If You're Reading This, It's Too Late

by Pseudonymous Bosch

  Then he wrestled a yellow fellow sock♥roach® to the ground.

  “Pietro, where are you?” cried Dr. L, still looking for his brother.

  As if Dr. L had summoned him from the beyond, Pietro arrived out of the trees on horseback at the other side of the graveyard. In his hand was what looked from a distance like a large snowball.

  “Everyone, go home!” he shouted into the snowball as if it were a megaphone.

  Alongside Pietro, a lively and diverse (which is a polite way of saying rambunctious and ragtag) sort of cavalry rode into the graveyard. With cheers and cries of “Ballyhoo!” they attacked (which is polite way of saying created chaos among) their gloved adversaries.

  On one horse (which, in this case, is a polite way of saying donkey) sat the two little people seen earlier on the bus, still in their formal attire. As soon as they entered the graveyard, they jumped off and started running under the legs of the silver-clad bouncers, tripping them and occasionally biting their ankles.

  The Bearded Lady also jumped off her horse (which in this case is a polite way of saying elephant) and started swinging her fists at unsuspecting Midnight Sun members.

  The Strong Man, meanwhile, marched in on foot, supporting (which is a polite way of saying wielding like human barbells) two Chinese platespinners — and knocking over enemies on all sides.

  Standing on top of a horse (which, in this case, is a polite way of saying camel), the Illustrated Man breathed fire from his mouth, lighting torches that he juggled then threw at fleeing sock♥roaches®.

  In a cart behind him, the red-coated Lion Tamer waved his bullwhip and bowed this way and that as if before a cheering crowd (which is a polite way of saying he was off his rocker).

  Alone among this brave-ish band, there was one who truly followed the Way of the Warrior: that was, of course, the one and only Warrior Wei. Lily wore full body armor over her black gi and had her horse-head violin strapped to her back as if it were a sword (which in fact it was).

  Like laser beams, her eyes locked on her old nemesis, Ms. Mauvais, who was standing slightly removed from the melee, a look of intense rage on her face.

  Screaming a vengeful word I cannot repeat (not because it was obscene, but because it was utterly unrecognizable), Lily kicked her heels into the sides of her horse and charged —

  Just before she could make contact, however, Ms. Mauvais signaled six of her gloved gravediggers with a flick of her gloved wrist, and they blocked Lily’s way, pulling her off her horse.

  By the time Lily kicked, chopped, and swung her way through the line of silver-clad thugs, Ms. Mauvais had disappeared — but, undeterred, Lily plunged into battle with the rest of the Midnight Sun. Running behind the circus folk, looking winded but also exhilarated, were two much younger and comparatively uncolorful people: Max-Ernest and Yo-Yoji.

  Pietro stalled his horse next to them.

  “Thanks for this —!” He tossed Max-Ernest the snowball which, of course, was actually the Sound Prism — and which Max-Ernest caught with two hands.

  “Now, all we need is that —” said Max-Ernest. He pointed to the senile Lion Tamer, still standing on his horse, bowing to an imaginary crowd. “Hey, mister — can we borrow your whip?” he shouted.

  Yo-Yoji looked at Max-Ernest in surprise: what the heck did he want a whip for?

  Pietro urged his horse forward, then jumped off when he neared the grave. In the commotion, Lord Pharaoh’s coffin had been left unguarded.

  “Pietro?!”

  It was his brother.

  Suddenly, they were face-to-face. And almost nose-to-nose. They were so close — so quickly and unexpectedly — that they each stepped backward as if frightened by a ghost.

  Although Pietro’s face had aged so much more than Dr. L’s, their movements remained identical, and watching the two of them together was like watching one person standing in front of a mirror. (Or maybe like watching two people playing mirror in a drama class.)

  “Nice trick with the voice,” said Dr. L, recovering. “I don’t remember that one.”

  “I guess I’ve learned one or two since the Bergamo Brothers last performed.”

  Dr. L smiled wanly. “You look . . . old, brother.”

  “And so I am. So we are. Luciano, come home with me. It is not too late. You are not this . . . thing.”

  He gestured to Dr. L’s handsome but lifeless face, his slick clothes, his telltale gloves.

  “I don’t believe it. I won’t believe it.”

  Dr. L blinked — for a moment he seemed almost to waver. To regret what he’d become. To agree to repent.

  “You always thought you knew better than me, didn’t you?” he asked with a sneer.

  “I do know better,” said Pietro.

  They stared at each other — their old love for each other vying with their newfound hatred.

  “Kill him!” Ms. Mauvais screamed, striding toward them.

  Dr. L raised his gloved hand. He held the skeleton key like a weapon.

  “Good-bye, fratello mio,” Pietro said sadly. “Do you remember this one . . . ?”

  He reached down and grabbed a fistful of snow. “We used to use smoke —”

  Before his brother had time to react, Pietro threw the powdery snow into his brother’s eyes, creating a sparkly cloud. He remounted his horse and escaped into the fracas.

  A moment later, Max-Ernest and Yo-Yoji climbed up onto the boulder overlooking the lake, the boulder on which they’d stood when Cass first called the homunculus a few long weeks ago.

  Below in the graveyard, chaos reigned.

  “Are you sure this is going to work?” asked Yo-Yoji. He held the lion-tamer’s whip in his hand, and he flicked it nervously.

  “Define sure,” said Max-Ernest, holding the Sound Prism so tight his knuckles were white. “Am I absolutely positive? No. Am I reasonably certain? . . . Uh, no. Do I think there is a good chance of success? Depends what you mean by good. Do I think it will work? Um, I hope it will. Does part of me think the plan is insane? Uh, yeah. Is it the kind of thing I would usually do —?”

  “OK, I get the point!”

  “Anyway, it’s a fact that a whip creates a sonic boom — I’ve read about it. It’s because when you crack it, it moves faster than the speed of sound.”

  Yo-Yoji eyed the whip in his hand, as if wondering how it could possibly move that fast.

  “Plus,” said Max-Ernest, standing a little taller, “it’s the only way to save Cass. Well, the only way I can think of. Do you have a better idea?”

  Yo-Yoji gave the whip an experimental crack. Max-Ernest jumped back, startled.

  “OK, you’re the boss,” said Yo-Yoji. He made a fist and looked meaningfully at Max-Ernest.

  “Paper scissors rock?” asked his confused friend.

  Yo-Yoji laughed. “No, like this —”

  And he showed Max-Ernest how to bump fists.

  It was strange for Cass, being on the sidelines of the battle waging in front of her in the graveyard. (Owen, it seems, was still too busy fighting sock♥roaches® to untie her.) In her fantasies at least, she was always the hero in these situations, not the damsel in distress.

  Still, she was glad there were heroes around — even if they weren’t her. She’d barely caught a glimpse of her two friends, but it had been enough.

  True, the Midnight Sun had numbers on their side. Not to mention just about every other advantage you could think of. But just knowing Max- Ernest and Yo-Yoji were there — and that they’d called Pietro just as she’d planned — made her feel hopeful.

  She wasn’t alone, she realized. She had a friend. In fact, she had two. And more if you counted Pietro and Owen and Lily. She looked down at her feet: and the homunculus. How many friends could a person have? Perhaps there was no limit. She made a mental note to discuss the subject one day with Max-Ernest.

  She thought again of the last time she’d been tied up — on the Midnight Sun boat. She hadn’t yet tried to reenact Max-Ernest’s wor
m wriggle, because she’d been under constant guard. But now, she realized, nobody was looking at her.

  Even the homunculus, still tied up in the snow beside her, was absorbed in the scene in front of him, as though it were a movie.

  She tested the rope for slack; sure enough, they used too much rope again. Then she kicked her shoes off — the first step — and, wincing, stood in her socks in the snow. Now she’d get frostbite for sure.

  Imagining a future life without toes, she shimmied herself out of the rope. Sooner than she expected, she was tying her shoes back on, and untying the surprised homunculus.

  “Nice job, Jester junior.”

  “Anytime.”

  As she spoke, her voice was lost in the —

  BOOM!!!

  It sounded like a crack of thunder — followed by the loudest rumbling Cass had ever heard, indeed, the loudest rumbling the homunculus had ever heard, and he’d been hearing rumbling for five hundred years (though mostly in his own stomach).

  “Look — it’s working!” said Yo-Yoji.

  He and Max-Ernest watched as rocks started to shake loose from the peaks above.

  “Yeah, but they’re not going in the right direction.”

  “Maybe we should trying aiming for that? That’ll come right down on them,” said Yo-Yoji, pointing to a tall mountain peak that seemed to rise directly out of the graveyard. The snow on the peak was piled so high it created a lip —

  “You mean that cornice? I don’t know how to aim for it exactly,” said Max-Ernest, looking from the Sound Prism to the mountain peak. “I was just figuring if I created a big enough sonic boom, the whole thing would avalanche.”

  “Well, let’s try again — but don’t close your eyes this time.”

  “OK — but it’s hard not to; it’s a reflex.”

  Bravely keeping his eyes open, Max-Ernest held the Sound Prism as far out in front of himself as he could.

  With an unusual intensity of focus, Yo-Yoji flicked the whip backward, then — crrrrracked it less than an inch away from the Sound Prism.

  BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!

  It was even louder this time. The mountains shook. A big crack zigzagged through the frozen surface of Whisper Lake.

  Max-Ernest and Yo-Yoji stared in amazement, at first not noticing that the boulder they were standing on had dislodged from the mountainside and started to ROLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL —

  Cass heard the boulder before she saw it.

  She had only a hazy hunch that the sonic booms had been created by Max-Ernest and Yo-Yoji, and only the very haziest of hunches that the purpose of the booms was to bury Lord Pharaoh’s coffin for good.

  Nonetheless, she snapped into action as though the plan had been her own.

  “C’mon,” she said to the homunculus, pointing to the coffin as the boulder hurdled toward Lord Pharaoh’s grave, gaining speed every second.

  (Thankfully, Max-Ernest and Yo-Yoji had managed to jump off.)

  While the Midnight Sun and Terces members alike scattered this way and that, running away from the boulder’s path, Cass and the homunculus sprinted to the coffin.

  Together, they pushed the coffin (it was still on wheels) back to the grave, and heaved it over the edge into the hole.

  “Cass!” warned the homunculus.

  The boulder had bounded off another rock, sailed through the air, and was now rolling directly at them like a giant bowling ball.

  With superhuman effort, the little homunculus rammed into Cass, pushing her out of the way just in time. But as he did so, he lost his footing and —

  “Mr. Cabbage Face!!!”

  — fell backward into the hole.

  The boulder crashed on top of him.

  Sealing the homunculus — and Lord Pharaoh’s deadly coffin — in the grave forever.

  As the last remaining members of the Midnight Sun retreated into the snowy wilderness, a black helicopter rose out of the trees and flew off into the dawn sky — like a creature of the night fleeing the encroaching day.

  Were we to have looked into the helicopter’s cabin, we would likely have found Dr. L and Ms. Mauvais sitting in stony silence, or furiously plotting their revenge, or both.

  Rather humiliating to be defeated by three children, a defunct circus, and a tiny man grown in horse dung — don’t you think?

  But let us stay on the ground this time, and watch the motley assortment of people known as the Terces Society gathering around Lord Pharaoh’s grave — now marked by a giant boulder sunk halfway into the earth.

  The scene looked something like it did when the Midnight Sun had gathered earlier. But the differences were telling.

  And not only because the sun — the real sun — had started to rise.

  For one thing, the Terces Society members smiled. Not in the greedy, sinister, conniving way in which the Masters of the Midnight Sun occasionally smiled, but in an easier, friendlier, if still mischievous and not altogether innocent way.

  For another thing, their attention was not trained on the grave and the terrible Secret it might contain but on the three kids in their midst.

  I don’t know whether it was due to Terces Society custom, or rather, as I suspect, to Pietro’s intuitive understanding of the kind of ceremony they wanted, but the three kids were kneeling almost as if they were being knighted. Pietro standing above them like a proud father.

  Cass and Max-Ernest were taking the Oath of Terces at last. And with them their new friend and partner, Yo-Yoji.

  As Pietro recited the words, they repeated them:

  I HAVE A SECRET I CAN’T TELL NOR INK;

  THOUGH IT HAS NO SCENT, IT DOES OFTEN STINK.

  THOUGH IT MAKES NO SOUND, IT CAN MAKE YOU ROAR;

  WHEN IT’S TASTELESS, I LIKE IT ALL THE MORE.

  THOUGH IT HAS NO SHADE, IT LACKS NOT COLOR;

  THOUGH IT HAS NO SHAPE, NO CAUSE FOR DOLOR.

  IF YOU THINK YOU KNOW IT, YOU’RE INCORRECT,

  AND FROM YOU THE SECRET I WILL PROTECT.

  THE SECRET OF LIFE IS NOT STONE NOR CENTS,

  FOR THE SECRET SENSE IS BUT A NONSENSE.

  “I thought it was supposed to be an oath,” said Yo Yoji, confused, as the three friends stood up. “That sounded more like another riddle.”

  “Well, I liked it,” said Cass, her face still red from crying. “Are we allowed to know where it’s from?” She wiped her nose and looked at the grown-ups standing behind them.

  “The Jester, of course,” said Mr. Wallace, pulling up the collar of his coat. “Everything he wrote is a bit of a puzzle.”

  Owen patted Mr. Wallace on the back. “And if you had it your way, we’d spend all our time sitting in some library solving them.”

  “Yeah, but what’s weird is, the way it goes, if you think you know the Secret, you’re wrong,” said Max-Ernest. “So how’re you supposed to figure it out then? It’s almost like you’re not supposed to solve the riddle. How ’bout that?”

  “How ’bout that?” Pietro smiled at Max-Ernest “I think you have come pretty close to solving it just now.”

  “Perhaps Cass is not the only one who has something in common with the Jester,” said Lily with a laugh.*

  Later, as they all started heading down the mountain, Cass stopped and turned back to look at the enormous ball of granite sticking out from the glistening snow. There was something very fitting, she thought, about such a little creature getting such a big tombstone.

  “Good-bye, Mr. Cabbage Face,” she said softly.

  Her eyes beginning to tear again, she pulled that much smaller ball, the Sound Prism, out of her jacket pocket, and tossed it into the air one last time.

  I’m sure I don’t have to tell you how hysterical Cass’s mother became when Cass didn’t come home after the Skelton Sisters concert. This time around she didn’t bend and it would be months before Cass could step foot out of her house again without an accompanying adult.

  You try telling your mother you’ll be home by eleven p.m. — then get kidn
apped by evil alchemists, save the world with the help of a broken-down circus, have your life saved by a five-hundred-year-old homunculus, swear an oath you’ll keep this all secret from everyone including your mother, and then show up the following day with no explanation what-soever.

  Cass was no longer allowed even to take the school bus. She had to be driven back and forth to school by her mother or her grandfathers.

  Or — as happened one day a few weeks after the incident at Whisper Lake — by her mother and her grandfathers.

  That afternoon, Cass’s mother was waiting on the curb in front of Cass’s school with Grandpa Larry and Grandpa Wayne; it was Grandpa Larry’s birthday and they were all going to an antiques auction to celebrate.

  As she stepped outside, Cass heard them speaking — even though they were about half a block away:

  “You know, it’s our story, too — not just yours,” Grandpa Larry was saying. “Maybe we should tell her if you won’t.”

  “No, no. I will. Very soon. I promise,” said Cass’s mother. “I just need to find the right —”

  “But there’s never going to be a right time!” said Cass’s grandfathers in unison.

  Reflexively, Cass felt in her pocket for the Sound Prism. But she wasn’t carrying it. She was hearing them with her own ears.

  Could the homunculus have been right?

  One thing was certain: whatever their powers, her ears were unique, and they were her inheritance from the Jester.

  And something else: it was time.

  Right now.

  Right here in front of her school.

  Before she could change her mind, Cass marched up to her startled mother and grandfathers, and took a big breath —

  “I know why you didn’t want to say who my father was.”

  Another breath.

  “It’s because you don’t really know.”

  Breath.

  “Because I was adopted, and you were afraid to tell me.”

  Breath.

  “But it’s OK, I still love you.”

  Breath.

  “And you’re still my mom.”