by Steven Bohls
Shay
“Hmm.” Shay stroked her chin with extra-long thinking strokes. She studied the checkerboard and Captain Bog’s black pieces.
He thinks he’s so clever, doesn’t he?
She gave the board a wicked grin, then lifted one of her red pieces and hopped over two of his little black ones.
“Ha-ha!” she said, picking up the pieces she’d just hopped over. “Bye-bye, little mouselet,” she said to the first, before tossing it over her shoulder. “Bye-bye, little mouselet,” she said to the second, tossing it over her other shoulder. “Two mouselets down. Seven to go.”
Bog wasn’t perturbed. He studied the board, nodding to himself. He looked confident. Too confident. Shay’s gaze darted back to the board. Her focus bounced from piece to piece, mouselet to mouselet, red to black.
And then she saw it.
The lurking mouselet.
It sat there, in the back, pretending not to be as dangerous as it was.
Maybe he hasn’t seen it yet. Maybe he won’t see it, she thought to herself.
She lifted her gaze to meet his. The captain’s eyes were locked knowingly onto her own. A grin lifted the scars on his face. He looked down at the board—at the lurking mouselet.
“No,” Shay said quickly. “Wait—wait—I want to take back my move.”
Bog’s head turned slowly to the left, then slowly to the right. He waggled his finger twice in the air. “Uh-uh-uh,” he said. “No takebacks. You know the rules.”
“But, but, but—”
But it was too late.
He scooped up the lurking black mouselet and began hopping over pieces.
Stomp.
Stomp.
Stomp.
Every stomp killed another defenseless red mouselet.
Five stomps.
Six stomps.
And then seven.
Nearly her entire army of mouselets lay dead on the board.
“Darlings!” she cried. “My little mouselets.”
Bog nodded with delight in his eyes. One by one he picked up their lifeless corpses and stacked them into his hand. “Bye-bye, little mouselets.” Bog chucked the handful over his shoulder.
Shay gave them a soft wave good-bye. “Farewell. You fought bravely.”
“That they did,” Bog said. “That they did.”
Her last mouselet sat in the center of the board. Alone and afraid. Defenseless and whimpering. Mourning the loss of its fallen brothers and sisters. “Your move,” Bog said. He leaned over the board and rested both elbows on the edge of the table.
Shay sat up straight and nodded stoically. If her lone mouselet was going to die, it was going to die fighting. She reached for the last of her pieces and lifted it high, ready to plunge it into the fray—to its inevitable demise.
Before she could set it down, something tickled the back of her brain. A whispery voice. No. It was more like shadowy eyes. Eyes stuck in her brain that weren’t her own.
She looked up at Bog. He could see that there was something going on. “Shay? Are you all right?”
She smacked the side of her head a couple of times to jostle the eyes free. “Hmm,” she said. “I think there are eyes in my head that aren’t mine. Will you excuse me?”
She stood and began walking to the bathroom. “Go away,” she whispered to the eyes. “Go find another mouse’s brain to nibble on.”
When she reached the bathroom, she locked the door and turned around to study her face in the mirror. “Who are you?” she asked. “What do you want in my brain?”
• • •
Jed felt bits of himself returning, even though he stayed in Shay’s vision.
“You can see me?” he asked.
Shay glared at the mirror. “I knew someone was in there,” she said to herself. “Now, answer me. What sort of mouse are you?”
“Well,” Jed began, “you’ve been calling me a broken mouse.”
Shay’s face lit up with excitement. “Really? That’s you? You’re alive?” She giggled and clapped her hands. “I knew it, I knew it, I knew it.”
“What’s going on?” Jed asked in her mind. “I don’t know who you are.”
“Of course, you do, silly,” Shay said. “I’m Shay.”
“Lyle said you kidnapped me.”
Shay gasped. “Lyle? Are you with him?”
“Yes. I’m on his train.”
Shay’s eyes widened. “You’re on the Endeavor? We’re chasing that pesky squiggly boat. It’s a very sneaky boat, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know what’s going on,” Jed said. “I can’t remember anything.”
Shay looked deeper into the mirror. “Lyle thought that might happen from that scary Awakening Key.”
“What Awakening Key?”
“You put it in your chest and then boom!”
“What did it do to me?”
“Awakened your sparks,” Shay said. “But Mouse King thought it might make your mind fuzzy. So he made a black key, too.”
“Yes! He’s been trying to use it on me. What does it do?”
“It’s not a nice key at all,” she said, shaking her head. “It deletes Jed and lets Lyle become new Jed.”
Jed’s stomach tightened. “New Jed?”
Shay nodded. “He wants your sparks, of course. So he can make things come alive like you can.”
“I knew there was something wrong with that key,” Jed said.
“You should get off of that squiggly boat,” Shay said casually, “before he deletes you and steals all of your gold and sparks. That would be sad.”
“How do I know if you’re telling me the truth?”
Shay nodded to the mirror. “Clever mouse. Good for you. I might be a sneaky, conniving, wicked little clunk mouse! Right? Yes. Okay, behind the painting of a red tree, Mouse King keeps a secret box. Four, fourteen, nineteen. That’s the secret. All of Mouse King’s angry memories are inside. I used to sneak in there and watch them. Hmmm,” she said, tapping her chin. “Watch fourteen–seventy-five. Then sixteen-sixteen. Then nineteen-three. And…oh, then thirty-three–eleven. That was an angry one. Watch them, then leave. Find somewhere safe. We will come for you.”
Before Jed could respond, the vision had faded.
He was lying on his back in the center of the training box. The bay doors were closed, and Lyle stood looming over him. The man’s hand was inside his pocket—clutching something.
The key, Jed guessed.
“Are you…all right?” Lyle asked, a stiffness to his voice.
“I’m fine,” Jed said, climbing to his feet. “Just blacked out for a second, I guess.”
“I see.” Lyle removed his hand from his pocket. “Maybe you should lie down.”
Jed stared at the pocket as if it held a shatterbox instead of a key.
“No really, I’m fine,” Jed repeated.
Lyle didn’t respond. Suspicion darkened his eyes as they narrowed on Jed. He opened his mouth, but before he had a chance to speak, Jed quickly cut in.
“You’re right. I probably should lie down. Maybe it’s all this training. I think I’m just worn out.”
“Hmm…” Lyle muttered, his fingers drumming against his pocket and the object inside.
Jed tried not to look at the motion and instead gave Lyle an exhausted look. “I’m pretty tired.”
Lyle nodded slowly but didn’t respond. Jed wondered if the suspicion in Lyle’s face had always been there or if Jed was just now seeing it for the first time.
Finally, Lyle spoke. “Get some rest. I have…an important task for you to do in the morning.”
Jed
The Endeavor’s windows were black with night. Jed had returned to his quarters, but despite Lyle’s command, he hadn’t rested a bit. For hours he listened to the sound of the thrumming engine, the light clinks as dragonflies tinkered with bulkheads and circuit boards, and the muted chatter of crew members. Now, however, all but the midnight navigational engineers were sound asleep, and the only noise w
as the dull hum of the ion battery.
Jed lifted the handle on his cabin door and peeked out into the corridor. Empty. He crept through the train cars toward Lyle’s command cabin. By now, Lyle would likely be three cars farther down, sleeping in his private bunk.
No light leaked through the edges of the cabin door. Jed tested the handle. Locked. He closed his eyes and focused on the gears and pins that made up the locking mechanism. Warmth spread through his limbs as sparks ignited, fueling his power.
A soft click sounded from the knob as the pins set into place.
Jed tried the handle again, and this time, it turned.
Starlight trickled through the windows that lined the cabin, casting shadows around the small space.
On the east wall hung the painting of the red tree that Shay had mentioned. He’d studied the painting before, the vivid red and orange leaves of a lone tree standing against an intense blue sky. The colors had seemed so unrealistic in this world of rusted metal and blackened, polluted clouds, but now, the painting promised something he felt he had been missing the whole time he’d been aboard the Endeavor. Now, the painting promised reality.
With a gentle tug, the painting swung on its hinges revealing a metal safe.
Jed spun the dial to the number four, then moved it back to fourteen and then forward to nineteen. He pulled on the lever and it clicked open. The safe door swayed on its hinges, pulling forward to reveal a simple wooden box with a single pair of spectacles inside.
“Riggs,” he said aloud. The word came out without his knowing why he said it or what it meant. Riggs what?
Carefully, glancing over his shoulder at the door, Jed pulled out the spectacles. The two golden frames surrounding the clear glass of the spectacles had tiny numbers carved into them, counting upward from one to ninety-nine. He clicked one of the frames forward, moving the number to one, and then on to two, and then to three. He moved the other as well, and then checked the note he had written himself: 14-75. He twisted the left rim dial to fourteen, and then the right side to seventy-five.
As he put the spectacles on his face, Jed’s vision changed. The Endeavor was gone. Lyle’s cabin was gone. It was different from the shared vision he had with Shay. In those visions, he’d been inside her head, feeling, smelling, tasting, and touching everything from her perspective. This time, it was as if he were a ghostly onlooker, still inside his own body, but invisible to all those around him as he stepped back in time to watch the past.
Lyle
Jed found himself in a room surrounded by gold and glass. Large domed windows on the ceiling leaked radiant sunlight and showed a bright blue sky. Lyle sat at a glass table in the center of a workshop. He wore no skin—only gold. Everything was gold: gears, cogs, sprockets, springs, wires, switches, levers, pulleys, disks, and spindles. All gold. It was a cluttered and busy workshop, but not dirty. No grime or oil marred the golden surfaces.
As Lyle glanced through the doming windows, Jed stepped sideways awkwardly, conscious of being an interloper even though he couldn’t be seen. Peeking out a side window, he saw a new world below him unlike any he’d encountered in this junkyard before—one that made him feel at home.
He and Lyle stood at the top of a large stone tower. Its brown sides were covered in woven green ivy with waxen leaves sprouting every which way. Below it grew gardens—rows and rows of plants, meadows of flowers, and seas of trees waving softly in the light, sweet breeze. Cozy stone cottages dotted the landscape, surrounded by even more foliage and dappled by the sunlight shining through the leaves. It was warm, and friendly, and beautiful.
Lyle returned to his work. He picked up a needlelike instrument with one hand and lowered a set of magnifying spectacles over his eyes with the other. A small object came into focus. It was a spark with amber glowing in its core. Lyle shifted the tool closer. He studied the magnified spark, scanning it for answers. He paused on a small protrusion. His practiced, steady hands inched the tool closer. He poked the facets around the protrusion. The spark brightened and dimmed at the lightest touch, shifting color from a deep amber to a soft blue. He expertly dissected another facet and the spark turned a rich sapphire color.
A light knock rapped from the workshop’s door. Lyle set the tools down on the glass table. He removed his magnifying spectacles and looked up. “I’m busy,” he called. “Please come back later.”
No answer came. Another knock sounded.
“Whatever it is, check with my assistant. I’m not to be bothered right now.”
He reached up to pull down the magnification spectacles, but the knock came yet again.
He sighed and marched over to the door. “I said,” he began, opening the door, “come back la—”
He froze. Two rows of golden knights stood with their backs to the wall. “Presenting Her Highness, Queen Calliope,” one of the guards said. It was the first time Jed had ever seen her—the first time he had even realized such a person might exist—and he and Lyle reacted in the same way, their mouths dropping open.
Jed moved closer, driven forward by curiosity. The queen’s golden face was astonishing. The golden sprockets and gears that formed the contours of her jaw were so small he couldn’t tell where one began and another ended. It was as if it weren’t made of gold at all, but instead smooth skin. She was the most beautiful thing Jed had ever seen.
“Your Majesty,” Lyle said, kneeling to the floor.
She extended her hand, taking his. “Please,” she said, “no need for that. My name is Calliope.”
“I’m Lyle,” he said, standing unsteadily.
“It’s nice to meet you, Lyle,” she said. Her voice had a clear metallic ring to it. “I’ve heard a lot about you. The other gearsmiths praise your work. They call you an innovator, inventor, and visionary.”
“I don’t know what to say,” he said. “Thank you.”
She smiled at him. The tens of thousands of gears in her cheeks flowed perfectly as they dimpled with expression. “You’re probably wondering why I’m here,” she said. She stepped forward into the workshop. Lyle bumbled aside, and Jed scooted away, too. Her figure moved with an ethereal grace, nearly floating across the floor.
“I’ve heard much about your experiments,” she said. “We have need in the palace for your talents.”
“The palace?” Lyle’s voice sounded unsteady.
She nodded once. “I’ve heard that you’ve enhanced a life spark, thus giving it the ability to push and pull objects. Is that true?”
“Yes,” Lyle said, his tone suddenly excited. “Would you like to see?”
“I would,” Calliope said, a gentle smile in her voice.
He scrambled back to the glass table with the glowing spark. “I’ll need a minute to calibrate the ion flux beam,” he said, cranking the lever and plugging a cable into a socket. A machine lowered from the ceiling. A nozzle aimed at the spark.
Lyle flipped a switch, and a beam of violet light shot from the nozzle and struck the spark. The spark glowed as nearby scraps of junk began to wiggle. The queen and Jed both watched with interest. Lyle turned the dial slowly, studying the vibrating pieces. Bit by bit, he increased the power, and more scraps slid toward the spark. Just before the moving pieces reached the table, he cranked the dial off.
Calliope eyed the scraps. “Remarkable,” she said.
Lyle then recalibrated the ion flux beam and turned the dial in the opposite direction. The beam shot out of the nozzle and struck the spark again. This time, the debris pushed away from the spark.
Lyle turned off the machine and excitedly stepped toward Calliope. “This is just the beginning,” he said. “We can do so much more with sparks. Far more than pushing and pulling. I believe we can connect sparks to…our souls.”
Calliope tilted her head. “What do you mean?”
Lyle lifted his arm. “If I want to clench my fingers into a fist, then the spark in my mind connects with the gears in my joints and my fingers curl into a ball.” He closed his fingers in
to a fist. “What if the spark in my mind could connect with other things? Things that aren’t even touching my body? The work I’ve been doing on life sparks will allow us to connect to everything around us. We’ll control our environment without even touching it. I could turn bits and pieces of metal into extensions of my arms or legs.”
Calliope’s eyes sparkled. “You can do this? You are sure of it?”
“I’m almost positive,” Lyle said. “I feel so close. I’ve worked a lifetime on this. The breakthroughs my team has made in the last year are extraordinary. We’ve petitioned the palace for more funding, but…” He shook his head.
Calliope considered Lyle. She touched her chin and squinted. “How much do you know about the relic raids?” she asked.
“Well,” Lyle said, “I’ve heard rumors of coppers and irons, trying to infiltrate the gold city and steal our relics,” Lyle said. “Glittertales to scare younglings, if you want my opinion.”
“I wish they were rumors and glittertales,” Calliope said. “But it’s worse. Coppers and irons are greedy. They want everything. Our spies tell us the irons are planning an invasion.”
“Invasion?” Lyle glanced at one of the windows as if to look for warships flying toward him. “We’ve never shown aggression. Why would they attack us? It’s—”
“Humans are never satisfied. Their greed is boundless. The more relics they steal, the more they want. We have tried to negotiate, but they know their forces are superior. And so, they threaten us, and we have no means to fight back.”
“Are they planning a full attack?”
Calliope nodded. “We believe so. The only thing slowing them down is one another. Right now, coppers and irons are fighting, but it’s only a matter of time before they come for us. We need your help.”
“Me?” Lyle asked. “How I can help?”
Calliope motioned to a guard. The guard walked forward, a long scroll in her hands. She placed the scroll on the glass table and began to unroll it.
Lyle leaned over to study the tangle of lines, measurements, and numbers. Jed inched closer and strained to see but didn’t dare get too close. This memory invasion thing was still too weird.
