I could imagine what Sir Real was saying in his mind: You should leave, Lorelei. You should go immediately, before you wreck it for the rest of us!
I looked at the Swisherswashers clustered around Ripple, each wanting a word from their lost princess, a touch or a nod of approval. The princess responded to the attention with grace. She listened to their suggestions and her eyes sparkled. Every Swisherswasher to whom she spoke swam away with a smile and vigor in the flip of their fins.
Plans were made. Rows upon rows of Swisherswashers formed up outside the window, and rows upon rows of Grumpalons as well, what seemed like a never-ending army.
Within the hour, the army started out for the darkened center of the sea.
We had barely swum for a minute before we saw the first Ratsharks. The beasts were hideous. They were long like the Swisherswashers, but their shark skin was mottled gray and rough. They had skinny, hairy rat arms, narrow rat chests, and rat heads that seemed diseased, sprouting mismatched fangs. Their beady eyes were completely black, and their whiskers trailed from their snouts like streams of snot.
The Ratsharks gathered in a huge line before them, snapping and growling, blocking their progress toward the center of the Ink King’s storm. I still could not see the island through the murk.
Jimmy floated out of the shadows. Above and behind his head was a dark octopus, pumping ink around him. It seemed to be what was enabling him to swim, and I wondered if he had cast the same sort of spell over himself as I had, letting him breathe underwater.
Jimmy pointed at us. “Get out of my kingdom. You don’t belong here.”
“Tis thee who binds this land and darkens these waters. Thou dost not belong,” Ripple responded, twirling forward and stopping at the head of her army. “Tis my realm and thou wilt relinquish it.”
“You’re nothing!” Jimmy shouted. “The Sea is mine. I took it from you and I’m not giving it back.” Jimmy’s gaze fell on me. “You,” he said, his voice dropping to that inhumanly low rumble. “You’re the only one who matters. But you won’t be staying long.”
I swam forward, and Gruffy launched ahead of me, staying right between me and Jimmy. Squeak perched in his usual place, his little head bowed against the water. Pip flapped behind them. Last came Darthorn, his mirrored armor reflecting the armies all around.
“Is that your dad’s plan?” I shouted. “For you to take over the Wishing World?”
Jimmy gave a skull’s grin. “Oh, he’d like that. But the Wishing World is mine.”
“He sent you here! I talked to him—”
“Shut up! I don’t care about him and I don’t care about you! Last chance, Loreliar. Get out or you’ll be sorry!”
“I’m not leaving without my parents.”
“We’ll see,” he said. “You stupid girl.” Then he shouted: “Robsombulous!”
Ripple’s mouth opened, stunned. The Swisherswashers swished back and forth, agitated. The Grumpalons flicked at the sand with spastic feet, looking like they had lost all control of their bodies.
Even Gruffy was stunned into silence.
“What? What does that mean?” I asked.
“He summoned the Robsombulous,” Gruffy said.
“Robsombulous. Robsombulous,” Pip murmured.
“What does it mean?” I asked again, exasperated.
“The Robsombulous,” Gruffy whispered, “was created at the beginning of the world. Some say it is the reason Veloran exists.”
“Danger. Danger,” Pip squawked, flapping about.
“Why is everyone so scared? We were about to go into battle! What is scarier than that?” I asked.
“This is worse. This is worse. Appeasing the Robsombulous is unpredictable. Unpredictable.”
“Choose your Wordwimble,” Jimmy said.
“Choose a what?” I looked at Gruffy.
“A Wordwimble,” Sir Real said, swimming up to her. “The one who will choose the first players.”
“What is going on?” I asked him. “Can you give me a straight answer?”
“The Wordwimble will choose opposite members of each army, one at a time, to spell the words,” Gruffy said.
“Spell? This is a stupid spelling bee?”
Gruffy looked at me sidelong. “What is a bee?”
I sighed. “Remember? I … never mind. They’re going to fight each other by spelling words? Who cares?”
“Vanishing entirely is enough to make one care,” Sir Real interjected.
“What?”
“You spell a word incorrectly, chica,” Sir Real said, “and you are gone.”
“Sucked away. Sucked away,” Pip agreed.
“To where?”
“No one knows. No one knows. Far enough that no one ever comes back. Ever comes back.”
A chill went up my spine. “I’m going to have to spell?” I asked. “And if I lose, I’m—”
“Desapareces,” Sir Real said. “You vanish.”
I couldn’t tell if he liked the idea or not. He had avoided me since the beach.
“A Wordwimble, or you forfeit!” Jimmy yelled, his low voice rumbling through the water.
“I will be your Wordwimble,” Sir Real said, swimming forward.
I opened my mouth to stop him, but didn’t say anything. I didn’t trust Sir Real. He wanted Jimmy gone, but I think he wanted me gone more.
Sir Real stopped in front of Jimmy. They began talking in tones that did not carry to me.
“Tis a clever ploy,” Ripple said to me. “The Robsombulous. But it shall avail them naught. They have the disadvantage. The Flimflams are quite clever.”
“And we have Squeak,” Gruffy said. “He has never misspelled a word in his life.”
I gave Gruffy a sidelong look. Squeak had never spoken a word in his life, so far as I could tell.
“Why even play at all?” I asked, knowing why Jimmy had chosen this. No Flimflam or mouse was going to have the opportunity to spell anything, because Jimmy would make sure I was the first. “Why don’t we just attack?”
Gruffy laughed lightly, bubbles coming out of his mouth. “That is funny, Doolivanti.”
“I wasn’t trying to be funny.” I frowned.
Gruffy looked at me in shock. “Defy the Robsombulous?”
“Well, just not even play.”
Gruffy shook his head. “No, Doolivanti. It is too late for that.”
“Squeak.”
“The Robsombulous abhors conflict,” Ripple said. “An’ thou dost fight in its presence, thou art forfeit.”
“Forfeit?”
“You get sucked away. You get sucked away,” Pip clarified.
“Is it that powerful?” I asked.
“So powerful,” Gruffy said, “that if someone says a particularly good word, a creature will appear.”
“A new animal is born from a word?” I asked.
“Indeed. Is this not how new creatures appear in your world?” Gruffy asked.
“No.”
“How do new creatures appear on your world?”
“They don’t.”
“You don’t come up with something so clever that they are born?” Gruffy asked.
“I can’t wish a hippopotamus into life. I mean, people have ideas, but just because they have them doesn’t make them real.”
“Then what makes them real?” Gruffy asked.
“Nothing makes them real,” I said. “Some things are real and some aren’t. It doesn’t change just because someone makes up a word. Our world isn’t like that.”
“Squeak.”
Gruffy laughed. “Squeak says every world is like that.”
I opened my mouth to tell them they were wrong, at least about Earth, but then I thought about the new gadgets people kept coming up with. New apps every day. New phones every few months. More and more. People dreaming things into existence. Like the Internet. Or the smart phone. They saw something, spoke something, had a vision, and then many others worked hard to make it happen. It wasn’t as immediate as a
new creature “popping” into reality. But aside from speed, what was the difference?
“Of course,” Gruffy said. “To the point: Squeak says the people with which you live may simply not realize they are doing it.”
“It’s beginning. It’s beginning,” Pip squawked.
I looked back at Sir Real and Jimmy, who were nodding. Sir Real pulled out what looked like a thin, purple pancake with white eyes. It was flopping back and forth in his hand. He tossed it up and let it float down, thrashing, to the ocean floor.
“Is that the Robsombulous?” I asked.
“That is a flipperdip,” Gruffy said. “To decide which Wordwimble goes first.”
“Where is the Robsombulous? How do we even know it’s here?” I asked.
“Can’t you feel it? Can’t you feel it?” Pip asked.
“Squeak.”
“It is here, right now,” Gruffy said. “Everywhere around.”
I looked at the water, but didn’t see anything besides the agitated Ratsharks, Swisherswashers, and Grumpalons. Then I began to feel the difference in the water. There was a weight that had not been there before, as though a glass dome had been pressed down over both of the armies, making the water tighter.
“I do feel it,” I whispered.
“Then clear your mind, relax,” Gruffy said. “And if you are called upon, spell the word correctly.”
“The Ink King and I are agreed!” Sir Real shouted, looking up from the flopping purple pancake on the ocean floor. Jimmy looked upset. “The Ink King has lost the flipperdip, and so I shall begin.”
Sir Real waved his invisible brush at the nearest Ratshark, who flinched.
“You,” said Sir Real. “Spell ‘Individulation’!”
The Ratshark’s eyes bulged. It looked to the left, then to the right. The other Ratsharks slithered back, wary.
I leaned toward Gruffy, “That’s not a real word!”
“Shh,” said Gruffy.
“Uh,” the Ratshark stammered. Then it bolted, its sharklike body thrashing mightily. It shot like an arrow away from the Wordwimbles. There was a great sucking sound, like the last water from a clogged sink going down the drain.
The Ratshark said, “Yii!”
And then it was gone.
My heart hammered. “Gruffy,” I repeated. “That wasn’t a word.”
“The Wordwimbles aren’t allowed to use words that have already been made. That would be cheating. If they do, then they are the ones who vanish.”
“But I can’t…” I said, and I felt an icy cold chill. “I can’t spell a word I’ve never heard before.”
“Why could you not?” Gruffy asked.
“Because I’ve never heard it before!”
He was about to answer, then Jimmy pointed at the huge, mirror-covered Darthorn. “You,” Jimmy said, and then he grinned at me.
“No—” I started to say, but Pip flapped a wing in front of my mouth and held it there, his talons clinging to my shoulder.
“You can’t protest. You can’t protest,” Pip trilled. “You’ll get sucked away! You’ll get sucked away!”
I watched in horror as the Ink King looked at Darthorn and said, “Spell framjacker!”
The inscrutable Darthorn waited a long moment, then said, “F-R-A-M-J-A-C-K-E-R.”
“I thought we were fighting a war!” I said.
“There are wars and there are wars,” Pip said.
Sir Real selected another Ratshark.
“Goobliette,” Sir Real said.
The Ratshark bared its lopsided teeth, but this one seemed braver than that last. “G,” it started. “O-O-B-L-I-E-T-T-E.”
“Squeak,” said Squeak, nodding with reluctant appreciation.
“Correct,” Sir Real said. The disappointment showed on his face as he glanced at me.
Jimmy, who had been frowning since Darthorn spelled his word correctly, turned to me, and a smile split across his inky face. He pointed.
“No,” I whispered. My heart constricted. “I don’t want to play.”
“You must, Doolivanti. There is no escape,” Gruffy said.
“But—”
“Loreliar,” Jimmy said. “Oh look, your favorite game.”
I had never hated anyone as much as I hated Jimmy at that moment. “Let’s see if you can mess it up as badly as you did before. Spell Copteroptopus.”
I looked helplessly at Gruffy, but the griffon looked at me with absolute confidence. “You can do it, Doolivanti.”
“Squeak.”
My mind raced. I didn’t even know where to start. C. It had to be a C. Everything that sounded like a K always started with a C.
“C,” I said. “O-P-T…”
Jimmy leaned forward, hands twisting together in a tiny parody of his father.
“U,” I said.
Jimmy whooped.
The sea swirled behind me, becoming a watery tornado.
“Doolivanti!” Gruffy shouted.
The vortex grew, moving toward me. The Grumpalons, Swisherswashers, and Flimflams drew back. Gruffy stepped in front of me.
“I shall battle it, Doolivanti,” he said, wings flaring.
“No!” I said. “Stay back. I’ll stop it.”
I held my hand in front of me, like I was holding a pencil.
The Robsombulous stopped, I wrote. The words burned on the water in front of me. The ground shook. Grumpalons were thrown flat. Swisherswashers and Ratsharks fluttered like a giant had shaken the ocean.
The vortex shuddered, and the pain in my chest was a hot knife, stabbing.
Jimmy shouted at me through the swirling water. “This isn’t the Starfield, Loreliar! Maybe you can beat me, but you can’t fight Veloran!”
Stop, I wrote on the air. I felt the Robsombulous pushing against me, forcing its magic on me. I clenched my teeth and pushed back. The vortex began to shake, and I could see red rips at its edges, just like the rips in the sky.
Sir Real swam back from me, his mouth open and his eyes fearful.
“Lorelei.” Ripple put a hand on my shoulder. My concentration faltered. I looked back at her, and her blue eyes were somber. “Verily, I am sorry,” she said.
“What—?”
Something smacked my feet out from under me, and I went down. The swirling water was all around me, and I couldn’t see my friends or the smug Jimmy.
The vortex engulfed me and I screamed.
CHAPTER 20
It tumbled me, and suddenly I couldn’t breathe water anymore. Once, when I went to California to visit my grandparents, I had been swallowed by a big wave. It had picked me up and turned me over and over until I didn’t know which way was up. I couldn’t breathe, didn’t know how to escape, and I had thrashed helplessly. I would probably have drowned, except Dad plucked me up, out of the wave.
The vortex was like that, except I knew no one would save me. Maybe there wasn’t even an “up” where I could catch my breath. Maybe the Robsombulous simply drowned you.
Then a blue hand reached in and grabbed me, yanked hard, and I was drawn out of the vortex.
The spinning water drained away, swirling over my head and then vanishing like mist. I wasn’t in the ocean anymore. I stood in a meadow with golden sunflowers taller than I was. The sun was bright, and the white streaks across the sky were majestic. I turned, but all I could see were sunflower stalks and flowers the size of my head.
“Lorelei,” came a soft voice. I turned toward the voice and stepped into an open meadow. Ripple was waiting for me.
I opened my mouth to speak, but before I could, she slowly transformed. She grew taller, and her ocean dress blushed until it was lavender. It was decorated with silver embroidery at the neckline and a heavy sash around the waist. Ripple’s blue hair became tumbling dark locks curling over her forehead and cheeks. Her all-blue eyes turned lavender with the whites that a normal human would have. Her skin was paler than mine, but no longer blue. She was human, a teenager. Maybe even older.
“Ripple!”
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She smiled. “Verily, I am she, but then also, I am not,” she said.
The realization hit me. “You’re a Doolivanti!” She wasn’t a creation of the Wishing World, like Gruffy or the Flimflams; she was a creator like Sir Real and Theron. Like me.
The teenager-who-was-Ripple laughed, soft and husky. “Lorelei, thy mind is bright and agile. Full of questions and great imaginings. Thou art what this world was meant to achieve.” She paused. “I felt thee ere thou didst arrive, in that first moment thou didst call to the threads and took them in hand. I had to come to see thee and be part of thy story. To look into thy heart and know thee.”
“So you are a Doolivanti. Or are you something else?” She was by far the oldest kid I’d seen in Veloran.
“I didst don the name ‘Ripple’ when first I found myself at the shore of the Eternal Sea. As did thy brother at the skirt of the Kaleidoscope Forest. As did thy friend Sir Real ’neath the sparkling leaves of the Silverweft. Twas not a lie when I told thee Ripple’s body was born of the Eternal Sea. As thy true name is Lorelei, mine is Vella. Vella Wren.”
My mouth hung open. “Vella Wren … Veloran?”
She smiled, and a blush crept into her cheeks. “I am caretaker here, and so have I been for many years. I do foster the wondrous imaginations in this place, and these children who would dream to grow stronger.”
“You made Veloran?”
She shook her head. “This creation belongs not to one child, but to all. Together, we do lean upon each other to make the impossible. What thy friend Gruffy flatteringly calls Veloran is but a conversation twixt the imaginings of each child. This world is a tapestry of wondrous delight made of children’s voices, each talking to the other, each of their wills interweaving like threads. The tapestry is ever expanding, seeking out children on many worlds, finding new Doolivantis, inviting them with flecks of herself and weaving them into the fabric.” She nodded at my necklace.
“The comet stones.”
“Indeed.”
“And you’re the caretaker of Veloran. What does that mean?”
“An’ this Wishing World dost breathe, I feel the wind. An’ this Wishing World be cut, then do I bleed.” She paused, then opened the side of her dress, revealing a long, red gash exactly where the little wound had been when I’d first met her.
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