by Dawn Napier
"Everyone okay?" she asked with her heavy, toothy muzzle.
Jack slid down off her back. The lantern was in his hand, and Debbie still clung to his neck. "We're all right," he said. "You?"
The Beast Below subsided, and Megan shivered and scrubbed at herself with her palms. She felt cold and icky. At least she still had clothes on this time. Why was that? Never mind; she'd probably never learn all the rules about this place. "I think I got bitten a few times," she said. She looked down at her ankles. "Little bastards."
They stood together in silence for a moment and contemplated the deep, black chasm. There wasn't much to contemplate; it was nothing but blank emptiness. Megan wasn't sure where it began or ended; it was a sort of vague black smear that sent chills across her skin and made her feel colder. The white-eyed shadows skirted it, creating a shifting border that moved with the motion of the lantern in Jack's hand.
She backed away. "I think we need to get away from that," she said.
"Agreed." In the yellow light of the lantern, Jack looked sallow and a little sick. "There's nothing there that can hurt you, but it could hurt me."
"Why's that?" Megan followed Jack away from the chasm. Debbie let go of Jack and latched back onto her waist. Megan stroked her hair.
"That chasm is one of the edges of this world. Beyond the darkness is the Place Between Worlds, where raw energy comes from. If I fall in there, I go back to the state in which I existed before you dreamed me up."
"So—nothingness."
"More or less."
"But I don't understand. Far Faraway doesn't have any edges. I drew a picture of it once. It's like a ball turned inside out. Or something. An inverse planet. Didn't I do that?"
"She’s been fucking around too much. Now there are cracks and holes where there shouldn't be, where there weren’t any before."
Fucking she. Megan had no idea who She was, but if she ever saw her, she'd kick Her ass.
Then she heard the cry, and every other thought was driven completely out of her mind.
"Mommy!"
"Paige!" Megan screamed. She started to run, but Jack grabbed her.
"Remember what happened when you left the path? It could be a trap."
"Mommy!" Paige's voice cut into Megan, tore into her soul and flayed her heart like no other pain on earth. But she listened to Jack. If it really was Paige, she was probably being used as bait for a trap. Slow and cautious was the way to proceed.
Still, her heart banged against her breastbone as though it were trying to escape and run to her daughter by itself.
"Paige? Where are you, honey?" Megan called. She relaxed and Jack let go of her. Debbie released her waist and took her by the hand.
"I don't know! It's dark. I think I'm in a cage. There are metal bars everywhere."
Megan walked in the direction of the voice. "Watch for a light, baby. Tell me when you see it." The lantern's light didn't extend very far here. It was as though the darkness was thicker. The white-eyed shadows loomed and gawped over them. Still they did nothing. What were they? Watchers, maybe. Spies for the mysterious She, the Dead Goddess.
It was warmer here at least. The air was warm and dry and smelled faintly of dust. It smelled like the first day of cold weather, when the furnace got turned on for the first time in months. Megan hated that smell. Her heart thumped a little faster. She didn't like this place and didn't want to be here. She wanted to go home. It had been wrong to come here. If something bad happened, it would be all her fault. She wanted to go home, and she wanted to go right now.
But she couldn’t leave Paige. She would not leave her here alone. She inched forward through the thick, dusty darkness.
Debbie's grip on her hand tightened. "Megan, I'm afraid," she whispered. "Can we go home?"
Megan's face felt numb, as though shot full of Novocain. She opened her mouth, and she couldn't believe what came out. "Don't be such a baby, Debs. Uncle Glen's a good guy. He said he's going to give me the money I need for that bike. And he's got a present for you."
"It's not my birthday."
"No, but it's coming in a couple of weeks. He probably wants to give it to you early."
"NO!" Megan screamed. "No, God damn it! I won't go through that again!"
"Megan, I don't like Uncle Glen."
"Debbie, don't be such a baby. Come on. It's just a little walk. We'll be back before Mom gets home from work."
"God damn it, Glen, where are you?" Megan shouted. "I know you're here somewhere, that's how this works, right? We're in the Dungeon Deep. We're in my ten year old's version of Hell. So I have to re-live my worst memories before I can get to Paige. I know. I invented this world, and I know the rules.
"Well FUCK YOU! I re-live that day every single time I close my eyes. So fuck you and fuck the rules. Just come out, Glen, so I can give you the ass-kicking you should have gotten while you were alive."
A low, purring growl, and a dark, furry shape with glowing blue eyes slinked into view. "Here I am," BigBad the Wolf said. "Now about that ass-kicking—"
And he charged, jaws agape.
Chapter Twenty
The wolf's eyes glowed a brilliant, furious blue. His mouth opened, and Megan saw straight into its toothed gap of a maw. His paws were enormous, and they spread out like furry hands.
Megan braced herself. She had no idea what she would do or how she would fight this monster. But she would not run, and she would not hide. She was done with both. She was going to face this nightmare, and she was going to fucking kill him.
She just didn't know how.
As BigBad slammed into her, she grabbed his muzzle in both hands. They fell to the floor together, and sharp pebbles cut into her back. She shoved his muzzle closed, but BigBad shook his head loose and came in for another bite. She punched him in the wet, black nose, and he jerked back with a growl.
Meanwhile, the wolf had her pinned, and his claws were gouging into her flesh. There was no way she could fight him off with brute strength. Skyclad, Kyria, even the Beast Below could not help her this time. Not against BigBad. He was everything evil in Far Faraway—and other places, too. She was Megan, only Megan, and she had to win as Megan.
Jack and Debbie were somewhere nearby; she could see the light from the lantern moving back and forth. But they couldn’t help her either. Jack was just a figment of her imagination, and Debbie needed to be protected. Even if Megan died trying, she would protect her sister.
BigBad snapped his teeth and managed to score a bite on her arm. Megan shouted with pain. This was no good. She had to use her head and think of a way to beat him. That was how it was always done in Far Faraway. Blood flowed from her hands and arm, and BigBad salivated. His breath smelled like damp rot and cigarettes.
The chasm was just a few body lengths away. Jack said it was an edge, some sort of crack in Far Faraway. There was nothing down there but formless energy. If Jack would dissolve into energy if he fell down there, would BigBad do the same?
That was what BigBad was: energy. Energy and nothingness and rage. It was time for him to go home. Back to where he belonged.
Megan sat up as much as she could and wrapped her arms around the wolf's furry neck. Now he smelled like cigarettes, wet dog, and tequila. Megan's stomach lurched at the smell, and her heart raced. But she held on. BigBad tried to back away, but Megan held on tightly. Then she lashed out with her legs and rolled them both over across the floor. Where was it? Maybe it was too far away. No, it was just a few feet away. Here!
The edge of the chasm was sharp as metal, and Megan screamed as she and BigBad fell over the edge and into the darkness of the Place Between Worlds.
BigBad screamed, a very human sound. He screamed and screamed as they fell through the cold, windy dark. Megan felt his fur loosen and soften under her hands. Then his screams faded, and she could feel nothing at all. Nothing but blank, black nothingness. BigBad the Wolf was gone.
He was gone, but Megan remained. Where was she? Nowhere. She was in the Place
Between Worlds. She'd fallen off the map. How could she get back to the Dungeon Deep so that she could find Paige?
It was completely silent down here. She didn't even feel like she was falling. If not for the unsettling feeling of motion in her stomach, she would feel like she was hanging still. Like a puppet on a string. Megan waved her arms around cautiously, and someone grabbed her wrist. She squeaked as her arm jerked in its socket, and a strong hand caught her other wrist. There was a gentle sensation of being pulled upward, and suddenly Megan was bathed in white light. She squinched her eyes shut, and when she was able to open them, she felt solid ground beneath her feet.
"Megan!" Her rescuer released her hands and grabbed her around the neck. "Megan, you made it! I knew you would."
Megan's face was full of dark, frizzy hair. It took her a moment to respond. She leaned back a bit so she could see her rescuer's face. "Debbie," she said. Adult Debbie. The Debbie who had polished off a bottle of tequila and then jumped out of her bedroom window after scrawling the word GOODBYE on her kitchen black board. Megan should have known that her dead sister would show up eventually.
"Yeah! Can you believe it? I didn't know if it would work, but it did! And now you're here, so everything is perfect!"
Debbie tried to hug her again, but Megan stepped back and stared at her hard. Debbie's face was fair and pretty as ever, but there were dark blue circles under her eyes and a trace of red at the corner of her mouth. Still, she looked pretty good for a woman who had done a nosedive out of a ten-story window the week before.
"You're Her, aren't you?" Megan said. "The 'she' everyone keeps talking about. Gillio called you the Dead Goddess."
"Yeah, people around here have a fancy name for everything. That was always your thing, wasn't it?"
"You are dead, though, aren't you?"
"I suppose." Debbie shrugged. "But that doesn't matter now. You're here, so Far Faraway is finally perfect. I've been working on it for ages."
Megan managed to look away from her dead sister long enough to take in their surroundings. She was not at all surprised to see that they were in Debbie's old bedroom from the old house. When they'd lost the house and had to move to an apartment, Megan and Debbie had been forced to share a room. It had led to more than one bitter fight, several tantrums, and at least one classic Mom Spanking. If Debbie were going to create an idealized picture of her childhood, it would definitely look like that fluffy pink confection Debbie had been forced to leave behind.
The bed was enormous, almost as tall as they were, and its bright pink comforter was covered with every stuffed animal imaginable. Megan recognized a few of them, like the one-eyed bunny Debbie had dragged around for most of her toddler years. Others were exquisitely fancy, unlike anything their mother would have bought for her, and didn’t ring a bell in her memory. Maybe this room contained both the toys she'd owned and the ones she'd wanted to own. The fluffy pink curtains covered the windows completely.
If she pulled one of those curtains back, what would she see? A magical fairy land, or nothing at all?
Debbie walked away and spun around like a princess in a children's musical. "Isn't it wonderful? I never thought Heaven would look like this! I might have killed myself a long time ago."
"Debbie," Megan said carefully, "do you think this is Heaven?"
"Oh I know it's actually Far Faraway, that make-believe place you and I used to play at. But it's Heaven to me. Especially this room. It took a lot of work to fix it just right. I think it needed you here to make it perfect." She sounded exactly as Megan remembered from their happiest times: bubbly and hopeful, expecting the world and getting it most of the time.
"So you have seen the rest of Far Faraway. You've seen what it looks like now."
Debbie shrugged. "I don't care. I've finally got my room the way I want it. It's not like the rest of it's real. It doesn't matter what it looks like."
That didn’t sound like Debbie at all. Megan frowned. Debbie had always loved all of Far Faraway, not just one little hidden corner of it.
"Debbie, where's Paige? Do you know what happened to her?"
"I have no idea." Debbie's eyes ran up the wall and fixed on a point on the distant ceiling. "Did Jack do something to her?" She twirled her hair.
Debbie had always twirled her hair and avoided eye contact when she was nervous or struggling to come up with a cover story. Megan put her face very close to hers.
"Debbie, what did you do with Paige?"
"Nothing!" Debbie still wouldn't look her in the eye. "I just told Jack to come get you. I told him to use one of your adopted kids as bait if he had to. Then I told him to put her someplace safe where you wouldn't find her. She's fine; you know I'd never hurt a kid."
"And then you put some sort of geas on him so that he couldn't tell me what he did."
"You make it sound so sinister. I just made up a story about him. Like you used to do all the time. Anyway, now you're here, and everything's perfect."
"Everything's not perfect!" Megan took her by the shoulder and shook her a little. "Far Faraway is completely fucked up. I don't know if it's your bad memories or mine or maybe both, but it is not like when we were kids. Debbie, we're grown-ups now. We don't belong here."
Debbie's face was red and sullen. She looked like the world's largest four year old. "I should have known you'd try to ruin everything. You always were a party pooper."
Megan slowly released her sister. "I'm not trying to ruin everything. I just want my daughter back."
"But then you'll leave. You'll take her back to the real world and leave me alone here."
Megan had no answer for that.
"This is just like when the bad thing happened. You left me then, too."
"I ran all the way home to get help! I didn't know what to do."
"You left me alone with him."
"He said that if I told anyone, he'd kill you."
"He said if I told anyone, he'd kill you. But first he'd do what he did to me."
"I ran out the door," Megan whispered. "I ran all the way home. I fell down and puked from running so hard. I'm sorry I left you."
"But now you're here," Debbie whispered back. "You won't leave me alone. Will you?"
Megan's eyes stung with tears. "Debbie, you're dead. I'm alive. I can't stay with you. I have to find my daughter. I'm so sorry."
"Fine!" Debbie shoved her away, so hard that Megan fell backwards against the bed. "I don't need you anyway. I never did. I can make up my own stories now. So fuck you and fuck your so-called daughter!"
The bed was warm and soft, so soft that Megan could not push herself off of it. It was like sinking in marshmallow fluff. She thrashed around with arms and legs, but she felt herself sinking deeper and deeper into the cotton candy-colored bedclothes. Faintly she could smell perfume, the cheap sort that a little girl might get in her stocking or Easter basket. The perfume smell got stronger, and Megan coughed. She was completely covered in pink softness, and she couldn't breathe. Then everything went black, and she was falling again through nothing. The shock of sudden cold was like a knife blade in her lungs. Back into the Place Between, apparently.
That fucking figures. If she can't get her way, she throws me out with the trash.
That was more like the Debbie that Megan remembered from recent years. She’d become increasingly irrational, especially after she’d stopped taking her medications because they interfered with her ability to drink. If anyone tried to talk to her about it, she would simply cut them off without a word. Megan had always been afraid to speak up, afraid of what might happen to Debbie if she cut off her sister too.
The big question, though, was how to get into Far Faraway from here. She must be hundreds of miles down by now. She wasn't sure she could become the Beast Below in this place, and anyway she was too hurt and sad to be angry.
What had Jack Benimble said about the Place Between Worlds? It was pure energy and potential, pure chaos. It was what Jack Benimble had been a part of before Mega
n had grown bored of reading the same book of nursery rhymes over and over to Debbie, before she'd started making up stories about the characters. Mary Muffet and Old Lady Shu had joined in a few of their adventures, but Jack was the one who had stuck it out with them.
If this place was pure energy, then maybe she could create a solution the same way she had created Jack.
Megan visualized her daughter. Small, even for a five year old; she had survived on instant noodles and diet soda for most of her early life. Long hair that tended to unruliness, even when it was washed and brushed. Paige's favorite colors were yellow and purple, so Megan pictured her in her favorite yellow blouse and purple jumper dress even though that wasn’t what she'd been wearing when she was abducted. Facts were not important; Megan was picturing the essence of Paige, her absolute Paige-ness. Practical details were meaningless.
Then she thought, hard as she could and with every fiber of longing in her heart, Take me to Paige!
The effect was literally breathtaking. Megan was yanked through space so hard that her lungs felt pressed into pancakes, and for several panicky seconds she couldn't take a proper breath. She was jerked wildly through space, zigzagging this way and that like an empty car in a rollercoaster. Paige! she thought frantically. Take me to Paige!
Hold on to that image, she coached herself. Yellow blouse, purple jumper. If you lose sight of what you're after, you could be lost out here forever.
Then she slammed into cold metal bars, and she screamed with pain. But at last she lay still. The ride was over.
Chapter Twenty-One
Megan lay panting for several minutes before she could even try to catch her bearings. Her chest and throat hurt, and bright black spots danced behind her eyes. After a few minutes of slow breathing, she felt her heart rate approach Earth-normal. Finally she was able to open her eyes.
It was dim here but not dark. She was in some kind of cage. Patterns of black stripes were everywhere, and she felt cold metal bars against her back. She couldn't tell where the light was coming from; it seemed to be some sort of atmospheric effect.