“Shut up!” I said. “No, that’s not right. You’re somewhere else, talking to me. I can find you. I will find you. I can—”
She smiled sadly. “’Twas my most fervent wish that we would know each other for many years, milady. Alas, some dreams are not meant to be, even in this Wishing World.”
“Jimmy killed you,” I whispered, and my mind filled with fire. “He killed you in your fight with him.” My hand slipped into the pouch at my side, and I clenched my little quill so hard my fist hurt.
Vella’s brows furrowed fiercely. “Thou didst swear an oath, milady. And thou must now keep it. Thou hast greater responsibilities than revenge. Take up the spinner and hourglass. Take up the mantle destined for thee—”
“You’re not dead,” I said.
“Lorelei—”
“You’re not dead!” I said, and my voice caught in my throat. “We’ll find out how to . . . how to . . .”
“Find thy courage, milady. Take thy spinner from Jimmy, thy hourglass from Sir Real. Thou art the only one who can.”
“No.” I shook my head. “You have to come back, because . . . Because you have to.”
“Lorelei—”
“I’d make a horrible you. I’d get angry with people all the time.” I choked on a sob. “And I don’t have blue skin or a cool accent. And . . . and the new name of the Wishing World would be, like, Lorelark, which is stupid. And so you have to . . .” I began to cry. “You have to come back and be you!”
She was crying, too. “Give thyself freely to this Wishing World,” she whispered, as though each breath was painful for her. “Thou must do what I no longer can.” She reached out a hand to me, and her ghostly finger passed through my cheek. Then she was gone.
“No!” I yanked the wooden quill from my satchel and raised it. I looked into my story vision, searched the ethereal threads, looking for hers, rooting around. I would make her live. I’d bring her back to life!
But I couldn’t find her story. I felt all around through my new connection, through hundreds of threads of children’s stories. I floated in the water for who knew how long, my heart and mind inside the stories of the Wishing World.
But she wasn’t there.
I screamed, hurled my pen away, which flipped and wobbled in the water. I curled into myself and sobbed.
Vella Wren was dead.
Fifteen
The Mirror Man
Theron woke up sweating. Something had hit him from behind, so hard he’d conked out. That had never happened before. He winced as he moved. His wrist and hand throbbed like his arm was broken. He worked it back and forth. Not broken. Just whacked really good. He felt weak and shaky, and he shook his head to clear it.
It was really hot in here. He wiped a hand across his wet face, pushing back his hair. He was behind bars made of lava rock that stretched along this side of the circular room. The room was short and fat and shaped like the inside of a flying saucer. The ceiling sloped all the way down to meet the floor, except in two places. The first was on the far side: a giant metal door with fist-sized rivets, shut tight. There was also a normal-sized door to his right at the end of the row of bars. That one was open.
Well, they weren’t going to keep him in a cage. He reached into his pocket for his knight figure.
It was gone.
“Looking for something?” Jimmy Schmindly appeared in the normal-sized doorway. He walked into the room, looking through the bars at Theron with a smile. He held up Theron’s silver comet stone as though inspecting it.
Pins prickled across Theron’s scalp. Fear. He hated fear.
A little spider made of silver metal rested on Jimmy’s wrist. As Jimmy gestured, it moved, resettled, but stayed on his arm. A spark of flame bounced around his shoulders.
“No stone. No Mirror Man,” he said. “And the spectacular just flies away, doesn’t it?” He flipped the stone and caught it.
“Lorelei is coming for you,” Theron said.
“Counting on it,” he said. “Whole plan would fall apart without it.” He flipped the stone again and caught it.
“She can just erase you from existence,” Theron said.
Jimmy stopped flipping the stone and looked at Theron. “You know, she could,” he said. “But she won’t.”
“She will.”
“She won’t, and you know she won’t. She only goes so far.”
“Good thing for you.”
“It is.” Jimmy paused, looked at the stone again, then back at Theron. “Wanna hear a secret?”
“Why would you tell me a secret?”
“I wasn’t even supposed to come to the Wishing World,” he said. “Dad didn’t think I had it in me. Didn’t think I could make it,” He looked past Theron, past the sloped room to somewhere else. “He thought Tabitha was going to get him into Wishing World. Then I got my comet stone, and I left him behind.” Jimmy blinked, then turned and looked at Theron again. “And I learned I was bigger than him. I got the castle I wanted. Went to the places I wanted. I had ratsharks and beetlins and my Octo-gone. I had everything except loving parents. So I took those, too. Except that didn’t work. That brought Lorelei . . .”
“Good,” said Theron.
Jimmy nodded. “Yeah,” he whispered. “You probably want me to get mad. But here’s the thing: I thought I had it all, and then along comes Lorelei and shows me how small I really was.” He paused, flipped the stone again, and smiled at Theron. “I owe her a thank-you for that. Because of her, I know what’s most important. If you’re not the biggest,” he flipped the stone, “then someone like Lorelei just crushes you.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Theron asked.
Jimmy looked down at the bouncing spark on his shoulder and said, “Go show him.” The spark bounced across the room, turning into twenty sparks along the way. Some of them skittered up the wall, lighting torches on the sloped ceiling and on the tunnel walls that led to the huge door. It was probably twice as tall as HuggyBug, made of iron, and the metal was pocked and rough like someone had shot it with a hundred guns. There was no handle.
Theron wrinkled his brow.
“What is that?” he asked.
“Everything,” Jimmy said. He flipped the silver figurine up into the air and caught it again. “Lorelei’s going to make me bigger than her.”
“Lorelei’s going to turn you into a pee stain,” Theron said.
Jimmy chuckled. “You don’t know anything, because all you do is punch stuff. There are other things out there. Scary powerful things. Things beyond the Wishing World . . .” He trailed off, then shook his head as if he was trying to forget something. He cleared his throat and continued, “You never even met Vella Wren, I bet. But Lorelei has.” At Theron’s confusion, Jimmy smiled wider. “Oh, she didn’t tell you? Surprise, surprise. ’Course she didn’t. Couldn’t have you knowing too much. Yeah, all the Sea Princesses and Ink Kings and Mountain Queens and Forest Lords don’t mean spit. The real boss of the Wishing World was called Vella Wren. Except she’s gone now, and I’m in charge.” He held up the metallic spider up like it was a trophy. “I can invite whoever I want to the Wishing World.”
“You’re a fart face,” Theron said.
“And you’re only as powerful as the Wishing World lets you be,” he said. He threw the figure up as hard as he could. It hit the ceiling, fell and smacked into the floor.
“Jimmy,” Theron shouted, pressing his face between the rough bars. “Don’t!”
Jimmy bent over the silver figure. “It didn’t break. Huh.” He looked over at Theron, then stomped on the stone, smashing it.
“No!” Theron felt his heart break. His ears rang, and he slid to his knees.
Jimmy leapt to the bars and grabbed them. His eyes blazed. “How tough are you now? You’re no Mirror Man. You’re just a little boy who runs away when he’s scared.”
Theron sobbed.
“You’re small,” Jimmy whispered, and he looked around, like he was searching for something but c
ouldn’t find it. “You’re nothing,” he said.
Two of his henchmen came in, the ones with the three legs and burning beards. They opened the cell and dragged Theron out.
“Put him with the others,” Jimmy said. “He can’t hurt anyone anymore.”
Theron didn’t fight them. He couldn’t feel his heart anymore. It was gone. They dragged him out of the room, leaving the broken shards of the stone behind.
Sixteen
Change Sucks
I had run out of tears when I finally came up to the surface of the Reflection Pool. It was a normal lake now. No crystals. I swam until I could touch, then walked up the bank and fell to my knees. Slowly, the lake hardened to crystal behind me. Vella Wren, gone. Vella and I had been friends in a way that I could never be friends with anyone ever again.
Her final words haunted me. Give thyself freely to this Wishing World. Thou must do what I no longer can.
Take Vella’s place? And what? Never leave the Wishing World? Never see my parents again? Never go to school again?
Never grow up.
HuggyBug stood at the edge of the clearing on the far side of the pool. His mirror eyes watched me.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do next,” I said.
He blinked.
“I can’t do what she wants me to,” I whispered. “I can’t be Vella Wren.”
He just stared, not even a blink this time.
“Helpful,” I said.
He trotted into the forest. Something tapped at my heel. My foot was still in the lake and André’s pen, which I had thrown away, had surfaced. The rest of the pool was hard crystal, but the bit around my boot was water, and the pen tapped at me. I picked it up.
There was no Vella to bury, no ashes to spread over a mountaintop. No headstone or service. There would be no fanfare for the passing of the most important person in the Wishing World. But someone had to say something.
I had no great speech, but I stood up and wrote on the air, slowly and carefully: Beloved Vella Wren. The words glowed gold, but they didn’t burn. Then they flashed and shot outward in a circle. A golden ripple of light raced through the trees. My heart, my love for Vella went with it.
Warmth spread through my chest, into my arms and legs, all the way up to my throat. Instead of that ripping burn, I felt tingling. I felt stronger, happier.
“Is that what being a Doolivanti is supposed to feel like?” I whispered to Vella, a question she’d never answer.
HuggyBug waited for me in the trees. He lowered his head and nuzzled me.
I threw my arms around him and cried. He stood there, silent, and waited until I was done. After a few minutes, I pulled myself together.
“Okay, bring on the nightmare forest. I’m ready.” Truth be told, I was feeling in the mood to squash a few roaches.
HuggyBug’s eyes flashed silver. The Reflection Pool vanished and we stood on the edge of the chasm, on the good side. The nightmare forest stood far away on its pillar island with all of its danger. If I didn’t go back there for a hundred years, it would be too soon.
“Squeak,” said Squeak, scampering up to both of us. Flicker wasn’t there, but Connie Cobblestone was. She sat facing a tree like an abandoned doll. When she heard my voice, she stood up.
“You look different,” she said in her monotone.
“We’re going to your mountain,” I said.
Connie twitched and thumped her foot on the ground like a rabbit. Flicker appeared.
“Nice outfit.” She appraised me, then rubbed her arms against the mist of the forest, looking accusingly up at the now-cloudy sky. The mist from the Kaleidoscope Forest had wafted out to the edge of the chasm. She squinched her face like there were a hundred needles touching her. “Find what you needed?”
“A lot of stuff I didn’t want to hear,” I said. “But yes.” I didn’t have the heart to talk about Vella. I couldn’t face that right now in front of Flicker.
With my new vision, I looked at Flicker. I felt the heat of her stories, and one of them flowed into me like a fiery ribbon:
* * *
A much younger Flicker, the same age as Connie, looked up at the stars. She wore the same flamey dress, but she was different in a lot of ways. To start, her hair and eyes were brown like Connie’s, and her features weren’t nearly as sharp as they were now.
I could hear someone singing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star behind her. Flicker turned, and the singer was a girl about my age. She had long, straight red hair and a beautiful voice.
“If you please,” Flicker said in a voice that lacked Connie’s monotone, but had the same light English accent. “What is that?”
The girl stopped. “The song? It’s a nursery rhyme. Parents sing it to kids.”
Flicker gazed at the stars. “It’s lovely. I should like to know more.”
“Well, there’s a lot of ’em,” the red-headed girl said. “And lots to learn here.”
“Why are you being so nice to me?” Flicker asked.
The redhead shrugged. “Why not?” She smiled and spun, turned into a shining star herself, then shot up into the sky.
Flicker gasped, watching the sky where the girl had gone.
“Why not?” she mimicked the American accent of the girl. Then her hair shifted, straightened, and turned a fiery red. She grew taller, willowy like the girl had been. “There’s a lot of ’em. And lots to learn here.”
* * *
“Earth to Lorelei.” Flicker snapped her fingers, sending sparks onto the air.
“Sorry,” I said, and I saw Flicker in a new light. Connie was stuck like a character in an old painting, but Flicker was evolving. She was learning, picking up mannerisms and phrases—even her own appearance—from other Doolivantis. That’s why she’d been so interested in the fist bump.
I didn’t know much about this girl, but I knew that when I was plunged into fire, her first thought was to protect me. I knew that she believed she was the only wall between a horror named Agatha and every other child in the Wishing World.
I lifted my pen and wrote on the air: The water of the forest felt like fire to Flicker.
The letters glowed and did their silent golden explosion thingie.
Flicker’s eyes widened and she stared at her hands, then at me. “What did you do?”
“I changed your story, just a little bit. I made it so the forest’s moisture doesn’t hurt you.”
“So you really can do anything.” She watched me, like she hadn’t wanted to believe it. “Vella said you could, but . . .”
“Well, no. I can’t do anything I want. I want to thump Jimmy and stop him from being a creep. But apparently I’m not allowed. So that’s one thing.”
Flicker cocked her head. “Why not?”
“I have to nice him to death,” I said.
“That’s dumb,” she said.
“Apparently, we’re a hand-holding star,” I murmured.
“Jimmy and Lorelei, sittin’ in a tree—”
“Oh, ick.”
“How about I nice him to death?” Flicker snapped her fingers and held up her thumb like a lighter. A tongue of flame rose from the tip. For the first time, I noticed that she had very pronounced eye teeth, like mini vampire fangs. I wondered which Doolivanti she’d picked that up from.
“Heh.” I gave a little laugh at her flaming thumb. “Let’s . . . yeah. We’ll keep that in mind,” I said.
Despite her confrontational demeanor, I was starting to like Flicker. But she was one-third of a three-faced Connie. Connie herself creeped me out. And Agatha . . . well, apparently she was the end of the whole game. As much as I liked Flicker, I had to wonder: How thin was that wall between these three personalities? A mile wide? Paper-thin? Who knew when Flicker might suddenly stamp her foot and become Agatha?
“All right, um, let’s do it. It’s time. Let’s, uh, let’s find Jimmy,” I said. Lame. So lame. Vella would have given a flowery speech about the equality of children and the need to preserve peace
and . . . and unions of imagination. Binary stars and stuff.
I sucked at this job.
Seventeen
The Upside to The Upside Down
We walked together into the bright sunlight. The Kaleidoscope Forest had moved and the Ferbletick stampede had been replaced by a larger-than-life, touch-the-sky volcano that was . . .
“That mountain is upside down,” I said. The volcano was suspended in the air and turned on its head twenty feet off the ground. The “top” of the volcano, which should have been pointed at the sky, was pointed straight down. It dripped lava like it had erupted not long ago. The poor ground underneath it had cracked and sent rivers of lava zig-zagging away in all directions. One of those rivers was right next to us. Its sharp, back-and-forth jags went around the edge of the Kaleidoscope forest.
“Yeah.” Flicker cocked her head, grinning at the mountain, then she glanced at me. “Oh, I guess that’s weird to you, right?”
“What is it?” The air smelled like burning.
“This is my demesne,” she said.
“I’m sorry, what is it?” I repeated my question.
“A demesne. Every Doolivanti has one,” she said. “Well, any Doolivanti that stays here long enough. It’s where we live, and it shows the inner fire of the Doolivanti who lives there.”
I remembered when I’d left the Sand Spinner’s domain and entered the Leaf Laugher’s forest. A line had been drawn in the sand, literally, marking off which land belonged to which Doolivanti. “It’s your domain. Your castle,” I clarified.
“Demesne sounds more mysterious.” She stretched out her skinny body, and the flames of her dress burned longer. “But home is where the heat is. Inside, outside, or upside down.” She drew in a long breath. “Magma, I’m comin’ home.”
“It’s an inferno in there, isn’t it?” I asked. “I’m going to have to hold your hand the entire way, like with the Ferbleticks.”
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