Chapter 49
The Lost Phone
When Not-Finn came back from Bellingham with his “family” late Sunday afternoon, he ran over to the Saunders’ place to see Not-Jack. Oddly, Not-Finn was starting to think of Mr and Mrs Jones as family. He didn’t have much to compare them to, but they were nice enough and seemed to care in their own uninvolved way. They were okay.
Not-Finn pushed open Not-Jack’s bedroom door.
Not-Jack was splayed out across his bed with joystick in hand and staring intently at a game monitor.
“Hey Jackie – have you seen my phone?” Not-Finn plopped down on the bed next to him. “I haven’t seen it since we hung out yesterday. I think I left it here.”
“Can’t say I’ve seen it, Finney-Boy” Not-Jack didn’t lift his eyes from the game screen. He was playing a new one: Big-Boobed Banshee Babes vs the Bar Room Brawlers, where drunken Irish pub-goers tried to down as many shots as they could – all the while not getting hit by acid squirting out of banshee boobs.
“Hmm, can’t think where I left it then.” Not-Finn mused getting up to leave. “Maybe I left my phone at Millie’s.”
“Hey!” Not-Jack hurriedly grabbed Not-Finn’s sleeve (totally screwing up and allowing his brawler to be caught by his wife and removed from the game). “Uh, no, um... I’m sure you had it while you were here. And you didn’t go back to Millie’s before you left for Bellingham did you?”
“No.” Not-Finn sat down again. “We left when I got home.”
“Don’t worry, it will turn up. Play with me! I’ve another controller here.” Not-Jack scrambled to find the second controller.
“Big-Boobed Banshees? I can’t believe that your parents let you get it.” Not-Finn looked at the video game box which left nothing to the imagination.
Not-Jack laughed. “Ha! They bought it for me! They said no at first, but all I had to do was mention liking boys and suddenly they decided to support my interest in boobs!”
“Are you interested in girls?”
“I don’t know. It just looked like a fun game – and I like yanking their chain. This game’s crazy!” Not-Jack shouted with success as his new brawler pushed an opponent into the path of an acid stream.
Not-Finn watched the game play. “I hate losing my phone.”
Not-Jack ignored him.
“What’s up?” Not-Finn looked at him. “You seem on edge.”
“Ah, nothin’,” Not-Jack lied. “I’m good.”
He handed Not-Finn the second controller. “Take over Harry McDangle – his character has a stash of milk to help him hold his liquor better. He doesn’t fall down as much as the others The hardest brawlers are the ones who have to pee all the time as they’re standing ducks for the banshees.”
Not-Finn joined in. Acid shooting boobs were awesome.
Chapter 50
Out Of Body
Discoveries
Mordette was as surprised as anyone when she finally transformed into a wish. Maybe it was the impact of Asphixia’s bolt of magic that did it.
And to transform in mass with fourteen fuzzy-wiggles surrounding her made the experience even more bizarre. They were all triggered to burst into wishes as well. She could hear all fourteen of them shouting and arguing inside of her golden being. They were just as confused as she was. Somehow, they had all become one creature.
One giant wish. The biggest wish that she’d ever heard of.
It immediately became apparent that they had to work together, or all they accomplished was to wobble back and forth in the air like too many fuzzy-wiggles in a giant amoeba costume.
But, they’d seen the danger for the brave boy. The big blue giantess was about to blast him. The fuzzy-wiggles remembered the boy. They liked him. Without discussion they unanimously swooped in and carried him to the roof.
After more tedious argument, they also agreed to fly up into the island, let down the staircase for the children and animals, and then when the queen appeared, they carried the group up the steps to temporary safety.
But Mordette had been extremely frustrated with the process since then. She’d had no idea how challenging it was to be a wish. It was not efficient to discuss every single action before it was committed. She wasn’t even counting all the quiet whispering voices from the wishes that they each had eaten over the course of their lives.
She now understood that wishes were more about fulfilling desire, than initiating desire. There were too many voices in her head! She felt helpless as the horrible battle played out below her.
Chapter 51
Convergence
The floating island and its staircase beckoned with an offer of safety. It was magical to see it suspended over the castle ramparts in the luminous twilight. Jack and the fluffball kids raced towards its sanctuary.
Bolts of blue energy slammed into the stonework around them.
The steps to the island exploded in blue flames. The blast blew Jack against a low parapet which surrounded the ruins of the rooftop gardens. Bilbe, Dilbe, and Lilbe scurried behind a pile of rubble. It was a sheer drop beyond the low wall.
“Fred, Fred, Fred!” The Blue Queen sweetly stepped closer to him. “You’ve been problematic since the day you arrived.”
There was no where for Jack to go.
She smiled and pointed at him. “It’s time for you to die, Fred.” Her voice shifted, “Die! Fred, Die!”
But Jack didn’t die.
She shook her hand like there was something wrong with it. She looked quite annoyed. “Your name isn’t Fred, is it?”
“No.”
“I’m so tired of creatures who lie to me!” she screamed. She fired a blast at the island above and clods of dirt tumbled down on him.
Jack noticed that only her upper body glowed now. From their conversation, he suspected that she’d eaten a wish – but she was a big girl. Maybe it wouldn’t go very far with her? Between the lightning bolts, increasing her size, and smashing through the castle roof without injury... maybe soon she’d lose her new powers! But he knew that even without the extra magic that she’d be an awful adversary.
He felt like a mouse trapped by a cat. She was enjoying this. She sent a blast to the right of him, then a blast to the left. She enjoyed that he was terrified.
The giantess began to playfully walk away then turned to fire a paralyzing bolt, but the boy wasn’t there!
One of the vast tangle of roots from the underside of the island had snaked down, wrapped around Jack and yanked him up into its root mass. Jack looked down and gaped. The canyon floor was hundreds of feet below him. It was a precarious position within the upside down jungle of dirt and roots.
“Thanks?” he whispered to the root as it released him – not sure where to focus in a world where anything could be sentient. Where does a root do its decision making? The roots just looked like normal roots.
Crash! Jack grabbed the closest root and hung on while his feet scrambled for a better foothold among the flailing roots.
A bolt from the hysterical Blue Queen had hit the island with blinding blue light and everything rocked.
Then from another direction:
BOOM!
Something hit the ground near the queen and exploded.
Jack looked to where the sound originated. What fresh hell was this?
At that moment a small pirate ship complete with its own bit of ocean rose above the battlements at the far side of the castle. It was flying!
Jack couldn’t believe it!
The Blue Queen was shocked as well as the tiny ship’s cannons sent a rain of cannon balls at the giantess. She sent an electrical storm of bolts right back at them which set some of the sails alight.
A small longboat skimmed out of the blackness on the other side of the castle as the ship cannons fired their loads. The boat
flew across the courtyard while the Queen was distracted and a tall figure jumped to the ground. It landed with a clumsy roll but jumped up with something in its arms.
A flying rowboat? The person still in it was pulling at the oars as fast as he could row. It was flying in Jack’s direction.
The root on which Jack stood sank as if someone else had placed weight on it. He twisted around and narrowly missed a wild knife slash. It was his old cell mate!
“What the hell is your issue?!” Jack shouted. “I rescued you! Get away from me!”
The crazed man lunged toward him again with the sharp blade. Jack tried to escape to adjoining roots. Balancing was tough on the bouncing branches.
“I got up here quick with the wee ones! I’ve been waiting for you!” The man swung at him again.
Jack didn’t swing back far enough and the blade gashed his forearm. “Ow!”
“Nasty human!” screamed the phooka in human guise.
Jack apron’s ties kept catching on knobby outgrowths. It was a long way down if he slipped.
The man forced his way closer to Jack. He pushed the boy towards the end of a root with nowhere to go.
“Humans are responsible for everything evil in Frey!” screamed the man.
Jack couldn’t step back any farther without letting go of the branch above him.
“Jack! Jump!” came a voice. Finn’s voice.
Jack pivoted to one side but before he could even look to see where Finn was, the man madly lunged with the knife and lost his footing.
Time seemed to stop as Jack’s eyes met those of the mad man who twisted and grabbed at air. Screeching he fell off the swaying root that they’d been balancing on.
The man plunged towards the small boat which floated in the air below. But, instead of landing in it he hit the jury-rigged plank that hung over the sides of the boat – flipping the entirety out of the floating pond, sending both the ex-prisoner and Finn into the abyss.
Jack screamed, “NO!”
Finn was a falling speck below. Jack reached out! The wish that he’d been holding onto burst through his veins and out through his hand and Finn stopped suddenly in mid-air above the rocks below. And like a powerful magnet that only attracted merboys, Finn was yanked up at heart-stopping speed to Jack’s perch in the roots, and gently into Jack’s embrace.
“Finn!” Jack cried.
“Jack!” Finn gasped. Finn couldn’t believe that he’d finally found him. He couldn’t believe what just happened.
They held each other like they’d never let go.
* * * *
Meanwhile, Footbe had jumped to the roof while sticky cannon balls distracted the Queen. He pulled up his shotgun and fired at the giantess.
This shotgun was his own invention. Instead of cartridges filled with standard shot, the cartridges were filled with small balls that exploded into incredibly sticky webs. One little web wouldn’t go far on the giantess, but hundreds of remarkably sticky nets were quite effective.
He shot cartridge after cartridge.
She tried to pull them off but the more she tried, the more stuck to herself she got. She toppled with a crash and lay near the edge of the hole in the roof.
The giant lizard-woman lay there panting. She glared at the phooka with venom. “Pytharus, how I hate you!” she hissed. “I loved you once! But no more!” she screamed with narrowed eyes.
Though incapacitated, the Blue Queen could still utter her wish through clenched teeth. “Die Pytharus! Die!”
The phooka laughed and tilted his head. “I’m not Pytharus.”
With her words, the real Pytharus conveniently died before he hit the floor of the canyon and the magic-nullifying collar about his neck broke open. The phooka in front of the Queen faded and a human form appeared.
“James?” whispered the shocked Queen.
Footbe shot her in the mouth so many times she could not utter another word.
“If you kill me, you and the Frits will die.”
But Asphixia was past caring. And she was still glowing. And sometimes thoughts are as powerful as spoken words.
Footbe gasped and sank to the ground unconscious.
She didn’t care if James was the one who had created the Frit. She’d left them long ago.
* * * *
Gibbie had directed the cannonball barrage from the forecastle. But the Wishermans had been practically hanging off the ship’s rail looking for any sign of their kids, and Jenny had been trying to keep them from falling overboard.
“Ah sees ‘em! Mamy, ah sees ‘em,” shouted Papy.
“Where? Where be ma babies?!” wailed Mamy.
“‘hind that thar rubble!” Papy shouted.
Before Jenny could stop him, and while Footbe was still firing off shots at the Blue Queen and avoiding her blasts, Papy jumped into the water around the ship and Mamy jumped after him. They dog-paddled to the edge of the water which hung suspended over the castle roof courtyard. The two wet fluffballs jumped down to the roof and ran to where their children were hiding. They gathered them up in unending hugs despite the battle going on with the Queen.
Bilbe, Dilbe, and Lilbe were so happy to see their parents that they didn’t complain of wet parental embraces.
Jenny impulsively jumped after the Wishermans and now was crouched beside the reunited family. She cheered when Footbe regained his human form, but when he fell Jenny ran to him.
It was in this instant that the whirling tornado of Redduns appeared. A swirling blur of wicked teeth and sharp weapons.
* * * *
Hovering above all of this was the giant golden wish that was once Mordette and fourteen fuzzy-wiggles.
She watched the violence below with dismay and frustration as she couldn’t do anything about it! Actions had to be unanimous. She had briefly succeeded in getting the team to animate a tree root to rescue the boy. But the fuzzy-wiggles insisted on discussing every proposed action and could rarely find agreement.
George’s voice chiding, “Oh, theeey’ll work it all out. It’sss not reeally our affair. Weee did our bit.”
Somewhere Beatrice was whispering about how none of this was what she’d expected.
Burt was speculating as to whether wishes needed or even used bathrooms. “What do you mean it’s not an important question! Seems important considering how many of us are in here!”
Mordette was ready to scream – till they all felt a pull.
“Somebody just used a wish!” noted an excited Trisha.
“Amazing how you can feel it – even up here!” said Burt.
“It’s that boy. The one we like,” mumbled Teddy.
“He just used it to rescue that other boy,” said Lance.
George reflected. “He’sss the one who rescued usss from our cagesss.”
“He isss nisscsse,” agreed Beatrice.
For once they were all in perfect agreement on what they wanted to do.
* * * *
Finn pulled back to see Jack better – but he didn’t let go. “I was afraid I’d never see you again. Ha! Pinkcheeks! Why are you almost naked!?” Finn laughed, reached around the apron and spanked Jack on the butt.
Jack turned red. He pulled Finn deeper into the roots where they’d be out of sight from the queen below. “That’s what I get for saving your life? Mr ripped-Hawaiian-boxers?” Jack suddenly noticed Finn’s pale skin. “Your skin – what happened to your legs?”
Finn cringed. “My real mom’s a mermaid...”
“Really? That’s – uh –” Jack was speechless for a moment, but saw Finn’s wide eyes and pulled him close. “That’s amazing! And we’ve found each other! We can find Jenny and go home. Our parents have got to be crazy worried by now.”
“Jenny’s here! I left her on the boat!” He pointed at the pirate ship.
Then
they both saw a small figure running across the ruined rooftop gardens.
“Is that Jenny?” Jack cried, “She’ll get killed! Who is she with? That’s the psycho prisoner who – how did he get back up there? JENNY! Get away from him!!” He shouted.
Finn looked to see what Jack was pointing at. “Oh! No – that’s – wow –that’s what my dad looks like! No – not my foster dad! My dad! Jack, I can’t explain now! Trust me – that’s not who you think it is!”
That’s when the red tornado of snot and terrible pointed weapons appeared, and also when a giant golden cloud fluttered between the boys and the action below.
If wishes were capable of speech perhaps they would have explained what their intentions were. But wishes are not capable of speech and Jack had no warning.
“Hey!” Jack pleaded with the enormous wish blocking their view. “Get out of the way! I can’t see what’s going o– !”
The giant golden mass burst into little stars and funneled itself into Jack’s surprised open mouth and filled him. The massive golden wish saturated every molecule of his being while Jack choked in terror, and Finn screamed with horror.
This was nothing compared to the experience with Pinkie. Light Burst through Jack’s pores and pushed Finn back with a blast. Fortunately he caught a loop of roots before he fell from the tangled nest. He held on tight and tried to understand what was happening to Jack.
This time Jack didn’t pass out! It was like he’d just drank twenty cups of coffee! Or a million cups of coffee! The root branches had marvelous textures he hadn’t noticed before. He noticed a boy nearby barely hanging to one of the roots below and he ordered another root to snake over and give more support and pull him to safety. He thought the boy’s name was Finn. Yes, it was Finn.
“I think I know you,” he said to the boy.
Finn was speechless.
God-Jack turned his eyes to the scene below on the castle roof where everything had stopped.
Redduns, Jenny, the Wishermans, the pirate ship and even the Blue Queen looked up with the sound of the blast and the scream, and all of them shrank back when they saw the golden being who floated above with no visible means of support. The being was so bright it hurt their eyes. It impassively looked down at the scene below.
Olly, Olly, Oxen Frey Page 27