“Oh, don’t worry about those blasted beagles,” said the homunculus dismissively. “I can get rid of them.”
Cass looked at him suspiciously. “You’re not planning on eating them, are you?”
The homunculus grinned. “Now there’s an idea….”
“Mr. Cabbage Face!”
“Actually, beagles taste terrible. Very gamey. Come here, I want to show you something before I go.”
“There’s no time!”
“Look—”
The homunculus hopped off the rock and onto a bed of leaves and pine needles. Brushing them aside, he revealed a large burlap tarp. He lifted a corner—and a silver candlestick poked out. Then he pulled the tarp off altogether. Underneath was the wooden chest the bandits had stolen from the procession. Cass recognized the big brass lock. Half open and filled to the brim with coins and jewels, the chest was a veritable treasure trove. It glistened, glittered, and gleamed, beckoning as only treasure can.
“For you…” He hesitated, not being very experienced with gift-giving. “Nobody ever did anything nice for me before.”
“Wow. Thanks. But all this treasure isn’t really yours to give, Mr. Cabbage Face,” Cass scolded. “Besides, my job now is to free those bandits. And if I offer this stuff to the soldiers, they’ll just take it—they won’t free anybody.”
The homunculus didn’t have time to respond. The beagles were fast descending on them.
“Quick—hide under the tarp,” he whispered. “I’ll get them out of here.”
“But you can’t run fast enough. They’ll catch you.”
“Who said anything about running?”
As Cass dove onto the pile of treasure, the homunculus threw the tarp over her. After recovering the tarp with leaves, he headed toward the dogs and let out a shrill whistle. “Beagles, you greedy dogs—you’re no better than hogs! Catch me if you can!”
The homunculus made a gesture with his hand that Cass, watching through a hole in the tarp, didn’t recognize but assumed was very rude. Then he scrambled up the nearest tree.
Barking angrily, the dogs pawed and scratched the base of the tree trunk until the homunculus climbed out onto a long branch and dropped over the edge, catching the branch with one hand.
“Watch this!” he shouted. And then he…
Swung himself through the air, catching onto the next tree like a monkey. “Ha ha—”
As he swung from one tree to the next, the furious beagles gave chase.
When a group of soldiers appeared over a rise, Cass briefly panicked. But then they, too, started running after the homunculus. She was alone once more.
“Bye, bye, Mr. Cabbage Face,” she said softly. She doubted she would ever see him again—whether in the past or the future or some other time zone as yet unknown.
Cass waited about five minutes before peeling the tarp off her head and examining the bandits’ hoard.
Never one to be overly interested in jewels, she couldn’t help but be impressed and wonder what would happen if she were to take a piece or two back with her to her own time. Everything here must be worth a fortune, she thought. Then again, she didn’t know how to get herself back to her own time, let alone how to bring a tiara along for the ride. Oh well, even if she were the tiara type, which she most decidedly wasn’t (she’d never gone through that princess phase that so many girls go through), she had a feeling her pointy ears would prevent her from wearing any tiaras anyway.
Just as she was about to tear herself away from the glittering mound, she noticed the black rock on which had gathered so many coins and rings and even the blade of a sword. The lodestone, she guessed. The same rock she’d seen during the bandits’ raid on the Duke’s procession. Although without the Double Monocle it looked leaden and had no bluish glow.
The sword, she thought, was a bit fancy for cutting ropes—it had a bejeweled gold handle and elaborate engravings on both sides of the blade—but it would be serviceable, nonetheless. It took all her strength to pull the sword from the stone. Just like King Arthur, she thought, holding the sword aloft.
She laughed at herself and started lowering the sword, then stopped with it still in midair. An idea had struck her. A crazy, far-fetched idea. An idea that had little chance of success.
But it had one thing going for it: it was the only idea she had.
How to communicate it to the Jester—that was the question.
Using the blade of the sword, she pried as many bits of metal off the lodestone as she could. Then she started retracing her steps back to the campsite.
When she got close, she proceeded more cautiously. Careful not to break any twigs or send any rocks tumbling into the campsite, she hid the sword behind a tree. The lodestone she continued to hold in her hand like the precious object it was.
By now, the Jester’s feet were bound together to prevent him from running, but remarkably his hands and his mouth had been left alone. It seemed the soldiers enjoyed his stories; they were demanding that he tell another.
“But I know no more,” protested the Jester. “You have heard them all!”
“Then we shall gag you like the others,” threatened the Commander, ripping a long strip off a piece of fabric in preparation.
“Wait! Wait! I will think of something! Let me see, have I told you the one about the sea serpent and the maiden?”
“Yes!” shouted the sailors in chorus.
Nobody saw the lodestone rolling on the ground, seemingly of its own volition—or they didn’t believe their eyes if they did—and Cass, kicking the rock along like a soccer ball, was able to reach the Jester without difficulty.
When she tapped him on the shoulder, however, he jumped—and everybody noticed.
“You are a squeamish fellow, aren’t you?” teased the Commander. “Are there ants in your pants? Or did a mouse follow you from the dungeon?”
“How did you know? A most annoying mouse, indeed!” said the Jester through gritted teeth. He was trying valiantly not to squirm despite the fact that Cass was pressing the lodestone into his back, where it wouldn’t be visible to the soldiers.
She waited a moment, then whispered her instructions.
When she’d finished, the Jester bowed formally to the Commander. “Sir, I have thought of another story after all. And it is a most important one befitting this glorious occasion. Indeed, it may change your mind about the very situation in which we find ourselves. You may even find yourself moved to free us all.”
“I seriously doubt that,” said the Commander.
“Wait and see…. There is a legend I am sure you know about a sword in a stone. He who pulls the sword from the stone is the One True King…?”
“We have all heard this legend, yes. What is your point?”
“My point? Ah, like the point of a sword! You are a punning soldier as well as a cunning one!”
“A pun? Oh yes! You see you are not the only one who is clever with his tongue,” said the Commander, puffing himself up. It was obvious that he had not intended the pun, but because he was the Commander, nobody argued with him.
“My point is that there is more to the legend than you might think—a second point to the sword, so to speak,” said the Jester. “If the sword is called back to the stone, then he who calls himself King is not the true King, but a false one. We owe him no allegiance.”
“What has this to do with us? I see no sword here, nor any stone.”
The Jester reached behind his back and presented the black-and-gold lodestone with a dramatic flourish. “Here is the fabled stone to which I allude,” he said, lowering it to the ground. “If, when I raise my arm, a sword flies through the air and sticks to the stone, will you renounce your false King and let these bandits go?”
The Commander laughed. “Very well. There is little risk of that. But know that your head will join with Anastasia’s on the platter if no flying sword appears.”
“Consider me warned.” The Jester looked up at the sky, closed his eyes, and solem
nly pronounced, “Excalibur, Sword of Swords, if the King be a false one, fly to this rock now!”
The Commander tapped his toes impatiently until one of the soldiers pointed—
The bejeweled sword had emerged from behind a tree and was sailing through the air. Everybody, the gagged bandits included, watched in astonishment as the sword slowed briefly, hovering like a falcon searching for its prey. Then, flashing in the sunlight, it lurched forward and flew straight toward the Jester as if answering his silent call. The lodestone sparkled at his feet.
When the sword reached the stone, it paused in midair, then dove point-first. It landed in the middle of the stone and stood straight, perfectly balanced, seemingly weightless. A miraculous sight.
A surprised murmur rippled through the crowd. Even the bandits opened their eyes wide, seeming to forget for a moment their captive condition.
One by one, the soldiers dropped to the ground, kneeling before the sword as if the sword itself were king. Eventually, only the Commander was left standing. Then he, too, was overcome.
“The Sword knows all,” he said to the Jester, eyes glistening. “I renounce the King. You are all free.”
“Oh now, now,” said the Jester, grinning with delight. “There is no need for such drama. It is I who am supposed to put on the show here!”
He looked over at Anastasia and winked.
Cass, now standing beside the Jester, thought she saw Anastasia offer a reluctant smile in return.
“I’m going to get out of the way,” Cass whispered in the Jester’s ear. “After the soldiers are gone, come find me over there where we slept. I have to tell you something. It’s really important.”
As she walked away, she tried to ignore the tired, faint-headed feeling that had been slowly overtaking her all morning.
Joe, the janitor, was just starting his one afternoon shift of the week when the short spiky-haired boy flew past him and ran into that poor girl’s room.
Or what had been that poor girl’s room.
He found the boy staring at the empty bed.
“Where is she? What happened?” asked the boy in a whisper. You didn’t have to be psychic to tell what he was thinking.
“Don’t worry; it’s not quite as bad as that,” said the janitor. “They took her home is all.”
A spark of hope lit up the boy’s eyes. “So did she wake up, then?”
“No, not that, either, I’m afraid. The doctor thought it was time for her to be in her own bed. Nothing they can do for her here anymore.”
“You mean they’re just giving up?” the boy asked indignantly.
“Well, they don’t put it like that….”
The boy slumped against the hospital bed, color draining from his face.
“You need a second?”
The boy nodded. Tears in his eyes, he put his hand on the sheet on which the girl had so recently been lying.
“Don’t be too long, son. I’ve got to mop the floor in there and get the room ready for the next customer.”
The janitor hesitated, trying to think of something more reassuring to say. Then he gave up and left the boy alone.
When, several minutes later, Max-Ernest made himself stand up, he noticed that the monocle had rolled out of his jacket pocket onto the bed.
Too late, he thought bitterly. I got the monocle too late.
He picked up the monocle and found that he wanted nothing more than to throw it at the mirror that hung above the sink. A year ago, he remembered, he’d had to force himself to throw things—a magic wand, most notably—in an attempt to express his anger. Now he had to restrain himself from shattering a hospital mirror into a thousand pieces. Perhaps this was progress of a sort.
Rather than throwing the monocle, however, he peered into it, doing a brief survey of the room.
When he came back to the mirror, he stopped cold.
There was a man in the mirror. An old or not-so-old man (it was hard to tell). He had messy hair that stuck out in all directions and a scruffy beard the mixed black-and-white color people describe as salt-and-pepper. He looked slightly insane.
Nervous, Max-Ernest lowered the monocle and turned around, but there was nobody in the room with him.
He looked into the monocle again. The man in the mirror was still there. As clear as day. But as mysterious as the man in the moon.
Was it a ghost? Max-Ernest couldn’t help asking the question. All his skepticism about the supernatural, all his logic and reason, seemed to disappear in the face of this apparition.
Whatever it was, was looking in Max-Ernest’s direction but seemed not to see him. His brow was furrowed and he looked frustrated, conflicted. He was muttering something to himself.
“Are you trying to tell me something?” Max-Ernest whispered, stepping closer. “Do you have a message from Cass?”
The man didn’t respond, just kept muttering.
The mirror looked foggy around the edges, but when Max-Ernest wiped it with his hand, the image didn’t change. The fog was behind the mirror.
I must be going crazy, Max-Ernest thought. This is all in my head. It must be.
He peered closer and saw that the man was hunched over a desk. Papers spilled out in front of him, covered with an almost-unreadable scrawl.
Max-Ernest had the odd sensation that he knew the man—something about the man’s nose reminded Max-Ernest of his father—and yet Max-Ernest was certain he’d never seen him before.
Could this be one of his ancestors? A great-grandfather, perhaps?
Meanwhile, the man kept muttering. Something was troubling him.
Straining, Max-Ernest could barely make out the words: “Just… one… more… Just… one… more…,” the man repeated over and over.
What? Just one more what?
The man’s hand inched toward a shiny object lying on his desk. A pair of spectacles? A knife? A bar of gold? What all-important moment in history was Max-Ernest witnessing through the monocle?
“Just… one… more… Just… one… more…”
The man picked up the object—it was indeed a bar of gold, more specifically a bar covered in gold foil—and greedily unwrapped it. He gazed at the bar as if it were a long-lost friend. Then, unable to resist a second longer—
“Hmmgh….”
Oh, thought Max-Ernest. Just one more bite.
Chocolate. A man eating chocolate. That was the momentous event Max-Ernest was watching in the mirror. He would have laughed had he been in a better mood—and had he not taken the subject of chocolate so very seriously himself.
The man put the bar down and smiled contentedly, momentarily at peace. Until—
“Well, maybe just one more…”
—he picked up the bar again.
“Hmmgh…”
What’s that noise he’s making? Max-Ernest wondered.
“Hmmgh… Hmmmgh…”
The noise was very peculiar: part hum, part groan. Max-Ernest found it irritating and yet at the same time irritatingly familiar. It was like an itch he couldn’t locate. Like a word that he couldn’t remember but that was on the tip of his tongue.
Suddenly, as if somebody had tapped him on the shoulder, the man turned and looked directly at Max-Ernest.
“You know, it wouldn’t hurt to try talking once,” he said.
“You mean… to Cass?” Max-Ernest stammered.
But the man didn’t respond. He just picked up a pen and started writing.
Then the image fogged over entirely. When the fog cleared, the man in the mirror was gone. In his place, Max-Ernest saw only himself.
Frustrated and a little bit frightened, Max-Ernest lowered the monocle and walked out into the hallway.
Instinctively, he headed for the vending machine. There was only one chocolate bar left, and for a second he considered leaving it for later. Then he remembered there would be no later; he had no reason to return to the hospital.
“Hmmgh…”
As he bit into the chocolate bar, Max-Ernest
had a startling realization: the reason he recognized the noise the man had been making was that it was the very noise that he, Max-Ernest, made whenever he ate chocolate.
It wasn’t a ghost that he’d been looking at in the mirror.
It wasn’t an ancestor. It wasn’t anybody from the past.
The man in the mirror was his future self.
The Jester didn’t find Cass until he almost tripped over her. She was lying on a bed of pine needles, half awake.
“Oh, there you are!”
The Jester hovered above her, his orange curls blocking the sun.
“Are you all right? I’ve been looking all over.”
Cass forced herself to sit up. “I’m fine. I just had to lie down for a second.”
“It has been more like twenty minutes…. Here, drink.” He offered a cup of water, which she sipped gratefully.
“I’m very glad I found you. You never know how useful an invisible friend is going to be until you’ve had one. I don’t think I could possibly survive without one now!” The Jester patted Cass’s head. “Braids, am I right?”
“You are very solicitous of this invisible friend of yours.”
Cass and the Jester both looked up, startled.
Anastasia smiled mischievously. “I suppose you can’t be too careful with invisible creatures. Without proper care, they’re liable to vanish altogether.”
“Invisible creatures?” the Jester sputtered. “What invisible creatures?”
He stood up and took a step away from Cass, studiously avoiding looking in her direction.
“My question exactly. I would simply have dismissed you as crazy had I not seen that sword fly through the air a little while ago.”
“You did not believe the legend, then?” queried the Jester, recovering.
“I know nothing of legends. I know what I see.”
“Very well. I’ll admit, I invented the legend. But did you not know that I myself am virtually a legend?—a legendary magician, that is. A master illusionist who can make inanimate objects appear to fly.”
“What you are is a man who talks to invisible creatures and pats their heads.”
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