by E. Archer
“Hello?” Ralph called to the elderly woman. But because she was a well-behaved character, she wouldn’t allow herself to hear anything outside of her own story.
So he moved on.
After wandering for an hour, it became clear that this cold hard nothing space was infinite, or at least extraordinarily large. He found any number of sullen young women, but none of them was quite the sullen young woman he was looking for.
His plan, once he located Beatrice, was to find a way out, to return to his own home and his own parents and his own boring life. But there was no diorama for his real world, no figurines of his own parents.
Ralph figured there had to be some clever way to get out of the attic. But, he was coming to realize, that was the hardest thing about being in a story; he didn’t really have any choices.
“Hello?” he called up to me. “Could you throw me a line, buddy?”
Of course I didn’t answer.
What happened next? I guess Ralph really had to go, because he peed behind a chemist’s laboratory set piece. He hadn’t found a bathroom anywhere in the Underworld, so he must have been holding it for quite a while.
What else? He rummaged around for food, with no luck — it was all too small, crunchy, and inorganic; he once brought a miniature horse to his lips, but got afraid he’d choke on a hoof. So instead he sat and got depressed for a while.
It had been a long time since he’d eaten anything; he couldn’t remember the last time, actually, though he was too anxious to actually feel hungry. He sat in the dim light of the empty stage and waited.
For what?
Anything, he supposed.
Ralph heard a slight creaking in the attic, looked over, and thought he spied a ghostly figure hovering far away.
“Beatrice?” Ralph called.
He heard her rush toward him, then a crash and a curse as she slammed into Oz on her way over.
“Hold on. I’ll come to you,” said Ralph, whose eyes had better adjusted to the near-darkness. He took Beatrice’s hand, and she crushed herself against him.
“Ralph, Ralph, Ralph,” she said.
“What is it?” he said, suddenly convinced he was about to be eaten.
“I was sure you were gone forever. Like Chessie’s son.” Her face wet the crook of his arm.
“It’s okay, I’m here. Shh.”
“Thank God.” A pause. “Um, where is here?”
“Hmm,” Ralph said, wondering how to answer. He sounded, for the first time in his life, a bit like his father. “How did you get here? Maybe that will tell us.”
“Well, I think your killing me —”
“Oh my God, that’s right. Yipes. Are you okay?”
“Yes, fine. I think your killing me finished my quest, in a weird way. I passed out and woke up in my everyday world, the way it’s supposed to go. Only, traditionally, you’re supposed to wake up with everything totally back to normal, so much so that you’re not even sure your wish actually happened. But I was still gray. And I could walk through things. And the castle was still in the clouds. Gert is super-cranky about that, by the way.”
“She’s going to kill me.”
“Maybe. Who cares? Anyway, since I’m still a ghost, I was the only one of the family able to get down to the ground. Cecil wanted to climb but Mother and Father wouldn’t let him. They wouldn’t let me, either, for that matter, but I ignored them, threw myself out the basement, and glided down. It was amazing — the vale was crawling with Royal Narratological Guild people in their pajamas yapping on cell phones, trying to figure out what to do. All I had to do, though, was catch the right gusts of wind, and I totally avoided them.
“I headed for London instead, because I wanted to chase down Chessie. I found her holed up in bed in her Kensington flat, with the door triple-barred and a couple of armed men standing guard. She was probably freaked out that the Royal Narratological Guild was going to come after her for botching another wish. Which they probably were, come to think of it. In any case, I floated right in. She ran farther upstairs and slammed the door closed. I passed through that door, too, of course, and finally cornered her in her bathroom. She was hysterical.
“At first I’d wanted to … well, to thank her, actually. For giving me the opportunity to see my mother again. And to complain that I didn’t have more time to chat properly with her. I wasn’t sure if I was going to bring up my ghostliness, because even now I’m still kind of digging it, and don’t want anyone to take it away. When I opened my mouth all that came out were questions about you. She’d been the one to grant the wishes, and I figured it was her responsibility to find a way to get you back.
“But she didn’t know how to fix anything. All she could say was that she was sure the Royal Narratological Guild wouldn’t allow you to rot away inside the ‘cold hard nothing storytelling attic.’ She pretended to be carefree, but she felt terrible about it, Ralph, I could tell. I spent most of the night consoling her. Come morning, she had a bodyguard get us eggs and bacon and she downed a mimosa while we ate brunch on her big puffy bed. That’s when she came up with the idea.”
“What idea?” Ralph asked
CHAPTER LXIII
Like anyone else, a narrator needs a home. It’s been our guild’s proudest feat, to tell stories so confidently that no one questions our means. How did anyone hear the secrets the evil regent muttered as he hid in the wardrobe? Who was there to describe the heroine’s final swim in the lake? A narrator, of course — but we need some place wherein to direct and observe.
Generally, we lie in catwalks above the action, at little wooden desks with single lightbulbs and a few reams of paper on which to write down everything. Anything that needs to happen storywise, we need merely imagine and it appears. So we spend our lives envisioning stories and watching them play out; our hands never stop scribbling. We make sure that nothing in the wish is tall enough to reach us, so as to prevent any awkward character-narrator interactions.
But before you read what comes next and place your judgment on me, I want you to realize one thing: You’ve been expecting me to devise some means to foil these hellions, but all the while I’ve been scribbling away with this quill. There! Those five letters, q-u-i-l-l, cost me time, as did this sentence to house them. Try to imagine what should happen next, even as you’re busy reading these words. None too easy, no? I haven’t been in this business for centuries like Maarten Sumperson, and don’t have an infinite number of other stories to fall back on — I need some lead time to stay ahead of the action.
Here I sit at my desk, writing these words, now staring down at Ralph and Beatrice and finding myself powerless to imagine anything plausible to stop them.
They cross between the sets until they get to the sector containing the Japanese sci-fi props, passing a dozen gecko-sized Godzillas before coming to Mothra. After shivering in delight to be in the presence of such an icon of geekiness, Ralph plucks the miniature giant insect from her Infant Island and loops a length of chain (which they earlier procured from a mining set) about her midsection. Then, like a bridesmaid with a wedding dove, he tosses Mothra into the air.
As clichés go, the moth to the flame is a classic, and I’m embarrassed not to have been a few steps ahead of those two young upstarts. The hand-sized Mothra zooms straight for my exposed lightbulb. Her godlike powers of flight lift Ralph and Beatrice, who have chained themselves behind her, my feeble bulb illuminating the whites of their eyes as they zoom toward me.
CHAPTER LXIV
As you can imagine, appearing in one’s own scene taxes one’s mental resources tremendously, which is why you’ll forgive me if these words come at a dribble. Even as I write this paragraph they’ve said so many things, too many to transcribe.
I cannot say a word — all my thoughts are frittered by my shame and trained on the writing task at hand. Taking advantage of my struggle, Ralph steals behind my desk and reads over the current page:
are frittered by my shame and trained on the writing ta
sk at hand. Taking advantage of my struggle, Ralph steals behind my desk and reads over the current page
“Stop,” Beatrice says softly. “Please. Put the pen down.”
But I can’t stop. That is the first commandment of them all.
Once, before I found my current employment, back when I was nothing more than a child living with his mother, I remember traveling home from school a day early because my boarding school mates had been being as uncivil to me as ever. My mother was away, probably off in the States filming a television spot. I remember opening a kitchen cupboard and withdrawing a box of chips and seeing a chef on the front holding a box of chips, on which box was pictured a chef holding a box of chips, on which was pictured a chef holding a box. I fell into that last box, closed the cupboard, and had to order pizza for dinner.
In Ralph I see the same bedazzlement at the reading of himself within himself. It is a thrill that we all turn to in our selfish moments, the vanity of thinking about ourselves thinking about ourselves. But it’s a thrill that can easily turn to paralysis and despair, so I try to shield him from my futile scribbles by turning my body. My quill is slick with horror at the predicament I’ve gotten myself in, facing the prospect of getting lost within the infinity of my own pages, spending eternity trapped in this one moment.
“Stop it right now!” Ralph says, and reaches toward the quill. He almost pries it from my fingers before I can write this.
“You little worm!” I say. “If you don’t climb back down, I’ll — I don’t know.” I’m distracted by the heavy clink of Mothra’s chain as she hurls herself again and again against the exposed lightbulb. The fact is, I do know exactly what I’ll do, if only I can find the mental space to do it. But I can’t muster the concentration to make the right words come out.
“You can’t railroad us like this,” Ralph bellows. “We’re real people, not puppets!”
“Maurice,” Beatrice says, laying a hand on my shoulder. “It is Maurice, isn’t it?”
“You know him?” Ralph sputters. “And I did not just ‘sputter'!”
“Maurice,” Beatrice continues, “are you here against your will? Have they made you a slave?”
“You can’t change what I’ve become,” I say.
“There must be some way,” Beatrice says. “Tell us you want us to save you, and we’ll find a way.”
“You think I have the best job ever,” I say to Ralph. “That I sit up here like a little god and cheerfully make everything the way I want it to be. But this is my life, this is all of it. No one alongside me, no friend or mother. No special person to love. No one, even, to wave up at me once in a while and acknowledge that they care that I exist. My life is my job, my job is my life. And your pathetic geek version of it, your precious job at MonoMyth, will get you the chance to make your stories and still have your own life outside of them. I’d give anything, anything …”
“We’ll get you out,” Beatrice says.
“No! I wouldn’t trade this away. I just miss my old life. You’ve caught me in a weak moment, seeing the two of you together. My composure will come back, I’m sure.”
“It’s okay not to be in control,” Beatrice says.
“I hear the sob story,” Ralph says coldly, jostling my quill when my word choice irks him, “but you made Chessie try to kill me. Multiple times.”
“Of course I did,” I spit. “Narrating the Battersby wishes was my one chance to be near my mother again. I had to pull so many strings to get assigned this job. I’ve looked forward for years to the chance to sit up here and be near her, to breathe the same air as her. And you came along and monopolized my own mother, ruined my stories even as you took her attention away from them, from me. So yes, I tried to kill you. You deserved it.”
“I don’t notice you trying to kill me anymore,” Ralph sniffs.
“No,” I say tiredly. “I’ve quite given up.”
“Why don’t you tell him exactly who you are?” Beatrice says, in her guileless way I love so, asking the questions others hold in their fists.
I want to answer her question.
But ask for more than is given and you will receive the kind of answer that leaves only hunger; turn a final page to find the next one blank and behind that blank page only tiresome closing remarks, a library barcode, and a dingy slipcover.
I stop writing and so vanish from view, as do the book, the lamp, the storytelling attic, these last words.
NARRATOLOGICAL GUILD NOTE:
Having identified the preceding chapter as the last in which the narrator is at all reliable, we have stricken the remainder from the record and instead resorted to the transcripts of the emergency meeting of the Royal Narratological Guild’s Technical Review Board, the pertinent elements of which are herewith inserted.
ROYAL NARRATOLOGICAL GUILD TECHNICAL REVIEW BOARD
SUMMER SESSION EMERGENCY ADDITIONAL MEETING
Atrium Suites
Buckingham Palace, Annex #-3
Buckingham Palace Road
London, SW1A 1AA
RNGTRB MEMBERS PRESENT
Dame Melinda Chevally, CHAIR *
Ms. Gladys Norwich *
Mr. Aldis Haines *
Mrs. Clotilde Micklethwait *
Mr. Maarten Sumperson *
SENIOR PROFESSIONAL STAFF
Edwina Baum (assistant)
Imogen Baum (assistant)
Rhody Baum (assistant)
Colossus of Parnassus (transcriber)
Lord Feverel of Alsatia (security)
Helicon III (annotator)
ATTENDEES
Duchess Chessimyn of Cheshire, Wish-Granter
Maurice of Cheshire, Narrator *
Mary and Steve , Parents of Subject
Ralph , Subject
Beatrice Battersby, Witness
Gertrude and Gideon Battersby, Parents of Witness
P R O C E E D I N G S
8:20 A.M.
CHEVALLY: Good morning. On behalf of the Royal Narratological Guild’s Technical Review Board, I’d like to welcome all of you back to the Summer Session, for our special additional meeting. I trust you were all notified in a prompt manner.
Tradition, of course, calls for any meeting with new attendees to begin with introductions. In order to set an expedient tone, I’d like to go first and model a suitable response. My name is Dame Melinda Chevally, and I am the chair of the Technical Review Board. My professional life has become that of a consultant, as I have transitioned to an administrative role after the Twenty-first Century Storytelling Diminution.
I would now ask the other members of the guild to raise their hands as I introduce them.
[OMITTED PORTION]
Is the Duchess Chessie of Cheshire present?
C. OF CHESHIRE: Yes, Madame.
CHEVALLY: I’ll remind you to answer the Board’s questions as precisely as possible, and cede any and all decision-making to an institution that does, after all, have centuries of experience in such affairs. Understanding that we are adjudicating the grave matter of your narrator’s removal from service, the Board would like you to tell us what you remember of your conversation with Miss Beatrice Battersby, after she appeared in your bathroom in ghost form.
C. of CHESHIRE: I’d be happy to, Melinda, not that you’ve given me a terrific amount of choice in the matter. I tried to calm her. I told her I was sure the Guild wouldn’t let Ralph rot in the storytelling attic, no matter what happened to his story. And yes, I let her know the reason why I never received a wish of my own as a child.
CHEVALLY: Would you care to elaborate?
C. of CHESHIRE: My sisters, sitting right there and there —
GERTRUDE BATTERSBY: Hello.
MARY : Hi, everyone.
C. of CHESHIRE: How to say it … they had a much more secure place in my family. Mary was my mother’s handmaid, practical-minded, an adult from the time she was a child. Gert was the beauty, an imperial firstborn. I was somewhere in the middle, and … let’s say I spent
a lot of time away from the house, out with friends. The summer when our parents decided it was time to grant us all wishes I had been especially poorly behaved. I was running around with a soldier’s son, and my parents hated him. They were sure — and they were right — that if I got a wish, I would wish to marry him. So they simply didn’t grant me any wish at all. You have to understand the time period — wishes were THE THING, and not getting one … ooh! I’ve always felt that I’m missing that … invisible badge, and I’ve never been a real part of the royal circles since. So it’s become a sort of fixation for me, as you can understand. I think everyone who is eligible should get a wish. It’s our birthright.
CHEVALLY: Do you recall what your sisters wished for?
C. of CHESHIRE: Oh dear. Let’s see. Gert wished to be the belle of the ball, something like that. She’s like a grown-up version of her daughter Daphne. She’s what children like that become.
GERTRUDE BATTERSBY: I wished to be loved. That’s all. And for the record I officially don’t appreciate the tone my sister just took.
CHEVALLY: And Mary?
C. of CHESHIRE: I … bloody hell, I honestly don’t remember.
MARY : I wished for peace. I thought it would be some bigger peace, like an end to a war somewhere, but my quest ended up showing me how to be satisfied with boredom. It’s not the most dramatic thing. My own sister can’t even remember what I wished for. But I’m very content.
CHEVALLY: So we can assume that your own lack of a wish led you to want to give one to Daphne, Cecil, and Beatrice?