The Lord of the Curtain

by Billy Phillips

  She made a threatening gesture with the hexagon and said, “How many tunnels?”

  “I says yer not as clever as ya think ya are.” His eyes narrowed. “There’s millions of ’em. Tunnels all tangled and twisted, leadin’ to a hundred thirty-seven million doors, leadin’ to a hundred million firmaments and a hundred million worlds and a hundred million faraway realms that you’d never imagine in a hundred million years. That enough for ya?”

  His face became cruel. “But only one tunnel leads directly outta this place. How d’ya like them odds? Now put that thing down and I’ll give ya the tiara. Ya can make yer choice: open the seven portals, or walk outta this place with yer tiara and roam about for eternity.”

  “You’re bluffing!” she said.

  But she knew he was right. It was impossible. She had sensed the unfathomable depth of worlds on the other side of that door when she had passed through a tunnel on the way to that wulf-infested forest. It would take countless lifetimes to cut through that many tunnels.

  Blackbeard reached into his inside coat pocket and retrieved the tiara. He set it on top of the boulder. “All yers,” he said.

  “Step back,” she instructed.

  Blackbeard backed up a few feet.

  “More.”

  He took a few more steps.

  “All the way to the far wall.”

  He retreated farther until his back pushed against the rock.

  She carefully returned the hexagon to the top of the boulder, keeping her eyes locked on Blackbeard. His left eyebrow curved.

  She picked up the tiara . . . raised it . . . but then she hesitated.

  Whatever this tiara really was, it might have had the power to make her happy and euphoric and giddy, but she’d be consigning herself to a lifetime of wandering through endless worlds, alone. Lost like a windblown autumn leaf drifting aimlessly along the ground. There would be millions of wrong choices at millions of intersections.

  “What happens if I open the portals?”

  “I’ll answer ya. ’Cuz ya have to make this choice on yer own. If ya open up them gates, the Enchanter will be able to secure Eos at the moment of its birth. And then you will become supreme monarch of that kingdom, I tell ya, establishing the very laws of nature.”

  He started to amble toward her. “Don’t worry, ya can keep the tiara. I’m not gonna break yer teeth or nuthin’. Look, there’s no point in ya gettin’ lost in a maze for eternity; not when ya could rule a world filled with happiness for all eternity.”

  He placed his hand inside the hidden compartment in the boulder.

  “What are you doing?”

  He fiddled. “Just watch.”

  The cavern began to hum at a different frequency. Blue, orange, purple, and green lights flashed and shimmered as a hologram materialized.

  The hologram was a mirror image of the hexagon.

  Seven new congruent circles formed before her eyes, followed by another perfect hexagon taking shape around the circles. Then another seven circles issued forth, producing another hexagon, and then one after another, after another. The pattern began to expand exponentially.

  She was witnessing the perpetual genesis of new worlds, the formation of a cosmic honeycomb.

  Suddenly, the holographic view zoomed in on one of the hexagons. Natalie saw that it was a hexagonal maze.

  The expanding honeycomb was an evolving universe where each hexagonal world included a maze. The symbolism was striking—and tantalizing to Natalie’s mind. These were all predetermined designs and destinies, and yet, within the design there existed choices every step of the way. Order and potential chaos coexisted, both dependent upon the act of choosing.

  And now Natalie had to make her choice: try to escape by entering into that mysterious honeycomb maze comprising millions of worlds, knowing the tiara would keep her contented as she traveled like a windblown leaf . . . Wait!

  A leaf.

  Photosynthesis.

  In a single flash of perceptual clarity, Natalie suddenly knew what to do next.

  “I’ve made my choice,” she told the pirate.

  A broad grin filled Blackbeard’s face as he gestured to the hexagon contraption. “Well, little lambkins, good for ya. Go ahead, start opening doors.”

  But instead of activating the seven colorful orbs in the hexagon, Natalie set the tiara upon her head. She shut her eyes.

  And then she vanished.

  As did the grin on Blackbeard’s face.

  CHAPTER Forty-One

  Caitlin was clocking sixty miles an hour over the ocean and it was sheer exhilaration.

  Kickass. Awesofrickintastic. Nothing else comes close. Period.

  Normally adrenaline was the culprit and co-conspirator behind an anxiety attack. Now it was producing such a heady rush that it seemed to her like it must have come from an illegal substance.

  Note to self: stock up on fairy dust should I ever get to go home.

  She contemplated the trippindiculars of human flight: her mind willing forth her speed and altitude, the wind pressing hard against her face. Jetting untethered to terra firma, unbound from solid ground.

  The cool spray of seawater invigorating her senses while triggering small gasps of air as it splashed her face. The blurry ocean whizzing by below. Starlight fixed in the firmament above. Moonlight making the sea look like honeyed syrup and its golden reflections like segments of mandarin oranges.

  Her legs and arms tweaked her aerodynamics . . . a twitch of the shoulder here . . . a shift of the waist there.

  But then, without warning, the thrill of flying began to wither. The songbirds’ beneficial effect was tapering off and Caitlin’s hunger was returning. The calm seas were also turning rough. The stars faded behind an overcast sky.

  “You see that?” Peter asked.

  She did.

  Whitecaps. Up ahead.

  “Those waves are a good fifteen feet high,” Peter said. “We’ll never clear them.”

  “Then we go through them.”

  “You’re mad. They’ll knock us right out of the air. If we plunge into the sea, we might lose our fairy dust. And I’m not too fond of sharks. I say we turn back.”

  As her hunger rose, her patience waned.

  “Stop whining. No going back. If I fall in the ocean, I’ll swim there.”

  “Persistent little bird. And a tetchy one.”

  Caitlin suddenly dropped in altitude, until she was practically skimming the surface of the sea.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Peter shouted.

  She began bobbing her head into the water. Once, twice . . .

  A few more quick dunks . . .

  She regained altitude. A sunfish squirmed in her mouth. It stank like slime. Nevertheless, Caitlin bit down hard, sinking her teeth in.

  Peter pulled up alongside her.

  “That’s a mola mola you’re eating.”

  “Wanna bite?”

  His tone sharpened. “No one ever warn you about pleasure escalation? Your desire doubling when you’re blood-eyed? Toss the fish—now! Or soon you’ll be nibbling on my thigh.”

  Too late; Caitlin was already spitting out fish bones.

  Before she had a chance to belch up a seriously smelly fish burp, the fifteen-foot-high waves were upon them.

  “Here we go!”

  Caitlin and Peter smashed into the first cresting wave.

  CRASH—whoosh!

  Caitlin managed a breath in the trough between the crests.

  Then another crest. CRASH—whoosh . . . catch a breath in the trough . . . CRASH—whoosh . . . catch a breath in the trough . . . CRASH—whoosh . . . catch a breath in the trough . . .

  This went on for three hard, pounding minutes. As they finally found calmer waters to cruise over, Caitlin and Peter Pan were huffing and puffing
, their bodies battered and beaten up by the slamming waves.

  “You were right,” Caitlin said.

  “I’m always right—but about what?”

  “I’m doubly hungry.”

  “Not good. Do me a favor: Don’t react—to anything! It’ll just escalate.”

  Caitlin suddenly spotted a blurred object jutting out of the sea, far off in the distance. It reminded her of two witch hats, side by side.

  Instead of using her telescopic eye to zoom in and examine it, she increased her speed to reach its position quickly. She accelerated to seventy miles per hour . . . eighty . . . swooooosh . . . she jumped to a hundred twenty.

  Headwinds pummeled her face, making her eye water. Surging air whistled as it whipped through the crevices in her patch.

  “Whoa, girl!” Peter cried out. “Even I’ve never gone this fast.”

  He always makes everything about himself!

  At their accelerated speed, Caitlin and Peter were soon making their final approach to the citadel of grim darkness: a craggy, mountainous island. The two witch hats turned out to be exactly what Caitlin had expected: the towering Twin Mountains of Velarium.

  Caitlin and Peter came in for a vertical landing—helicopter style. They touched down on the haunted island. The landscape was chock full of eucalyptus trees—tall centurions that emitted an eerie blue haze and a pleasant menthol-pine scent tinged with a faint note of honey.

  “The leaves on the trees—they have a golden flicker,” Caitlin noted.

  “Eucalypts are gum trees,” Peter Pan said. “They mine minerals from deep underground. Through their roots. The glitter on those leaves is actually gold.”

  Note to self: stuff my pockets with fairy dust and eucalyptus leaves before leaving this place!

  The delightfully inviting eucalyptus aroma coming off the trees—which cleared Caitlin’s nasal passages, allowing her to sniff Peter’s blood better than before—made a stark contrast with the foreboding ghost-gray mountains whose spiked points seemed sharp enough to impale bodies.

  Caitlin glanced up toward the peak, but there was no summit in sight. The mountains were a milieu of gloom and granite. Their jagged slopes and ridges reached into

  the clouds, conveying an ominous warning: Climb up—if you dare!

  Caitlin’s face hardened as she took in the steep climb she’d have to brave and the dizzying heights she’d have to scale to reach the summit and Dipping Pools.

  “That’s totally crazy. Impossible!”

  “I told you—no strong reactions!” Peter warned.

  Caitlin exhaled in exasperation. A moment later, she fell to the ground, writhing in distress. She curled up into a fetal position.

  Peter kneeled beside her. “What is it?”

  Her words were strained. “You’re right again. I reacted. I got mad when I saw the climb. Whatever is inside me doubled again. The hunger. Other desires. You’re looking more

  appetizing than a tostada right now. Feels like I’m losing control.”

  Peter helped her to her feet. He seemed as nervous as hell—for his own life, no doubt.

  “Stay calm,” he said. “I’m going to take a quick survey of the place. Maybe there are some steps or trails that lead up this mountain. Hang tight.”

  Peter flew off.

  Caitlin couldn’t blame him for finding an excuse to get away.

  And then she smiled at the sick humor of it all. What if the immortal Peter Pan, the boy who never grew old, was suddenly eaten like a hamburger and eradicated from existence forever? What would the world say about that?

  She figured J. M. Barrie was probably rolling in his grave.

  CHAPTER Forty-Two

  A single photon, or wave of light, existed in a superposition, just as the excited electron in a leaf was in a superposition in the process of photosynthesis.

  All of which was good news for Natalie. Because she was now ultraviolet. Which meant she could superposition herself to simultaneously travel every single possible tunnel route in the hyperdimensional, intergalactic maze instantly. And just as the excited electron in the leaf chose the fastest route to the reaction center in a leaf, Natalie could choose the fastest route—in fact the one and only route—out of this place.

  She wasted no time.

  When she vanished in the cavern before Blackbeard’s eyes, she made the shift to a wave superposition. The sensation of being in 137 million places at the same time was a bit disorienting.

  Ya think?

  But the tiara and that glorious violet light freed her from fear and prevented her from losing her grip on reality—or her sanity.

  She had identified the correct exit tunnel—or it had identified itself to her; she wasn’t sure yet. So she shifted back from ultraviolet to visible, material form. Her sudden reappearance in the cavern a split second later shocked Blackbeard even more than her sudden disappearance had.

  But now she knew exactly where to go when she bolted from the cavern.

  Thankfully, the human brain’s most important function is to filter out unnecessary information. If not for this filter, the mind would be under constant sensory overload.

  Imagine absorbing 137 million worlds. Natalie was grateful for sensory gating.

  But there was still a residue, an impression, that had remained behind. It was like the milky film on a glass after your pour the milk out.

  Her hyperescape had become a hypermemory, slowed down into fleeting flashes of recall. She remembered whipping through endless tunnels at dizzying speeds but purposely not trying to find out anything about the vast worlds that waited on the other side of each doorway, for there was no time. She had to focus on one thing: choosing the correct tunnel. She had and she now blazed through the one that led to freedom.

  She rocketed through the twisting tunnel, bypassing other inviting options and tempting detours which were made more irresistible by closed hatch doors that happened to show up at various intersections. Of course, she plowed straight ahead in the same tunnel, opening those hatches and bypassing the alternate routes until she finally reached the final—seventh—hatch out of the cosmic labyrinth.

  That was easy enough!

  When she came to a stop, she found herself standing outside under overcast skies, and breathing in mild, fresh air that had a tempered layer of cool crispness beneath it.

  Yesss! How refreshing is this!

  She swiveled to her right to scan the landscape . . . turned to her left to behold the opposite horizon . . . spun ninety degrees to look out across. . . . The unexpected sight knocked the wind out of her lungs.

  The screams came on their own.

  Over and over and over, inflaming her vocal cords.

  And then she ran.

  CHAPTER Forty-Three

  Caitlin’s will was weakening with each passing moment. Her resolve dismantled piece by piece, the way a child breaks down a Lego creation by pulling apart the building blocks.

  Within those in-between, empty spaces, awful thoughts clouded her mind. Urges that brought twinges of guilt because she no longer loathed their depravity. Her independence was dissolving like ice in spring. Something inside her was dimming her decency. She felt like someone was layering soft blankets, one by one, over the lit lamp of her soul, and intended to keep adding them until the last sliver of light was snuffed out. Shame included.

  She struggled to retain even a few sparks of humanity.

  A bitterly cold wind blew by her, snarling, alive, pregnant with otherworldly wickedness. This was no ordinary current of air.

  Janus is near! He’s found me!

  A fierce scream interrupted her thoughts.

  She did an about-face, toward the sound. It seemed to have come from Mount Velarium.

  There was nothing there.

  Her eyes shifted . . . to its twin.

  The Velar
ium volcano.

  Caitlin was paralyzed by what she saw, unable to process the reality unfolding in front of her.

  Natalie!

  There was her sister, running toward her from the base of the volcano.

  “Caity-pieeeeee!”

  * * *

  When Natalie saw Caitlin, the adrenaline surge in her body felt like a dam bursting. She started running wildly toward her.

  But Caitlin started frantically waving her off. “Stay there! It’s too dangerous.”

  Natalie skidded to a stop. “What?”

  “I’ll hurt you.”

  Caitlin suddenly looked past her sister. She screamed, “Watch out!”

  Natalie turned. Blackbeard also hurtled out of the open hatch at the base of the Mount Velarium volcano. He came charging after Natalie.

  She took off, but her feet got tangled up in her frenzy to escape. She tripped, then tumbled to the ground.

  Blackbeard moved in fast, grabbing her by the wrists. He held her tight so that she couldn’t squirm loose and lifted her to her feet.

  “Thought ya outsmarted me? Ha. Know what ya just did? Ya just opened up the doors to Eos.”

  Huh?

  “What are you talking about?” Natalie asked incredulously. “I never touched the hexagon.”

  “Course not. That contraption was a diversion. Ya ran through the real hexagon. The tunnels. The seven hatches that ya opened to get out? Those are the real doorways that needed to be opened.”

  Natalie felt sick to her stomach.

  “The Lord of the Curtain devised this deception to get ya to choose to open the doors. And choose ya did. With all yer heart and soul. It was all staged, kid. The encounter with the white wulves too. They’d ‘a torn yer throat out otherwise. Ya had to locate your power, so we set ya up. But ya can still be a princess.”

  Peter Pan was flying faster than an arrow shot from a crossbow, whipping through the air just above ground level, sleek and straight.