Loremaster

by Todd Fahnestock

  “Who else—”

  She laid a finger against her lips. “I would love to speak with you more, but it must be at another time. We cannot delay. Go now.”

  I turned, and the crystals of the pool were winking at me, as though some light source I couldn’t see was shining at them and reflecting back.

  She pointed to the center of the pool. “Go to the very middle. Lay down. Look deep. You will know what to do.”

  “I just walk out there?”

  She nodded.

  I put the toe of my shoe on the crystalized lake. It was solid.

  “Face down. Look down,” I murmured to myself. “Look deep.” I walked out on to the center of the lake, got to my knees and then stretched out on the top of the rough crystals. I looked back at the Lady of the Lake, but she and the Misses had faded back into the trees.

  Okay then. I put my forehead against the jaggy surface.

  Nothing happened, well, except that it felt like sharp rocks were poking into my forehead and my knees. That happened. Hello headache.

  Don’t think about that. Look down. Look deep.

  I stared into the crystal, and I couldn’t see anything except my own skin color reflecting off the little sides of the crystals.

  But wait. No. There was something. In one of the crystals near my left eye, something moved. I pulled my head back so I could see it with both eyes. It vanished.

  I put my head back down. The flicker near my left eye returned. It was Vella. The little crystal expanded, growing wider, and I fell into it.

  Vella hovered below me, and I sank toward her. I reached for her, but she was too far away. She shook her head as I sank past.

  “Vella,” I shouted.

  “Find thyself,” she whispered. Now she was so far above me that she was only a dark lavender smudge on the expanse of blue, but I could hear her voice as though she was right next to me. “Mend what was torn.”

  “Vella!”

  But she was gone, and I was still spinning through blue nothingness. I looked above, to each side, then spotted something beneath me. Ground. Trees. Street lights and a city street. A girl running toward a house with a purple door. Running in the rain.

  A girl who looked just like me.

  Twelve

  Now A Me, Then a Me, Everywhen A Me, Me

  I blinked. This was me one year ago. Back when everything was horrible and I hadn’t found the Wishing World yet.

  And as soon as I thought it, I wasn’t looking at the girl. I was the girl. I was standing in front of my house. I pinched myself, and it hurt. I looked up, trying to see the surface of the Reflection Pool far above, but there was only the rainy night sky, just like it had been that night. Like I was really here.

  A chill ran up my back. I looked down at my body, at my hands. They were smaller. I was a year younger.

  Calm down. This is a dream. This is what the Reflection Pool wants you to see.

  But I thought of Mr. Schmindly. What if my entire life over the last year—The Wishing World, finding Theron and my parents—was the delusion, and here I was, back at the place I never wanted to go again?

  I climbed the fence and scaled the roof just like I had done before, except without the sliding off and almost dying part. Inside, everything was painfully the same. The total absence of my family was a dead silence hanging over my head. It was so real that my heart started racing. I went over and punched the wall and nearly broke my hand.

  “Let me out,” I said. The Metaphorical Forest brought all of your thoughts, including your nightmares, to life. What if the Reflection Pool trapped you in your worst nightmare? What if it was all some kind of trick? What if Jimmy had somehow made that vision of Vella and trapped me here?

  Stop it.

  I stepped away from the wall, shaking my hand. That wasn’t it. I had seen Vella on my way here; I had seen her at the Eternal Sea. Vella wouldn’t have sent me to my worst nightmare.

  I stopped pacing. Yes, she would. Vella said to find myself. Where better than here? As much as I hated it, without this moment, I would never have come to the Wishing World, and I wouldn’t be who I was now.

  Thunder boomed and lightning flashed outside, and suddenly Gruffy was in the room. I saw him right away this time because I was watching for him.

  “Doolivanti,” Gruffy said.

  “Hi, Gruffy,” I said. He really was a lot smaller then.

  He looked curiously at me. “My name is—”

  “Gruffilandimus. I know. I’m going to call you Gruffy,” I said. Whatever I needed to get out of this, I wanted to get it and get back to talking with Vella. I didn’t want to be this girl. I didn’t want to be scared all over again.

  “As you wish, Doolivanti.” He cleared his throat. “I would be honored for you to do so.”

  I felt like a fraud standing here talking with this memory of Gruffy. It wasn’t the real him. This Gruffy didn’t know all of the things we’d been through together. He thought he was meeting me for the first time.

  He began to speak, but I cut him off.

  “You can’t stay here,” I interrupted him. “You need to get back to your friends.”

  “I . . . yes, Doolivanti. You are wise. Please send me back.”

  “Hang tight.” I raised my hand and wrote on the air.

  Gruffy flew back to his friends.

  There were no extra tries this time. The portal opened, and there it was: the tunnel that led to Urath the Grimrok, Pip and Squeak.

  “Well done, Doolivanti,” Gruffy said, and he leapt into the picture.

  And here was my big moment. This was the moment Vella wanted me to relive. This was the time I first ripped the Wishing World.

  Was she hoping this time I would stay out? Not rip the Wishing World? Was that how I healed it forever?

  And then what? The Wishing World could probably mess with time. It could mess with everything else. What if I really had returned to this moment? Panic rose in my chest.

  I’d be stuck back here with nothing. I’d be stuck forever. No Theron to stand by me. No hugs from Mom and Dad.

  No way.

  I followed Gruffy, I wrote. I found my family.

  I ran at the painting on the wall and threw myself into it.

  Thirteen

  Where I Get Sucky News, Which Is Apparently What I Need

  The invisible barrier pushed at me, wrapped around me, and my imagination went wild. I saw all of my best daydreams. This time, though, I also saw the things I’d hoped to do since this time last year, like returning to fly with Gruffy again. Like actually speaking with Squeak and hearing his wisdom firsthand. Like having tea with Ripple in her palace.

  Loremaster . . . the voice whispered. My heart pounded frantically. A light breeze twirled me into the air.

  Threads of silver and blue flew out of nowhere and started lacing around me, forming black leggings with tall black boots. A long-sleeved blue jacket with silver embroidery and little designs on the cuffs, buttoned in the front with discs of silver slid onto my arms. A satchel filled with paper and quills for writing appeared on my shoulder.

  You are beloved. You are needed. A leader like no other . . . the voice whispered.

  I held myself so still that I shook. No. Not this. This invisible force wanted to take the innermost part of me and change it to something else, change me in a way I had no control over. Vella said mend the rip. But she can’t have meant this; I didn’t want to be someone else. I finally had my family, my friends, my brother. Things were just how they should be!

  I trembled, and my eyes burned with tears. The way I was . . . It was all I had. When everyone else had abandoned me, I’d leaned on me, I’d found my own strength. I’d found my own way. If I gave that up, I’d just be falling. I would be no one at all.

  “Please . . .” I said. No one answered. “No, please . . .” Let it be something else. Give me another job, something horribly difficult, just as long as it’s me that gets to do it.

  The threads tightened, s
queezing.

  “I don’t want to,” I shouted, letting all of my anger and frustration blast out with my words. But I didn’t tear the fabric. Instead, I let out a sob, and I let the invisible force have me.

  The clothing molded to me, and the Wishing World sank into my skin, into my muscles, into my blood. I felt it pumping through me, connecting to every organ in my body, linking itself to me.

  The imaginations of all the children throughout Veloran’s history, from Earth and other planets, flowed through me. There were a billion stories, from a boy’s quiet knitting of scarves like his grandmother used to make to a girl’s death-defying volcano climb to the Sand Spinner’s monumental Azure City. It was all here, all inside me. These were the children’s lives. I felt the joy, the fear, the sadness of each child’s journey in Veloran.

  These stories moved in and filled me, expanded me, changed me with every laugh and shout of every child and each mark they made upon the Wishing World. One after the other, the stories thrummed through me. There was a cadence to them. I could hear and see them. I reached up and touched a flowing ribbon of red wind and saw the happy story of a boy who loved bouncing red balls and big red balloons. He filled an entire kingdom with them. Balls on the floor. Balloons floating everywhere. Then I saw the Lady of the Lake’s story: a being who wanted to reach beyond her world, who reached so far that she rocketed through the stars to a land filled with aliens. She strove to communicate with them, scaring many, befriending a few. I saw Theron’s story: so scared, watching his own hero, our Dad, get consumed by a monster. He rose above his fear and became the hero he needed to be.

  I felt the threads that Vella Wren had described, interweaving and working with and against each other, tightening into a cloth so wild and colorful it floated like a landscape below me. Each thread was a child’s story, making this beautiful, unpredictable tapestry.

  Then a searing red light ripped across it, slicing the fabric. I screamed as stories were destroyed. “Stop!”

  The rip widened, ignoring my anguish. On the other side was . . .

  Me.

  “No . . .” I whispered.

  I saw every moment when I had destroyed another’s story: Exploding Jimmy’s wall. Forcing the Starfield to my will. Making the shore of the Eternal Sea rumble. Fighting the Robsombulous. I’d torn right through them all.

  Tears slid down my cheeks. I choked on my shame. “I didn’t mean it,” I whispered. “I didn’t know! I was just . . . I needed to find my family. . . .”

  I sobbed and looked away from the stories, away from the horror of what I’d done. I retreated back from this new sight. I alighted softly on the sandstone floor of my own story.

  Behind me, the portal to Earth was still open; I could see Theron’s room in my house. In front of me, Gruffy, Pip, Squeak, and Urath were frozen in time, and blue color seeped around the edges of the tunnel. The blue became water, rushing in, taking everything else away until I was floating beneath the distant surface of the Reflection Pool.

  “Dost thou see?” Vella asked quietly, floating next to me.

  Fourteen

  Where I Have Nothing to Say. Mark It on Your Calendar

  Vella’s lavender dress drifted on the weird, breathable water. Her lavender eyes glimmered in the dim light.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I didn’t realize . . .”

  “This I know.”

  “But . . . if I can’t imagine what I want and write it, what is my Doolivanti power?”

  She smiled. “’Tis the same, of course. Thou must write thy stories. The world needs thy stories, but thou must also look deep into the hearts of those who dwell here alongside thee, as only thou canst, and weave their stories and thy desires together.”

  I tried to wrap my head around how I would do something like that.

  “It shall take thee time to grasp,” she said. “Had we our leisure, we might spend days to ease thee into thy new clothes. Alas, time is not plentiful. Hearken close that I might impart to thee information that thou dost need.”

  Her urgency, the tightness around her eyes, they were totally un-Vella-like. “Vella, you’re sad,” I said. “And . . . you’re hurt.”

  Questions sprung up like weeds in my mind. I mean, what was she doing at the bottom of this pool anyway? Why not meet me at the shore, or even at the edge of the Kaleidoscope Forest? Was this some weird kind of prison? Could she not leave? And how the heck did Jimmy beat her in the first place?

  “Prithee, let us discuss Jimmy,” she said. “Thou must face him, an’ thy wisdom shall be thy weapons. In this, I can aid thee.”

  I clamped down on my thoughts and said, “Okay.”

  “Thou must find a way to make his thread fit with thy desires. Thou must find a way to embrace his needs.”

  “Um, could I eat a raw salamander instead?” I asked.

  “Lorelei.”

  “Embrace his need? You mean give him what he wants?”

  “Heed thy vision. The Reflection Pool does not idly—”

  “But he kills people! He should be stuck in a box and forgotten.”

  “So thou wilt become a tyrant to best a tyrant?”

  I glared at her. “I wouldn’t— Why are you always taking his side?”

  “Because we are connected, he and I. Just as all of the Doolivantis in this Wishing World are connected. Just as thou art connected to him.”

  “I am not connected to him!”

  “Oh, Lorelei. Thou didst create him as surely as he didst create you. Thou art bound together as a binary star.”

  A star? A happy little hand-holding star? “He didn’t create me,” I blurted, but even as I said it, I thought about how I wouldn’t be here if Jimmy hadn’t stolen my parents.

  “Thou dost see,” Vella said calmly.

  “Well, that’s a connection I’m happy to cut,” I said.

  Vella shook her head. “Jimmy doth hate, an’ his head fills with visions of destruction. If thou dost foster thine own hate and use it to best him, thou wilt surely take his place.” She paused. “And I cannot e’en imagine the destruction thou wouldst then inflict.”

  “Never.”

  “Mine heart is glad to hear thee say this.”

  “I’m not going to kill anyone,” I said. But I also hated Jimmy more than I’d ever hated anyone. What if I reached him and found out that he’d killed Gruffy? Or André? Or Theron? A murderer like that couldn’t be allowed to keep walking around. His absence would save others. “What about turning him into a stump and sitting on him?”

  “Lorelei.”

  “Okay. Okay.”

  “Swear it.”

  “Swear what?”

  “That thou wilt work with his story, to help give him that which he craves, e’en as I have striven to do as steward of this Wishing World.” She watched me steadily, and I hesitated. Her face contorted, and she looked like she was going to snarl at me, but then the look was gone, replaced by a strained, controlled gaze. It seemed like she was biting back a cry of pain, like someone was slowly stabbing a knife into her side.

  “What’s happening!?” I asked.

  “An’ thou does swear thine oath, then shall I tell thee all.”

  “That sounds like a trap,” I said. “You tell me first and then I’ll swear.”

  “I shall not.” Her lips pressed together in a firm line.

  “Fine,” I said. “I swear to stop Jimmy. I swear I won’t hurt him anymore than I have to. And I’ll try to . . . try to help him get the story he needs.”

  “I’faith, ’twill have to serve,” she said.

  “Now tell me what’s happening,” I said.

  She nodded. “Jimmy wished to take my place as steward. He didst steal the spinner, but true stewardship requires two talismans: the spinner and the hourglass. That which he lacks, he doth now desperately seek. ’Tis for this that he brought thee to this Wishing World. He hopes thou wilt recover the hourglass for him.”

  “That’s why he wants me alive,” I murmure
d. Squeak had been right.

  Vella’s lip curled in a snarl again, and her brows lowered.

  “Vella—”

  She held up a hand for silence. Whatever was happening to her, she fought it off, smoothed her expression, and continued. “Thy friend, Sir Real, has the hourglass. Jimmy didst bring him to this Wishing World. But when Jimmy demanded Sir Real stand against thee, the Lord of Flimflams resisted. ’Twas an ugly battle, Jimmy prevailed, and Sir Real only escaped by cleverness and narrow chance. He didst seek me out, and I did give him the hourglass. Alas, we were discovered, and Jimmy did then take Sir Real as his prisoner. Thankfully, thy friend is cunning. The hourglass is well hidden, and Jimmy knows not that his prisoner doth carry it. But Sir Real is weak, and Jimmy may soon pry open the truth. An that doth happen, Jimmy shall be unstoppable.”

  Vella had begun to fade, just as she had at the sea palace. “Thou must use thy powerful imagination to create the solution I could not,” she said. She flickered, faded, then came back, her face contorted. “I didst seek harmony with Jimmy, but I . . . found not the answer.”

  My heart thumped painfully in my chest. She wasn’t here. This was just another projection like at her palace. She was so faded now that I could barely see her. “Vella, where are you? Tell me so I can help—”

  “Lorelei,” she interrupted. “There is more . . . What thou dost see before thee is not what thou dost think. ’Tis a life ripple, an echo of what once was. I didst conjure it to help thee, imbued it with mine own life’s essence that it might converse with thee as though I was really here, but ’tis nearly spent,” she said.

  A cold snake wrapped around my heart. “What do you mean ‘once was’?”

  “I . . . have died. This last piece of my life’s force lives only for the purpose of preparing thee, and only here where memories may come to life. ’Twas all I was able to save—”