by Tiffany Tsao
Still, wishful thinking had played too much of a hand in Yusuf’s theory. For if he was right about everything else, he was wrong about one crucial thing: Murgatroyd’s compassion could not heal. Love, at least in this case, was not enough. Murgatroyd could no more repair the wounds caused by suffering than someone could will a loved one back from the grave.
This did not mean that Murgatroyd would not be able to do wondrous things in the future. Indeed, his time would come. But that time was not now. For now, all Murgatroyd could do was see the villainous Hans unfurled and do the only thing he was good at. Love.
And then it was over, and Murgatroyd was lying next to Hans. His hands and feet were still bound, but his head rested on the man’s chest in an approximation of a hug. Ann was yelling furiously at him to get away.
Murgatroyd raised his head and looked Hans in the face once more. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, awed by what he had just seen.
Then with a great effort, Hans shoved Murgatroyd off his chest and began crawling to the far corner of the room, dragging his leg behind him.
“Home!” he howled as he hurled himself through the crack apparently located there. The surviving four Anti-Questians followed him, creeping or hobbling as best they were able, leaving a trail of blood in their wake.
Pierre was the least injured of them all. He helped the other three through. And just as he was about to stumble through after them, Murgatroyd called out, “Pierre, you don’t have to do this! You don’t have to be one of them!”
Pierre regarded his abodemate through his bruised, swollen eyelids. “I know I don’t have to. It is my choice.”
And with that, he too vanished.
None of them except for Pierre had ever been through the crack before. It was Pierre who found out it led directly into the Known World and thus deemed it a suitable location for what they would have to do if the worst were to happen. By happy coincidence, it was breathtaking. They couldn’t have hoped for a more wonderful, more man-made place to die—as if life had decided to grant them a modicum of mercy in this, their final hour.
They were in a crowded plaza, in broad daylight, surrounded by people and beautiful buildings, tall and stately with many windows, and elaborate spires and domes. There were even fountains: one with a great tower rising out of its centre, with four muscular giants surrounding its base; two others at a distance, to the survivors’ left and right, more modest in stature, but also skilfully sculpted and astonishing to behold.
There were birds too. Real birds. Imagine that.
It was beautiful. More beautiful than in the books they had read. More beautiful than in any postcard they had purloined. More beautiful than anything in their wildest dreams.
They were home.
In a newspaper account of the incident, eyewitnesses reported the ground below the plaza giving way under a group of tourists, the earth swallowing them before mysteriously knitting itself together again, pavement and all, as if nothing had ever happened. The tourists’ identities were never ascertained.
In other news, on the same day, a man was torn to shreds by stray dogs. The victim, black, in his thirties, and already bearing serious wounds, had no identification on him and thus remained nameless. As this occurred several streets away, approximately thirty minutes later, no connection was ever drawn between the two events.
CHAPTER 19
Murgatroyd had never been very good at parties. At least, this is what he surmised from his extremely limited experience with them. The first party he had ever attended had been for a classmate’s birthday during his first year at school. It was a Sun King–themed luncheon, claimed his father when he read the invitation for him (Murgatroyd’s reading skills at that age were positively abysmal). This meant that Murgatroyd had to wear a costume: white stockings, pantaloons, a tunic with ruffles at the collar, a long curly wig, and on his face, powder and rouge.
Upon arriving, he found that everyone else had chosen to ignore the dress code.
After this came a very long period of not being invited to any parties at all.
The second party he had ever attended had been in honour of his best friend, Kay Huat, to celebrate the latter’s return to Singapore after four years in the US. Kay Huat organized it himself—a relatively low-key soiree in his father’s flat, where he was living at the time. Murgatroyd had never been brought into contact with Kay Huat’s other friends before and was understandably nervous. How cool those other friends seemed! How smart and sophisticated!
The evening did not go well. After an hour of awkward conversation, interspersed with slightly less awkward silence, Murgatroyd accidentally smeared some chocolate swiss roll all over his crotch and fled to the bathroom to wash his jeans. And then he opened the window and began to wave them around in an attempt to get them to dry more quickly. Evidently the jeans weren’t enjoying the party either: afforded the opportunity to escape, they flung themselves out of his grasp and plummeted to the grass below, at which point guests began pounding on the door, demanding that he hurry up. The events that immediately followed, admittedly, could have been worse: Murgatroyd emerged in his underpants, everyone had a good laugh, and Kay Huat let him borrow a pair of his father’s shorts. Then, later in the evening, he caught on fire.
That had been years and years ago. Nevertheless, it was entirely understandable for Murgatroyd to be slightly apprehensive about the party that was about to start in less than an hour—and more understandable still given that he had asked Nutmeg if she would attend it with him, thus turning it into his first-ever actual date.
The party was being held in the clearing next to the Compendium. All Questians had been invited, though it was difficult to predict how many people would turn up. Contacting every member was always a tricky business since mass communication relied on hand-delivered notes, and even though invitations had been sent to people’s abodes eight weeks in advance, who knew if everyone—particularly the more dedicated explorers—would receive them in time, though as it was the first party ever to be held in the Quest’s history, it would have been a shame to not attend.
The whole thing was Mildred’s idea. She had convinced the One that it would not only be nice, but necessary.
“Launching a website is a significant milestone in the Quest’s existence as an organization,” Mildred had said. “Think about it. All the information everyone has spent so much time compiling will now be accessible to the general public.”
The One had frowned. “It was always accessible to the general public.”
“Yes, but more so now.”
The One gave a grudging nod. This was, admittedly, true. She turned her attention back to the sheet of paper on the table in front of her, extended her index finger, and tapped on a tan box labelled “About.” Mildred promptly removed the sheet and replaced it with three sheets providing a summary of the Quest’s mission statement and a brief history of the organization, including a grainy black-and-white photograph of the One, Yusuf, and the Other, evidently taken on some group excursion the three had made to the Known World once upon a time.
The One quickly perused the text to determine it was all correct. It was. “Back,” she said, and Mildred replaced the three sheets of paper again with the printout of the home page. This was the method Mildred had devised in order to give the One the experience of browsing the website.
The One tapped a box labelled “Territories of the More Known World.”
“I only printed out the first hundred entries,” warned Mildred, producing a list of Territories beginning with A.
The One’s finger scrolled down the page and hovered over “Afghanistan-Barracuda.” She tapped. And Mildred spread before her eight pages of full-colour illustrations of flora, fauna, and scenery that one of the more talented Oddfit Questians had done during his exploration of the Territory.
“Not all the entries have visuals,” explained Mildred. “But we’ve sent out a call for Questians with artistic abilities to contribute as they’re able. Vis
uals will be vital in drumming up more interest.”
The One had grown more accustomed to the way Mildred spoke whenever she talked about publicizing the Quest. Nevertheless she couldn’t help but wince a very little bit at the phrase drumming up more interest.
“So this site will be accessible to everyone in the Known World?” she asked, changing the subject.
“Well, everyone with access to the Internet. And for the moment, only people who speak English. But the idea is for the website to be in multiple languages—once we launch this initial version.”
The One murmured in approval. She let her gaze rest on a charcoal sketch of a field of Restifar Tonsilaruses in full exuviation. She could practically feel the flap of their elastic tongues against her shins. She let out a happy sigh.
Mildred saw her chance. “We should celebrate the launch of the website. An event of some sort. I can organize it.”
The One had nodded.
And now the day was here. Rumours had been flying for months about what the party would be like. There were whispers about special refreshments being transferred in from the Known World. There was even some talk about a grand piano. Murgatroyd tried his best to ease his anxiety by thinking about these things as he trotted over the undulating hills of periwinkle moss to Nutmeg’s abode near the Compendium. He even tried indulging in speculation about what colour the piano would be. But despite himself, by the time he arrived in the vicinity of the abodes where the Compendium staff lived, his palms were dripping with sweat—so much so that he didn’t even dare to pat the pocket of his best dress shorts to make sure Nutmeg’s gift was still there.
The Compendium staff quarters had been designed by someone who was enamoured with the idea of camouflage. As a result, the individual abodes were very difficult to locate, and Murgatroyd had to knock on the trunks of several different trees, and then several treelike doors belonging to other abodes, before he found the correct one. One of Nutmeg’s two abodemates, a Sumfit Questian in her early twenties named Edith, opened the door.
“Are you Nutmeg’s date?” she asked.
Murgatroyd nodded, flushing suddenly at the word date. Edith disappeared, and in less than a minute, Nutmeg appeared, looking just as nervous as Murgatroyd. She had either just bathed or gone swimming, for her hair was slick and wet. Her wrists were adorned with bloodwood bangles, cut in such a way as to accentuate the plumpness of her forearms. And she had applied a dark pigment to her eyebrows and the area in between so that they formed a single, seamless low arch.
As they stood looking at each other, each of them broke into a wide grin.
“Wah,” exclaimed Murgatroyd, turning even redder and trying surreptitiously to wipe his palms on the back of his collared short-sleeve shirt. “Very swee. Erh, sorry. I mean great. You look great.”
“You do too,” she chirped. “Are those new flip-flops?”
Murgatroyd’s grin grew even wider. He stretched out a leg and waggled his foot so Nutmeg could admire its plastic sea-green vestments. “You noticed! This whole outfit is new. I asked Percy to buy them for me when he was in the Known World last month.”
Percy was Murgatroyd’s new abodemate. Since Pierre’s death almost a year ago, Murgatroyd had been assigned to live with someone else.
“We should go,” said Nutmeg with a glance at the darkening sky. “The party begins at sunset.”
“Wait!” blurted Murgatroyd, remembering the present in his pocket. “I have something for you.”
Nutmeg’s heart leapt into her throat at how quickly things were progressing, but to her relief, it was not an engagement pelt he produced, but a wad of crinkly aquamarine paper.
“Here,” he said, depositing it in her hand. Then, prompted by the feeling he should say something else, he added, “I hope you like it.”
“I do,” she said, staring at it admiringly. “It’s lovely.”
“Erh. You can open it if you like.”
“Oh, it opens!”
She uncrumpled it to find several paper parasols strung together with soft-wheat yarn, each parasol nestled in a separate layer of tissue paper to prevent the string from getting tangled.
“To hang on your wall,” Murgatroyd explained. “Uncle Yusuf used to give them to me whenever I ate ice cream at his shop. These aren’t the same ones, but there was a peddler selling some in the settlement here. They’re one of my favourite things from the Known World.”
“Thank you,” said Nutmeg, meaning it. They stood together in silence until Edith and Nutmeg’s other abodemate, Greta, squeezed past them to head to the party themselves.
Nutmeg put the parasols away in her room, and when she returned, she and Murgatroyd set off side by side for the Compendium, each of them quietly convinced that they were the happiest person in the entire universe.
Not all the rumours about the party turned out to be true. For example, there was no grand piano. But it was a splendid affair nonetheless. Tall poles had been erected and draped in fairy lights, which bathed everything in a soft amber glow. At the far end of the clearing, near a pair of portable electric generators, was an enormous projection screen. Small cloth-covered tables were scattered across the lawn, bearing, to everyone’s amazement, platters of chicken wings and beignets—deep fried and hot to boot.
“How . . . ?” murmured Murgatroyd after polishing off five beignets.
“They’re being delivered fresh from the Known World as we speak,” someone behind him answered. “The One let Mildred have some Oddfit Questians to help with the logistics.”
Murgatroyd and Nutmeg turned around to greet Ann. She was wearing the green sundress she’d had on when she had first told Murgatroyd about the More Known World. And, of course, she was wearing her eye patch too. But there was something different about her—something that Murgatroyd couldn’t quite place.
“Drink?” Ann lifted two paper cups from another table and offered them to her two friends.
Nutmeg took a sip and looked startled. “It’s . . . buzzy.”
“Ginger ale. Bottles and bottles of it. Imported from the Known World too. Like I told you, Mildred went all out. Took full advantage of the Oddfit labour the One let her have. The One was furious about the extravagance at first. Can you blame her? She’s worried about the ill feeling it’ll incite among the settlers. It’s not good for Oddfits to show off like this. Not when everyone else has to mostly make do with local goods.”
Nutmeg picked up one of the wings and took a nibble. “What meat is this? It’s delicious!”
“It’s chicken,” said Ann.
“No, it’s not!” Nutmeg guffawed. “But whatever it is, I like it.”
Then Murgatroyd realized what was different about Ann.
“Where’s your contact lens?” he asked, recalling their encounter with the Anti-Quest with a shudder. In some ways, it seemed so long ago now. In other ways, it felt like it had just happened yesterday.
She shrugged. “I took it out for tonight. For a change of pace.”
The Other bounded up to them, clutching two fistfuls of wings. “I can’t even remember the last time I ate chicken or anything deep fried!” he declared before taking a bite from each hand, as if he were holding two apples.
Not far behind him was the One. She had recently started using a cane to walk. And though her health had worsened in general, tonight there was a bloom in her cheeks that made Ann wonder if the woman wouldn’t outlast them all.
Never one for social pleasantries, the One ignored Ann and Murgatroyd and spoke directly to Nutmeg—for that was why she had come over in the first place.
“Christian says you’re a valuable addition to the Compendium staff,” she informed Nutmeg.
“Thank you,” said Nutmeg, with a little bow of her head.
“And Mildred likes your work very much. She says it’s improved many of the entries on the website by several fold and that all the Oddfit Questians you’ve been working with have been very impressed.”
“Thank you,” said N
utmeg again, though the One’s remark brought to mind the frustrations of trying to draw things based solely on other people’s explanations of what they had seen—especially when their descriptive vocabulary seemed to consist entirely of small, smaller, big, bigger, and no, that’s all wrong.
“To be honest,” said Nutmeg, “I’d rather draw what I observe with my own eyes.”
“Yes,” said the One, “I can imagine. Once we find a suitable Territory and a suitable Oddfit Questian to accompany you, we’ll send you on an expedition. A long one—to accommodate your Sumfit constitution. Perhaps Ann would like to go with you, or Murgatroyd.”
“Oh, Murgatroyd, surely,” said Ann airily, popping a beignet into her mouth. “He’s been showing dramatic improvement. I think he’ll be ready to graduate from apprenticeship in another few months or so.”
Murgatroyd and Nutmeg looked at Ann in surprise and blushed.
“So joining the Quest has been . . . satisfactory so far?” asked the One. The care with which she chose her words was unusual, but even she was capable of tact when it was necessary. She was determined to win the trust of not only Nutmeg, but her entire community—to prove they had nothing to fear from the Quest, despite what Yusuf had told them.
