“Just thought I’d put it out there,” she said.
Mr. Dickens eyed the rustling groups of books above with a newfound curiosity.
“Excuse me, but what in Shakespeare are those books up there?” he asked. Calliope smiled to herself, a knowing smile that was somehow both warm and inscrutable. She looked at Miss Parker, who had a wide twinkle taped across the bottom of her face.
“Then it’s true!” Miss Parker yelped with girlish glee.
“What is true?” Milton asked.
“This,” Miss Parker replied, shutting her eyes and drawing a deep breath. A silvery-purple glow surrounded the woman. A group of books filed away in the “P” section shouldered themselves away from the shelves. Once free, they dove down from the top of the Tomiary and fluttered to Miss Parker, darting around her in swooping arcs of delight, like baby birds reunited with their mother.
Mr. Dickens gaped in slack-jawed wonder. Even the normally “too-cool-for-prep-school” Mr. Wilde was entranced and transported, like a young boy watching his first fireworks.
“True artists fill their works with pieces of their souls,” Calliope explained. “In the afterlife, these soul-pieces actually reside outside of an artist, living in their work. Those original incarnations of pure inspiration …”
Mr. Wilde closed his eyes and summoned his works from the shelves—The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Importance of Being Earnest, and others. The volumes frisked and nipped at each other playfully as they skimmed the air around him.
“The feeling is astonishing,” Mr. Wilde murmured. “It’s like … dancing in the rain to the music in my heart.”
“Or getting married in a bouncy castle,” Miss Parker replied with a childlike grin.
Mr. Dickens closed his eyes. His books—time-tested classics such as Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, David Copperfield, and Great Expectations—nudged themselves free from their roost, waddling to the edge of the shelf like baby penguins before gliding down in playful exuberance.
“It’s been so long,” Mr. Dickens said, grinning from beneath his unkempt beard. “I had forgotten what it feels like to be inspired. It is like an electric feeling, describing what we really have no words for at all.”
Euterpe set her lute down by the edge of her velvet fainting couch and eyed Milton with interest. “Is that … a kazoo?” she asked, flipping back her strawberry-blond curls as she glided toward him.
Milton nodded, pulling Gabriel’s kazoo from his pocket. “Yeah,” he replied. “I found it in— OWW!”
One of Mr. Wilde’s volumes clipped the side of Milton’s head. The Tomiary was beginning to resemble a tornado in a library, with books zooming in dangerous, liberated circuits around the gallery shelves. The works of Mr. Dickens seemed to lag somewhat behind the output of his fellow teachers.
“While my far-flung soul bits are gratefully emancipated from this secret prison of literary inspiration,” the man observed, “they seem to be a touch sluggish.”
Calliope smiled, ducking down to avoid impact with The Portable Dorothy Parker collection.
“I’m afraid that the more successful an artist’s work is, the bigger the press runs. Meaning, the more soul bits that are scattered and diluted. Authors of legal thrillers, for instance, can scarcely move their books at all, much less make them fly.”
Euterpe twirled the kazoo thoughtfully in her hands. “Ahh … Gabriel’s kazoo,” she murmured. “It was the archangel’s way of focusing and amplifying angelic intent, before he took up the horn. Do you mind?”
“Knock yourself out,” Milton replied.
The muse put the kazoo to her generous lips and hummed. Immediately, Milton felt at ease and gently buoyant. Euterpe gave the instrument back to Milton.
“What did you do?” he asked as he tucked Gabriel’s kazoo back in his pocket.
“I merely hummed the word ‘hope,’ ” she replied before smiling and walking away.
Hope, Milton thought, as if waking from a dream. I came here for a reason.
“I’ve got to rescue my sister,” Milton said urgently as he dashed to the far window. “They’re probably keeping her in the left steeple, since we were trapped in the right.”
“Too late,” Urania commented, her brass telescope pointing down just beyond the base of the tower. “Look.”
Milton squinted into the eyepiece. After adjusting the focus to humor his poor vision, a disturbing scene came into crisp view. Marlo—her mouth zipped, her hands tied—was being shoved outside by a team of Deaditors. They were leading her to a metal pole sticking up out of a mound of earth.
“Maybe there’s still—” Milton started before a discouraging sight plucked the words from his tongue. On the periphery, marching toward the Tower of Babble, was a team of fallen angels, led by Principal Bubb. Milton’s plan to avoid angelic assassination had succeeded on one level—his head was still attached to his shoulders, not severed by a razor-feather—yet it seemed to have failed miserably on another as the team of celestial soldiers converged below.
Milton crumpled inside.
“I’m too late,” he said as hot tears sliced down his cheeks. “Marlo threw the debate for me, and I just got caught up in trying to prove her wrong. Now there’s nothing I can do.…”
Calliope set her soft, subtly encouraging hand upon Milton’s upper back. Her touch kept his misery at bay, though he could still hear it howling in the distance.
“There are two words that will open many doors for you,” Calliope said.
“ ‘Pull’ and ‘push’?” Milton replied.
“No: ‘I’m sorry.’ ”
Milton turned and peered again through Urania’s telescope, this time training it upon the left steeple. The cell was identical to the one he had just fled, only unguarded now that Marlo had been dragged away. Milton studied the waggling tongues, positioned roughly a yard apart, spewing the eternal rancor that held the Tower of Babble together.
“I’m sorry,” Milton whispered, feeling the words on his lips, making them seem more real as he took Gabriel’s kazoo from his pocket. He smirked to himself as he turned.
“You know what this place needs?” Milton asked nobody in particular amid the ruckus of flapping pages. “Some peace … and riot.”
36 · A TORTURE’S WORTH
A THOUSAND WORDS
MARLO WAS LED outside to a long metal pole poking out from a mound of shredded-paper pulp. She had been scrubbed raw with salt and gravel and forced to pad outside barefoot wearing a frilly white petticoat. The last time she had worn all white was at the Generica Middle School’s Opposite Day dance, where the boys didn’t ask girls to not-dance, not accompanied by any music.
Marlo’s mind was hot with fury and questions, but her principal modes of expression—her mouth and hands—were now either zipped shut or bound tight. She sighed as the Deaditor demons prodded her forward with their hot-red highlighter wands.
I won’t let these meddling, muddling demons edit who I am down to nothing, Marlo thought with difficulty as decomposing demon creatures lashed her to an iron pole.
Vice Principal Carroll—wearing his tall fusty top hat, a Victorian overcoat despite the heat, and a light dusting of personal eccentricity—gamboled toward her, as if Marlo’s impending punishment were a game of croquet.
“Good evening, M-Miss Fauster,” the man said in a voice that reminded Marlo of a corkscrew: making its point in a persistent yet meandering way. “My, aren’t we a delightful froth of petticoats today? Rather like a meringue with moldy blueberries on top!”
Marlo struggled vainly against her bonds. The metal pole felt both cold and hot against her raw back.
Vice Principal Carroll flipped open his pocket watch.
“It is nearly t-time. The hurrier I go, the behinder I seem to get.…”
Principal Bubb and her team of fallen angels clustered around Vice Principal Carroll. The deranged man bowed and tipped his top hat to the principal, revealing his Thinking Cap beneath. Luckily for the vice principal, his behavio
r was so consistently inconsistent that such displays of eccentricity went mostly unnoticed.
“Principal B-Bubb!” he exclaimed as he took her claw and, lips quivering with repulsion, kissed it. “How good of you—if that term is in any way applicable—to arrive,” he added, picking a strand of coarse bitter fur from his tongue.
Principal Bubb gauged the man quizzically with her yellow goat eyes.
“Traffic was murder … and a host of other sins, both mortal and venial,” she replied, wiping the back of her claw on her red leather dress.
Vice Principal Carroll gazed with wonder at the team of nine fallen angels.
“We shan’t be having any trouble with Heck’s Angels about! I have a guardian angel of my own, you know: one that no one else can see!”
Principal Bubb rolled her eyes. “Of course you do.”
Marlo noticed one of the angels in particular: a breathtakingly beautiful boy with gleaming, black-metallic skin, piercing blue eyes, and wings feathered with razors.
Angelo, Marlo thought, staring wide-eyed at the boy. From Precocia. The boy hired to assassinate Milton. I wonder if he—
The boy, Molloch, gazed briefly at Marlo before continuing his sweep of the area.
Nope, Marlo thought with mixed emotions. He looked right through me … like most every cute boy.…
Principal Bubb scowled at Marlo. “So what, exactly, are we doing here?” she asked. “What will happen to the Fauster girl?”
Vice Principal Carroll clapped. “Sentence first; verdict afterward, as they say!”
“No one says that. Pretend that I am a dim-witted cretin and explain things to me simply.”
“I have faith that my powers of pretend can easily accommodate your request, Principal. What we are preparing for—the crowning jewel of the War of the Words—is Miss Fauster’s punishment before she is dispatched down below.”
“About that,” Principal Bubb replied. “As much as I despise the girl—and I really, truly, madly, deeply do—I’m troubled by the complete disregard of underworld policy here. Introducing minors to h-e-double-hockey-sticks is a bad idea even for a realm known for its bad ideas. The girl, like every student in Heck, should make her less-than-merry way through the system, undergo her Soul Aptitude Test, then graduate either above, below, or the other various outcomes.”
“Michael, the reigning Prince of Darkness, approved it himself,” Vice Principal Carroll replied.
“Of course he did,” Bea “Elsa” Bubb muttered with extreme distaste.
“And for a competition of this sort, the stakes must be high. The greater the risk, the greater the reward—”
“Regarding this ‘reward,’ ” Principal Bubb interjected, “I have an even bigger problem with that tiresome twerp Milton Fauster jumping the procedural turnstile and landing a coveted spot upstairs. As much as I’d like him out of my pelt, rewarding a notorious troublemaker such as him sends the wrong message. Worse yet, it gives the rotten ragamuffins hope.”
“Again, Principal, it has already been cleared.”
“By whom?”
“Satan, if you must know.”
“Satan?!”
“Yes, he arranged for the ‘prize,’ apparently,” Vice Principal Carroll said before casting a nervous glance down at his pocket watch. “But if you’ll excuse me, we really must be m-moving on. Van Glorious is nearly finished with his halftime performance, and I have to kindle the f-fire, so to speak, that will become the most blazingly popular event in afterlife radio history! Perhaps the last radio event ever, as the ultimate storytelling device is about to make its auspicious debut.…”
Blazing? Marlo fretted. Is he going to set me on fire like they did with Noah’s wife, Joan of Arc? Or like how island-people used to sacrifice young Virginians by throwing them into volcanoes?
The vice principal left Bea “Elsa” Bubb to stew in her own abominable juices as he walked around the mound and pulled a tuning fork from his pocket. His blue eyes glittered with awe as they rested upon the tall metal pole.
“A Rod of Irony,” he explained as he paused behind Marlo. “A fitting form of retort-ure for a mouthy young girl.”
Marlo began to shiver uncontrollably.
“Now, now,” he whispered softly.
“We are but older children, dear,
Who fret to find our bedtime near.
But you shall be the last sight to see,
At least those not conceived by me.…”
Principal Bubb hobbled up the mound on her polished hooves.
“Where is the other Fauster child?” she asked suspiciously as she scanned the shimmering Tower of Babble. “I like the troublesome burrs under my saddle to be where I can see them.”
Vice Principal Carroll rubbed his sallow chin. “Not to worry, Principal! Mr. Fauster is locked away, tight and tidy at the tippy-top, where he will pose no trouble at all.…”
Milton climbed off the last rung of Jacob’s stepladder and hopped back into the cell of the right-hand tower.
“Oh, the brave knight returns empty-handed, I see,” Moses said, his sarcasm set to “11.”
“Shut up, Babcock,” Mordacia said, slugging Moses on the bicep before turning to Milton. “What happened?”
Milton trotted to the door. “It’s hard to explain,” he said, eyeing the blurry forms of guards stationed on the other side of the sonic wall. “But I might have figured a way out of here.…”
Milton took out Gabriel’s kazoo and trained it upon the nearest ear sticking out of the sonic wall.
“I’m sorry,” Milton hummed into the ear, the kazoo focusing and intensifying the sentiment behind the words. He could hear the jabbering mouth on the other side of the wall suddenly stop its incessant arguing, as if biting its tongue. It began murmuring softly before—with a twitch of its ear—falling to the ground, leaving behind a large hole in the wall.
The children were astonished. Moses snapped out of it and folded his arms.
“We wouldn’t be able to get past the guards,” he declared flatly. “And it would take forever to undo every one of those ear—”
Before Moses could finish, two more mouthpieces fell to the floor, removing part of the door and a portion of floor. Milton smiled.
“It’s spreading,” he said with satisfaction as he walked over to the window. “If the vice principal can release some sort of language virus, so can I. This will undo the Tower of Babble exponentially. So we’ve got to hurry.”
“Why should our team escape?” Moses spat. “We won. We’re going to get prizes. And you’ll get to go to Heaven just for being along for the ride.”
“First, we have no idea what Vice Principal Carroll has in store for any of us,” Milton replied sternly. “Second, all we know for sure is that he’s planning some punishment for Marlo. Down there, right now. Last, he’s just using us as a way of focusing the attention of the afterlife so he can remake Creation in his own image.”
Moses shook his head with fuming disgust. “To counter—”
“There’s no time for a rebuttal,” Milton interrupted. “Turning everything into an argument wastes time, limits our thinking, and forces us to distort facts to get our way. Not to prove a point, but just win … treating important issues like some kind of game. But here, if one of us loses … we all lose. I know this is a hard concept for Wise Acres, but we’ve got to stop sniping each other and start helping each other.”
Milton turned to Rakeem.
“Rakeem … maybe you could use Moxie there as a sort of battering ram. Once the door is undone, just charge. The others can follow behind. I think the Deaditors will have enough problems of their own.…”
“Why is she all pink like that?” Principal Bubb asked as Vice Principal Carroll tapped the tuning fork in his palm. “She looks like a girl-shaped eraser.”
“Miss Fauster was exfoliated so that her skin would be extra thin,” he replied.
“To what end? So that she looks presentable on radio? Not like some sassy, pasty, iro
n-deficient ghost?”
“Not iron-deficient, Principal … but irony-deficient!” the man said, his blue eyes glassy with demented delight. “The Rod of Irony that Miss Fauster is currently tied to … it’s a truly remarkable creation, in that it literally attracts remarks.”
The man paced in circles around the pole, while Marlo struggled to free herself from her typewriter ribbon restraints.
“You see, Principal Bubb, every word we say has a specific energetic signature. And every nasty thing we say has a uniquely specific nastiness to it.…”
Vice Principal Carroll held up the silver tuning fork, with the initials “MF” etched upon its base.
“During the debate, I captured Miss Fauster’s sharpest, most caustic jibes and ripostes, then fabricated this special Retuning Fork,” he continued, twirling the fork in his fingers. “And, with a simple tap—”
Vice Principal Carroll gently struck the Rod of Irony with the Retuning Fork. The pole was slowly overwhelmed with bad vibrations until it wobbled and waggled.
“—every hurtful word that Marlo Fauster has ever uttered is now called back to her.”
Principal Bubb arched her scraggly centipede of an eyebrow. “You can’t be serious,” she replied. “That’s absurd.”
“I take my absurdity very seriously … sometimes with sugar and cream. Imagine, every mean-spirited remark you’ve ever made flung back at you like a verbal boomerang!”
Principal Bubb shuddered. “It’s almost unspeakable,” she replied.
Two stagecoaches converged one hundred yards away. One was gleaming red—marked INFERNO2GO—and pulled by snarling, decomposing Night Mares that gave off a smoldering scarlet glow as if illuminated from the inside. The other stagecoach—the Trans-Empyrean Express—gently floated to the ground, pulled by a team of immaculate winged Pegasus.
A clap of thunder boomed from overhead. The magenta clouds above swirled and darkened. Marlo swallowed as the Rod of Irony shivered behind her, pressing against her back like a nervous outboard spine.
So that’s my punishment, she thought, glancing warily up at the sky. Getting burned by every bad thing I’ve ever said … haunted and taunted by my own words …
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