“What do you mean?” asked Billy incredulously. After all that had occurred, she wanted to know what he had seen in school?
“Did you see anything in the halls?” she demanded again.
“I don’t know,” answered Billy in confusion. “The hall monitors, and a bunch of Gummie Bears were stuck to the ceiling in this one part of the hall. How do you think someone can get a Gummie Bear up there?” he began, but his voice petered out when he saw the venomous glare that Mrs. Russet was directing at him. He gulped. “What’s going on?”
Mrs. Russet shook her head. “I don’t know. The Book of Earth has something I’ve never seen before, not in my lifetime, at any rate.”
“What?” he asked.
“A blank page,” she responded.
“So it has a blank page, so what?” he asked.
“You don’t understand, Mr. Jones,” Mrs. Russet said. “Everything that happens on the lands of the world is written in the Book of Earth as it happens.”
Billy wondered if that included everything, including that one time he had picked his nose during class in first grade and everyone saw him doing it and made fun of him. Then he tore his thought away from that embarrassing moment. There were more important things happening right now, he knew, even if he didn’t understand exactly what they were. “So what does a blank page on the Book of Earth mean?” he asked.
“I don’t know. But the last entry is you going through the doorway to your first test. After that…,” she shrugged, unsure in a way that Billy wasn’t accustomed to seeing her be. “It’s as though the history of today hasn’t been written yet. As though something so monumental is going to occur that it will change the very fabric of our world.” She shook her head, and murmured to herself, “The last time this happened….”
“What?” asked Billy. Mrs. Russet looked at him as though she didn’t know what he was talking about. “The last time this happened…what?” he reiterated.
“The last time the Book of Earth was blank was during the time of the first Wars of the Powers, the time of the breaking of the earth, the rending of the continents. The time before the Truce, when all was chaos.” She looked hard at Billy. “The time directly before the first coming of the White King.”
Now, at last, she asked Billy what he’d been expecting her to ask from the beginning: “What happened during your test?” she said.
“Didn’t you see any of it?” he asked, a bit surprised. He had thought she would ask for his impressions of what happened, or something, rather than opening with a blanket question.
“Do you think I would be asking if I had?” she answered.
Billy nodded, then told her as best he could what had happened. As he did, Mrs. Russet’s brow furrowed ever more deeply. She interrupted occasionally, asking him a question when he was being unclear, but for the most part she remained silent. When he was done telling her what had happened, she pursed her lips in thought and was very quiet. She remained that way long enough that Billy wondered if she was doing something magical, or perhaps had just fallen asleep with her eyes open.
Finally, she reached into her pocket and withdrew a small cigarette lighter. She flicked the wheel, and flame emerged. Billy looked at her questioningly, and she explained, “Relax, Mr. Jones. I’ve not taken up something so opprobrious as smoking. We simply thought it would be best to have a way to keep in quick contact with each other.” Then she looked at the flame and said, “Vester.”
“Yes?” came the fireman’s voice after a moment, emerging from the small flame as though he were standing in the room.
“I need you,” said Mrs. Russet. “Can you come to me?”
“Just a sec,” answered Vester’s voice. The flame was silent for a few minutes, then it suddenly elongated and crackled. There was a puff of acrid smoke, and Billy’s friend appeared beside him in the class. He was dressed in his work clothes: a blue uniform with a shiny badge on. “Sorry, I was on call and had to arrange for someone else to cover.”
He looked at Billy. “Hey, sport,” he said, then looked back at Mrs. Russet. “What’s going on?” he asked.
“A great many things,” she said. “I need to go to Powers Island, and I think I might need Billy while I’m there. But I don’t want to take him to the Council with me…not right away. And I don’t want him left alone on the island, either, so….”
“You want me to baby-sit,” finished Vester.
“Hey!” said Billy in protest.
“Sorry, I meant ‘youngman-sit,’” said Vester with a grin.
“Stop horsing around,” said Mrs. Russet. “This isn’t the time.” She paused, calming herself. “But yes, that’s exactly what I want you to do.”
“Fine with me,” said Vester. “I was hoping to catch the Challenge match at the stadium anyway.” He punched Billy in the arm. “You in, kid?” he asked.
“Uh…,” Billy answered. It was his standard answer now, but at least he was growing to accept the fact that sooner or later in most conversations he was going to be reduced to monosyllabic grunts.
“Great,” said Vester with a smile. “When do we go?” he asked Mrs. Russet.
“Now,” she answered, withdrawing her beehive key.
“Remember, kid,” said Vester to Billy.
“I know, I know,” said Billy. “Remember to hold your breath. Two steps forward and one step back.”
“You’re a pro,” said Vester.
“Come on,” said Mrs. Russet impatiently. Billy thought for sure she would use the key on the door to the classroom, but instead she went to one of the supply cabinets at the back of the classroom and opened it with her Imbued key. She whispered something under her breath as she did so—probably the same nonsense-sounding magic words that she had said the first time she took Billy to Powers Island—and then stepped into the cabinet, followed by Billy, with Vester at the rear.
They appeared in the Accounting Room, greeted as before by the nasty view of the mummy warning of terrible death if one Transported without holding one’s breath. This time, however, Mrs. Russet didn’t bother to stand in any of the three lines to the Counters, the carnival-like fortune tellers that dispensed the name badges to everyone on Powers Island. She shoved her way to the front of the nearest line, pulling Billy and Vester along behind her. A few people in the line looked at her questioningly, but immediately moved aside when she said, “Council business.”
She, Vester, and Billy each got their name tags. Billy’s still said simply “Billy—unDetermined,” but he thought when it appeared in the Counter machine, the badge had said something else for a moment. He had no time to wonder about it, though, as Mrs. Russet immediately turned to him and Vester. “Keep him close,” she said to the fireman. “Something odd is happening, and I don’t know what.”
“I’m not a baby, you know,” said Billy, a bit peeved that everyone seemed to be acting like he was in need of constant watching.
“Yes, I do know that, Mr. Jones,” said Mrs. Russet. Then she looked at Vester and repeated, “Keep him close.” Then she turned without another word and got onto one of the elevators that opened to the Accounting Room.
Billy heard the elevator’s voice say, “What floor and department, please?” in its normal cheery voice, then it continued in a sulky tone, “Oh, it’s you,” as the doors shut and Mrs. Russet went to wherever it was she was going.
Must be the same elevator we went to the Hall of Convergence in, thought Billy.
Then he felt Vester guiding him to another elevator. It opened. “Whaddya want?” said the elevator in a distinctly New York accent.
“Stadium,” answered Vester. “I’m not too late for the start of the Challenge, am I?”
“Nah,” answered the elevator as the doors closed. “Still got a few minutes. Say, ’dja hear the one about the two guys that ran into a bar?”
“No,” answered Vester warily.
“Yeah,” said the elevator. “It was weird, because you’d think the second guy woulda noticed it
after the first guy walked into it. But BAMMO! He walks right into it! Harharhar!”
Vester laughed weakly at the joke, nudging Billy to do the same.
“Better laugh,” whispered the fireman to Billy. “Some of the elevators can get testy if you don’t laugh at their jokes. We don’t want to end up in the Room of Destruction or the Department of Experimental Chaos.”
Billy laughed as hard as he could. “Tone it down a bit,” murmured Vester. Billy scaled his laughter down to a chuckle.
“Hey, you’re all right,” said the elevator. The doors slid open; apparently they had arrived at wherever they were going. “You can ride in me any time, kid.”
“Thanks,” said Billy. He followed Vester off the elevator, and could hear the thing chuckling to itself as it moved away.
The place they had gone to was familiar-looking to Billy. It reminded him of the concession level at a baseball or football stadium.
“Where are we?” he asked Vester.
“Powers Stadium,” answered his friend. He grabbed something from a passer-by and handed it to Billy. “Hot dog?”
Billy took the hot dog. He was a little disappointed that the treat wasn’t something more, well, exciting than a mere hot dog. Something a bit more magical was in order, he thought.
“Eat me,” said a voice.
Billy almost dropped the hot dog. He looked at it. The hot dog had suddenly sprouted two tiny eyes and a mouth. “Mmmmm…,” it said in a sultry whisper. “I’m so tasty. Steamed to perfection, with just the right amount of mustard. Nothing would give me more pleasure than to be eaten by a wonderful young gent like yourself.”
Billy’s eyes crossed in surprise. He looked at Vester with upraised eyebrows. The fireman was already biting into his own hot dog, which sounded like it was moaning in pleasure. Vester looked at Billy. “What?” he asked.
“Please,” whispered Billy’s hot dog. “I can just imagine the ecstasy of being crushed between your molars, the sublime pleasure of being slowly dissolved in your stomach acids….”
Vester started off through the throngs of people that surrounded them. Billy quickly looked around, spotting a man with a tray of hot dogs nearby, each of them extolling its culinary virtues to passers-by. He put his own hot dog on the tray and hurried after Vester, resolving never to eat anything on Powers Island before making sure it wasn’t going to start talking to him.
Billy caught up with his friend as Vester was walking out into the open part of the stadium. Billy gasped. It was a stadium, but it was enormous, dwarfing any other sports arena. There must have been a hundred thousand seats in the place, most of them filled with chatting people. The center arena was big enough to put three football fields in it, and the whole thing was covered by a huge pool of water, waves slapping up against the protective walls that lined the space and kept the nearby spectators from being drenched. Periodically throughout the water there were pillars, big enough to stand on, their tops about five feet higher than the water below.
Atop many of the pillars there were small pyres, a few sticks arranged in a teepee and set ablaze. And on two of the pillars stood a man and a woman, each dressed in a bright red suit of what looked like armor. Their red metal faceplates were closed, so Billy couldn’t make out their faces, but the two armor-clad figures waved at the crowd, which roared its approval.
Billy realized that this was the arena he had seen the “boxing” match in earlier, the two rock giants pummeling at each other amongst the screaming people. But at that time, the place had appeared to have sand in it. Where had the great pool of water come from?
Vester started walking down a set of nearby stairs, craning his neck for a good seat. As he did, something clicked in Billy’s thoughts. “Hey,” he said. “I thought that there were only supposed to be twenty thousand people on Powers Island at once.”
“There are,” answered Vester.
“But,” Billy said, “this place is huge. It has to have a hundred thousand people in it.”
“Yeah, but most of them aren’t here,” said Vester. “They’re just watching the Challenge Match.” And with that, the fireman stepped into a row full of cheering people…and stepped right through them. Not “through them” in the sense that Billy would walk through a crowd, ducking and moving to avoid being trampled. Vester literally passed right through the people sitting in his way as though they were ghosts. Billy gulped, not wanting to follow his friend anywhere that required walking through people, but realized he preferred that to being left alone in the middle of a strange place on Powers Island.
He took a deep breath, then walked into the aisle, following Vester. He passed through ten or twelve sets of legs, their owners not seeming to mind that Billy was walking through their smoke-like appendages, though several did holler at him to move it because “You’re blocking my view.”
Finally, he got to where Vester was. His friend was holding down a fold-out plastic chair that was apparently the universal standard issue for sports stadiums—even on Powers Island. “Take a load off,” said the young fireman.
Billy almost fell into the proffered seat. “I don’t get it,” he said.
“Don’t get what?” asked Vester, finishing off the last bit of his happy hot dog.
“Pwease help,” said a voice that sounded like that of a toddler. “Pwease, pwease help.” Billy looked around for the source of the voice. He finally saw a tiny last piece of a hot dog, evidently left over from the seat’s previous occupant, sitting on the ground in front of him. As soon as Billy looked at it, the food whispered, “Pwease finish me. Pwease eat me.” Billy shuddered, then nudged the hot dog away. “Nooooo,” it cried in a small voice.
“Well?” repeated Vester. “What don’t you get?”
“Anything,” said Billy, praying that no more food would talk to him. He felt slightly sick, and knew he was going to have nightmares about talking hot dogs tonight.
“Well,” said Vester, looking around, “the people are mostly Projections. It’s like watching a show on TV, only in reverse. Instead of a real show being broadcast into what you see on TV, the Powers all around the world are broadcasting themselves into the stadium.” He shrugged. “If the show won’t come to you, then you just go to the show.” Then he winked. “At least, that’s how it works if you’re a Power.”
That explained how Vester had walked through everyone, thought Billy. Aloud, he said, “How can you tell if the person you’re walking through is really there or not?”
Vester’s eyes glimmered with mirth. “If you feel something when you walk into them, and they yell at you to get off their toes, then they’re really there. The uncertainty is part of the fun.”
“Okay,” said Billy. “So are these…Projections…all of the Powers in the world?”
“Probably most of them,” said Vester. “I was going to be Projecting here myself, if Mrs. Russet hadn’t asked me to baby-sit—er—hang out with you.”
“And what exactly are we going to see?” asked Billy.
“Geez, you don’t know anything, do you?” said Vester good-naturedly. “Powers Stadium is where we Powers come to see our version of sporting events. Usually, the players are Powers who are competing to achieve some objective, or they’re controlling Fizzles who do battle.”
Billy snapped his fingers. “So those two rock giants we saw—the boxing match—those were Fizzles,” he said.
Vester nodded. “Right-a-roni, my friend.”
“And is that what they’re going to do?” asked Billy, gesturing at the two armored people on the pedestals in the arena.
“Not exactly,” answered Vester. “I mean, they are, but it’s a bit more complicated in this case. This is a Challenge, which means that someone thinks they should be a member of the Council. So he’s challenging the current Councilor to a match of magic. The greater Power will win, and either ascend to—or keep—the place on the Ruby Throne.”
“Then that means,” said Billy, looking at the armored woman far below.
> “Yeah,” said Vester, eyes aglow with that look of dumbfounded affection Billy had seen in them before, when Billy had stood before the Council on the Diamond Dais. “It means that the woman down there is Fulgora.”
CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH
In Which Billy sees the Dead, and War Begins…
Billy’s breath caught in his throat. “What’s going to happen?” he asked.
“You never can tell,” answered Vester. “Not in a Challenge.”
“But, it’s not…I mean, no one is going to get hurt, are they? I mean, it’s not dangerous, right?” he asked. He didn’t know Fulgora, but the Red Lady was beautiful, there was no denying that, and it seemed somehow wrong to Billy that a woman so beautiful could be in danger.
Vester looked at him seriously. “Billy, have you seen anything since you came to Powers Island that seemed to tell you that there is any magic without danger?”
Billy was silent. Even the Transport spell that he was coming to accept as commonplace could mummify you if you didn’t hold your breath. Vester was right, he knew. There had to be an element of danger in any spell, just as there was always a danger—however slight—whenever you turned on the stove or got in a car to go to a friend’s house. Even the smallest conveniences came with a price.
He turned his attention to the arena. “What’s with the water? And the little fires?”
Vester spoke distractedly, reminding Billy again of his father. His father spoke in that same voice when explaining the finer points of a football game to Billy: like he was there, but not there.
“The fire is because Powers generally need their Element to work their magic.” Vester withdrew the matchbook from his pocket, the one he had used to create a small horse of flame. “I strike a match, I can control the fire it makes. But I can’t create the fire. So that’s why the fires are set on the podiums. And as for the water all around them, that’s because Water douses Fire.” He seemed to sense Billy’s confusion, because he amplified that thought. “No one Element is supreme. It’s like a big game of Rock, Scissors, Paper. Water can often destroy Fire. So in a Challenge, the most dangerous anti-Element is placed nearby. Only the strongest of the Powers will be able to practice their magics while in the midst of such danger. It’s just one more way of proving the strength of the winner, and their right to the Council seat.”
Billy: Messenger of Powers Page 17