The Lord of the Curtain

by Billy Phillips

  Damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.

  Probing fingers brushed the bottom of her foot.

  Oh my gosh! Someone’s down there! Yes! Please help me!

  She felt a sharp tug on her ankle.

  No! No! No!

  The hand was trying to pull her downward, deeper into the quagmire.

  Oh God—no!

  She jerked wildly and wrenched her foot free. But she dropped even lower into the gravel soup in the process. She kept her eyes closed. Airtight. Hermetically sealed. She knew those coarse granules of sand would scratch her eyeballs. She floundered in darkness.

  Is it Glinda pulling at me? Is she trying to help me suffocate quicker, to get this over with?

  Another fierce tug on her ankle almost dislocated her knee. This time the hand wasn’t letting go.

  This can’t be happening!

  But it was. Caitlin was being dragged down deeper into the quicksand, each yank of her leg distancing her from the surface . . . from safety . . . from air!

  The only thing sinking faster was her last glimmer of hope.

  Downward, deeper, and lower she sank as the hand pulled and the pressure of the liquid sand increased. She was dropping to unspeakable depths, descending into the suffocating grains and darkness. She knew with total certainty that she’d never see the surface of the sand pit again.

  Her legs and feet touched some kind of mucky, round opening. It felt like a cylindrical vent or a ring-like hole.

  Oh no!

  She was being pulled into it.

  Stop!

  Caitlin was now horizontal—on her backside, being dragged along into what felt like a narrow passageway.

  The gritty consistency of the quicksand began to thin out as she was towed along.

  Her body bumped against mucky walls, burrowed through thinning sands. Her lungs throbbed in protest—the result of holding her breath for so long. She desperately craved one quick suck of air.

  Sticky walls of mud gave way to rocks slimy with

  moss. Her fingers rubbed against slippery stone as she moved along.

  The wet sand continued dissolving, and the passageway soon turned swampy. Marshy. It diluted further until the cavity became cold, clear, and watery.

  The environment surrounding her now seemed to be liquid, as opposed to granular. She took a chance and raised an eyelid—but just a crack.

  Clear water—yes!

  She opened both eyes. Someone was ferrying her and Glinda along by the ankles.

  The currents of fresh water flushed the sand grains from her eyes, washed the mud deposits from her ear cavities, and rinsed the granules of clay from between her toes.

  If I could just sip a bit of oxygen!

  Caitlin glanced over at Glinda. Her face had turned pale blue from lack of air, and her bloated cheeks looked ready to burst. She offered a tentative smile. It brightened when the mysterious person tugboating the girls abruptly swam upward, heading toward the surface. Chips of jeweled sunlight flickered like glitter above them.

  Caitlin was moments away from having to involuntarily gasp for air. Which meant water rushing into her lungs. And drowning.

  Splash!

  The girls’ heads crashed through the surface of the water. They frantically gulped fresh air.

  “Are you both all right?” the Little Mermaid asked.

  A speechless, breathless, and dumbfounded Caitlin could only nod deliriously.

  After a few heaving breaths of oxygen, Glinda and Caitlin swam to the shallows and then straggled onto the sunny banks of the creek they’d been in.

  They dropped to the ground, rolled onto their backs, and spread out their arms and legs. Their chests rose and fell rapidly as their lungs lavishly inhaled oxygen. Then exhaled, inhaled, and exhaled again.

  “I’m going back to tell the others where you are,” the Little Mermaid said. “Sit tight.”

  Caitlin leaned up. Before she could call out, the Little Mermaid had vanished beneath the river with a flourishing flap of her purple fin.

  Caitlin laid back down again, recuperating in the warming rays of the sun. She took hold of Glinda’s hand.

  The emotional stress of the ordeal began to give way to giddy relief.

  “I’d say that was pretty freaky!” Caitlin declared.

  Glinda chuckled through grateful tears and sobs. “I didn’t see that one coming.”

  Why would you have?

  Caitlin picked granules of sand from her belly button. She rolled a single grain back and forth between the pads of her thumb and index finger. She stared at it up close.

  She still had no clue what she was supposed to actually do once she reached the mythical Twin Mountains of Velarium—the place where evil lived, violent volcanoes erupted, and the ruthless Red Spectrum ruled.

  How will I possibly topple the Lord of the Curtain, find and rescue my sister, and get the hell out of this place alive? I’m one person. Okay, there are six others helping me. But I’m the one designated as the goblet. A homeless, motherless, fatherless, orphaned goblet.

  But she still had a sibling. The thought brought fresh tears to her eyes.

  Oh, Natalie!

  “You okay?” Glinda asked as she sat up on the river bank.

  I don’t even know.

  Caitlin shrugged at Glinda. Could she—would she—be able to confront and somehow overpower the mountain of evil and the monster known as the Lord of the Curtain?

  With her index finger, Caitlin flicked the lone grain of sand off her thumb.

  Suddenly the idea of sinking away into quicksand seemed the easier proposition.

  CHAPTER Twenty-Two

  Blackbeard opened the thick wooden door and entered the cell. Natalie was standing by the stool, staring at his scabbed face. She was holding the pee pail. It was half-full.

  “Quite a load o’ piss ya got there,” Blackbeard said. “How big is that bladder o’ yours?”

  “I haven’t been able to go to the bathroom since I got here.”

  He scowled. “Well, be careful with that bucket.”

  Natalie started toward him. His eyebrows arched.

  “Where ya goin’ with that?”

  She lifted the pail to her chest, left palm under the bottom, right hand gripping the rim.

  Blackbeard’s face reddened. “Hold on—”

  She hurled the pail at his face.

  His batted his arms to block what he knew was coming.

  SPLASH!

  Too late.

  Flustered and soaked, he snarled. “Aaaarrrgggggggghh!”

  Natalie ducked past him and hotfooted it out of the cell. She fled down a skinny passageway that ended at the base of a short wooden staircase, steep as a ladder. Daylight spilled in from above.

  Yes!

  She climbed, step after step. Reached the landing. Escaped outside. Sprinted into the free and open air.

  Behold freedom!

  Suddenly, her eyes bugged out. Her shoulders sagged like a faulty parachute. And her mouth went slack-jawed. She felt as though the ground beneath her feet had just fallen away.

  She was standing on the deck of a ship. A pirate ship. Sailing on a shoreless sea. She whipped around, searching every direction. The horizons were landless—nothing to the west, east, north, or south! No other ships were out there. And there was no sun in the sky, only rainclouds on the verge of opening their floodgates. The air was salty, subtropically humid, and slightly fishy-smelling. The only sounds she heard were windblown sails, breaking waves, and the lingering wails of distant seagulls.

  Atop the ship, the skull and crossbones flag flapped in a light southerly wind.

  And then thunder clapped. The skies opened. Lashing rain fell like crystal pins.

  “Pretty, ain’t it?”

  Natalie tu
rned. Blackbeard stood behind her, eyes transfixed by the open sea and rain-swept skies. The view clearly touched him.

  Natalie began to tremble, but not from the cool sting of rain. She was thinking of Caitlin.

  So this is what it feels like. Neurosis. Phobia.

  She realized there was no getting off the boat. There was no one to call. Nowhere to run. No place to swim to if she jumped overboard. She loosened her collar and started nibbling on her pinkie nail.

  Blackbeard shoved her from behind. “Back inside ya go before we catch cold.”

  She had to tamp down the uncomfortable feeling gathering inside her, a feeling teetering on unbearable cabin fever. A disturbing sense of being vulnerable and totally out of control of her situation. If she’d been tied up and stuffed in a box locked inside a dark, cramped closet located in the basement of an old, abandoned house, she would have felt the same strong unease that verged on panic as she had felt upon seeing the wide-open sea. Equally harrowing. Like two sides of one coin called phobia hell!

  She couldn’t let Blackbeard know how vulnerable she was, or that all these bleak, unbidden thoughts were cropping up in her mind. She stiffened her back and flexed her arms.

  The old pirate shoved her back into the cell. He followed behind her and locked the door.

  He pointed his finger at her sharply. “I says yer darn lucky that was jug water in that bucket and not yer warm, yellow piss.”

  She mocked him. “And I says yer darn lucky I don’t got mind over matter right now, ’cause then I’d use my mind to reposition that matter that is your head right up your scrawny, hairy, zit-abundant butt. Then, when folks saw ya flounderin’ down the street, they’d stop and say, ‘Hey, what’s the matter with that guy?’ And then other folks would respond, sayin’, ‘Ahh, pay no mind to ’im. There’s nothin’ the matter with the guy. He’s just one, big, dopey, dumbass butthead.’”

  Inside, Natalie was laughing herself silly at the dorky, lame, dim-witted remark.

  Her claustrophobia and agoraphobia dissipated—for the moment.

  And so it happened that this was one of the rare occasions in the life of Natalie Fletcher where it felt absolutely awesomely delightful for her to . . .

  Just. Let. Go.

  And act her age!

  CHAPTER Twenty-Three

  Caitlin shrieked when an anonymous, cold finger poked the bottom of her foot.

  “Aaaahhhhhhhh!”

  She bolted upright. She was sweating profusely, swinging her arms, and kicking wildly as if she were drowning in a pitch-black sea. Her eyes were still shut.

  “It’s just me,” Scarecrow whispered. “You fell asleep. Open your eyes.”

  The trauma of the quicksand caused a reflex response when she felt Scarecrow’s fingers fiddling with her foot. It was an innocent effort to rouse her from her slumber.

  “What’s happening?” Glinda mumbled as she, too woke up, yawning and stretching her arms and torso.

  They were still on the sandy shore by the creek. Scarecrow lent a gloved hand to Caitlin and helped her to her feet. Tin Man did the same for Glinda.

  “I take this as a good sign,” Scarecrow said.

  Caitlin looked at him, clearly confused.

  “The Well of Velarium,” Scarecrow explained. “You managed to find one of the underground water arteries. It saved your life. Which suggests the Twin Mountains and the Dipping Pools are real.”

  “She saved our life,” Caitlin said. “The Little Mermaid.”

  “I trust you’re refreshed now. We need to keep moving.”

  “I’d like to take a sick day.”

  “There’s much we need to discuss,” Scarecrow said.

  The straw dude is right. I have questions that need answers.

  Tin Man pointed a silver finger eastward. “The trail picks up over there.”

  Caitlin picked a sand grain from her tooth. “Let’s go. And watch out for quicksand.”

  The foursome found their way back to the trail without incident. Caitlin renewed the conversation that had taken place prior to her being buried alive.

  “As I was saying . . . how is all of this gonna play out? How do I—the goblet—combine fire and water to take down the Enchanter?”

  “You already have the fire inside you,” Scarecrow said. “You’re blood-eyed. Once at the mountaintop, you’ll immerse yourself into the hallowed waters of the Dipping Pools of Velarium. The violet waters will cleanse all traces of the darkness from you. As the darkness dies, the Enchanter will weaken. But first you must become an empty vessel—empty of fear, doubt, hesitation, uncertainty. And most important of all. . . . ” He paused.

  She made eye contact with him. “I’m listening!”

  “Selfishness.”

  Her eyes narrowed sharply. “Did my sister tell you to say that?”

  Scarecrow’s stitched-up mouth broke into a slight smile.

  Caitlin ignored the grin. “You said you heard about these fantastical twin mountains in a legend.”

  “Yes—an old one.”

  “Then how do you know the place even exists?”

  “A few throughout the ages claim to have found it.”

  “Like who?”

  Scarecrow went silent. A baffled look crossed his face as he shrugged.

  Boom—I just stumped the big brain! Who’s your zombie now?

  Scarecrow turned to Glinda, who took the cue.

  “Dear, dear Caitlin. I’m almost certain the Twin Mountains exist.”

  Almost?

  “They’re recorded in one of the Great Books of Records and—”

  “Wait! Did you just say one of the Great Books of Records? Like, there’s more than one?”

  “Well, yes . . . sort of . . .”

  “Sort of? How many Great Books of Records are there? And do they all mention the Twin Mountains?”

  “That’s a bit complicated to explain at the present moment.”

  Scarecrow gamely interceded, perhaps trying to save face as a result of his prior mental lapse. “According to my calculations, if you piled all the existing Great Books of Records one on top of the next, they would touch the stars.” He perked up. “I can calculate how many books that’d be, if you’d like?”

  Lady Glinda rejected the offer with a dismissive wave of the hand. “We’re getting ahead of ourselves. No need to overwhelm her with information at this point.” She sidled up to Caitlin and interlocked arms with her.

  “To be perfectly frank, sweetie, there is a fifty-percent chance the Twin Mountains are real. If they’re not real, the Lord of the Curtain will be able to continue blocking the light forever, the kingdoms will drown in darkness, and this conversation will be moot.”

  Why be subtle? Tell it like it is.

  “Something doesn’t make sense,” Caitlin said. “Why would the Dipping Pools be unaffected by the broken spectrum?”

  Tin Man stepped in beside her. “They sit at the summit of the mountain. And the summit stands higher than the firmament—above the clouds and curtain impairing the rays. Therefore, the Dipping Pools capture the full spectrum of the sun. The same holds true for the feminine waters in the underground oceans. The Well of Velarium lies beneath—”

  “Hold on a sec. Did you just say feminine waters?”

  “I did.”

  “What does that even mean?”

  Scarecrow took up the baton. “Two types of water exist in our world—masculine and feminine.”

  Kinky.

  “Masculine waters fall from the skies,” Scarecrow said.

  I think they call that rain.

  “The masculine waters are collected in the Dipping Pools, at the summit. Feminine waters, on the other hand, rise from underground oceans—the Well of Velarium—deep below the mountain.”

  Male on top. Some things never change.r />
  “Then what happens?” Caitlin asked.

  “Something extraordinary!” Scarecrow replied. “There’s a network of channels inside the mountain connecting the Dipping Pool to the Well of Velarium. When the masculine waters flow into the feminine waters below, magic happens!”

  Mating waters—this gives new meaning to the term “hot springs.”

  “You mean, like, the Earth moves?”

  “No. After their union, the coupled waters begin to shimmer violet. This signifies the unleashing of profound restorative forces. The underground violet oceans nourish all the aboveground streams, rivers, lakes, and seas. These regenerative waters are what produce our enchanted kingdoms. And because these healing waters saturate our world—in the atmosphere, as rain, fruits, and drinking water—no one ever dies here.”

  “Well, they sure do now. So what happened?”

  “Long ago, the Enchanter siphoned off the masculine water supply in the Dipping Pools. He literally separated the masculine and feminine waters, causing them to lose their curative powers.”

  “How did he manage that?”

  “The Lord of the Curtain is able to hang curtains that dim or filter light and create illusions, as you know. But one thing he cannot do is change the structure of our world without human intervention. He found someone.”

  “A human?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who?”

  “Blackbeard. Long ago, the thieving marauder swore allegiance to the Enchanter. He’s the one that dammed the water channels inside the mountain. Then he built a special valve that cuts off the water supply from the summit, separating the masculine and feminine waters.”

  “And that was the end of violet underground oceans and everlasting life?”

  “Worse. The Enchanter siphons off violet from our essence.”

  “How?”

  “Our reactions. They nourish him. Feed him. And because we can’t access the green band, we have no ability to resist, even if we want to. Each time we react to the red band, our desire doubles in intensity, and then our next reaction generates double the amount of violet for this fiend. He’s constructed the perfect system of darkness, of slavery. Our everyday actions exponentially strengthen his existence while weakening ours. The Enchanter’s plan is to usurp all the violet from the entire universe: all the worlds, all realities, and every dimension.”