The Width of the World

by David Baldacci

  The walls were stone. And there were openings in the Tower Room about six inches wide, too narrow for anyone to pass through, but they did provide some light and air. It was chilly in here, and I wrapped my coat more closely around me as we crept forward.

  As I glanced at Delph, I saw him take a long knife from where it was tucked inside his belt. He looked grimly at me.

  Harry Two’s hackles rose, and a low growl emitted from his throat.

  I used my wand tip to illuminate the center of the room.

  I gasped.

  Sitting in a wooden armchair was a crumpled pile of a creature dressed in rags. It was tall and painfully thin, its atrophied muscles taut against the bone. The head was overflowing with long white hair and was bowed until it was almost touching a bony knee.

  The thing, no doubt seeing my light, turned its head in our direction.

  It was all I could do not to scream.

  It had no face. No eyes, no nose, no mouth. It was just flat skin so pale that I couldn’t believe that it was alive. I was frozen looking at the pitiable thing.

  And even though it had no eyes, I felt that the thing could see us.

  Petra gasped, “What is that?”

  I shook my head. It looked like nothing I had ever seen before! Could the poor thing be one of the branded? But if so, why would it be kept in the Tower Room, and not enslaved like the others?

  It turned back around and its head once more bent down. I put out my wand light.

  “Why would they keep this thing up here under such heavy guard?” asked Delph. “What’s so important about it?”

  I moved around the room, keeping an eye on the creature until I reached one of the slits in the wall and looked out over the countryside.

  I turned back to the others. “This has been a waste. And now we need to get out of here,” I said.

  I couldn’t explain why, but I had a premonition of something truly awful happening.

  I hurried over to the door and tugged on it.

  It wouldn’t budge.

  I cast my spell to unlock it. It didn’t work. I tried every spell I could think of to open that bloody door and not a single one worked.

  I put my ear to the metal. I was listening for any sound from the jabbits, but I heard nothing.

  “The magic,” said Delph. “Victus said there was magic guarding this room. I reckon if you get past the jabbits and get in here, they got spells that make sure you don’t get out.”

  My spirits sank. It had been so stupid to come up here. We were trapped.

  I ran to the slits in the wall and looked out. If I could enlarge one of them, we could fly right off the Tower and head back to Empyrean.

  I pointed my wand at the slit and cast my spell. It immediately rebounded on me and knocked me heels over arse across the room.

  I slowly rose, rubbing at a painful newly risen knot on my head.

  “Bloody Hel,” I said.

  As I walked back across the room, I passed close by the creature. It shot out a hand and grabbed my wrist. Though terribly emaciated, the creature was ridiculously strong. I dug my fingers into its flesh to make it let go, but it was like I was attempting to shed iron shackles.

  Delph came to my aid, but even with his immense strength, he could not break the creature’s grip.

  Petra pointed her wand at it and said, “Impacto.”

  Her spell ricocheted off the thing and she had to duck to avoid being hit.

  “Uh, Vega Jane,” said Delph.

  “What,” I barked.

  “Is it my imagination, or is this room getting smaller?”

  I looked wildly around.

  He was absolutely right.

  The walls were moving toward us. Already the room was half as large as it had been.

  I tugged with all the strength that Destin provided me and still I could not break the creature’s grip. And the walls were barely two feet from us and were closing in with alarming speed now.

  My wrist was being crushed by the thing and the walls were within a foot of us. And they would crush more than my wrist.

  “Let go!” I screamed.

  “Vega,” cried out Petra.

  I had my feet up on the side of the chair the thing was sitting on and used it for leverage.

  “I … can’t … break … its … bloody … grip!”

  The walls were barely six inches from us, and in a few more seconds we would be smashed flat. I felt one wall hit me in the back.

  Delph was pushing back against another wall with all his strength, but it was useless. It pushed him right into me. Petra was next to me and Harry Two on the other side. The walls would be touching within a few seconds.

  I screamed again and jerked madly on the creature’s withered hand.

  Petra cried out as the wall pushed her hard into me. I looked up and saw the wall on the other side of the chair hit the wooden arm and crush it.

  It was over. We were done for.

  Harry Two jumped up and licked the creature’s arm.

  It immediately let me go.

  I pointed my wand at the oncoming walls.

  “Embattlemento.”

  My shield spell sprang out all around us. When the walls hit it, they ground to a halt.

  But only for a moment. Then they started moving forward again, but at a much slower pace. Yet they didn’t have far to go. The four of us were literally pushed right against all sides of the chair, with the hideous creature breathing heavily in the middle of us. I could feel his rank exhalations on my cheek, so close was I to his mouth.

  The walls pushed us closer. My lungs were constricted as Delph, Petra and Harry Two were shoved more tightly into me. Our faces were now an inch apart. There was no room left to even breathe.

  My mind started to shut down with the lack of oxygen. But right before my eyes closed for the final time, I felt my wand hand jerk.

  Of course!

  I willed my wand to return to its form as the Elemental.

  “Everyone hold on!” I shouted.

  Then the door to the shrunken Tower Room was vaporized by a spell.

  And there he was standing in the opening. The space was now so small that he could reach out and touch me.

  It was Endemen.

  I knew he couldn’t see us, but he bloody well knew we were there.

  He pointed his wand at the narrow space that was all that was left of the Tower Room.

  As I had before, I tossed the Elemental upward, but held on.

  We were all immediately ripped off our feet, bound together as we were by the magical tether.

  The Elemental hit the stone ceiling and blasted right through it.

  We were out in the open.

  I gulped in several large breaths and knew the others were doing the same. I didn’t think I’d ever been in a tighter place. I could still feel the stone walls wedging themselves against me.

  I leveled out and flew forward in the direction from which we had journeyed here.

  When I looked behind me, I became sick to my stomach.

  Endemen was behind us, astride one of the jabbits, which, as it turned out, was of the flying jabbit variety, as I had seen from my brief journey back in time when I lived in Wormwood.

  Behind him were a dozen Bowler Hats.

  Well, I had managed to lose them before. Perhaps I could again.

  I zigzagged across the sky, but they matched me move for move, as though they could actually see me.

  The jabbit put on a burst of speed and came so close to me that one of the heads tried to bite my boot, but I kicked it away in the nick of time.

  Then Delph cried out, “It’s the jabbit. It can smell us.”

  And I knew if we attempted to fire spells at Endemen and his cohorts, it would truly give away our positions and we’d have a wall of deadly curses hurtling right at us. In fact, that was going to happen regardless. They had to know where we were generally, invisible or not. I put on a burst of speed and pulled away, but I sensed that Destin co
uld not keep up this pace.

  Next instant I saw that Endemen and the jabbit had closed the gap by half and were moving up fast.

  “We can’t outfly them, Vega,” cried out Petra.

  “Then we’ll just do this!”

  I turned so sharply that the others were swung out wide on the tether.

  Now I was heading right for Endemen and the jabbit, though they couldn’t see us.

  But the jabbit could smell us, and I could tell from its hundreds of confused expressions that it didn’t know quite what to make of its prey coming so willingly to the slaughter. I mean, after all, who would be that bloody stupid?

  I readied my wand, but Delph shook his head and said, “Spell cast will give us clear away.” He pulled out his long knife and said, “I’ll kill it with this, Vega Jane.”

  Petra exclaimed, “A knife? Against that! Are you barmy or what?”

  He said, “My dad told me once that the underbelly of a jabbit is the softest spot on it. And my dad never told an untruth in his life.”

  He gripped his blade and readied himself as we roared toward the hideous flying serpent.

  I looked up ahead and saw Endemen barely ten feet from us. At our combined speeds, we would crash into each other in another few seconds.

  I counted one, then two.

  The screech of the jabbit was ear-shattering. I could see every mouth open, all the venomous teeth about to tear into us.

  “Vega!” screamed Petra.

  I felt Harry Two go rigid in his harness.

  They were right on us. I could see the darkened pupils of Endemen’s eyes.

  “Now,” I shouted.

  I dove.

  We soared directly under the jabbit.

  “Now, Delph, now!”

  He pointed the blade straight up.

  It ripped into the serpent’s underbelly.

  Delph somehow managed to keep the blade in the same position as we roared the full length of the monster, the blade cutting open its belly all along the way. Jabbit blood and guts rained down on us.

  We cleared the tail and I dove to avoid crashing into the other Bowler Hats.

  All they could see, I knew, was blood pouring from an enormous slash in the jabbit’s belly without being able to see what had caused it.

  As I looked back, the jabbit was falling away, already dead.

  Endemen had just lost his ride.

  I expected him to soar upward under his own power, but he didn’t. It seemed that he was having trouble reaching his wand and that his legs were pinned inside the wings of the dead jabbit.

  He plummeted downward and all of his crew plunged after him.

  I hoped the dead jabbit crushed the lot of them.

  I turned back around and accelerated to Destin’s top speed. I felt the links of the chain against my skin. They were like ice. It was as though my chain instinctively knew that our very survival was at stake. It was giving our escape every bit of power it could provide.

  We were far enough away now.

  I raised my wand, tapped my leg and cried out, “Pass-pusay.”

  The image of wonderful, safe Empyrean was firmly in my mind.

  The next moment we landed at the front door of the place.

  I lunged for the huge doorknob, opened the portal and we all fell inside.

  Delph leapt up and slammed the door shut before he slumped to the floor alongside us.

  We all just lay there panting and shaking and living with our own horrible thoughts of a calamity barely avoided.

  As my head cleared, I looked up from the floor to see Pillsbury there.

  “Mistress Vega, are you all right?”

  I slowly stood with the others. We were all covered in jabbit yuck.

  “No, Pillsbury. In fact, I doubt I’ll ever be right again.”

  EXHAUSTED AND UNABLE to even think or talk about what had just happened, the three of us simply sat on the floor in the front hall of Empyrean covered in jabbit guts looking at one another.

  We had finally convinced Pillsbury that we were okay and needed no help in any way.

  He had reluctantly clanked away, leaving us alone.

  At last I found my voice.

  “We need to clean this vile stuff off. Then let’s meet back in the library.”

  The sun was starting to come up as we headed for our respective rooms. I took off my soiled clothes and poured pitcher after pitcher of clean water over me. It magically replenished each time. I scrubbed every inch of me hard with a bar of soap. Then I did the same with Harry Two. I dried us both and I put on clean clothes that Pillsbury had previously placed in my cabinet.

  When I got back downstairs, Petra and Delph were already there, looking somewhat revived in their clean clothes and skins, but the memory of what we had gone through still lingered in their haunted looks. As I’m sure it did in mine.

  “What was that thing in the Tower Room?” asked Petra. “It … it had no face.”

  “I don’t know. I know I couldn’t make it let go of me.”

  “But, Vega Jane, what made that thing so special that it was under such heavy guard?” asked Delph.

  I looked at where it had clutched me.

  Then I glanced at Harry Two. “If not for Harry Two, we’d be dead. He was the only thing to make that creature let go.”

  I patted Harry Two’s head, and he gave me an appreciative lick.

  When I looked back up, Petra was staring directly at me.

  “Endemen killed Daphne and the others,” said Petra in a hollow tone underlined with dread. “Like it was nothing.”

  “We’ve seen him kill before,” I said. “Those poor blokes on the train. He doesn’t care who he kills, Petra.”

  If I was expecting her to merely agree with this statement, I was destined to be sorely disappointed.

  She bellowed, “And yet you let him live back in Bimbleton! If you’d bloody well taken my advice, Daphne and the others would still be alive.”

  “That’s not fair,” Delph said defensively. “Vega Jane had no way of knowing.”

  “He’s murderous, Delph,” snapped Petra. “The point is how could she not know. Or how you couldn’t, for that matter!”

  I finally found my voice, although it was unlike my normal one.

  “To kill in cold blood takes a different sort of Wug,” I said quietly. “And as much as it would truly be convenient to be so bloody evil, I’m not that sort of a Wug. Neither is Delph.” I paused and then asked the question I was sure she was waiting for me to toss out.

  “Are you?”

  “Maybe I am,” she retorted. “Since I’m not a Wug!”

  “So why didn’t you just kill them yourself? You didn’t have to listen to me. You could have done it, if you’d really wanted to.”

  She started to answer but apparently decided to hold her tongue.

  “What, Petra? Why don’t you say it?”

  “If I had killed them, that would have just been proof to you that I’m really and truly a bloody Maladon.”

  “Is that the only reason?” I asked.

  “What if it is?”

  “I don’t think it is.”

  “I don’t care what you think,” she snapped. “They have a bloody army! They have magic beyond us. They’ve rounded up all sorts of blokes who could have helped us. If we leave Empyrean again, chances are very good we won’t come back alive. But if we don’t leave Empyrean, then we can’t defeat the Maladons and turn things right again. So what was the bloody point of us fighting our way through the damn Quag!” she positively shrieked.

  I looked at her, resisting the urge to turn her to stone.

  But in truth she had neatly summed up our plight as well as our limited options.

  “I have no intention of spending the rest of my life safely within the lap of luxury here at Empyrean. I fought my way across the Quag to find my family. And to find the truth. Since I haven’t discovered either yet, I intend to keep looking. You can do whatever the bloody Hel you want, Petr
a Sonnet. I’ve no time or patience for cowards.”

  She looked like I had punched her, and with words I guess I had.

  “And I reckon that’s enough talk for one night,” said Delph, glancing nervously between us.

  I ignored him and rolled my wand between my fingers. I watched as Petra did the same.

  Delph must have noted our rising anger, because he added, “Well, I’m knackered, so I’m going to get some sleep.”

  We watched him head up the stairs, and then Petra and I locked gazes once more. She eyed my wand and I hers.

  “Do you really want to have a go at me, Petra?” I said coolly.

  For just an instant I saw something familiar flicker in her eyes. I strained to think where I had seen it before.

  Was it the calm, deadly look I had seen in Endemen’s eyes after he’d murdered those two poor train blokes?

  I steeled myself for her attack.

  But then she turned and stalked off up the stairs.

  I let out a long breath.

  I waited until she was out of sight, I wasn’t sure why, and then I marched up the stairs too.

  I didn’t know how many more of these confrontations I could endure without actually attacking her!

  And poor Delph. If he thought Petra and me taking a blood oath and swearing allegiance to each other would completely solve our differences, well he just didn’t understand females.

  Though the sun was coming up I fell asleep almost immediately, with Harry Two right next to me. However, I awoke much later somehow feeling just as tired as I had when I’d gone to bed.

  As I washed up, I gazed at myself in the looking glass. It seemed that I looked older, more haggard and lost. My limbs were stiff and I had very little energy. I rubbed at a pain in my neck as I walked down the stairs. I was suddenly worried that some of the jabbit venom had gotten into me when its belly had been opened up by Delph’s blade.

  Pillsbury was in the kitchen, where Mrs. Jolly had laid out a truly sumptuous meal. A few moments later, Petra and Delph staggered in looking as lethargic as I felt. This made me feel even more concerned about the possibility of jabbit venom.

  After Pillsbury and Mrs. Jolly left us, we sat down and started to eat. None of us spoke a word or snatched a glance at one another. It was like we were each eating alone.