Playing a Part – 15.7
Author: Wildbow

Playing a Part – 15.7 | Pale

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Avery pushed hair out of her face and behind her ear, then held it there.  Sootsleeves drove with the top down, one hand on the wheel, the other on a can of apple soda, that she tapped at, pried at, and flicked, even turning it upside-down.  Avery reached forward to help, but at the same time, not seeing Avery, Sootsleeves tossed the can into the cup holder.

Avery might have offered to help, but Verona was on the phone.

“Yeah.  Sorry.  Talk later?  Sorry again,” Verona said.  There was a pause.  “Yeah.  Okay, will do.  Okay, bye.  Love you.”

Verona hung up.

“So?” Avery asked.

“Postponed with a maybe cancel.  She wants me to try, said she usually eats late.  Does mean driving back to Kennet in the dark, but we were going to get stalled anyway, I bet.”

“Okay,” Avery said.

“I’ll deal with it.  Let’s focus on what we need to focus on?”

“Okay, sure.  Um, first of all, Sootsleeves, thanks for the ride.  Can I open that can for you?”

“Can?”

“The apple drink.  It’s probably going to explode, since you were shaking it.”

“Explode?  What are these vendors selling?”

“In foam, fizz,” Avery said.

“What nonsense.”

“Cherrypop and I still haven’t played this game that’s super fun, where we make the foam and then put it around our mouths and pretend to be rabid,” Snowdrop said.

“We play that all the time!” Cherrypop said, from Snowdrop’s lap.  “Why are you so dumb sometimes!?”

“I like playing hard into stereotypes,” Snowdrop said.  “Opossums are rabid a lot.”

“So cool,” Cherrypop said.  “Best animal.”

“For the cans, they seal things up so they don’t go bad,” Verona told her.  “The fizz is for fun.”

“I can try to open it so you and your steed don’t get dirty,” Avery said.

Sootsleeves passed the can back to Avery.  Avery leaned out the window, holding it out to the side, and turned it away from the car as she cracked it open.  There wasn’t too much fizz, but she got some froth on her hands.

She wiped some on Snowdrop’s mouth.  Snowdrop licked at the moisture and then loomed over Cherrypop, “Raaah!”

Cherrypop laughed hard enough she fell backwards, lying against Snow’s legs.

“Napkin?” Avery asked.

Verona passed her one, and Avery wiped her hands and the outside of the can.  She held out the can, then didn’t release it to Sootsleeves.  She warned, “When my baby sister first tried soda, she cried.  The fizz catches you by surprise, I think.”

“I don’t need cosseting.”

“Okay.”  Avery let Sootsleeves take the can.

Sootsleeves drank, and Avery could see in the rearview mirror as she scrunched up her face.

“We’ll need to stay out of sight, right?” Verona asked.  “Because the last thing I want is to screw up your stay here in Thunder Bay.”

“I’d say I’d rather have to leave Thunder Bay than let those kids get hurt.”

“Okay,” Verona replied.  “Will adjust my priorities, then.  What are we even trying to do?  Stop her?”

“If she’s going to hurt them, then we should interfere.  Depends how that universe works.  And we want to figure out if she’s linked to Musser’s campaign.”

“Okay,” Verona said.  “Let me think about how we can do that.  Gut feeling is maybe you tackle the kid part and I see what I can do in the background, about the Musser connection.”

“Mmm.  I don’t want to split up.”

“Might have to, depending.  But let’s figure out what’s going on before we hammer too much down in the way of a plan,” Verona said.  “I’ll think of stuff.”

“We’re not far,” Sootsleeves said.  She slowed.  “The children found her in the market.”

The market was an old mall, with a sign mounted above the parking lot with slots for various stores in the mall.  A third of the slots were empty.  There were cars, but not many.

“Thanks for the ride Sootsleeves, you can let us out here, we’ll just walk across the parking lot.”

“No, I’ll carry on with the first favor.  I’ll take you the full way as part of my deal to help you with this factfinding and spying endeavor.  I’ll remind you, if you need direct help from any of my subjects, tell one of them, they’ll spread the word.  That can be my second favor to you.”

“Okay,” Avery said.  “Again, I’ll keep that in mind.”

“How do I enter this infernal place?”

“Looks like… over there.  Have to take the road around, wait at the intersection, then turn left.”

“What kind of market makes it so hard to enter?”

“Are you going to be okay, Sootsleeves?” Avery asked.  “I’m getting the impression that a lot of this is bewildering.”

“Is bewildering for me too,” Cherrypop said.

“I will manage.  Fundamentally, all places are the same at their core, I’ve drunk up what I can of this world and emphasized absorbing what I need to use my steed to her full ability, I can figure out the rest.”

“Do you have a place to stay?  Sleep?”

“I have a kingdom.”

“Okay, uh… and food?  Things for your subjects?”

“It is the reality for myself and my people that we must be the poorest kingdom.  We exist on the verge of starvation, we struggle, our sick are among the sickest, but my love for them is unbounded and their loyalty to me firm.”

“How did you buy the fast food?”

“I don’t know.  I naturally matched myself to the poor of this world, I had some coinage and papers.  I could buy a surprising amount.”

“I think that’s common for the working poor in this era,” Avery said.  “Struggling to keep the lights on, but there are options for cheap, unhealthy food.  The fact it’s easy is the big reason people do it.  Being poor means not having time to cook.”

“Ha, sucks,” Cherrypop said.

“You’re literally penniless, Cherry,” Verona said.

“Cherrypop is rich where it counts,” Snowdrop said, “in her wallet.”

“When you say the food is unhealthy, do you mean it’s diseased?” Sootsleeves asked, without alarm.  “I must know if I’m to feed my subjects.”

“Probably not, but it’ll make you fat faster than some alternatives,” Avery said.

“Ha!  Fat,” Cherrypop proclamed.

“What an era this is.  The poor are fat,” Sootsleeves said.

“Sometimes.  A lot of the non-working poor go hungry.”

“Then so may my subjects.  Such is their lot, bound to me as they are.  All the same, I’d rather my subjects be fat than so thin they crumple.”

“It’s always this way?  Being poor?”

“This was true when we had our own dream, it was true when we founded a kingdom on this Earth, in a patch of remote forest.”

“You had a Path of your own?” Avery asked.

“You had a kingdom on Earth?” Verona asked.

“The Dream was The Run-Down Kingdom,” Sootsleeves replied.  “I would meet those who made it through and down the maze of streets with a favor or errand asked of them every time the bells tolled, and the bells would toll roughly every two minutes.  I thought it was one of the better places I’ve seen, for how canny and quick it required someone to be, figuring out the streets and where to go to not have to backtrack to carry out the tasks.  It required a careful ordering of events and routing through the streets, unique to each visitor.”

She sounded so proud.

“What happened if you couldn’t do an errand?” Avery asked.

“Often unavoidable.  The offended party would be waiting at the end to beat you with a stick, broomhandle, or branch.  If it was only a handful it would be a light battering, if it was ten or more it could be actual violence.  Past twenty, they might use torches and set you alight, or put the weapons through you.”

“Can you fly over?” Verona asked.

“You could try but the way is down.  My castle is at the lowest point.”

“Could you burrow, then?”

“Ronnie, please don’t try to break the path of the woman kind enough to give us a ride.”

“A large part of my smallest supporter’s duties include defending the underground ways.  You would be swarmed and chewed through before you succeeded in digging down to a lower level.”

“Huh.”

“As is right.  I made efforts to shape what I could and told my subjects to keep watch for outside forces.  It could take days or weeks to reach my castle, but we guarded against Death and Starvation.  They would grow hungry and thin while working their way through but they would not die.  I at least ensured that.”

“That’s good,” Avery said.  “Probably.”

“If they reached me then I would try them with a game of bidding for pieces of riddles.  Boons to those visitors who triumphed, losers would find their material things, health, and status at risk of being forfeit, and they would have to choose two of the three to lose before I returned them to where they came from.”

“You were the final boss?” Avery asked.

“I have no idea what that means.”

“From games.  The last and biggest challenge.”

“Then yes.”

“What boons?” Verona asked.

“The first is enough apples to fill one’s stomach, in exchange for half your food being ruined thereafter.  The second a squalling babe that’ll be bound to you as your own.  The third is an assortment of fifteen wounds, afflictions, or lesser curse.  The wounds become great scars harder than any armor, the ailments resistances to what you endured, the curses become regenerating wards.  But they must each be healed, endured for long enough, or dispelled, first, respectively.”

“Uhhhh.  First of all, who would take the first one?” Verona asked.

“Not me,” Snowdrop said.  “Hate apples.”

“You hate a lot of food,” Cherrypop observed.

“Someone hungry,” Sootsleeves answered Verona.

“Yeah, maybe, but uh, okay.”

“Many go wanting, little witch.  As a queen of starved and struggling, I know this.  Do not underestimate the value of a full stomach.”

“She’s so wrong,” Snowdrop said.

“But the half your food, is that like, every meal is a coin flip, or I defrost myself some curry and there’s, I dunno, mold in half of it?”

“You can’t eat moldy food,” Snowdrop said, sagely.

“Either.  Both.  I imagine the arbitrators of these boons would do what is easiest for the meal in question.”

“For the second, at least, I could see someone wanting that.  Is it like, a babe in the sense that someone like Avery could go and find this hot person?  Or could I find some hot guy-babe?”

Avery sighed, and Sootsleeves frowned.

“Tongue clicking opossum babe?” Snowdrop asked, quiet.

“I’m confused,” Sootsleeves said.

“Verona means in the modern sense of ‘babe’,” Avery said.  “Someone attractive.  It’s slang.  A squalling, babe, Verona, Snow.”

“Could interpret that as some sexy guy that’s crying a lot.  If he’s babe enough maybe that’s cool?  I’ve gotten used to my dad, some.”

“It’s a child,” Sootsleeves said, sounding offended.  “A cranky or weepy one but a child.”

“Does the baby grow up?” Verona asked.

“What use a boon when it would pass in a few years?”

“The baby doesn’t grow up?” Avery asked, surprised.

“The boon is an infant child of your own, something I’ll have you know that many people treasure.  It might never smile or coo, and might cry incessantly, but many individuals have hearts large enough to welcome such a soul into their lives.  It’s a fine boon.”

“Yeah, okay, that sounds like a nightmare.”

“Be nice, Ronnie.”

“For many it was an opportunity to fill a void in their hearts,” Sootsleeves said, prim.

“For the third one, how bad are the wounds, curses, and conditions?”

“Wounds vary from nicks and bruises to bone deep cuts.  Curses from coughing up the occasional turd to seeing all fair things turned foul.  Afflictions range from persistent itches or incontinence to sanity-destroying madness.”

Cherrypop laughed at that.  “Yes!  Best boon!  Cough turds, free scars, and it makes you tougher!?  Win win!”

“I’m actually surprised Cherrypop followed all that,” Avery said.

“A lot of goblins might actually be down for that boon,” Verona added.  “But I don’t think most would do okay with the riddle and errand part.”

“We’ve gotta go,” Avery interrupted, as they eased into the parking lot.  “There’s no time to dig into that.”

“A story for another time, as is the kingdom we founded on Earth before we were attacked and bound.”

“I gotta ask, are the gifts optional?” Verona asked.

“Ronnie!”

“A boon must be chosen.”

“That sounds like a path that we’d need to use that escape rope on, no offense,” Verona said.  “I can’t think of another way to make it okay.”

“Offense taken,” Sootsleeves said, voice level.

“Ronnie, please.”

Queen Sootsleeves went on, “The path must be walked.  The exit is through.  Any other route invites a bane, a tide of my soldiers and spies following you to confound you in whatever world you decide to move to.”

“For how long?”

Avery climbed over the side of the car, grabbing her bag.

“For as long as you reside there, whenever you return there.”

“So if you came to Earth?  Rats harassing you for as long as you’re on Earth?  And if you leave and come back, they’ll come back?”

“Not only my smallest followers.  It might be the orphans to steal and move your things, or the sickly, to cough on you and spatter you with mucus.  Or some combination.  The rules must be respected.  It is good for my servants to be able to steal the food, reside in attics and walls, and there is justice in it.  A kingdom’s laws should be obeyed.”

“If people break rules they don’t know?” Verona asked.

“The rules can be discovered.”

“See you!” Avery called out.  She opened Verona’s door and then dragged Verona out.  Verona snatched up her bag.  “I don’t suppose we could get a ride later?”

“If it’s part of the first deal, yes.”

“Thank you for putting up with Verona.”

“It’s nostalgic to think of how things were.”

Avery waved as she continued to drag Verona away.

“Tell my subjects I’ve got food.  Not a lot, but tell them!”

“Okay!” Avery called out.

They walked away.

“You, uh, really go off on tangents when you’re tired or distracted, huh?” Avery asked.  “It’s nice to get to know Sootsleeves some, I guess.”

“She sucks,” Snowdrop said.  “I never want to be like her, stuck running some Path as a boss enemy, giving out snacks.  Being queen?  That’s the worst.”

“Such a hassle,” Cherrypop agreed.  “Gotta be a tyrant, keep the snacks for ourselves.”

“Oh my god,” Verona whispered, “but seriously, who would ever go to that path?  I’m so bothered.  Why does it suck so much?  Who would do that?”

“I think it might’ve been a path that was easy to stumble into,” Avery said.  “Like, enter a door with a rat nearby while on a Path and it could take you to the Run-Down Kingdom.”

“I think I get why she was bound,” Verona said.  “Like, I get it, binding Others is bad, but you can stumble on this place and you get a freaking forever baby, a bunch of wounds and curses, or fucking get every meal ruined for the rest of your life, or you try to run and you get rats forever, or you lose and you lose all your connections and material things?  Or your health?”

“She sounded proud of it.”

“I think that’s a case where you can say yeah, maybe there’s merit to binding, just to stop a lot of people from being screwed over.”

“Yeah, except I think they tried other things first.  She was brought down to Earth, that’s a whole thing where Path practitioners can try to bring a path or a key component of a path down to earth to try to create an effect, or remove it from the network of the Paths.  So if they find a path that’s easy to stumble onto where every option is bad, or things aren’t doable, they move it out of the network.  The situation she described sounds like a good case for that.”

“And then that went wrong enough they bound her?” Verona asked.

“Or she was vulnerable after settling on Earth without path rules around her and they bound her, then forgot her on a shelf, I guess?  There might’ve been some hard feelings if some of them got on the wrong side of her ‘boons’.  I kind of get the impression there’s a few Others that the Garricks sent me where there were catches or there was some reason they weren’t eager to pull them out of storage.  Maybe some where they plain forgot about why nobody was pulling them out.”

As they approached the entrance, three kids in shabby clothes were playing what looked like a game of hackysack, kicking a ball of crumpled paper between them, keeping it in the air.  As Avery passed, one of them gave her a little nod, jerking his head off to one side.

“Sootsleeves has food she’ll share,” Avery told them.

The group of them ran off, in the direction of Sootsleeve’s car.  Avery picked up the ball of paper they’d left behind, then pitched it into a trash can.  Snowdrop intercepted it and knocked it to the ground, smiled sheepishly at Avery, then got the paper and stuffed it into a pocket.  Avery put an arm around Snow’s shoulders and jostled her a bit, playfully.  Cherrypop peeked up and out over the front of the collar of a t-shirt that read ‘Body possitive’ with a very plump opossum sitting slouched against a wall.  She ducked her head down whenever someone looked their way.

They entered the mall.

From the sign that was standing up in the center of the wide path, there were four wings extending from the middle, with a ‘no name’ grocery store bordered on two sides by wings, and a space for a big box store on the opposite end of the mall.

One wing and the adjoining big box store that had no lights on, except for the t-shirt store.  Half those overhead lights were off.

A dinky little playground with fences containing a little play structure sat in the middle of the concourse.  A set of scratched up unicorn, dinosaur, and rocket ship were mounted on springs right by it, along with a little coin operated ‘firetruck ride’ with a video game in the little cracked dashboard display.

A girl in stained clothing sat astride the rocket ship.  She pointed off to the side as Avery and Verona walked up.  Toward the darker wing of the mall.

“And the kids?”

“They left a few minutes ago to get things from that big market,” the kid said, pointing at the grocery store.  “Went back that way.”

“Thanks,” Avery said.  “Sootsleeves should have food, she wanted us to pass on word.”

“It’s okay, someone’s mom gave me a chocolate,” the girl said, before grabbing the rocket ship wheel and hurling herself left, right, forward and back, the rocket ship swaying in the direction she threw her weight before the spring returned her back to normal.  “The other subjects- some of them might not have had anything yet.  So they should eat first.”

“Okay.  That’s good of you.  But you should also not just try to make it through the day with one chocolate,” Avery said.

“Long live the Run-Down Kingdom, hail to Queen Sootsleeves,” the kid proclaimed.  She exaggerated how wild she was getting with rocking the rocket.  “Patriotism is a willingness to do what you can to raise up the kingdom as a whole.”

“Fair,” Avery said.  “But maybe don’t talk too much about that?  Or people might start to realize you’re working with me?”

The girl nodded, letting the wobbling rocket ship return to a normal position, panting for breath.  “I’m a kid though.  People think I’m pretending.”

“Thea might not, though, and we don’t know if she has guards stationed or something,” Avery said.

“Or if you’re talking about political theory and patriotism when you look, like, ten,” Verona said.  “Sounds weird.”

“A civic education is important,” the orphan said.

Avery glanced down the length of the dimmed wing of the mall.

“Hey,” Verona said.  “Got that key?  That you got on the Paths?”

“I was thinking it was a good way to handle the alternate world, if we get stuck in one.  You want it?  Because I think I can break out in other ways.”

“I want it, but not for that.”

Avery pulled the Faerie key from her pocket, that she’d bought when at the Fall court with Fernanda.  An escape from any realm.  What other use could there be?

She trusted Verona, and it made her feel better about possibly pulling Verona into trouble if Verona had another way out.

“We should figure out how to spy on them.”

“Animal form?” Verona asked.

“She grew up in a magic kingdom with talking, supersmart animals,” Avery pointed out.

“Oh, hm.”

“It’s why I had Queen Sootsleeves warn the subjects.”

“We stayed back,” the girl in the rocket ship said.  “Like we were told, so we won’t get seen.  There’s some members of the small army watching from a distance.”

“The mice?”

The girl nodded.

“Okay.”

Avery indicated the direction.

Let’s see what Thea’s doing with these kids.

They headed down the long wing of the mall, moving slowly and keeping both eyes and an ear out for anything unusual.

They passed the t-shirt shop, where a single tired and lonely looking employee sat on a stool behind the counter, fiddling with her phone.

Avery slowed, stopping in the hallway to look around, nervous.

Verona put a hand out to block Avery from moving further, unnecessarily, because Avery had already stopped in her tracks.

“What’s up?” Avery whispered, leaning in close.

Verona pointed at the wall.

Drawn on the paint was graffiti in permanent marker.  But on one patch of wall, someone had drawn a mark that looked like two overlapping crescent moons, one larger with horns pointing down, the other half the size with horns pointing up.  There were diamonds and overlapping lines worked into it, and in the center was a faint, dark smudge.

“I got a bad feeling,” Verona said.

Avery had to search inward before she could identify the feeling.  A bit of trepidation.

“Sudden feeling?  Felt off,” Verona murmured.

Avery used her Sight, painting the world in a landscape of mist and handprints, with connections stretching elsewhere.  As she did, she could see the little diagram on the wall unfold, the hooks moving as it swelled to its actual size and three-dimensional shape.  The smudge turned crimson and took on a glow.  A matching diagram on the far side of the broad hallway did the same.

And, Avery saw, the tips of the crescents caught and pierced the connections stretching from their end of things to the unlit end of that wing of the mall.  The connections turned into threads and tatters, drifting through the air.

“Blocking the sight,” Avery said.

“Twelve points on top, six below,” Verona noted, after counting.  “Most of that’s just the raw power she dropped into it.  Eighteenth of the connection blockers is the moon, relates to secrets, fears, anxiety.  Good for scaring away small animals and any innocents that aren’t especially brave, apparently blocks Sight if it’s strong enough.  Might stop augury.”

“Hmm.  Is the idea that it filters out the nervous and keeps people brave enough to leap into other worlds?”

Verona shrugged.  She put a hand out, past the ‘line’ that was more or less drawn to cut off the info their Sights could provide.  “I think we can just pass.”

Avery glanced over the surroundings for any further traps, then nodded, taking that step.

As soon as she did, she lost the ability to See Verona and the things behind Verona, but her regular eyes could still track all that stuff.

She could also hear voices.  They were distant, but the sounds extended down the hallway now.

She beckoned for Verona to come.

“Need glamour,” Verona whispered.

Avery led Verona to where they were close enough to hear, then hunkered down in a doorway, out of sight from the hall, opened her bag, and passed the glamour from the High Summer Rose to Verona.

She did her best to listen, wishing she could somehow have Lucy here with her earring, or transfer power like she did with Snowdrop.  She wondered if another sort of awakening ritual might allow for that.

“I want the hat.  Give me the hat.”

“But Kai and I were going to race!”

“Race with something else.  The hat is the only thing I haven’t tried.”

“But the hat is one of the fastest!”

“Don’t fight,” another child said.

Avery looked back at Verona, who had pulled some various pens and things out of her pencil case.  She laid out everything on the floor, key, pen, pencil, a little craft knife with a plastic cap, pen, pen, marker…

She dusted them with glamour, then quickly made the same motions of her hand for each.  Fingers grazing key, then changing the tops of each of the other handheld things to match.

“Kai!  Let’s race!  Around the towers!”

“Hey Verona?” Avery asked.

“Walk me through the plan?  You said you were tired.”

“I think we pose as kids who wandered close.  Brave ones who pushed past that bad feeling the moon block generated.  And while we’re doing that, if we get in a pinch, we have the keys.”

“The glamoured ones probably won’t work.”

“Almost definitely not.  Not as keys.  But if you think about it, what screws up her practice more than random people having a ton of these keys?”

“How would you explain that?”

“Maybe we say that we got the key with the help of a Whitt?”

“Framing Tomas?”

“Probably not the local guy.  But someone.  A girl from the Whitt family?”

“I don’t want to frame Fernanda when she was helpful.”

“There’s nothing saying she would get singled out.”

“We don’t know how many girls are in that family, we don’t know how many might’ve visited a faerie market.  It could get traced back to her.  No.”

“Okay,” Verona said.  She paused.  “Crap.  That would’ve been good, though.  Solves every problem we have.  If the Whitts are allied with Musser and she knows that and reacts?  Smoking gun.”

“We’ll have to find another.”

Verona nodded.  “But disguise?  I don’t see how we find out what’s going on without one.”

Avery nodded.

“And I’ll keep the keys as something in our back pocket to blow her mind.  We don’t have to mention Fernanda or the Whitts.”

“Okay, sure, that’s solid.  Just don’t lose the good one.”

“Gotta give the glamoured ones a little tell, something simple and small.  Helps glamour hold.”

“Yeah,” Avery said.

She got more of the glamour from the High Summer Rose, then set about changing herself.

“Cherry and I are coming,” Snowdrop murmured.  “Screw those lost mice keeping watch.”

“Run for help if we get stuck and don’t report back?  If there’s no obvious way to break us out.  And don’t give yourself away.”

Snowdrop nodded.

Avery turned her hair a bright, dyed orange, made it longer, adjusted her features, and did a necklace of little candies.  Then she aged herself up a few years, adding some colorful makeup around her eyes.  She changed her clothes in color and style while keeping the general type of clothing consistent.  While Verona worked, she turned her attention to Verona.  Verona didn’t look up from the work she was doing while Avery changed her hair and top.

Verona finished, stood, and adjusted her height and jeans.  Making herself taller than Avery, before making her clothes all black.  She fashioned some glasses for herself, and put the keys away.  “Works?”

“I think so.”

“I worry we’re a mismatched pair,” Verona said.

“Aren’t we anyway?  A bit?”

“A bit.  We have our dynamic.  Feels like this is a pair that wouldn’t,” Verona said.  She reached for Avery, and Avery submitted to the adjustments, as Verona turned her hair purple, instead of orange, then turned a bright blue shirt black.  The necklace became something with rosary-style beads.

“Nora wears a necklace with candy on it.  It’s cute,” Avery said.

“You want to keep it?  The candy?”

“Nah.  I just did it because.”

“Okay.  It’s fun that you like that.  It’s good you’re happy,” Verona murmured.

“Are you happy?”

“Nah.  Glad to be helping you, but worrying about ditching my mom.”

“But besides here and now, are you okay?  Guilherme once told me that what we decided to do with glamour said a lot about who we were.  And you’re dressed in black.”

“I thought it’d suit her tastes, maybe.”

“Mm.  Okay.”

They’d changed.  They picked up their stuff, changed the exterior of their bags, and then ventured closer.

There was light shining through the entrance of one store.  Avery could hear distant whoops.  As they approached, Avery saw that the entryway into that shop was decorated wood with what looked like a clockwork bird in the corner.

With Verona just behind her, she peeked past.

The store interior was gone.  Instead, Avery could see out and down.  Towers, skyscrapers, and a multitude of clocktowers looked like they were sketched in pencil and painted in shades of tan and brown.  Every surface was intricately detailed.  It was as if careful textures had been substituted for colors.  Shingles each covered in a thousand distinct swirls, buildings with cross hatching and every stone given detail that would take an artist half a day to do.

There were kids doing acrobatics through the air.  A girl wore a hat with butterfly wings trailing out from the sides, a chin-strap keeping it on, while another girl sat on a cube-shaped cage with giant bat wings stretching out of holes on either side, swooping and lazily doing circles instead of really racing around.  A boy stood on a small boat with propellers, and someone in the distance wore a cloak that had a pattern that bled into reality around them, turning their body into slices like saturn’s rings, that narrowed and contorted as they zipped around, racing with the wing-hat wearer.  All the kids were drawn in that pencil and coffee style.

Avery leaned forward, peering down.  There was no apparent ground, only tall buildings stabbing upward from mist.  The mall hallway met the wood across the base of the entry, then became shingle on the other side.  Wind blew Avery’s fake hair all over the place.

The area was looped, she realized.  It wasn’t that large, even though it appeared to be horizon to horizon.  There were parallels in how the kids were flying and how birds in the distance moved.  It was maybe only four blocks by four blocks of skyscrapers and towers.

“What in the world?” Verona breathed.  “Is this actual magic?”

“I think it might be.  Unless this mall is about a billion times more on the inside than it looks from the outside?” Avery replied.

She could sense Snowdrop settling into a vantage point to watch.

A fifth figure plunged down from above the entryway into that space.  A sword punctured the roof, followed by a body that landed heavily.

Hair, loose clothing, and feathers all settled around the short, slim figure.  It was another kid, ten or eleven, hair in a long ponytail, wearing a jacket so loose it nearly swallowed her up.  Angel wings about ten feet across stretched on either side as she rose to a standing position.  As she let go of the sword, the wings exploded into individual feathers, which were scattered by the wind.

Avery recognized her from what the Lord had showed her.  She’d looked the same in the elemental hologram, except here she was drawn in the tones of coffee on paper.

“Want to fly?” Thea asked.

She looked so joyless for a person who had just been flying.

“Is it dangerous?” Verona asked, her voice different.

“Yeah.  But so is skiing.  So is driving,” Thea said.  “Pick up the sword.  You’ll get angel wings.  And don’t panic.  It’s a long, long way to the bottom, so take your time, don’t worry, just figure it out.  You’ll have time to learn how wings work if you keep your head.”

Verona looked at Avery.  Avery shrugged.

Verona stepped through, and the color left her.  She was the same glamoured appearance, but in near-black brown coffee tones now.

Verona grabbed the sword, and dark wings thrust their way out of her back.  She would have fallen from the roof with the violence of that thrust if the sword wasn’t embedded in shingles and wood.

“This is amazing,” Verona said.

“There are rules,” Thea said.  “First off, you can’t tell anyone who hasn’t seen this place.  You can tell each other, me, but nobody else.  That’s a me rule.  For rules of this world here, you can’t take anything outside.  There are other things all over the place.  A lot of them let you fly.  You can use them, but if you take anything, you have to return it to the owner.  It’s not enough to leave it lying on a roof somewhere.”

“Oh.  Better to not take anything, then, huh?” Verona asked.  “Even this?  I should let you take it back.”

“It’s okay.  The items I bought are fine to use.  I’ll take them back after,” Thea said.  “Fly.  It’s an amazing experience.”

“I’m a little nervous.”

Thea smiled.

Then she booted Verona over the edge of the roof.

Verona held onto the sword, wings stretching, her expression one of alarm, as she grabbed for the roof’s edge and missed.

“No!” Avery shouted.

She almost stepped through.  Closer to Thea.

“It’s fine.  Everyone needs a push sometimes,” Thea said.

Avery watched as Verona soared, sword in hand, flying through the sky.  She exhaled in relief.

“You’re close.”

“Yeah.  We’re close.”

Thea smiled.  “Want to fly too?  I can call one of the others back.  Or I could go buy something.

Avery’s eyes searched the scene.  What was the trap?  How did this work?  What was Thea doing?

“You’re more cautious than your friend.”

I never really thought that.  Except maybe in stuff like speeches or winging it with ritual wording.  Avery shook her head a little.  “What is this?”

“This?  Magic.  An old painting with something special put into it, to bring the painted world to life.”

Avery’s eyes settled on a clock.

“The clock’s counting down.  Does this only last for a little while?”

“There’s a man with no wings who calls himself the Ornithologist.  He arrives when the clock hits zero.”

“Why?  What does that mean?”

A group of men in business suits with bird masks and wings flew by.

“He made this world.  He makes the rules.  He’ll check for flying permits.”

“Oh,” Avery replied.  “What happens if you don’t have any?”

Thea shrugged.  “Doesn’t matter right now, don’t worry.  I sorted that out.”

“For everyone here?”

“Yes.  I did the paperwork and got enough licenses for twenty people.  Next time I’ll have twice that.  To be safe.  We could keep flying after, but I think it’s a good time to stop when he shows up.  He’ll make up rules and cite for violations.”

“Why?  What is this?”

Thea smiled.  Then, stretching, she walked through the frame.  Back into the hallway of the mall.

She became adult, twenty-something, dressed in dark colors, hair in a long drooping ponytail.  The coat she’d been wearing now fit like a glove.

“You’re not a kid.”

Thea shot her a sad smile.  “You asked what this is?  It’s flying.  Isn’t that terrific?”

Skipping the kid question?

Verona swooped by.  Avery felt a bit of relief that Verona wasn’t still plummeting.

And a fair bit of concern for the kids on the inside.

“If there’s magic in the world, why don’t we know about it?” Avery asked.

“Because it’s dangerous to show people.”

“Dangerous?”

“I’ll risk the danger.  Don’t worry.  That’s for me to worry over.”

Avery frowned.  She couldn’t help but worry that Thea might attack her here.  That Thea had seen right through the ruse.

“It’s too lonely, not getting to share this sort of thing,” Thea told Avery, watching the kids fly.  “If I get in trouble, I at least put some smiles on faces along the way.”

Avery couldn’t help but feel a bit of a pang at those words.  The loneliness of not having anyone to share with.  It was the worst thing about being away from Verona and Lucy.  She had Snowdrop, but it still kind of sucked to have to keep stuff from Nora and Jeanine.  From her mom.

“I would have thought she was the serious one from how you dress.”

Avery looked up at Verona, and she felt a bit of a shiver as she realized that Theodora’s kick had damaged the glamour.  There was a bit of stripe at Verona’s back, where the striped sweater shone through the black clothing.  Verona whooped and dove through an archway, using the sword to ding a bell mounted at the apex as she passed beneath it.

“Kai!” Thea shouted.  “Give our new friend here the aeroboat!”

“Oh, no, I shouldn’t,” Avery said.  She waved for Kai to keep going.  He gave her a thumbs-up.

“Okay.”

She was still keeping an eye out for the trap, trying to decide what Thea was doing.

If Thea was doing anything.  Had they pegged her wrong?  If she was this evil person abducting kids and letting universes chew them up and spit out power, like the person Odis had killed, then wouldn’t someone have stopped her?

She’d been described as someone with ambition.  What did that mean, in this context?

“How often do you do this?” Avery asked.

“Last week, I met with Kai.  Just him and me flying.  This week it’s four.  Next week, they’ll bring more friends they trust.”

“But we’re not supposed to tell.”

“They won’t tell.  They’ll just tell their friends to come to show them.  Friends worth having will listen.”

It felt weird hearing Thea talk about trust.

Is that the catch, then?  Get more and more kids, bring them in, then what?

Avery could picture Thea closing the door like this.  Leaving them to deal with the Ornithologist.  Maybe she had the paperwork now, but if she was on this side and left the door closed, they couldn’t really do anything about that.

“Excuse me,” Thea said.  She stepped through, and became young again.

It was so weird that she did that.  What drove that?  Or maybe was it her Self?  That this world tried to paint her as she really was, but the years spent young and unchanging physically had cemented her as the kid in this reality?

Or, Avery wondered, was Thea doing it for other reasons?  To remind herself of earlier times?  Why?  Were those happier memories?  A time she’d been more comfortable, while murdering her friends?

Avery shivered.

Thea walked over rooftops, waving for people to come in.  She tightrope walked across a beam that was about two inches wide, to get to the rooftops on the other side of a gap.

What is this?

Avery, Lucy, and Verona had done some research for Clementine, a bit ago, to try to see if she could offer any generic advice on cursed items.  Cursed items came in varieties, and if this painting was a trap, then she had to figure out how.

Some items were pendulums.  Give something, then take it away on the backswing.  A makeup kit that could make someone beautiful but then the beauty would fade and it would take away the original face’s beauty with it.  Bit by bit, encouraging more use, more use, more use.  Until the user took their own life, or got killed for being a monster.  Then the makeup kit would drink up the Self or the soul, using the claim it had established, position itself to be found by someone else or get moved by its creator, or it would return home for the stored power to be extracted.

In this case, that could be the flight and freedom.  The repeated visits would work.  Consequences of a pendulum were usually small and subtle at first, so people wouldn’t catch on, but would get more intense over time.

Felt like a stretch.  Usually, something imparted was a quality.  Maybe there was something to this where someone could experience flying and enjoy themselves, and the rest of the world would get less fun, but there were too many extra details.  Why have the Ornithologist?

Some items were plot items.  Cursed items that had built in stories with patterns or traps woven into them.  A cursed clown doll that would let someone invent humiliations to force on a peer in worse ways and worse ways, from blurting out something embarrassing, sudden weight gain or hair loss, wardrobe malfunctions, crapping themselves in a public place, having debit and credit cards cut off in front of people, and so on, always asked for and then enacted the next day.  The doll would always demand the wielder of the doll to escalate from the last time, but as the pattern was established, the doll would always be stolen by the target, would always be used against the original wielder.  There would always be a final confrontation, always with both the original user and the primary victim holding the doll and trying to wrest it from the other’s grip, each trying to top the other’s last stated curse, or top themselves.  And, almost inevitably, the two would invent humiliations capped off in finality.  Each stating an embarrassing death for the other.  Then the doll would go cold, and they’d have nothing left but to wait until tomorrow.  That was the pattern, and breaking from it would require tests of character and sacrifice.

There could be a plot here.  The warnings were a good sign.  So was the danger looming in the future.  But plot items tended to reward being able to step back and think about things, with clear ideas or clear morals for anyone who wasn’t too emotionally invested.  Anyone who looked at the clown doll and thought about what would happen would be able to guess a lot of it.  Or they’d know it was wrong and that they were going down a bad path by using it, but they wouldn’t care.

There wasn’t anything like that here.  It looked fun, there wasn’t anything obvious in the way of morals or lessons to be learned.

Apples or Poison Apples were a curse specialist’s term for items that generated an effect, helped an energy or effect take hold, then collected that energy.  She’d read about a crystal egg that made love cool.  Families would become cold and distant, calculating, ruthless, empathy dying for those touched by any light that hit the egg and refracted out, for anyone else also touched.  Clementine had picked up the fake flower in a plastic tube by the roadside, and it had generated an overabundance of life.  But poison apples were often very simple, beautiful objects that people wanted to keep around or keep on display just for the artistic value – that kind of aesthetic led people to put them in prominent places where they could work.  This frame and this world wasn’t that.

Trials were tests of character, where items offered power with the expectation that someone would be ruined by that power, or demanded the target learn a lesson.  Enough people would fail that the cursed item collected more power than it spent doing whatever it did.  A lot of Clementine’s items were tests of character.  The game console, the thrift store dress, the choker, the sleepy book, the key to the goblin room, the knife, the earring.  Others.  If there was a pattern for Clem’s items, it had to be something related to that.  Avery had read about a bowl that, if filled with water, could let someone see and control the dreams of someone they loved.  Writing in cuneiform around the edges of the bowl told of the rules, that it had to be someone they loved.  The test was what that love involved, and how someone would act if the love faltered.  Often, a lot of the people using the bowl would act in a way that had no love in it, for their own satisfaction or glory, with no kindness, respect, or trust.  Then, having violated the warning, they would be swallowed by the bowl and kept imprisoned in the same kinds of dreams they devised.

Trials were usually mostly solved if it was discovered what they actually did.  This wasn’t resolved by that.

There were snares, like Clementine’s possible first magic item, the videotapes that had sucked up her neighbor.  Items that closed around the user like a bear trap, slowly or quickly.  A lot of them liked to make realms, like this.  They tended to have bait or something appealing to them to lure people in as the jaws closed.  Verona had liked the idea of the oil of Aphrodite, which would enhance lovemaking between couples or help bring fantasies to vivid life for the solo lovemaker.  But the experience would be so vivid the user would lose track of time, they wouldn’t answer knocks on the door, and ran the risk of enjoying themselves to the point of wearing their genitals down to calloused or scarred over nothingness, or lovers would fuse together at the pelvis.  That sort of fit here.  But they tended to be simple.  They didn’t usually have rules like this had, beyond the one obvious one.

And there were affliction items.  Simpler still, often tying themselves to the user.  They did something had while held and were hard to get rid of.  Cherrypop’s rock.  There was no way this was an affliction item.

That left two possibilities that fit better.

Coded items had rules or codes that had to be followed.  They could be intricate and complex, or simpler, and some items of other categories often had codes or something going into them.  But a pure coded item was one that set out rules for how it was to be used, and then punished the violators.  The brownies at the Blue Heron were that.

Don’t take an item out of here, return what you borrow, gotta have paperwork for the Ornithologist…

Could be something like that.  What happened if a rule was violated?

Then there were Ferries.  Items that housed Others.  Jinn in a ring, something fairy in a music box, gremlin in a computer, echo in a piece of clothing.  The Other gave the item its power and it also gave it a more complex motive and an  intelligence.

This was all made by the Ornithologist?  The rules stem from him?  It could be an elaborate way to get his choice of food delivered into his mouth.

Like with any Other, figuring an item out could mean unraveling how to defeat it, or turn it against the person wielding it.

Thea started to make her way back, clapping as Kai hung off the propeller boat, which had flipped upside-down.

She seemed so positive.  So relaxed.

Was there another possibility?  That she was a person who had been plunged inot a screwed up, manipulative situation and come out of it screwed up and manipulated?  Taking away the wrong ideas from it all?

There was a fine line between a regular magic item that had a cost and an item that could be called cursed, because the cost was too steep or the power too tempting.  People in everyday life bought tickets to places and potentially got stranded.  At what point did that become predatory, or ‘cursed’?  When that was the explicit goal of people arranging the travel?

So much of it came down to Thea and her real intent.

Thea had spirited these kids away and there was a chance, however slim, that her intentions were misguided, her willingness to make them Aware at a risk to herself a genuine one.

Avery waved at Verona.

Verona began to make her return, swooping back toward the doorway between realities.  At the same time Thea was crossing that tightrope.  Verona’s descent was wobbly, but she managed to land, putting the sword down into the rooftop.

“Gut feeling?” Avery asked, quiet.

“Love flying.  Want to try?”

Yes.  I’ve been a bird and it’s great, though I get spooked at the idea of some hawk or owl flying down out of nowhere.  I’d love to fly without that worry, but I’d be worried about something else here.

Avery shook her head.  She murmured, “you’ve got a spot showing where she kicked you.”

Verona turned so her back was to Avery, her front to Thea, who hadn’t seemed to notice.  She smoothed the back of her top and in the process, adjusted the glamour, removing the stripe.

It was hard to imagine Thea not seeing that, somehow.  Like Avery had painted her as this sharp, dangerous person.

Had seen her as this sharp, dangerous person.  One who’d attacked her friends.

How did that square?

“We should have a race!” Kai called down.  Thea turned, standing mid-tightrope, an impossibly long fall below her, and she barely seemed to care.  “Next weekend, when we bring people!”

“Should I try to find and buy faster tools in the meantime?” Thea called out.  “I could get enough for twenty people, then let them choose.  Maybe that’s fairest.”

“Multiple rounds!” a boy called out.  He was wearing the cloak of circles.  He landed on the bottom of the boat Kai was hanging from, standing atop it.  He used his weight to help steer it toward a landing position.  “We’ll figure out what’s fastest.”

Verona let go of the sword.  The wings dissolved into little feathers that flew everywhere.  Verona was in the middle of stepping for the window when she stopped.

“Follow the rules,” Avery said, quiet.

“Yeah, was just thinking.  Check me over?”

Avery nodded.  She stepped closer, and let Verona do a slow turn, while Avery made a point of checking every inch of her.

No stray feathers.

No bits of dirt, no little things with odd textures.

“Am I okay to go back through?” Verona called out.

“Should be!” Thea called back.

That’s not a yes.

“Will you check me over to make sure?  I don’t want to screw up!” Verona called back.

Thea glanced at her.

She might suspect now.  That we’re asking too many questions or seeming too sharp about all this.

“What do you think?” Verona murmured.  “I wanted to get a look at this place.  It’s a puzzle.”

“Loops,” Avery told her.  “Few blocks this way, few blocks that way?”

“Yeah but I think that’s part of the trick,” Verona said.  “Birds in the distance, copying us?”

“Yeah.”

“I think those loops with birds mirroring us are legit loops.  But where the towers and things seem to repeat?  It’s a fake loop.”

So instead of it being tall building, short building, clocktower, repeating, where you can return some item you borrowed to any short building, it’s not actually.  It’s tall, short, clock, tall, short, clock, tall, short, clock, repeating, and when you go to return the borrowed wings to a short building, you have to find the right one when there’s two others that look near-identical.

“I’m imagining borrowing something and then the entrance, your one point of reference for things?  It might move or close or something.  Then how do you return something to its original place?  It’d be so easy to get lost with this subtle pattern of repeating buildings,” Verona said.

“You think this is nefarious?” Avery asked.

“You don’t?”

“I don’t know.  I could see a world where she’s… maybe I’m being optimistic.”

“It’d be nice if people surprised us by sucking less than they first appear,” Verona said.  “Nice, but improbable.”

Avery frowned.

All the kids who’d been flying made their approach.  The boy who’d been hogging the circle cloak seemed to be an older brother of the girl who’d last worn the winged hat.  Kai had been playing around with the boat, and another girl had been riding the cage.  They settled on nearby rooftops, then headed toward the doorway.

Thea approached as the kids came.  She gave the girl with the hat a hand, then took the hat, placing it on the rooftop next to the entrance.  Then she turned her eyes to Verona, who was head and shoulders taller than her, and somehow she came across as bigger and more intense.

“You wanted me to check?”

“I just want to be safe.”

“You take anything?”

“The sword.  But I left it there.”

“You’re safe.”

Avery exhaled slightly.  She let Verona come through.

She was left hoping none of the kids was being dumb.  She could so easily imagine a version of herself, giddy from flying and magic and fantasy, wanting to take some piece of it home.

It was only a matter of time, wasn’t it?

There was nothing saying that a cursed item couldn’t fit multiple categories.  This could be a coded item and something else.

The girl who’d worn the hat came through.  She looked a little shocked to be back in reality, blinking her eyes in the dim hallway as if she’d just stepped outside into bright light.

No trap, no consequence.

Kai was next, a lanky guy with the sides of his head shaved.  The shaving had gone up far enough it made it look like he had a slight ‘hawk.

“Gotta pee,” Kai said.

Avery backed up a bit.  What was it she and Verona had done, when rescuing Brie?  They’d had to use glamour to create fake versions of themselves.

Standing by the wall, Avery reached behind her back, and used her thumbnail to trace a hard line from the seat of her jeans up to her beltline, up the small of her back, between the shoulderblades, to the back of the neck, then to the back of her head.  Cutting into the shell of glamour she’d wrapped herself in.

Gently and carefully, she stepped back.  Leaving the disguise she’d worn standing a single pace ahead of her.

Thea was still on the other side.  Avery had to wait, watching until Thea turned her back.

She hurried, passing by Verona, reaching out-

Verona passed her the key.

It’s going to be harder to rejoin the group than to split from it.

She went after Kai, checking the coast was clear before stepping into the boy’s washroom.  The positioning of the stall walls blocked a view of all but the closest urinals, but she could tell he was there from the shadow cast from the window.

“Kai?” Avery asked, leaning against the wall.

“That’s a girl’s voice.  Uhh.”

“Sorry,” Avery said.  “But it’s important.  I need a favor.”

“Uhh.”

“This is a magic key,” Avery said.  She kept her back to Kai as she took a step to the right, reached out, and put the key on the edge of a sink.  “It helps you escape a place you’re trapped in.  Magical places you could be trapped in.”

“Uh huh?”

“I need to make sure Thea’s not tricking you all.  Let her see the key, tell her what it does, but do not tell her it came from me, please.”

“You want me to lie?”

“I need you to lie.  Things could get really bad if you don’t.  Even if she gets angry or scary, even if she gets upset, even if she threatens never to show you magic again… you can’t tell her it came from me.  You tell her you got it before you came here today.”

“Why would she get upset?”

“Kai, I think this is a trick.  Maybe not this weekend, but eventually.  We need to see how she reacts to a key that keeps you from getting trapped in a place like that.  If she gets really upset…”

“She wants to trap us?”

“But if she’s glad you’re protected but confused, that’s something else.”

“Who are you?”

“It’s honestly better if you don’t know and can’t tell her.  A friend.  Someone watching out for people.”

“Thanks, friend,” Kai said.  “Except I have a shy bladder, and this is weird enough I can’t-”

“I’ll go.”

“Thanks.”

Avery slipped outside.  And she froze as she saw a figure walking over.

That led to bewilderment, because the figure was her.

Oh.  Thanks Verona.  I was worried about how I’d get back.

The passing of the key, the way Verona had done this, it meant a lot.  Like being on a team and feeling everything click, needing to pass and the person being there, ready, anticipating that need.

Avery hurried to step back into that glamour through the slice she’d made in the back of it.  Leg into leg, other leg into other leg, arms into the armholes, shrugging-

Thea.  Adult Thea, walking over.

“Everything okay?”

She was suspicious.

And Avery was facing her, the back half of her in tatters, the glamour not sealed up behind her head, back, and butt.

“It’s a lot to think about,” Avery said.  “Confusing.  I don’t know what to think.”

About you.

“I remember feeling similar once.”

“When you first found this place?”

“It’s an item, not a place.  I just bring it here because it’s close to my place, but it’s accessible, and there are a lot of conveniences nearby.”

“A good while ago, when I was about as old as those younger children, I got my first taste of a magical world.  I made mistakes.  Lost myself.”

Avery frowned.

Thea paced a little.  Avery did her best to stand so Thea wouldn’t see behind her, but at the same time, she needed to keep it so that Kai wouldn’t either, if he stepped out of the bathroom.  But stepping back and retreating made it seem like she was afraid of Thea, which would only make Thea more suspicious.

She was already pretty sure Thea was suspicious.

“I didn’t take it seriously enough, my friends died.  Or I took it too seriously.  I want every visitor to these little worlds to enjoy themselves, while I handle the parts that need good judgement and responsibility.”

Technically you could be saying that even if you wanted to feed them to that world.

“Why do you look like a kid in there?” Avery asked.  Which is it?  Is that your real Self, now, like Lucy’s hair is pink to Sight and augury a lot of the time?  Or is there another reason?

“Why are you here?” Thea asked.  “Normally the only people who could get here are the ones who’d decide to fly.”

Do you mean your moon-shaped connection block would scare away the sorts of people who’d hang back and ask a lot of questions?

“My friend.”

I wouldn’t have made it this far without Verona.  I wouldn’t be here without her.

“Friends are so hard to find, so easy to lose,” Thea said.

Especially if you murder them.

“Why are you a kid in there?” Avery asked again.

Kai stepped outside of the bathroom, and looked a little weirded out to see what looked like a teenager and an adult talking a few paces from he door.

Avery’s glamour was still open at the back.

“Don’t we all wish we could go back a bit?”

Avery shook her head, then reconsidered.

If she could go back to the end of summer?  Maybe.  But…

“I’d rather focus on where I’m at right now.  The past… betrayals-”

She thought of Olivia.  Of leaving Lucy and Verona.  How weary Verona seemed deep down.  How hurt.

“-doesn’t fix anything to dwell on them.”

“You live in the moment, but you won’t fly?”

Avery shook her head.  There was a whole complicated answer to that she wasn’t ready to give to someone who might be an enemy.

“Everything okay?” Kai asked.

“Yes,” Thea said.  “Things are fine.  Come.  We can talk about plans.”

Then she turned, walking away.

Kai, who looked eleven or twelve, frowned at Avery.

Listen to those instincts, Avery thought.  You seem like a good guy, but I bet you’re wondering a lot about stuff.

She felt the ragged edges of the glamour flutter as if Kai’s attention was a strong wind and the tattered edges were blowing in it.

Except maybe don’t think too hard about how this girl with purple hair might be the girl who gave you the key.

“Go on,” she said.

He frowned, then hurried back.

Avery sighed and then quickly fixed up the glamour at the back, following.

“We can bring others?” the younger sister of the circle cloak boy asked.

“Yes,” Thea said.  “But you can’t tell them anything.  Not even a little, to get their interest.  Not even a hint.  And you can’t force them to come.  If they want to leave or if they change their mind, don’t drag them after you.”

Relying on the ward to filter out people? Avery wondered.

Or is it not wanting to be responsible for people who won’t enjoy it?

“Should we bring anything?” the older brother asked.

“Only yourself and your bravest friends.”

“I had something I wanted to ask,” Kai said.

“Yes?” Thea asked.

“A few days ago… someone gave me this.”

He looked so nervous.

He showed her the key.

Thea’s eyes flashed.  They became like little stone orbs with maps carved into them, turning rapidly in the sockets.

“Where did you get that?”

“It was given to me.”

Kai went silent, shaking his head.

“That’s a key meant to help you escape a trap,” Thea said.  “This place was never meant to keep you prisoner, Kai.  But the fact you have that and someone gave it to you or left it for you means someone thinks it might be.”

“Yeah, and… I don’t know,” Kai said.  “Why would they think that?”

“Because it’s not unheard of.  It’s part of why there are rules.  These things can go wrong.  I’ve experienced that.  I was telling our new acquaintance that.”

“You made mistakes,” Avery said.

“Rules help these things go smoothly.  Knowing every variable helps them go smoothly.  Otherwise they can end in tears.  Now we’ve got two variables I don’t understand.  A key out of nowhere, and two strangers who showed up unexpectedly.”

“I’m confused,” Kai said.

“So am I, Kai,” Thea replied.  “I have to call this off.  We’re done, until I can figure this out.  I won’t risk something unexpected happening.”

The other three children protested, while Kai looked stricken.  A few angry eyes turned toward Avery and Verona.

The glamour was secure-ish, but Kai’s attention still made it tremble.

These kids are Aware.  Thea showed them magic.  They might not have any special rules to them, but I’m definitely feeling pressure from Kai.  Maybe because I gave him a bit more of a hint than the rest.

“Go home.  Don’t bother coming back.  I don’t expect to return here.”

“Kai, just tell her!” the girl who’d had the butterfly hat raised her voice.

“Please,” the other girl said.

“Bud,” the guy told him.

Kai looked like he might never have experienced peer pressure once in his life before, and how he faced the pressure of three kids who thought they might lose magic.

“Is there a compromise?” Verona asked, wearing her guise of some dark, bespectacled teenager.

“Go home.  We’re done,” Thea said.  She sounded so bitter.

“Kai!” the other guy shouted.  “Seriously, what the hell!?  Just explain!”

“Easy does it,” Verona said.  “Getting angry won’t fix anything.”

“Screw off!  You’re part of what’s ruining this!  You two and Kai keeping some secret!”

It felt too manipulative.  Avery could imagine seeing Thea as someone who’d maybe gone off the deep end as a kid, and was trying to do a mini-replay of that.  A little pocket world with something fun, a bunch of friends together, and a chance to be responsible.  Being a kid again would fit into that.

But it felt too manipulative.

“Kai!” the guy said.  “If you screw this up, we’re done.  Friendship over.”

“No-” Avery started.  At the same time Thea whirled on him, an angry expression.

Thea glanced at Avery, the angry expression fading.  Thea looked at Kai, then at the boy.  “Don’t ever turn your back on friends.  Treasure it.  It’s too important.  It’s too lonely.  Take it from me.”

“Just tell us, Kai,” the younger sister of circle boy said.

“In the bathroom-” Kai started.

Avery was very still.

“-A few days ago, after school…” Kai went on, eyes on the floor of the mall.

“I’m so disappointed, Kai,” Thea said, turning away.  She touched the frame that was stretching out to create the fake world, then resized it, pulling on the side like she was closing a sliding door.  The frame narrowed, she reached up, and made it small.  As she did, the scene got smaller.

She pulled it away from the wall, and it looked like the fabric of reality tore and rippled a bit, before healing.  Leaving only a doorway into an empty, dark storefront in a dying mall.  She held a picture of clockwork birds drawn in shadows of brown, flying over a city of steam and clocktowers, about a foot and a half across by two feet.

The other boy looked so angry.

“If you’re going to lie to my face, at least lie well,” Thea said.

“I’m not lying-”

She moved like she was going to slap him or strike him with the wooden frame of the painting.  But she wasn’t.  In the same motion she swung, Thea released the painting.

Letting it expand as it flew.  A doorway, hurled straight at Avery and Verona.

The frame swept past them, and the world cast into the shades of brown and pencil outlines.  Avery felt her stomach lurch as she fell, dropping about a foot onto a sloped surface.  Verona just barely in arm’s reach.

Verona was worse at the whole balance, agility, not dying from falls thing.  Avery’s initial instinct was to reach out.  She pushed Verona hard, toward the side of the roof, helping to arrest Verona’s fall at the cost of accelerating her own.  Verona caught and hugged a bit of pipe.

And Avery fell backwards toward the edge of the roof.  Her back slapped hard against the shingles, and fingers scraped the surface in desperate hope for purchase.  A mental image of Snowdrop almost falling off the bed leaped into her mind.

The connection wasn’t there.

She used her Sight, adding the mist of it to the mist of this place, high enough to flirt with the lowest rooftops.  She saw the connection, spotted the little doorway that was already closing.

Snow! she reached.  Aiming for the doorway, and the connections extending through it.

Snow reached back at the same moment she reached.  Giving her everything.  All the good stuff Snow had to offer.

Avery’s foot hooked on the edge of the roof.  She swung down violently, upside-down-

Stay calm.  Picture the opossum hanging from its tail.

And caught the frame of a window with both hands.  As her legs swung down, Avery managed to bring one down onto the base of the window.  A tense, awkward position hanging off the vertical face of a building.

She considered using the black rope, but this world had its denizens and they watched her.  People with gas masks shaped like bird faces, and people with pigeon heads, and pigeons with very serious human faces.

There was a glimpse of Verona’s face.  An expression Verona had worn, thinking that Avery had fallen.  Then the expression fell away.  Masked.

Leaving Avery all the more worried about what else Verona might be hiding.

A concern for later.

For now, Thea was doing something, and the clocks were ticking down in increments of seconds, not minutes.  And the doorway was distant and disappearing.  She crawled at first up the steep slope of the roof, pulled her black rope out of her bag, and kept it on hand, just in case.  Out of sight.

“I don’t know who you are,” Thea said.  Her voice came from the direction of the little doorway, but it sounded like it came from right next to Avery.  “But I was never going to keep them, or imprison them.  I was only going to have him snip off the wings and hamstrings of their souls.  I need the materials, you have to understand.  They’d live, the fact they know about magic would cease to matter, and I can build something important.  Now I’ll have to make do with snippings off your souls.  And I’m going to have to put them somewhere to dispose of them.  Their lives are on your heads now.”

“Ave,” Verona said.

Avery turned.

Behind them, a tear in the sky.  Black, when the darkest shadow in this place was otherwise a dark brown.

He emerged like water from a faucet, flowing down in pencil scratches and blackness.  Then he stood straighter, standing on a rooftop, about four or five stories tall.  Pencil scratches drew circles and shivering Leonardo da Vinci style markings and lines in the air around him.

“Guess this is a ferry type cursed item,” Avery said.  “Vessel for that guy.”

“Yeah,” Verona said, still hugging the pipe.

“We knew this might happen.  I think I can get us out, but I think you gotta-”

The tall, gaunt Ornithologist turned his head.  Mist moved as if getting out of his way.

“-stall for me.”

“Tall order,” Verona said.  “Okay.”

Next Chapter