The Actual Account of Peter Able

by Natalie Grigson

  Professor G then picked up his staff and waved it in a wide arc above his head, narrowly missing a candelabra flickering with golden fire. I found myself hurtling, chair, desk, backpack and all a few inches above the ground and across the room to sit next to Circe. As my desk jostled hers, from the book bag slung across the back of her chair, flew a bright blue bird, followed closely by a fleeing rat and a small green lizard. They made a mad dash for the door, but with a wave of her hand, Circe sent them soaring through space and back into her bag. It wasn’t unlike Circe to tote around her little humans turned animals. Across the room, the other two students’ desks had also been magically pushed together; I could hear the blonde saying something about a Blibbering something or other.

  “Your spell assignments,” Professor G’s voice boomed through the room, “are on the board.” And indeed, suddenly they were. “Begin.”

  With a half-glance in Circe’s direction, I began reading the list of spells under my breath. They weren’t easy ones, and it was good, I thought, he was having us practice.

  “Peter,” she said in her smooth voice like velvet. “Aren’t you even going to look at me? We used to be so close, Peter.” She draped her hand languidly over the one I was using to hold my wand and then squeezed, hard.

  “Ouch!” Sparks shot out of the tip of my wand and briefly, lit the blonde’s long hair on fire. She just smiled and doused her head in a jet of magical water, which vanished and dried as soon as the flames were gone.

  “Oh my, haven’t you ever had a pretty girl touch your wand before, Peter? I’d thought you and that Jenny—”

  “Don’t talk to me about Jenny,” I snapped, shaking her hand off my wrist. “Last year you wanted nothing more than to keep me stuck in some alternate version of my story, away from Jenny forever, as a pig—”

  “Swine.”

  “—and now you want to, what, make fun of me, because my girlfriend is gone? I’m sorry, but I don’t really see the joke.”

  “Peter, I know about your mission with Randy,” she said, suddenly serious; urgent. “I know where you’re going tonight. And I happen to know just what your destiny has in store for you.”

  “I’m sorry, was that a capital or lower case D?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Well it’s just that if it was a capital D, it sounds like a much bigger deal than if it was just a—”

  “It doesn’t matter, Peter!” she snapped. “One day very soon you’ll need my help, and today,” this next part looked like it physically pained her, “I need yours.” She probably missed my stunned expression, because at this she turned to pull something out from her bag. Again, the blue bird tried to make a break for it, but she shoved him roughly back in the bag. (“Oh Lester.”) When she turned around, she was holding a tiny glass jar between her thumb and forefinger, a nearly-clear-blue smoke was floating calmly in its middle.

  “What is that?” I asked, scooting my chair away. It wasn’t the jar that scared me; it was the idea of taking anything from Circe.

  “It’s a bit of magic.”

  When I neither said anything nor made any move to take the thing, she rolled her eyes and plunked it rather indelicately on my desk. “It’s not harmful, Peter. It wouldn’t do me any good to hurt you—I need you to take this out there with you.”

  “And do what with it?”

  “Nothing. Just bring it out with you, and then bring it back to me.”

  I edged my hand closer to the little thing, magically testing it for any charms or enchantments that might hurt me. There was nothing. Spurred on by a hopeless little chirp from inside her bag, I gingerly picked it up the jar and tucked it into the small outer pocket of my backpack.

  “Now. Let’s get back to work, shall we?”

  Class ended at 12:30, so for the next hour and a half I walked idly around campus, trying not to think about what I’d be doing in just a matter of hours. I watched the other students milling about as I wound my way through the twisting paths and walkways of campus. They were laughing and talking excitedly with each other. It seemed to me they didn’t have a care in the world. A few times I stumbled upon couples: a pixie and a nymph holding hands, two centaurs playing roughly near a pond in west campus; and sitting on a bench in the emptying courtyard, I saw two particular professors from a certain other wizarding series, leaning in for a kiss. (I’m not telling who.) I smiled sadly and turned away toward the forest.

  Behind me, I heard the clock strike two and I was grateful for a distraction in the form of my next lesson. It was an odd one, in that it only met once a week, and odder still, since it was taught by my good friend, Mattie, and took place deep in the forest that ran alongside campus.

  “Hello, Peter,” she said. She was sitting atop a moss-covered log, her red hair pulled back from her face, and her eyes blinking inquisitively, magnified by her thick glasses. “How’s your first day going?”

  “Oh, it’s okay, I guess. I woke up really early this morning and ended up—”

  “Okay, Peter, enough with the chit chat. Let’s talk about this Top Secret Mission you and Randy are planning for tonight.”

  “—running out of paper towels. How did you know about that?”

  “Oh, everyone knows about that, Peter. They probably do, too, you know.”

  I had to agree.

  “When I teach independent study courses like this one, Peter, I generally try to figure out: What is it that the student needs now? Love? Respect? Luck? In your case, I’d say, survival.”

  I plunked myself down on the forest floor across from her; it was leafy but underneath the ground was hard and not exactly comfortable. I regretted my verb choice immediately.

  “Survival? You don’t think that’s a bit extreme?”

  “Well if I was up against destiny itself, I’d be a little concerned. Professor Rex told me over lunch,” she added.

  “Ah.”

  “So. Let’s get started.” And without so much as a muttered spell, Mattie squinted in my direction and the next thing I knew, a nearby rock was whizzing toward my head. Luckily my survival instincts kicked in, and from my pocket, I pulled out—a piece of gum. I don’t have the best survival instincts. A moment later, though, after narrowly dodging the careening rock by leaning back flat to the ground, I pulled out my wand and dissolved the boulder into dust.

  “What the hell was that all about?” I sputtered, through the boulder’s sandy remains.

  “Just trying to get you warmed up, Peter. You don’t have much time.” And again, from the corner of my eye, I saw something dark and furry sailing through the air. It was a badger.

  On and on, Mattie attacked me—first with objects, then with magic directly. She said I had to be ready for anything, as she really didn’t know what to expect and neither did I. Finally, at half past three, sweating and lying on the forest floor, I told Mattie that I had to get going.

  “Well, I think this was a good first lesson, Peter.”

  Aching and bleeding (which, sure, I could have repaired with magic, but it sounds cooler to say ‘aching and bleeding,’ don’t you think?), I got up from the ground and dusted myself off.

  “You know, Mattie. It almost seems like you just wanted to exhaust me so much I wouldn’t want to go tonight.”

  She didn’t say anything, but became suddenly very interested in polishing her glasses with the bottom of her buttoned up shirt.

  As I gathered my backpack and sweatshirt and made to leave, she said in a very soft and un-Mattie-like voice, “I just don’t want to see you get hurt. I know you miss this Jenny character that you’ve told everyone about so much, and I know others miss their loved ones who were erased from their backstories, but not in the same way. Their memories of them were fading until you reminded them. If you’d just give it time, I’m sure they’d fade away completely. Maybe your Jenny, too.”

  It was harsh, and maybe I should have been upset, but honestly, I was too tired. “I get where you’re coming from,” I sighed, rubbing my hand
over my brow, “but I can’t forget Jenny. And I can’t just pretend that all those other characters just never were, either. They vanished in my story, and I’ll never be able to forget them, or feel okay about not doing everything I can to bring them back. Besides,” I added, attempting a smile, “tonight’s just a trial run. I’m just going through to check it out, and then I’m coming right back with Terrill and Ivor. It’s no big deal.”

  Mattie looked up at me and impatiently wiped away a tear.

  “You, Peter, have never been good at lying.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Thirty minutes later, I arrived in Randy’s office to find him pacing, hands behind his back. When I closed the door behind me, he jerked his head up. “I was beginning to think you’d reconsidered the plan.”

  “Randy, I’m one minute late.”

  He ignored me and rather walked to the other side of his desk, bent down and opened a drawer. It was the same drawer where he kept the backstories, now that ? was no longer a threat. Still, it was protected with a pretty complicated little charm. Luckily, I knew how to break it, and yesterday while Randy and Bob had stepped out of the office to check out the newly renovated lobby (“Oh, but I’d love to do some decorative sitting here!”), I had done just that. I’d replaced the backstories with magically duplicated copies. The real ones, at that moment, were tucked away into a manila folder in the very backpack on my back. I held my breath as he rifled through the drawer.

  “Huh,” he said from below the desk. “Something’s funny about this.”

  My heart was pounding.

  He stood back up, not holding the duplicates of the backstories, but a bulging canvas bag. He pulled out a sandwich, wrapped in cellophane. “Yes, I’m almost sure of it. There’s smooth peanut butter in this sandwich. You know, it’s the second time I’ve gone to buy crunchy and come home with smooth. I don’t know what that’s all about…”

  Slowly, my heart resumed a normal and less lethal pace and my shoulders shrunk away from my ears. I was on edge as it was, but if Randy found out what I was attempting to do, well, he’d try to stop me. And frankly, I didn’t have time for that.

  “Okay, I’ve got snacks for the road and some car games. Terrill and Ivor are already on site, so we’ll meet them there in a few hours. Are you ready?” He stopped ticking things off on his fingers and for the first time, really looked at me. He must have noticed how anxious I was, because he came around the desk and put a hand on my shoulder. “Hey, it’ll be fine. Think of it like an adventure! You’ll just pop over, check it out, and then come back. We have all the time in the world to do the hard part.

  “Do you want to leave your backpack here?” he added, gesturing behind his desk.

  “No!”

  “I mean, uh, no. Thanks. I have some homework I might do in the car. Also, what was that all about?”

  “Just something I thought I’d try.”

  “Oh. Well, alright, let’s just get going then. If we’re going to be back in time to see Magnum P.I…”

  Randy was still looking at me like a suspicious emoji, but didn’t say anything. We left the simple, cube-shaped detective building and ducked beneath the blood-spattered police tape that surrounded it and barred it from the parking lot. In the parking lot, there were several undercover cars, some of them occupied with stereotypical cops, doing stereotypical cop things like eating donuts and looking through binoculars toward the campus courtyard area. If they were trying to look inconspicuous, it didn’t help that most of the cars said UNDERCOVER on their doors.

  “We’ll just take this one today,” Randy said, guiding me toward a simple, four-door, silver sedan. A few minutes later, we were buckled in, windows down, and cruising away from campus. We were on the road to—

  Randy cleared his throat ridiculously.

  “Say, Peter. I think it’s time we revealed the big plan, don’t you think?”

  I didn’t know how to do the emoji thing, but if I did, it would have been rolling its eyes.

  “So here we go: off on the road to the Black Market! So we can begin researching how you can get Jenny and the other erased characters back by…”

  “Going to the Real World. I think they probably already got that, Randy.”

  “Well. Now they’ll know.”

  Pause. I’m not sure if you did already get that. But yes, that was the plan: I’d go out into the Real World in an attempt to get Jenny and the other erased characters written back into Fiction. Of course, I had no idea how exactly I’d do this, but I knew that if they came from Out There, they could only be brought back from Out There. And I just knew that the characters’ backstories I’d stolen from Randy’s office would help.

  “Obviously, we won’t be able to do all of that tonight,” Randy chuckled, eyes on the road. “I mean, that could take months. Maybe even years to do. This will just be a good way to go out and see what it’s like Out There before we start really preparing. Right? Peter?”

  Hey, look, I did it.

  When we pulled up to the small marketing village in Nonfiction, which hid the Black Market in its depths, it was dark outside. You could hardly tell, though; the stars were so bright out here. They almost seemed closer.

  “Desert sky,” Randy said, coming around the front of the car to stand next to me. Our heads were craned back, noses upturned to a chilly, light breeze. It seemed utterly still on the sandy road leading toward the market, and just beyond our little patch of silence, the hustle and bustle of people, so many people, could be heard.

  “It’s beautiful,” I said, trying to memorize it. I wondered if skies in the Real World were dotted with so many stars; or, horrifyingly, if they had stars at all? It struck me then, as we made our way down the road and into the busier streets, that I really didn’t know anything for certain about Out There. I may as well have been strapped to the outside of a rocket, shooting up into that starry night above, not knowing if I’d be able to breathe.

  “You alright?” Randy asked, his hand squeezing my shoulder a little firmer. He was guiding me through a veritable mess of people, and he had to shout over the noise. I just nodded, taking it all in: the vendors lining the streets, booths set up with hanging fabrics and signs of every color. They were selling bags covered in beads, little handmade, wooden toys, shoes made from brilliant gold and orange fabrics, clay pots and bowls, hand-woven leather notebooks. I could smell curry and incense burning, and underneath, something sickly sweet, like rotting fruit. On and on it went; we shouldered through crowds of people—people carrying woven baskets on their heads, laden with bags over their shoulders, babies on their backs. Dark-skinned children darted at knee-height through the crowd, tripping people up, scaring donkeys and mules that were tied up here and there. Donkeys and mules, I noticed, who were not talking.

  “Welcome to Nonfiction,” Randy shouted, steering me toward a road branching off from the main one. There were only a few vendors down this road, who glanced up suspiciously as we walked by. The noise faded totally as we walked further down the road, like we’d plunged our heads in water. It smelled like drying leather.

  “I never knew it would be so… I don’t know. So much, I guess,” I said quietly as we walked on. The only sounds now were those of our footsteps along the crunchy dirt road.

  “Yes, the first time I came here I was a little overwhelmed, too. And you know—most of the animals don’t talk here.”

  I nodded.

  “Just imagine, though—this is just a portion of Nonfiction. What I mean is, we’re still in the world of books. Sure, it seems more fantastical to you or me than what we know, Fiction, or even more so, our own neighborhood, Fantasy, but it’s still one removed from Out There. Because someone Out There still had to publish it for it to be on this side. I just can’t even imagine how strange it must be in the Real World.”

  I gulped audibly—and immediately wondered if that was a thing in the Real World.

  “The weirdest part,” I said after a moment, “is that Fantasy is prob
ably what seems fantastical and unreal Out There.”

  Randy just nodded, now paying more attention to the little alleyways we passed. It was getting darker, I noticed; I could hardly see my hand in front of my face (Is that a thing in the Real World?? Oh my God!) Finally, he slowed at the mouth of one alleyway, which looked particularly dark and ominous—especially because there was a street sign that read “Black Market,” below which, one lonely vendor stall was stationed.

  “May I be of help to you?” a woman with an Indian-sounding accent said from the other side of the booth. She leaned forward, poking her head through the display of goods on either side; a cloth was wrapped around her head and face, covering everything but her dark, heavily lashed eyes.

  “Oh, it is you, Randy,” she said, before retreating back into the shadows behind the booth. A moment later, she came around the side and greeted him with a formal handshake. She turned to me and did the same.

  “Peter, this is Amala. Ever since ? recovered so many of Fiction’s backstories last year, Amala has been monitoring the entrance to the Black Market. She makes sure the characters who pass through here have been approved by Detective.”

  “But I thought the Black Market was basically run by criminals, selling illegal things to other criminals…?”

  “It is,” Amala said simply.

  “Well, we need all sorts of petty criminals in Fiction, Peter,” Randy said patiently. “Otherwise, how dull would that be? No, no, we let the Black Market continue its business as usual, selling goods from the Real World; we just monitor it now. Besides, the only entrance to the Real World lies within the Black Market, and there are lots of characters who work in the land in between. We can’t very well close that down.

  “Plus,” Randy added, “Detective gets a cut of all the sales from the Other Side. So everyone wins.”

  “That sounds extremely corrupt,” I said.

  “No, no. We just use it to fund the genre.”

  I couldn’t help but think it still sounded pretty messed up. I was sure nothing like this could ever happen in the Real World.