“Ah,” I said. “I get it.” I took a quick breath and shouted, “I’m so gonna die!” I leapt to my first pillar. It shrank so small I had to balance on the ball of one foot. I winged my arms and had to balance like a flamingo. “Hey!” I shouted.
Flicker glanced back at me. “I said ridiculous conclusions,” she shouted, and her pillar shrank at her own comment. She stopped talking and gave me a fierce glance.
Dying is a likely conclusion?
“This will be a breeze,” Flicker shouted, jumping to the next pillar. It widened enough for her to land with both feet.
“Jimmy’s going to be my boyfriend after this,” I shouted, leaping to the next pillar. It grew so wide that I could get a running jump at the next one. “He’s my favorite person!” The next one shrank so much that I almost missed it.
“Eep!” I squeaked, and winged my arms for balance.
“I said conclusion,” Flicker snapped, “Not opinion!” She shook her head and yelled: “Lorelei will always make everything she does easier!” She jumped to a nice, kiddie-pool-sized pillar.
“Hey,” I shouted.
Stupid Robsombulous rules. Don’t worry about knowing what to do. Just do it or die. “People who play with fire never get hurt,” I yelled.
The next pillar grew so large it butted into the next one. I ran across both and shouted again. “The Wishing World always makes sense!”
The pillars in front of me grew so large that they mashed into each other, expanding like sponges until the chasm was completely filled. The floor had little steps where some of the pillars weren’t the same height, but the largest gaps were the size of my fist.
Flicker and I looked at each other.
“Run,” I said.
We raced across the uneven ground. The pillars started shrinking. Just a little bit at a time, slowly making cracks in the floor that would be a chasm in moments. We hopped over them, running for all we were worth. Flicker was more nimble than me. She skipped over the uneven ground like it was a dance. I followed as closely as I could. We got within twenty feet of the tunnel on the far side when the gaps started getting big enough that we had to hop from one to the other. Flicker played hopscotch with them, and I barely kept up. The last jump was almost as wide as I was tall. Flicker leapt across it, sailing over the gap like a ballet dancer. I followed, shouting as I pushed off the shrinking pillar. I wasn’t going to make it.
“Flicker!” I shouted.
She spun as soon as she landed, reached out for me. My first foot hit the ledge, but my second slammed into the wall. She caught my hand as I fell. Her heels skidded to the edge of the cliff.
I hooked a heel on the ledge. Together, we hefted me up, and I rolled onto my back, breathing hard.
“Urg,” she said. “You weigh a million pounds.”
“Not all of us are made of fire,” I huffed. “I don’t like this place. No wonder you never come here.”
“Told you,” she said.
“Let’s find Jimmy.”
“Squeak,” said Squeak, hopping down from my shoulder.
“And kick his butt,” Flicker said.
“Yes, and that,” I agreed.
“You wish.” Jimmy’s voice came from the darkened tunnel ahead.
I rolled to my feet and grabbed my pen from my satchel. Ahead, deep in the shadows, stood Jimmy, with his kingly cape and silver spider spinner crawling on his arm. The Skitterspark danced on his shoulders.
“Thief!” Flicker raised her hand and pointed.
“Flicker, wait—” I said.
Flames shot in his direction, lighting up the tunnel. That lava bath really charged her up.
Jimmy squinted, put up a hand in front of himself. The flames flowed around him. The Skitterspark danced madly on his shoulders. He looked triumphantly at Flicker. “You’re weak, and you know it. Why don’t you turn into Connie?” The spinner scuttled down his arm and rested in the palm of his hand. He pointed his other hand at me, and flames shot out.
Flicker leapt in front of the fire. It hit her and she became yellow, blue, then white-hot. I shielded my eyes and crouched.
“Flicker!” I had my pen out. I started writing: The flames—
Flicker reached back and touched my hand with warm, but not scorching hot, fingers. She smiled, then winked. The flames stopped, and she turned back to Jimmy. “Tell me you aren’t so dumb that you think a Fire Princess would be hurt by fire?”
Jimmy snarled.
I imagined the threads of Vella’s tapestry, tried to feel them like I had at the Reflection Pool. They became vivid to me quickly, just like with Flicker in the forest. I tried to understand why he was the way he was:
Mr. Schmindly sat on a stool next to his daughter’s bed. I could just see them through the crack in the almost-closed door. Tabitha was younger than when I’d met her. Her black hair was a buzz cut on the sides and tall on top, like she was in a Goth band or something.
“Life has to be bad for you,” Mr. Schmindly explained. “You can’t just run off and play with your friends and be happy. That won’t work. You have to need the Wishing World, Tabitha. That’s the only way you’ll get your stone.”
“Amber says you’re nuts—”
“You don’t talk to your friends about this,” he growled. “I told you that!”
“Well then I think you’re nuts!” Tabitha stood up. “I don’t need my friends to know that.”
“Daddy?” Jimmy came up to the door, pushed it a little farther open so he could see. “Daddy?” he said. “I can help you—”
Mr. Schmindly leapt from the stool with a snarl and slammed the door shut so hard it smacked Jimmy’s hand. He hissed and held it against his chest, then kicked the door and ran away.
That image swirled away, and I saw another:
Jimmy sat on Ripple’s throne. I walked through the soaring archway, dripping water like an angry rat that had clawed its way to shore. Lightning flashed behind me.
I demanded my parents. He refused. I fought him just like before, except this time I felt his anger at losing control, at losing everything he had won, and finally his terror as I yanked him out of the Wishing World and threw him back to Earth.
His pain flowed into me, and for the first time, I felt sorry for Jimmy. He had been hurt. By his dad, by me. And what he most wanted was to make himself unhurtable. That’s what this was all about. The reason to become invincible wasn’t even to prove something to Mr. Schmindly anymore. Getting back at his father had been replaced by another desire: to dominate, control, and eliminate the threat of . . . me.
I popped out of my “story sight” like a cork from a bottle.
Oh, great. How was I going to give him that?
“Jimmy,” I said.
His nostrils had flared, and his eyes were wide. “Stupid girls,” he yelled as he turned and ran away. He vanished around the first bend in the dark corridor.
Flicker ran after him.
I started after her, but something nagged at me. Jimmy had proven that he could plan an attack. He had a half-dozen thugs to help him. He’d almost captured me twice. Only Squeak’s quick thinking and a timely Run Root had saved my bacon the first time. And it took Connie’s superior knowledge of Vella’s palace to save me the second time. Now I had arrived at Jimmy’s lair of power, and he acted like a five-year-old, showing up alone and throwing flame at the princess of fire . . .
“Flicker, don’t chase him,” I yelled. Jimmy wanted us running into the dark after him.
Squeak leapt from my shoulder, became a blur, and shot ahead.
“Squeak,” I called after him “Don’t let her—”
I heard a splash, and Flicker screamed. The light vanished. Then . . . silence.
“Flicker!” I stopped in the dark, listening. “Squeak!”
I moved forward cautiously, stopped again. I couldn’t see a thing after Flicker’s bright burst of firelight. I blinked against the after-images, stepping to the side until I found the wall. I trailed a finger,
but everything had gone dark and quiet. And shadows were where the Ink King lived.
“Flicker, talk to me!”
“No one’s going to help you, Lorelie,” Jimmy whispered from somewhere ahead in the dark. “You don’t have friends anymore. Not your Fire Princess or your high and mighty griffon.”
“Squeak!” I called for him, but he didn’t answer.
Something slithery brushed my shoulder, and I yelled, slashing my pen across the air.
Jim slam!
The words burned, and Jimmy cried out as he was lifted and thrown into the wall. I felt the old raking sensation in my chest, and I growled through it.
The volcano shook.
Flippin’ freakin’ fumbles. I couldn’t do that, not that way. For all I knew, I’d ripped the sky again. But I couldn’t just let Jimmy hurt Flicker and stick a knife in my back.
I squinted and made out light ahead. It came from the outline of a door far down the hall. I could barely see, and I crept toward it one foot at a time. Jimmy was down, unconscious. I didn’t see the Skitterspark, but the spinner, the spider thingie, was curled on his chest. I picked it up, and it crawled easily into my hand. Its little spider legs tickled, but they didn’t hurt. It tickled its way up to my wrist, turned around three times, and lay down like a dog. That should totally have creeped me out, but it didn’t. It felt friendly. It felt like Vella.
I walked a few more paces and saw a pit in the center of the hallway, something you wouldn’t notice if you were running full tilt. I peered down into the pit. At the bottom was a shimmer of dark water. It was shallow, about knee deep, and Flicker was crumpled beneath the surface, not breathing.
“Flicker,” I cried, jumping down into the pit with a splash. The “spinner” climbed deftly onto my shoulder as I knelt and picked up my friend. She’d been light as a feather before, but now she weighed a ton. She’d soaked up the water like a sponge. She looked cold and gray and dead. The pit was only about five feet tall, and it took all of my strength to push her up the wall. My arms shook and my legs trembled. With a shout, I shoved her over the edge and onto the ground above.
Breathing hard, I hauled myself up.
“Don’t be dead. Don’t be dead.” I felt for a pulse in Flicker’s neck, but there was nothing. I pushed on her stomach. No water came out of her mouth, but it rose up out of her skin, then slowly sank back in.
“Fire,” I murmured. “She needs fire.”
I grabbed the spinner, which I had no idea how to use. I put it on her chest. “Burn,” I said. Nothing happened.
“Okay, okay,” I said, putting the spider back on my shoulder. I’d have to read the manual on it later. I pulled the pen from my satchel. I was going to do it right this time. I was pretty sure Flicker’s story wasn’t about dying, and I was positive it wasn’t about water. She wanted to live, to burn.
I could work with that.
I paused, calmed myself. I reached into her story thread and envisioned the best for her. I wrote: Fire in Flicker.
“Burn,” I murmured. The words glowed on the air, then that ripple of light flashed out from them.
Flicker’s dress erupted into flame. Light and heat filled the tunnel. The hallway smelled like a damp campfire, and I coughed, waving away the smoke. But Flicker was no longer cold and gray. Her hair was reddish, and her skin was pinkish again.
A happy tingle filled my chest instead of a burn. The cavern didn’t shake.
“Flicker,” I said.
Her eyelids fluttered.
“The prison . . .” she murmured, pointing up the hallway to the light that crept out from around the door. “Lorelei, you have to . . .” But she twitched five times.
Connie Cobblestone blinked, looking up at me. “She is gone,” she said. “Flicker is gone.”
“Connie, you have to bring her back. She was about to tell me something about the prison. Can you bring her back?”
“She is gone.”
“No, but—”
“Agatha is coming . . .” Connie whispered.
“What? No! Don’t say that. Never mind Flicker. You just stay with me, Connie.”
“Okay.”
“Flicker just got a little water-logged,” I said. “She’ll be back.”
Connie looked up at me with those enormous, unblinking eyes.
Like, hopefully really soon.
I got up and ran to the door down the hall that was outlined by orange light. Flicker said the prison was this way. I went to the door and tried the handle. It was locked. I grabbed the spinner off my shoulder and put it on the handle. “Open,” I said.
It did.
“Ha ha!”
I love it when stuff works.
The prison on the other side was, well, a prison. It had a dome ceiling that went all the way to the ground, so all the walls were slanted. There were torches all around, giving it a nice, toasty torture room kind of feel. The ceiling was low except just to my right, where a Grimrok-sized metal door rose up into the shadows. The left wall was a big prison that had lava rock bars, but it was empty. Connie slunk into the room, twisting her hands.
“Is it time to be punished?” she asked.
“Hey, no. Don’t say that. Nobody’s punishing anyone.”
“I . . . did such a horrible thing.”
I walked back to Connie, put my hands on her shoulders. She was cool to the touch, and that was somewhat unsettling in this warm room. “Look, everything’s going to be fine. Flicker’s taking a nap and we’re going to help each other while she’s gone. Okay?”
She watched me with her lamp-like gaze.
“Okay?” I repeated.
“Okay,” she said in her monotone.
“You just stay here, and I’ll figure out where the prisoners are. Once I free my friends, everything’s going to get better.”
I went to the first empty cage. The dirt on the floor inside had sneaker prints the size of Theron’s feet. He’d been here!
I faced the giant Grimrok door. Nothing better have happened to him. Or any of them. My heart raced.
Okay, just stay calm, I told myself as I walked toward the Grimrok door. There was deep, red light coming from underneath it.
My foot crunched on something and I stopped. There were bits of silver rock, a totally different color than the lava rock all around. I knelt down. One of the pieces was a miniature head.
“Oh, no . . .”
It was Theron’s knight figure. The one Father had given him, the one that changed him into the Mirror Man. And it had been crushed to bits. Theron had been in this room, and Jimmy had destroyed his magic, his link to the Wishing World.
I pulled my feather necklace out and blew on it. Come on, Gruffy. I know you can’t get to me, but I need you to try. Screech for me, so I can hear you. If you’re on the other side of that door, I need to hear you.
“Doolivanti!” Gruffy’s voice was muffled, and it came from the other side of the Grimrok door.
Yaas! Double awesome with a yippee on top.
Eighteen
This Was What Was That Was Supposed To Be A— Wait, What?
I walked up to the Grimrok-sized door and held the spinner in front of me.
“Open,” I said. The spinner scuttled back and forth on my hand, agitated, and it got uncomfortably warm. The door did not open.
“Open now,” I shouted. The spider curled into a ball like it had been poked with a stick, and it became red-hot. I yelped, dropping it to the floor. Slowly, it shook itself and unfurled its legs again.
Fiddlesticks. I hate it when stuff doesn’t work.
“Doolivanti?” Gruffy asked from the other side of the door.
“Hang on!” I yelled. I pulled my pen out and left the spider—still glowing—on the ground to cool off.
I calmed myself and reached into the door, trying to feel for its story, trying to follow Vella’s advice. The rough iron with its grooves and bumps were thicker, stronger than anything I had ever felt.
The door’s story cam
e in stilted flashes. It was made of the strongest metal in the Wishing World. It had been melted and hardened and melted again, squished and formed and heated so hot that no fire could ever melt it again.
“Doolivanti,” Gruffy called from the other side.
“I’m coming,” I shouted. “Just a second.”
“Lore, it’s hot,” Theron called through the thick metal. “There’s a big pool of lava in here, and growing bigger.”
He was in there, too!
“There’s no water! Please help us,” Theron called.
Theron never begged for help.
“Help! Help!” Pip squawked.
They were burning!
I couldn’t afford to follow Vella’s advice right now. It was just too slow. I’d do this one last thing and then use my powers the Vella way forever after. A little more rip in the sky wasn’t going to destroy the Wishing World.
I wrote: The door burst open!
The door shook, and it bent in the doorjamb, but it didn’t open.
“Ow!” I cried out. My chest burned like I’d been stabbed with a white-hot knife. That was the worst one I’d ever felt. I pushed a hand to my chest, clenched my teeth.
“Lore!” Theron’s voice called out, filled with fear.
Heat filled the room like there was an inferno on the other side of that door, rushing out through the cracks.
No! I couldn’t be too late! I wasn’t too late!
OPEN! I wrote in capital letters.
It felt like my head was pushing against something flat and hard, just like when I battled Jimmy at Ripple’s palace a year ago. I growled and pushed against it.
“Rrrrrrr-OPEN!” I shouted, and head-butted the invisible force.
The door shuddered, grinding against the rock that surrounded it. The floor jumped like I’d caused an earthquake. I lost my footing and fell to my knees, and the room got so hot it hurt to breathe. A thin crack sliced halfway down the middle of the door. A deep, red light shone into the room.
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