by Henry Clark
“Maybe we could make him some potato pancakes,” I said, suddenly on board with the plan. “Or a pumpkin pie.” I thought of Modesty’s sister Fidelity. “Or asparagus ice cream!”
“There,” crowed Pre. “You’re working on a plan already. I knew the moment you told me Delleps had contacted you that you were genius-level scientists. You should return to the World of Science immediately.”
“And you should come with us,” said Modesty, retrieving her lighter from the table. “You’d be a big help convincing Elwood Davy that Congroo exists.”
“No, I have to stay here and wait for Hemi-Semi-Demi-Director Oöm Lout.” Pre pushed in his chair and looked down at it, refusing to make eye contact with any of us.
“Why would you wait for him?” I asked. “It’s obvious he can’t be trusted.”
“Why… obvious?” Pre looked up, sounding hopeful.
“Because one minute he’s telling you he knows there’s a door open between the worlds and it must be closed immediately, and the next he’s being way too helpful about Master Index’s abduction and your stolen french fries. I mean, flyer-fries. He wasn’t consistent; that’s usually a sign someone’s hiding something.”
Pre looked, for a moment, as if he might be getting ready to pack an overnight bag. Then his shoulders slumped, and he said, “No. Oöm Lout is an elected government representative. I have to respect that.” His eyes darted around the room. “But… I’ll come with you to the balcony and see you off.”
Preffy led the way up the spiral staircase. We were halfway to the top when Drew detoured on the fifth level and ran over to one of the bookcases.
“There’s no way I’m leaving a library in a world of magic without checking out the books,” he said over his shoulder. He ran his fingers along the spines. “These are all probably full of ancient wisdom and great feats of wizardry and, and—What the heck?” He leaned closer and started reading off titles. “The Mystery of the Old Library. The Librarians Take a Holiday. All’s Well Where There’s a Library. Franklin Gothic: Ghost-Hunter Librarian. What is this?”
“Oh,” said Pre, coming up behind him. “That’s the li-fi section.”
“Li-fi?”
“Librarian fiction. A few years ago, one of our authors realized that any book that has a librarian as a main character is much more likely to get recommended by real librarians. Ever since Cooper Black, Pirate Librarian became a big hit, other authors have been churning out books about librarians who are also detectives or spies or super wizards or costumed crime fighters or stunt unicyclists. Most of our libraries now have li-fi sections. One of my own favorites is The Adventures of Biblio Baggins. Librarian by day, dabbler in the scientifical arts by night.”
“So this isn’t a tower full of books on how to do magic?”
“No, but we do have a few of those. They’re in the basement.”
“This looks like a book of magic over here,” said Modesty. She, too, had left the stairway and was standing next to a pedestal that supported an open book with gilt-edged pages.
I gave in to my own curiosity and followed Pre over to Modesty. Drew fell into step behind us.
“Yes, that’s one of our basic magical references.” Pre patted the book, then flipped through a few of its pages. “This is the Necro Name-a-Coin. It’s an index of all the different types of coins that have been recovered using the To Gather Lost Coins spell. It’s a marvelous book, edited by Johann Necro. It’s self-updating and self-repairing.”
“Self-repairing?”
“If a page tears, it invisibly mends. If a page gets torn out”—Pre grabbed a page and ripped it from the book—“it grows a new one.”
We watched, stunned, as a new page spread out from the binding and replaced the one he had taken. He crumpled the page in his hand and tossed it.
“Wow,” said Drew. “That’s like something right out of Castle Conundrum.” He looked up at me. “Can we stay longer?”
“Are you out of your mind?”
“We really shouldn’t waste any more time,” Pre said. “I’m not at all sure how many jars of dragon food Oöm Lout will be able to transfer here; it may only be a matter of days before things become critical.”
“You really think this Lout guy is going to help replace the flyer-fries?” I asked as we resumed our climb.
“I don’t see why he wouldn’t. He said he’d look into it.”
“You don’t think he might be responsible for your jars going missing in the first place?”
“Oöm Lout’s known for being a bit eccentric, but I’m sure he’s not out to destroy the world. Are people in the World of Science always this suspicious?”
“We try to be, yes. It’s actually what science is all about.”
We stepped back out onto the balcony. Modesty was in the lead, and she halted almost as soon as she went through the door. The rest of us bunched up behind her.
“Who are they?” she asked, pointing to the distance.
In a treeless area of the hill below the ruins of Legerdemain, five horsemen were riding down the slope, heading in our direction.
“Well,” Pre said, “four of them are wearing the blue uniform robes of Quieters. The one in the middle, wearing the gold robe, would be a board member, so that’s probably Oöm Lout. He certainly didn’t waste any time getting here. They’re less than ten minutes away.”
“What about the one in the green robe?” I asked. “The one who’s on foot, running ahead of the horses? The horses are having a hard time keeping up.”
A sixth figure was visible about a hundred yards ahead of the rest. It was jogging down the hillside, the distance between it and the horses widening with every step it took.
“Judging from the speed at which it’s running,” said Pre, “that would be a logem.” When he saw our puzzled looks, he added, “A logem is a hollow person made from clay.”
“You mean a golem,” said Drew.
“I’m sure I don’t. Logem is short for analogem—it’s an analog of a human being. An artificial person. You grow a logem from a single slab of clay taken from the Homunculus Clay Pits—that’s a big tourist attraction near the town of Homunculus—and rich people use them as servants. Usually, they mold the faces to look like famous actors or athletes. They’re completely hollow, but they’re capable of speech and varying degrees of mental activity.”
“That’s also true of rich people where we come from,” said Modesty.
“I can’t imagine why they would have brought a logem with them.” Pre shook his head. “It’s such a waste of magical energy.”
“It looks like the logem will be here in a lot less than ten minutes,” I said.
“Oh yes,” Pre agreed. “They’re very fast runners.”
“Ring, ring.”
The voice I now recognized as that of Delleps came from my pocket. I pulled out my phone and switched it to speaker mode.
“Hello.”
“Thank you for using the Congroo Help Line. How may we assist you?”
Pre’s eyes went wide. “Is that—?”
I held up my hand to keep him from finishing and slapped the phone to my chest to prevent Delleps from hearing anything that might sound like a question.
I thought carefully before I spoke.
“Hi,” I said. “You’re the oracle known as Delleps. The Congroo Help Line exists to help Congroo. So whenever you call, you have something to say that might be beneficial to your world. But because you’re an oracle, and oracles have a bunch of bonkers rules, you can’t just volunteer the information. You have to be asked a single question, with no follow-up questions, and your answer to the question can’t be easy to understand. So I have to guess what the best thing to ask you is and then figure out the meaning of whatever wacky thing you say in reply.”
“Was any of that a question?”
“No.”
“Good. How may I be of service?”
“Psst.” Modesty stuck her head in between the phone and me. “Ask her
what the most important thing we need to know right now is.”
I examined what she had suggested from every angle. It sounded pretty foolproof.
So I asked it.
“You’re a very bright group,” Delleps conceded. “Listen carefully: The girl fresh from stitchin’ will enter the kitchen and close off the transworldly highway. You better act fast, and Oöm Lout get past, ’cause right now she’s out in the driveway.”
I waited, in case there was any more. Apparently, there wasn’t.
“Highway and driveway don’t exactly rhyme,” observed Drew.
“It’s a cryptic prognostication,” grumbled Delleps. “There’s no obligation for any of it to rhyme!”
“The girl fresh from Stitchen,” Drew quoted. “Stitchen might be the name of a town here in Congroo.” He looked to me to see if I agreed.
“Did you just hear that slap?” asked Delleps. “That was me, hitting my forehead with the heel of my hand.”
“Don’t make it any more complicated than it is,” growled Modesty. “My sister Prudence needed eighteen stitches—she’s the girl fresh from stitchin’.”
“And stitchin’ and kitchen,” Delleps said smugly, “happen to rhyme perfectly.”
“Which would be great,” said Drew, “if stitchin’ were a word.”
“Delleps is saying Prudence is home,” said Modesty, “and when she goes into the kitchen, she’ll close the fridge door and break the connection and we’ll be trapped here!”
I held up my phone and gave it a quizzical look, which I hoped wouldn’t be seen as a question. “That wasn’t terribly cryptic,” I added.
“No,” Delleps agreed. “The more urgent things are, the less mysterious I’m required to be. Move your tails.”
Click. Delleps broke the connection.
“I can’t believe we’ve just heard from Congroo’s greatest oracle.” Preffy sounded overwhelmed.
“Been nice meeting you,” I said as I pushed past him to follow Modesty, who was already in motion. Over my shoulder, I added, “We’ll get right on the Elwood Davy thing as soon as we’re home.” I pulled Drew along with me. He had been staring back at the door to the inside of the tower. Modesty was already halfway across the balcony.
A winged gargoyle with a four-foot sword dropped out of the sky and landed on the path in front of us.
“Whoa!” Modesty fell back as the sword swooshed past her face at eye level. We scrambled back ten paces. When the gargoyle failed to chase us, we stopped and squeezed together in a tight, frightened knot. The thing with the sword stayed where it was, blocking our way. It looked like carved gray stone, with horns on its head and sightless stone eyes, but it had an odd shimmer to it, with areas on its chest where you could see through it to its back, as if the whole creature might be hollow. Snowflakes swirled around it and started filling in the holes, and it began to look more solid.
“Fazam!” Pre spat. “It’s a Dust Devil.”
“A what?” asked Drew.
“Something Oöm Lout must have sent to delay us until he gets here. A Dust Devil’s a tiny bit of magical energy, maybe three or four ERGs, that builds itself a visible body by surrounding itself with dust and other bits of debris from the air and ground. This one appears to be using sand and dust and snow, plus maybe some loose garment threads and lint and possibly a few stray nose pickings.”
“You’re saying it’s a whole lot of nothing covered in a thin shell of snot,” said Drew.
“A very tiny amount of snot, if any,” Pre said defensively. “It’s not like we pick our noses that much.”
“You don’t teleport your snot to Saturn?” I asked.
“No!”
“It would explain the rings.”
“We don’t!”
“You’re saying this thing isn’t really here?” asked Modesty, pushing Drew aside.
“Oh, it’s here all right,” Pre assured her. “But it’s mainly air, with a thin layer of dust and snow. Very good for guarding something you don’t want people getting into. They’re distantly related to logems; Congroo has a lot of hollow life-forms.”
“Can’t we walk right through it?” I asked.
“You could walk through it, yes, if you kept your eyes closed and didn’t inhale,” Pre agreed. “Except for the sword. The sword’s edge is only the thickness of a dust mote. Do you have any idea how sharp that makes it? Sharper than any scalpel. There’s a story about a soldier during the Second Goblin War who walked through a Dust Devil and didn’t realize he’d been cut until he leaned over a drinking fountain and his head fell off.”
“Ring, ring,” said my phone. I slapped my pocket and pulled it out again.
“Hello.”
“She’s in the house,” said Delleps.
“That’s… not even remotely cryptic.”
“That’s how urgent it is.” Delleps hung up.
“Your sister’s in the house,” I told Modesty. “We’re out of time!”
Pre took a single step closer to the Dust Devil, which flicked its sword from side to side at the level of our necks.
“There’s ice on the floor at its feet,” said Modesty. “Maybe we could throw ourselves down and slide between its legs? Like a goal in hockey?”
“Just because it’s made of dust,” said Pre, “doesn’t mean it can’t bend at the waist. You’d never make it.”
“Okay… then… a party balloon and confetti!” said Modesty. “That’s what a Dust Devil is. What happens when you rub a balloon against your shirt and hold the balloon over confetti?”
“Everybody sings ‘Happy Birthday’?” I guessed.
“The confetti sticks to the balloon,” Drew answered, catching on faster than I had.
“Are you doing science?” Pre practically squealed; he was so excited.
“Maybe. If we’re lucky.” Modesty grabbed Drew and me and pushed us toward the gargoyle. “Distract it. Leave the center of the path clear, but don’t get close enough to be cut. Leave the rest to me.”
She gave us another shove. Drew and I refused to budge. We both faced her and opened our mouths to protest. She stopped us by shouting, “Do you want us to be stranded here for the rest of our lives? In a world WITHOUT TOILET PAPER?”
I looked at Drew. Drew looked at me.
We launched ourselves at the gargoyle.
The path was six feet wide; I kept the wall of the balcony to my right; Drew stayed to the left. We had maybe a two-foot gap between us. The thing waved its sword from side to side, and we skidded to a halt. It could have taken one step forward and skewered us, but it seemed content to block the way. I got the impression it would kill us only if we refused to take the hint.
I jumped to the top of the wall, made the mistake of looking down, and nearly lost my balance. I briefly glimpsed the green-robed logem sprinting toward the tower’s base, and I wondered, very fleetingly, how long it would take it to run up seven flights of stairs.
Not long.
Drew lunged forward in a crouch, putting himself within sword range, but I waved my arms, shouted “Nyeah-nyeah,” and pretended I was about to run along the top of the wall to get past.
The gargoyle switched its target from Drew to me and swept its sword at my legs. I jumped with all my might, the sword passed beneath my feet, and I stuck my landing—but just barely. My arms made circles in the air as I fought to keep my balance.
The sword completed its swing.
And came back at me.
I wasn’t in a position to jump again. The sword was coming straight at me.
Modesty hurled herself down the alley like a bowling ball, threw herself to the ground, and slid on her back along the icy patch beneath the gargoyle.
She was holding the can of Cling-Be-Gone antistatic spray.
The moment she was directly beneath the monster, she sprayed the can upward. The sword was an inch from my legs when the geyser of anti-cling spray hit the gargoyle in the butt.
It burst like an explosion in a glitter fact
ory.
Sparkly flakes flew in all directions and then cascaded down on the path. The tiny grains stung as they hit our faces, but it didn’t hurt anywhere near as much as getting my legs cut off would have.
“Brilliant!” shouted Pre, and ran to us. “That was like something out of Mary Potter, Girl Scientist, during her first year at MIT.”
“MIT?” asked Drew as he helped Modesty to her feet.
“The Magicless Institute of Technology. It’s the fictitious school of science in one of our most beloved fantasy septologies. I love those books. They’re the highlight of the library’s STEM collection.”
“What’s STEM?” Drew asked, adjusting his turkey.
“Stories That Exclude Magic.”
“Let’s move,” I said, dropping down from the wall and pushing everybody forward. Modesty shook off gargoyle dust like a dog shaking bathwater, and we plunged along the path. My longer legs carried me past the others, and I arrived at the doorway first. The refrigerator’s interior light was still on, and through the shelves of food, I could see Modesty’s kitchen. I stepped forward.
And came face-to-face with a girl who had a bandage wrapped around her head. She had just removed the chair that had been holding the fridge’s door open. Her eyes went wide.
She screamed.
And slammed the door in my face.
The refrigerator light went out. It was like sunset on doomsday.
“No!” I shouted. “We’re trapped!”
I couldn’t help my folks if I couldn’t get back to them. They’d have to sell the farm, all the time wondering what had happened to their younger son. Glen’s hand-me-down clothes would go to charity, which, okay, was a silver lining, but still—I wouldn’t be there. We weren’t going to be able to save Congroo—we were going to be stuck in it. I whimpered.
I didn’t want to live in a world without toilet paper.
Pre pressed his hands against my shoulders.
“Don’t back up!” he ordered. “The door’s not closed—you’re standing in it. The connection will hold as long as you’re there. Don’t back out. Push!”
He shoved me, and I threw my weight against the inside of the door. I felt a carton of eggs collapse messily on one of the shelves, and then I fell forward and went sprawling on the floor of Modesty’s kitchen. Pre tumbled in after me, and Modesty wasn’t far behind.
