveningside Drive?” asked Patrick. “That’s funny. I live at 96 Morningside Drive.”
“Yeah, hardy-har-har,” said the boy, his pubescent voice dripping with sarcasm. “Great joke. Now, explain yourself and don’t try any—”
The boy broke off. Clearly he’d just thought of something and—judging from how he clasped his hands and did a little jump—it was a pleasing notion.
“Wait, are you an Earthling?!”
“Umm,” said Patrick. Wondering again if the boy had said Earth or Ith before, and also if maybe the boy was like Stephen Westrum, Jeff Hookey, or one of the other crazy Doctor Who–Heads from school, always obsessing about aliens and robots and mutant plagues.
“Holy flipping sight!” yelled the boy, looking down at his smartphone. He was bouncing up and down like he had to go to the bathroom. “I found one! I found one! I’m going to mega-index!”
“Found one what?” asked Patrick, standing up. Despite his now very concerted attempts to shoo them away, the sheep weren’t budging, a
nd he was becoming increasingly worried one might step upon his shoeless toes.
“An Earthling, stoop!” said the boy, looking intently into his phone. He glanced up suddenly, embarrassed. “Oops, sorry, I mean an Earthling, sir.”
“O-kay,” said Patrick.
“Wait—Rex—they say he didn’t even know where he was at first. Am I the first person you’ve seen?”
“Seen? You mean in this yard?” asked Patrick. He wanted to ask who Rex was but the boy cut him off.
“Here on Ith, am I the first Ithling you’ve seen?”
“I’m going to guess you like science fiction,” said Patrick.
“Where were you before you got here?!” demanded the boy.
“Umm,” said Patrick. “I was at the kitchen sink and then—”
“And then suddenly you just found yourself here—here, in front of me?”
“Something like that,” admitted Patrick.
“That’s why your ears are so freakishly big!” shouted the boy, smacking his palm against his cheek and spinning around. “I can be so blind sometimes. Of course!”
He observed the skeptical look on Patrick’s face and broke into a nursery rhyme of sorts:
“Ears are for Earth
Eyes are for Ith
And both in their way
Help the true become Truth!”
“O-kay,” said Patrick, crossing his arms and noticing the raised skin of his burn. He’d forgotten all about it—strangely, it didn’t hurt at all.
“You’re on Ith! Ith! You’re on a whole ’nother world!”
Patrick looked at his arm. The letters, YA-WAY, were very clear—raised and bright red upon his light brown skin—but the thing was more like a healed scar than a fresh wound.
“What’s that on your arm? A cut?”
“No. A burn, I guess.”
“A burn?”
“Yeah, there was a hot pipe in the kitchen this morning.”
“Why were you near a hot pipe?” asked the boy. “Are you an HVAC tech or something?”
