The Floating Room

by Brian Olsen

  Now I see it. An army marches down 42nd Street. An army of elves.

  There are thousands of them, stretching so far back I can’t see where their ranks begin. They’re slaughtering everyone they come across. Some of them pursue fleeing humans down cross streets or into subway stations. The rest break through store windows to massacre the customers huddled at the back, or shoot wave after wave of arrows at anyone who hasn’t found cover yet. Smoke pours from nearby buildings as they’re set ablaze.

  “No. This is a lie. The elves wouldn’t do this.”

  “Ask them. Ask her.”

  At the front of the horde is Dyllic, the elf queen. She opens the door of a taxi and pulls out the cowering driver. She lifts her dagger.

  “Dyllic, no!”

  I run for her, somehow avoiding getting skewered by any flying arrows. I reach her just as she plunges her blade into the poor cab driver’s heart. She sees me and lets his body drop, half in and half out of his cab.

  “Human King!” she says. “Once our enemy, now our liberator!” She holds up a fist, stopping her forces’ forward progression.

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Why?” She spits at my feet. “You know why. This world is bursting with humans. There was never any place for us here. They deny us lands of our own, so we must take it! This city has ample room for elves. If we do not claim it, then the goblins, or the minotaurs, or some other peoples of magic will.”

  “But you’re killing innocents! Murdering them!”

  She laughs. “There are many more where these come from. They’re only humans!”

  Gunshots, many, many gunshots, fire off behind me. I flinch, covering my head. The civilians have mostly cleared the streets, and now the camouflage green of the army fills them instead.

  “You can’t win,” I say. “The humans have weapons more powerful than bows and arrows. They’ll kill you all!”

  “They have guns. But we have magic. And allies.”

  She nods past me, past the army, up towards the sky. A dark shape moves over the city, high above.

  “You freed all the magical creatures, Monster Child. And for that, the elves thank you.”

  The shape gets bigger. The soldiers fire at it, but their bullets do nothing. It screeches, shaking the windows above.

  A dragon. It’s enormous, it must be as long as a city block. It descends to just above the tallest building and breathes out a jet of flame. It flies along 42nd Street, strafing fire all the way.

  The soldiers don’t stand a chance. They can’t even run. Hundreds of men and women, burnt to ashes in seconds.

  Dyllic and the elves don’t move. They hold position as the dragon’s flame gets closer and closer, melting cars only a dozen feet away. The elves sweat from the heat, but I feel nothing.

  The flame cuts off. The dragon roars and soars back into the sky.

  The street is quiet. There’s nobody left alive to scream.

  Then the elves cheer. The elven soldiers hold their weapons aloft and shout in ecstasy at their victory.

  The Nightmare Queen stands next to me. “You could take your revenge,” she says in my ear. “Burn them, the way their dragon burned these poor innocents.”

  I take a sharp breath and almost choke on the smell of roasting meat. I swallow back bile.

  “No.”

  “They’ll kill more. This city is still full of people, and they’ll all be slaughtered.”

  “This isn’t true. The elves wouldn’t do this.”

  “Wouldn’t they? Why do wars begin, Chris? Over land. Over resources. You’re bringing millions upon millions of intelligent species back to a world they have no place in. You don’t think they’ll fight for their people?”

  The nightmare fades. I’m back on the step, below the floating room. She floats next to me and unsheathes her gleaming, golden sword.

  “That’s what you did, Chris, when you were the Common King. Fought for your people. You weren’t evil. But sometimes we have to do awful things to protect what’s ours.”

  “We can find another way. It doesn’t have to be like this.”

  “There already is another way. The creatures are safe in their own worlds, and humanity is safe with them there, too. Leave them there. Leave well enough alone.”

  “It’s not right,” I say. “It’s not right to leave them locked up like that.”

  “Right, wrong. Now who’s the child?” She sneers at me. “Wake up, Chris.”

  And I do.

  I’m in my bedroom. I fumble for my clock. It’s not even one in the morning yet.

  I lie in bed, staring at the ceiling.

  I don’t think I’ll get any more sleep tonight.

  Thirteen

  “Turn left here,” Alisa says.

  “I can’t turn left here!” Nate looks at her in the rear-view mirror. “There’s no exit.”

  “Then turn left the next time you can turn left.”

  “The exits are on the right.”

  “Then take an exit on the right and then turn left.”

  Alisa sits next to me in the back seat of Nate’s car. The closed book, with her phone on top of it, rests in her lap. The phone is open to a map app showing our location on the highway headed out of Charlesville. She’s dangling the tree medallion necklace over the phone, focusing her magic through it to use it as a divining tool. The necklace ignores the motion of the car and tugs towards a spot on the map. As we get closer, Alisa zooms the map in to narrow down where we’re headed.

  Zane, on the other side of me, leans his head on my shoulder. “This doesn’t count as our date.”

  “Sorry. We were supposed to come up with something to do. I’ve spent the past two days catching up on homework.”

  “Me, too. Tomorrow’s Friday, though. We should figure something out.”

  Nate calls back to us, “Taking the exit. Still left?”

  Alisa expands the map. “Yes.”

  “This is the mall.” Jasmine’s riding shotgun. “This is the exit for the mall. Are we going to the mall?”

  “I don’t know yet.” Alisa taps her phone again. “Just keep going.”

  Tannyl sits up. “I remain uncertain that this is our wisest course of action. Is there no other way to reach the baku?”

  “Tannyl, my dude,” Nate says. “You gotta stay down. Can’t have this many people in the car. Not enough seatbelts.”

  Tannyl harrumphes and lays back down. He’s sprawled uncomfortably across our feet. “I don’t understand why I am in this position when I am clearly the tallest of us.”

  “New kid gets the worst seat.” Zane rubs the top of the knit cap covering the elf’s ears. “That’s the rule.”

  “We’re not going for the baku, Tannyl,” I explain again. “Their artifact is too far away.”

  There are these creatures called baku in the book who have the power to eat nightmares — perfect for our situation. Unfortunately, Alisa’s logomancy located their artifact in Japan, and flying to Tokyo for the weekend would be a little hard to explain to our parents. Every other creature we looked for was far away too, so we decided on a different approach. Alisa asked the necklace to point her towards whatever artifact was closest, regardless of what’s inside it. There are two in town, the necklace and another which must be the minotaur trophy Mr. Liefer took from us, but Alisa found a third just a few miles away. We have no idea what species of creatures are in it, but it’s a place to start.

  “You do understand,” Tannyl says, “there are some magical creatures it would be truly dangerous to unleash on your world. There are animals who are not evil, but are powerful and predatory. And there are undead, such as ghouls, who prey on the living.”

  If he were a logomancer, I’d say he read my mind. I didn’t tell anyone about my recent visit from the Nightmare Queen, or the apocalyptic vision of the future she showed me. I know, I know, I should. But they’d just worry, and I’m worrying enough for all of us. Besides, the way I see it, if she’s trying to warn
us off freeing the magical creatures, then it’s probably exactly what we’re supposed to be doing.

  “We know,” I say. “You told us. We’ll figure out what’s inside before let any of them out.”

  “I hope it’s fairies,” Jasmine says. “I’ve always wanted to meet a fairy.”

  “Since when?” Nate asks.

  “Since forever!”

  “You have literally never once mentioned fairies before.”

  She smacks his shoulder. “You don’t know everything about me, Nate Montgomery.”

  “We already looked for fairies.” Zane sticks his hand out the window, waving it in the air. “They were in England, remember?”

  “Right here!” Alisa says sharply. “Turn right.”

  Nate makes the turn. “Jaz was right. Anybody need anything at the mall?”

  It’s Thursday, just around five-thirty, so the mall is crowded with other teenagers, and with people shopping on their way home from work. I’ve been to this mall about a million times. We all have, except Tannyl. It’s the closest to Charlesville, and the biggest in the area.

  We pile out of the car, Tannyl stretching and quietly grumbling. Alisa, balancing the book, phone and necklace, leads us across the lot towards the nearest entrance.

  Tannyl gives an abandoned grocery cart a curious push. “This is a marketplace?”

  “Yeah.” Nate throws his arms out. “Lots of stores, all in one building. Restaurants, too. Big movie theater.”

  “It’s pretty much the best,” Jasmine says. “You’ll love it.”

  We go through the entrance into a wing of the mall. Tannyl freezes in wonder, but Nate and Jasmine take him by the arms and lead him forward.

  “Ever been in a building this big before?” Nate asks.

  “Oh, yes. Much bigger than this. Do not be deceived by the flimsy shelters you saw in our prison world. Elven cities are sights to behold. Humans, too, constructed wonders in the world before. And yet…” He shades his eyes and blinks. “It’s the lights. The sounds. The moving images. And a multitude of smaller things that I cannot fathom the use of, but none of you pay any heed to.” He lowers his hands. “I do not see how my people could ever adjust to a world like this.”

  “I need a map of the mall,” Alisa says. I’m not sure if she was listening to Tannyl or not. I haven’t noticed her talk to him much since we freed him. “My phone can’t zoom in any closer.”

  “Here.” Jasmine runs over to a display with a light-up layout of the mall. She takes a folded paper map from a cubbyhole and brings it to Alisa.

  “Perfect.” Alisa dangles the medallion over the paper map. “Truth.”

  The medallion drifts off center. We follow Alisa down to the mall’s main promenade. Her eyes are glued to the map and I have to steer her around a kiosk selling sunglasses.

  “Can we eat?” Jasmine asks. “I’m getting hungry.”

  “We’ll hit the food court on the way out,” Nate promises.

  Alisa leads us right to the center of the mall, to a large area filled with benches, open all the way up to the ceiling two floors above. An enormous fountain shoots a tall spire of water. Escalators on either side of us go up to and down from the promenade on the second level, and wings full of shops lead off in all four directions. There are a ton of people around, some sitting on the benches or on the damp lip of the fountain.

  Alisa looks around. “It’s here somewhere.”

  “Oh, great.” Zane steps out of the way of a woman with a baby carriage. “Nice and public. Let’s put on a magic show.”

  “There’s a lot of stuff here that could be an artifact, Alisa,” I say. “Can you narrow it down?”

  “I’m trying.” She hands the book of magical creatures to Jasmine, shoves the map in her pocket, and holds the dangling necklace out in front of her. “Truth.” The necklace doesn’t move. “Truth.”

  “Try—”

  She shushes me. “Just let me do it.”

  Jasmine finds an open spot on the edge of the fountain and opens the book, so I join everybody else clustered around her.

  Zane puts a leg up on the fountain and leans over her shoulder. “The artifacts are all hidden in the pictures, right? Maybe we can find a picture of something from the mall?”

  Nate rolls his eyes. “Great idea, townie. Does this book on magical creatures have an entry for Old Navy?”

  Zane bites off his reply, for which I am very grateful.

  Jasmine flips through the book. “The pages switch places when you’re not looking.”

  “It’s hard to tell how big it is, too,” I say. “I’m not sure how many different species we’re even dealing with. It looks like hundreds of pages. Tannyl, does that sound right? How many different types of magical creatures are there?”

  Tannyl, standing above Jasmine, twists his neck so he can see the pages right-side up. “I don’t know. This book is organized oddly.” He puts his finger on a page, stopping Jasmine’s flipping. “Here are brownies. But a few pages back I saw hobs. They are the same species. The book lists them separately but I fail to understand the distinction.” He frowns. “Some tribes of elves are distinct enough from each other that we would hesitate to call ourselves the same people, yet we were all put together.” He flips a few pages. “And here. The Baba Yaga are not a species at all, but three sisters warped by their logomancy into something no longer human. I do not understand how this book was composed.”

  “It was a rush job,” Nate says. “Right? A bunch of human logomancers being sloppy with their spells because they didn’t know or care enough to figure out how other people self-identified.”

  A vein in Zane’s neck pulses. “Maybe they got it wrong,” he says slowly. “That doesn’t mean they didn’t care.”

  I rub his shoulder. “However it was put together, it’s what we’ve got to work with.”

  Tannyl points towards the food court. “You have those here? They’re not magical animals?”

  I look at the sign he’s pointing at. “Chickens? You think chickens are magic?”

  He blushes. “I don’t know. We take magic for granted. Its presence is not always obvious. Elves have no magical abilities, but we are creatures of magic.”

  “Yeah, dude,” Nate says, “but chickens?”

  Tannyl shivers. “My father raised chickens. I always found them…disquieting.”

  Alisa hurries over, following her dangling necklace. “Move, move!”

  We scatter and she takes our place. The necklace stops tugging and goes still.

  “Here. It’s right here.”

  Zane sticks his hand out, catching some of the fountain’s misty spray. “Can you be a little more specific?”

  Alisa puts the necklace back on. “Apparently not.” She gestures at the small section of the fountain in front of us. “It’s in here somewhere.”

  We lean over the water. Coins fill the fountain. Mostly pennies, but plenty of nickels, dimes and quarters too. Nate shrugs and starts scooping them out of the water and onto the fountain’s lip.

  A pair of elderly women on a bench nearby tsk at us. I give them an apologetic smile. “He threw in his lucky penny by mistake.”

  “How do we know which one we want?” Zane asks. “They all look like normal coins.”

  “If it’s even a coin,” I say. “Could be the whole fountain, for all we know. Or the water.”

  “Somebody got something to dry them off?” Alisa asks.

  Nate takes off his button-down school shirt, revealing his black Def Leppard t-shirt underneath. He gathers the coins, wraps them in the shirt, then drops them back down.

  “Perfect.” Alisa takes the book from Jasmine and drops it on top of the coins, then picks it back up and flips quickly through the pages. “Look for color.”

  The images are all black-and-white, but as Alisa flips I think I see a flash of silver. “Stop! Go back.”

  She turns back a few pages, but there’s nothing. “It fades when it’s not touching the object.”


  She puts the book on top of the coins again, then flips through more slowly. This time, we all tell her to stop at once. The picture shows several large black birds, some perched in trees, some flying through the air. The sky is full of dark clouds, lit by lightning flashes. It’s all in black and white except for a silver coin held in one of the bird’s mouths.

  “Impundulu,” Alisa reads, sitting on the fountain. “Also called a lightning bird. Comes from the folklore of several South African tribes, including the Zulu.”

  “I have never heard of this tribe,” Tannyl says.

  “The book gives the mythic history from our world, not the real one from yours,” I explain. “You may not know South Africa, but have you heard of this bird?”

  He shakes his head. “But the world is vast, and life takes many forms.”

  “They’re so pretty!” Jasmine says.

  Nate, reading over Alisa’s shoulder, adjusts the book in her lap so he can read it better. “Pretty, maybe, but I’m not so sure we should drop in for a visit. They can turn into lightning. They can turn into human men in order to seduce women. Oh, and they’re vampires. They drink blood and thrive on death and pain.”

  “Sounds like a party.” Zane taps the book. “But maybe one we shouldn’t crash.”

  “Probably a good idea,” Alisa says. “I’m not trying to get seduced by a vampire bird today.”

  “But they’re intelligent?” I ask.

  Everybody looks at me.

  “I mean, they’re not just animals, right?” I continue. “If they can look like people and seduce women, then they’re, you know, sentient, right?”

  Nate slaps his forehead. “Oh, buddy, I don’t like where you’re going.”

  “We can’t condemn them based on what it says in a book that we already know isn’t completely accurate. Their imprisonment is just as unjust as the elves’ is.”

  Jasmine bites her thumbnail. “Chris, please don’t let the vampire birds out. What if they seduce me and Alisa and drink our blood?”

  “Yeah.” Nate takes her hand. “Jasmine’s pale. She needs all her blood.”

  “I’m not saying let them out.” I touch the picture. “I’m saying we need to go in and meet with them. Or I do, anyway.”