Gustav Gloom and the Cryptic Carousel

by Adam-Troy Castro

There was a blinding flash of light, and once again the view outside the carousel changed.

  This time it became a wall of raging white water. It was like a hundred Niagaras, maybe even a thousand, and it was miles high and miles wide, and it roared with a fury that dwarfed the angriest spider-crone who ever lived.

  Silverspinner screamed at the top of her lungs, as awful a sound as was ever made by any creature who knew herself to be the last of her kind. The claw missed Fernie’s face entirely, made a clang as it rebounded against one of the upright poles, and was then yanked from sight.

  Fernie rolled over on her back to see what was happening and saw Silverspinner framed in the space between the carousel floor and carousel ceiling, desperately trying to hold on as the cascade hammered her with more force than even she could stand. The spider-crone looked terrified of what was about to happen to her, and downright pathetic in that terror. So pathetic that for the first time, Fernie understood how old Lemuel Gloom could have ever felt sorry for her.

  The spider-crone shrieked, “This won’t kill Silverspinner! Silverspinner will live! Silverspinner will find you someday, and Silverspinner will . . .”

  The water peeled her free, and she was gone.

  Fernie still hadn’t fully realized it was over when Gustav knelt at her side and shouted, “Are you okay? Tell me you’re okay!”

  Fernie could hardly hear him over the sound of rushing water. “I’m fine. Where are we?”

  A flash of bright light later, the plummeting water went away, replaced by the same gray clouds they had been traveling through a few seconds before. The deafening noise also went away, a happy event given that it allowed Lemuel’s shadow, still piloting from the control room, to speak to them in a nice, conversational tone of voice. “It’s called Loliolioliolackalolio,” he said. “A profoundly stupid name, I admit, but it’s also the single greatest waterfall Lemuel and I saw on any of our travels to distant worlds. It’s about three miles high and twenty wide, and oceans plunge over it with every heartbeat. We used to use it as a kind of drive-through car wash to give this old carousel an occasional polish, back in the good old days. It seems to have worked just fine today, washing the nasty bug away.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  What Gustav and Fernie Find in Dim Land

  They traveled through the fog for a long time without encountering any further dangers. Lemuel’s shadow did everything he could to distract Gustav and Fernie with exciting stories of the adventures he and Gustav’s grandfather had enjoyed back in the old days, and some of those stories were marvelous indeed. But as time went on, Fernie found herself paying less and less attention, unable to keep her thoughts focused on anything but the journey ahead and the family still in danger. It was hard to tell exactly how long the journey took, because there were no days or nights in this realm between worlds, but from the number of times she slept and woke up, still never seeing Gustav close his own eyes or lie down for even a second, it might have been four or five days, maybe even as long as a week.

  Fernie grew so worried about not getting to her family in time that she begged Lemuel’s shadow to make the carousel go faster. He simply said, “We’ll show up when we have to.”

  “Don’t you mean when we get there?”

  “If I meant that,” he said, “I would have said it. In a journey of this kind, the carousel knows not just where but also when it needs to be. I know you’re impatient, Fernie. But I promise, we’ll get there when we have to.”

  She thought the trip would take forever, but then they saw the Dark Country down below. It looked like the blackest, heaviest, most forbidding storm cloud anybody ever saw hanging above them, just before thunder crashes and torrential rain starts falling in sheets. The only difference, of course, was that it was far below the flying carousel, a vast unknowable place as foreboding as rain clouds always are in scary stories.

  Peering over the edge of the carousel, Fernie understood why it would be dangerous to descend directly into that terrible place: There was no way to tell what parts of it were safe, what parts were dangerous, and what parts, if unwisely entered, would amount to the same thing as Gustav and Fernie putting themselves in a box and delivering themselves gift-wrapped, with a friendly pop-up card, for Lord Obsidian’s birthday.

  So they followed Hieronymus Spector’s instructions and instead flew to the great storm’s edge and found the terrible Dark Country completely surrounded by a chain of jagged mountains high enough and dense enough to contain the ominous cloud, as if they constituted a bowl and the Dark Country a nice serving of Sinister Doings Soup.

  The land outside those mountains, the Dim Land Hieronymus had mentioned, was a vast gray desert with no surface detail whatsoever. Mapping it would have been as simple as taking a single blank sheet of paper and doing nothing to it. It looked like the kind of place where walking around in circles was just as entertaining as walking around in straight lines, or for that matter just sitting down and not going anywhere at all.

  Fernie and Gustav sat on the carousel’s benches, watching the nothingness roll on in silence, until Gustav said, “You know what I think this place is?”

  Fernie shook her head.

  “When you see someone heading somewhere and you ask them where they’re going and they say ‘Nowhere,’ that’s what this place is. The actual place Nowhere.”

  “That’s silly,” Fernie said. “Nowhere isn’t an actual place. It’s just, you know, the absence of an actual place.”

  “That’s what I thought, too, until I saw this. This is a place that somehow forgot it was supposed to be a place.”

  Lemuel’s shadow took the carousel lower so Gustav and Fernie could sit watching the mountains and look for places where the valleys between them offered easily traveled paths to the country within. They saw a few that looked horribly dangerous, a few others that merely looked arduous and time-consuming, but none that impressed them as particularly promising until, after an hour or so of silence punctuated by comments about how dreary everything was, they spotted something in the far distance: what seemed to be a flowing river of gray shadow-stuff pouring through a gap in the hills.

  Gustav said, “I didn’t know the Dark Country leaked.”

  “It never did before,” Lemuel’s shadow said. “Let’s take a look.”

  They flew closer, passing just over the river, and saw that it was not a river at all, but a stream of dejected shadow people, trudging out of the Dark Country and gathering in a large mob a few miles outside the border. There must have been thousands of them all told, even millions. They flowed steadily from the gap in the mountains, none headed in the opposite direction. Fernie had never seen people, or even people-shaped beings, who looked so dejected, so weary, and so completely without hope.

  Lemuel’s shadow growled. He was not a beast, or an animal, or even the kind of person who growled, but he growled now. “This is awful.”

  “Who are they?” Fernie asked.

  “They’re refugees, people minding their own business and living their own lives when a war comes along and sweeps them out of its way, like dust. There’s never been a war in the history of flesh or shadow that didn’t force such people to flee their homes and give up everything they know and love, just to get away from the fighting. These are Lord Obsidian’s, I guess.”

  Fernie thought about the kind of forces that Lord Obsidian must have unleashed in order to terrify even shadows into running away and felt a terrible chill. “Somebody would have to be really evil to make this happen and not be so ashamed they’d want to stop immediately.”

  “I’m not arguing,” said Lemuel’s shadow.

  But Gustav peered intently at the scene and said, “We should go down there and talk to some of them.”

  “It might not be safe.”

  “None of this is safe,” Gustav pointed out, sensibly, “but everything we do from now on might be a little mo
re safe if we can get some of those shadows down there to tell us what they’ve seen on the other side of those mountains. If we’re lucky, we might even find somebody to go in with us and guide us past some of the worst bits. If we’re not lucky, then at least we’re no worse off. Take us down.”

  Lemuel’s shadow grumbled a little bit, but complied. The Cryptic Carousel descended to within a short walk of the vast parade of refugees, most of whom took no real notice of it. A few, which in a crowd this size amounted to hundreds, surged forward a little bit, but then held back, unsure whether the vehicle brought friends or foes; they waited as Gustav got up and Fernie followed, joining the shadow of Grandpa Lemuel at the controls.

  “I’ll be right with you,” Lemuel’s shadow said.

  “Don’t bother,” said Gustav. “You can’t go with us.”

  “What? Don’t be silly. I’m a shadow. That’s my country out there. I’m more at home there than you are.”

  “I know,” Gustav said patiently, “but you still can’t go.”

  “Of course I can—”

  “No. We need somebody we trust to watch the carousel and keep it from being stolen or harmed, so we have a way back to Sunnyside Terrace when we’re done. That’s an important responsibility, and you’re the only person we know who can handle it.”

  Lemuel’s shadow fell back against the bookcase as bonelessly as a man who’d been struck. “I . . . don’t want to be left alone again.”

  Fernie felt so bad for him that she had to say something. “You won’t be. We can’t take Harrington where we’re going. Somebody needs to keep him safe and get him back to Sunnyside Terrace if anything happens to us. You’re the best person for that job, too. Just look. He already loves you.”

  This was clearly true, because Harrington was even now winding his way around the shadow’s insubstantial ankles, and making the happy purr made by cats who have decided that somebody belongs to them.

  “You’re all that’s left of my grandfather,” Gustav said, “and I don’t know you very well yet, but I think I know enough about him from the stories I’ve heard to know that he wouldn’t mind very much if I stopped thinking of you as my grandpa’s shadow and started thinking of you as my grandpa. In fact, I think he would like me to. As far as I’m concerned, that’s just another reason for us to make it back.”

  The shadow seemed to be having trouble speaking. “I . . . appreciate that, dear boy. And don’t worry, dear girl, I’ll care for your pet better than any shadow, anywhere, ever cared for a cat. I promise.” He swallowed, got control of himself with considerable difficulty, and asked, “Where should I go while I wait for you?”

  Gustav said, “Just take the carousel up and watch the Dark Country. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but we’ll make sure that something does, something that you’ll be able to see from a height. When you see our signal, you’ll know that it’s time to come down and get us. But be fast. By then, we might be in a hurry.”

  Lemuel’s shadow nodded, then leaped forward and wrapped Gustav in his kind’s equivalent of a tight hug. He whispered something in Gustav’s ear, let him go, and then surprised Fernie by hugging her as well, which felt a lot like standing on a beach and finding herself wrapped in a cool breeze rolling in from the sea.

  She picked up Harrington and held him while he purred, assuring him that in the great grand history of all cats since the beginning of time, he had been the bravest and the smartest and most loving cat any girl had ever been proud enough to know. He rubbed his fuzzy forehead across hers and in his own way repeated the compliment.

  Then Gustav and Fernie linked hands, stepped off the carousel, and waved as it rose into the air, turning from a colorfully painted circle into a dot, and then into nothing at all.

  They turned toward the crowd of shadows and started to walk.

  Fernie let go of Gustav’s hand just long enough to hug herself. It wasn’t cold in Dim Land. In fact, it was neither hot nor cold, not warm or cool, not even the temperature in between all of that, that people know as comfortable. It was no temperature at all. But Fernie needed to hug herself anyway, because she suddenly found herself doubting this mission and her own ability to stay strong while she and her best friend did what needed to be done. In this strange, stark place, so far from Sunnyside Terrace, and so far from everybody else she’d ever known, even the certain loyalty of the brave Gustav Gloom suddenly did not seem nearly enough to keep her as warm inside as any girl needed to be if she was going to venture into the unknown places that she was about to visit, and confront the enemies whom she was about to fight.

  She was still feeling these doubts when a tall, transparent figure among the shadows up ahead separated from the crowd and demanded, “Who are you?”

  Gustav stopped in midstep. “Who’s asking?”

  “I’ve never been any man’s shadow, and therefore never had a name. Tell me who you are and perhaps I’ll choose to let you pass.”

  Gustav nodded with total lack of surprise and spoke up to address the crowd: “My name is Gustav Gloom. This brave girl beside me is my best friend, Fernie What. We are here in search of her sister and both our fathers. We are prepared to take this search all the way to the home of Lord Obsidian himself, if need be. We will accept the help of any among you who are willing to join us, but will not tolerate any of you who decide to stop us or slow us down. We have come too far and defeated too many monsters for that. Are there any other questions?”

  The nameless shadow said nothing. For a long time, it seemed that none of those behind him were going to say anything at all. But then, one of his companions repeated, “Gustav Gloom.” Another said, “Fernie What.” The buzz spread throughout the mob, growing louder every time the names were repeated, until they became chants, half of the gathered thousands saying his name and half saying hers, until the words echoed for miles in every direction.

  Fernie didn’t understand why the shadow refugees were doing this. It wasn’t like they’d been waiting for her or Gustav to come from the land of light to rescue them. It was like Hieronymus Spector had said, and others had said before him: There were no prophecies here, no great heroes whose coming was promised by fortune-tellers of the past. She and Gustav were just two children looking for their families. But both their names echoed all the way to the hills anyway . . . and then the cries stopped all at once, as if all that chanting had fulfilled its purpose.

  For a few seconds, the emptiness of Dim Land was matched by a silence just as complete.

  Fernie said, “Gustav, I don’t—”

  Gustav seemed to stumble a little bit, his round eyes going wider and his pale skin turning a shade paler. “Oh. Wow.”

  “What?”

  He put a finger to his lips. “Shhhh.”

  She heard nothing.

  He put the same finger to her lips. “I have better ears than you do, Fernie. Be quiet and you’ll hear what I hear in just a few seconds.”

  Fernie couldn’t tell from his calm expression whether it would be something good or something terrible. But she closed her eyes and listened as hard as she could, letting everything around her go away in favor of whatever else she was supposed to be hearing.

  “Fernie!”

  It sounded like a distant voice crying her name. It couldn’t be . . . but that was what it sounded like, and it rolled across the flat gray land. She listened harder and heard:

  “Fernie!”

  Fernie stumbled past Gustav and faced the direction the noise was coming from, where she saw a distant speck of color, the bright T-shirt, blue jeans, and bouncing red hair the only sights in this landscape that weren’t as gray as dust.

  She stumbled over her lost sister’s name, unwilling to hope. “Pearlie?”

  “FERNIE!”

  The tiny distant dot was indeed Pearlie What, traveling with these gray refugees out of the dark place where she had fallen; a
nd as she pumped her arms, racing toward Fernie, the shadows behind her all raised their arms, as if in tribute to the miracle before them.

  Her shadow, which had followed her into the Pit, seemed to be missing. That could not be good news, any more than the long absence of Fernie’s own shadow could be good news. But the living flesh-and-blood girl was here, and that was the best news Fernie had received in longer than she wanted to think about.

  “PEARLIE!”

  Fernie overcame her paralysis, and raced toward her sister, weeping. She felt the knot of fear that had been tightening in her heart loosening just enough to establish how much it had been hurting her all along. It didn’t loosen all the way, not the way it would have if her father had been racing behind Pearlie to join in on this happy occasion. He was nowhere in sight. But Pearlie was here, and for the moment that was enough.

  The two sisters reached each other and embraced, both talking at the same time, Fernie crying, “Oh, I thought I’d never see you again,” and Pearlie crying, “I can’t believe you came all this way, you’re crazy.” They let go and looked at each other and both said, “I missed you so much,” and sobbed some more, each one too busy asking breathless questions to sit still for the answers.

  Then they started talking over each other again. Pearlie weeping, “They got Dad,” and at the same exact time Fernie said, “We’ll save him.”

  Pearlie cried, “There are monsters in there,” and Fernie cried, “We’ve stopped monsters before.”

  Pearlie protested, “But these are the worst monsters ever,” and Fernie said, “They haven’t faced us yet.”

  Pearlie finally yelled, “Do you even know what you’re going to do?” and Fernie yelled back, “Of course not! What would be the fun of that?”

  Then they both ran out of breath and collapsed in a hug.

  Not everything was all right, yet. But for the first time, it now seemed possible that it might soon be.

  Gustav Gloom offered the sky one of his rare smiles and joined them.