Saving Fable

by Scott Reintgen

  “Momma?” a voice called from the stairs. They both turned to see little Patch making his way down the stairs on short legs. He had a book almost as big as he was tucked awkwardly under one arm. “Can we read this one?”

  It wasn’t playacted at all. Indira saw the genuine desire of a young boy to be with his mother and the reflected desire Mrs. Pennington had to spend time reading with him.

  “I will be up in one pirate minute. Which is how many human minutes?” she asked.

  Patch concentrated, counting on his little fingers. “Three!” he shouted randomly.

  They shared a smile. He started back up the stairs, but Mrs. Pennington called out, “Who has it better than us, little man?”

  Patch’s flop of hair tossed as he turned back. “Nobody,” he called back, as if there were no other possible answer to the question. Indira’s heart melted just a little bit.

  She turned back to find Mrs. Pennington bustling around the kitchen again. The woman could have been the picture beside the word bustle in the dictionary. She pulled out two more pie dishes and began sorting through ingredients, talking as she worked.

  “We’re probably not the most exciting choice, but we’d love to have you,” Mrs. Pennington said. “I understand there are a few more families to see today.”

  “Of course,” Indira said. She knew it would be smart to explore every option. The Penningtons seemed wonderful, but who knew what was waiting in the final three or four rooms? Indira stood and thanked Mrs. Pennington. “I’m sorry again about the pie.”

  Mrs. Pennington said it was nothing, and Indira moved to the next room, a little ache in her heart as she left. That’s a new feeling, she thought. I guess the Penningtons are in first place?

  In the next room, a willowy family sat together on the floor. Or it looked that way at first. Every few seconds they would twist into a new pose, backs arching or necks rolling to one side. Colorful dream catchers hung in the windows, and a bright tie-dyed shawl was draped over the couch. The mother rose from her pose like a praying mantis and gave Indira an interesting bow.

  “Namaste,” the woman intoned. “Your aura is welcome here. Come. Be.”

  She led Indira to a vacant spot between her and her son.

  “Breathe in,” the woman instructed. “Breathe out.”

  Indira felt uncomfortable, so her breathing came out and in raggedly. The family all seemed to notice. The mother nodded at the son, who went to the kitchen and pulled a mug down from the cupboard. She kept giving instructions: “You’re feeling stressed. Pinpoint that stress in your body. Let your aura hover over it. Expel the bad; inhale the good. Be free.”

  Indira felt a soreness in her butt and an itch on one shoulder blade, but she didn’t announce either of those things. She practiced breathing, which she already felt she did pretty well, and changed poses twice before the boy returned with a cup of coffee.

  “The coffee is organic,” the mother bragged. “We eat vegan; we think vegan; we breathe vegan.” She gestured to a cat that had just perched on the couch. “Even Muffins is a vegan.”

  “Draw close to the world and it will draw close to you,” the son added.

  All of them glanced at the father, expecting additional wisdom, but he seemed to have fallen asleep in his meditative pose. Indira laughed, which drew an annoyed look from the mother. “Your aura is suffering. Quick, what do you see when you look in the coffee? What does your aura interpret in the ether?”

  Indira glanced down. She hadn’t noticed it before, but the cream had definitely taken on a swirling pattern atop the coffee.

  “You mean in the whipped cream? What do I see in the whipped cream?”

  The mother corrected her. “It’s not whipped cream. It’s steam, and it’s a metaphor for what can be known. Go on—what do you see?”

  Indira didn’t understand, but she glanced at the coffee anyway. The spattered pattern looked unreadable, but as she squinted, a rough outline did form.

  She saw a person with a gentle smile.

  “You see something.” The woman nodded. “What is it? What does your future hold?”

  “The Penningtons!” Indira shouted. “It’s Mrs. Pennington.”

  The family looked startled as Indira sprinted back through the archway. Patch sat in the loft, turning the pages of his book excitedly. Mrs. Pennington had another pie in hand, and Indira determined to call out before she could turn around with it.

  “Mrs. Pennington!” she shouted. “Wait, Mrs. Pennington.”

  The little lady paused, pie held tightly to her chest. “What is it, dear?”

  “I want to be a Pennington. Can I adopt you as my family?”

  She didn’t scream this time, but the pie dish did slip from her shocked hands. This one wasn’t glass, so it just clattered loudly on the floor as Mrs. Pennington rushed forward to give Indira a huge and welcoming hug.

  The Pennington home was nestled in a comfortable neighborhood called the Skirts. Just south of some of Fable’s finer suburbs, the Skirts featured identical townhomes pressed together like cookies on a baking sheet. The architects had left enough room so they resembled individual houses, but one only had to take a few steps back to see they’d all come from the same batch.

  Indira’s room was not under the stairs or in a tea cupboard or anywhere as ridiculous as one would normally find in stories. She had a pleasant nook upstairs with a view of the southern forests in all their slate-green splendor. Before we continue, I would ask you, my dear reader, to remember a moment in which you arrived home. Perhaps after a day of lengthy shopping, or after spending all day hiking through the woods, or after a long journey away from the places and haunts you know better than your own heart. Imagine finally arriving and feeling that tremendous familiarity of home. If Fable had felt a lot like open arms, the Penningtons’ home was a bold kiss on both cheeks.

  Indira slept soundly that first night, the warmth of her new home enough to briefly wash away the memory of her failure. She dreamed of David. The two of them stood under the sun, looking over cliffs and out at the ocean. They laughed together before leaping out into the breathless deep….

  * * *

  Indira stared at the ceiling. Even though she felt quite at home, she’d remained in her room, trying to not make noise and pretending she was still asleep. She had heard Patch and Mrs. Pennington roaming about, but she didn’t quite know how to go downstairs and join them.

  Some things just take practice.

  She took advantage of the morning quiet to write a quick letter to David. She took out one of the pieces of stationery that Brainstorm Ketty had gifted her, admiring the finely curving font her name was in at the top. If she wasn’t going to be able to visit him once a week, at least she’d write to him just as often. She kept the letter short and sweet, confirming she’d be attending Protagonist Preparatory but not mentioning how poorly auditions had gone.

  It did not help that the memory of the day before was slowly creeping back into place. She saw Peeve Meadows and the three stones and all those failed audition scenes. A part of her felt like pulling up the covers and staying there forever.

  Mrs. Pennington’s voice interrupted those plans, however.

  “Indira,” she called from the bottom of the stairs. “Someone is here to see you!”

  Someone was here to see her? How did anyone even know where she lived? She wondered if it was Deus, come to remind her of a few new rules now that she had picked her family. Maybe it was someone from the school?

  The Pennington home was a lot like a person who wants to fit into a pair of jeans they’ve grown out of. Everything felt sucked in, and once you were inside, you were a little stuck. The stairs were narrow, the living room was barely big enough for the couch, and the kitchen table doubled as the chef’s counter. Indira took the stairs three at a time and barely avoided tripping over Patch
’s scatter of building blocks. Mrs. Pennington gave her a slow down, young lady eyebrow raise. Her disapproval was overshadowed, though, by Maxi rushing forward for a hug.

  “How’d you find me?” Indira asked.

  “Please,” Maxi replied. “It was a piece. I just kind of batted my lashes at Dexter DuBrow in the Adoption Agency and asked for your address. The Evertons gave me their city map, since they both had to catch flights to Amsterdam today.”

  “There’s an airport?” Indira asked curiously.

  Maxi waved a dismissive hand. “Doesn’t matter.” She revealed a foldout map with advertised locations and bold-lettered captions. “We have exactly one day to ourselves. One day to explore the city! We’re taking a tour of Fable.”

  With a few motherly reminders from Mrs. Pennington, and a brief art show from Patch (featuring some rather colorful interpretations of what a dog should look like), the two of them were out the door. Indira felt a mixture of nervousness and comfort with Maxi. Her new friend was so breathtakingly beautiful. Indira couldn’t help wondering if she should put her hair up like that, or if that fashionable vest might come in her size.

  But there was also the fact that Indira dreaded bringing up auditions. What if Maxi had won all three of her scenes? Indira’s failure loomed overhead like a dark, invisible cloud.

  For all that, Maxi clearly enjoyed her time with Indira. Indira had never had someone talk to her the way that Maxi did. Maxi thought that everything Indira said was just a riot. And it wasn’t lost on Indira that Maxi had gone through the trouble of finding out where she lived.

  She was so focused on her private thoughts that she ran right into Maxi’s back. Her friend had stopped in the middle of the street, and Indira nearly bowled her over. She looked up to see what was wrong, and a little gasp escaped her lips.

  Overnight, downtown Fable had transformed. Gone were the bleached-white buildings. In their place, a crowd of polite castles stood like city gentlemen in gray overcoats.

  The most bizarre thing, however, was the mirror image that floated above the city proper. Each looming gray building had a twin hanging over it. She thought it might be an illusion or that she needed glasses, but Maxi stood openmouthed, and Indira knew they were seeing the same miraculous sight. The mirrored buildings had all been tipped upside down. A layer of earth floated above them like a pointy hat made of tangled roots. She squinted and could just make out the Marks walking through those topsy-turvy streets.

  Indira fumbled for Maxi’s map. “Did we go the wrong way?”

  Neat lines showed the city as it had been the day before. A series of spiraling staircases and conch-shell buildings. But as she held it out for Maxi’s inspection, the lines began to reorganize themselves. She watched the drawing shrink in places and grow in others. A bold line appeared at the center of the map, indicating the upper and lower halves of the downtown.

  The upper half was labeled: WHERE-THE-TREASURE-IS.

  The bottom half was labeled: REACH-FOR-THE-SKY.

  She continued to watch as shops on the map cordially traded places with one another before settling into their new locations. Maxi whispered, “Oh they’re just adorable.”

  “Is everything in Fable like this?” Indira asked. “Is everything so…magical?”

  “I hope so. It makes life more exciting. Come on, first stop is the Talespin coffee shop.” Maxi tapped a building that fit snuggly between a cobbler’s shop and a scarf store. “I’ve heard their white mochas are divine.”

  Indira remembered Brainstorm Ketty mentioning something about the Talespin, but she had no idea what a white mocha was. She handed the map back to her friend and followed. Maxi led Indira across an old-timey drawbridge. All the Marks had donned medieval clothing, or maybe Fable had forced the wardrobe change upon them? In the distance, a church bell tolled its good morning. A small part of Indira hoped that the story she’d be in would have knights and catapults and lances. She wouldn’t mind a medieval adventure.

  A darker thought followed: she could only ever be a side character in that story. She’d be the person destined to fall off the horse, or die for the hero, or whatever. Indira had to set the thought aside before it could steal too much magic from the bright new city.

  They wound through a series of courtyards, past stretching stained-glass windows, and into a merchant square. Every now and again, Indira tilted her head back to look at the tops of the buildings dangling above them. It was clever magic, she thought, but she hoped it was also stable magic. If the spell malfunctioned, half of Fable would come spiraling down on them. Indira shivered at the thought and focused on the buildings that were right-side up.

  All around her, log cabins huddled along the castle walls, as if trying to stay out of the rain. Maxi let out a little squeal and slipped forward through a crowd of Marks.

  In that direction, Indira spotted a hanging sign that read simply: TALESPIN.

  The Talespin didn’t smell like Indira expected a coffee shop to smell. If you were to ask its owner, Mr. Threepwood, what scent a character caught as they walked through the front doors, he would tell you it was the scent of buried history combined with a touch of oatmeal-cinnamon and a liberal dash of what could be. Indira mostly noticed the oatmeal-cinnamon, though.

  The shop was divided into two rooms: an immediate room where coffee and little pastries could be purchased, and off to one side a more spacious area filled with mismatched wooden tables. Espresso machines puffed out steam that made the whole place feel crowded. Indira and Maxi stood in line, waiting to be helped by a man with a gray-brown ponytail. Indira couldn’t help searching the crowd for Phoenix, but his toss of red hair was nowhere to be seen.

  “I think I just saw one of the Lost Boys from Peter Pan. I heard that they totally throw the most epic parties,” Maxi whispered. A second later she let out a squeal and slapped an excited hand on Indira’s shoulder. “There it is! It’s actually right there!”

  Their angle to the sitting room now showed a massive mirror, set against the farthest wall. Characters waited their turn to stand before the twisting thing, which was framed in fickle gold. Indira had heard about this before: a magic mirror. It always popped up in stories. Usually, the mirror gave bad dating advice or complicated the plot for everyone in the story.

  “What’s so special about that one?” Indira asked.

  “Well, you know about the Authors, right?”

  “Sure,” Indira said. “They write the stories.”

  “ ‘They write the stories’?” Maxi repeated incredulously. “More like they decide if we ever get to be real. They’re the ones who breathe life into us. They can have us killed off or they can let us live happily ever after. Without them, we’re nothing.”

  Indira nodded. She hadn’t meant to offend. “And the mirror?”

  Maxi’s face filled with delight. “It’s the only place in Fable that shows us the Authors. I think someone brought the mirror back from the Real World like ages ago. It’s one of those rare connections between here and there. Pretty cool, right?”

  Indira nodded again and stepped aside as Maxi ordered a white mocha but with the whipped cream at the bottom and extra hot because that was the only way to drink it. Before Indira realized she hadn’t asked Mrs. Pennington for any money, Maxi had already ordered Indira the same thing, and paid for it too.

  “This drink is so good that I want other people to like it, you know?”

  With their beverages in hand, Indira and Maxi joined the line for the mirror.

  “So, that’s where the name Talespin comes from. It’s the moment an Author and Character connect for the first time,” Maxi explained. “Together, we spin a tale into existence. I heard from this guy in the audition line—who, side story, had like the worst foot odor ever—that every time Hamlet came to Talespin, he saw William Shakespeare. Cool, right?”

  Indira nodded,
trying to ignore the mention of auditions and hoping Maxi wouldn’t bring them up again. A few seconds later, the line moved and it was Maxi’s turn. She sauntered up to the mirror and stared for a full minute. After an awkward silence, she whipped back around.

  “How boring.” She pouted. “It was just some old lady looking out of a window and trying to be all dramatic. I didn’t even see her write anything.”

  She stormed over to the nearest table, and Indira stood watching her until one of the characters in line coughed politely. Embarrassed, she set her coffee on the nearest table and rushed forward. Before she could even catch her breath, the mirror’s surface began to boil. It looked like melted metal rippling from the splash of a stone. She waited as an image appeared, fuzzy and inconsistent at first. The colors sharpened, and she felt as though she had been transported through worlds.

  The Author she saw looked like a man accustomed to hunching. It wasn’t a pretty posture, but Indira felt that he must always be leaning into life, rather than away from it. She counted that as a positive. A busy world spun all around him. Indira saw a constant stream of people coming and going, but the Author ignored them. His eyebrows pushed together in concentration. He looked as if he had told the rest of the world he’d catch up with them later. Indira took a step closer. Printed in fine letters on the front of the journal were the initials DM.

  She could not stop from wondering what they stood for. Devin Manatee or Dax Maverick? Before she could puzzle it out, the ground started to shake. She heard a voice echo all around her. It was almost as though someone were shouting down at her from a mountaintop.

  “Mine! Mine! Get out! Mine! Get out!”

  Indira turned, trying to find the source, but something powerful came in from the opposite direction and gave her a shove. Indira felt herself stumbling through time and space, back between worlds. There was a moment where she stumbled to the edge of something, like a railing that overlooked a drop into an endless pit. She almost lost her balance before a hand landed on her shoulder. The grip tightened.