by Kari Maaren
Roland said, “What?”
“Your kind of stories. That game. The story doesn’t always go the way you want,” said Freddy, “since other people are writing it with you. Like Mel and me now. Do they have to be NPCs?”
Roland’s eyes were widening. “But if I lose control of them again…”
“No, she’s right. You still control the story,” said Mel, “mostly. Let them be PCs.”
“Now,” said Freddy. “Roland, now!”
A tentacle thrice the width of her body was scything through the air towards them.
“PCs, then,” said Roland, and turned to Cuerva Lachance. “Okay?”
Josiah said, “What—”
“Do try to keep up, Josie, dear.” Cuerva Lachance turned on her heel and leapt for the tentacle.
She changed as she went. Freddy saw a blurred mass of black feathers and talons connect with the tentacle, then continue to transform, shredding itself into a sucking, twirling hole in space. Roland and Mel hadn’t been expecting that. Both of them stepped back, and Mel clapped her hands over her mouth. “She does things. Just let her,” said Freddy.
Mel shook her head. “You’re in the story, too. Freddy, stop forgetting about that gun thing.”
“Good point,” said Freddy. She squeezed a bolt at the next descending tentacle. Lightning crackled up its length; it whirled away from the boat and plunged into the water. Belatedly, Freddy wondered if it was really a good idea to use an electricity-based weapon on a boat in the sea. “Don’t worry about it. Way ahead of you,” panted Mel, whose fingers were glowing. “Protection spell. Keep firing.”
Freddy glanced at Roland. He was cringing on the deck, completely helpless. “You’re writing the story,” she screamed at him. “Do something!”
“I’m not a character,” he screamed back. He tucked his arms over his head.
Josiah, in the meantime, had mostly been standing there looking stunned. Freddy tapped him on the back of the head with the base of the gun. “PC. Player character. You’re not a mindless puppet. Will you please do something now?”
He locked eyes with her. She held his gaze as firmly as she could. She saw suspicion give way to a grudging, reluctant belief. They trusted each other sometimes. They had bounced through history together, over and over. He knew how she felt about time travel.
“Player character,” said Josiah, “fine,” and went to work on one of the tentacles in his own way.
“You can’t exist,” he told it drily. “Obey the law of gravity, won’t you? I tolerate this kind of thing from Cuerva Lachance, but from you, it’s absurd. Pull yourself together and start taking physics into account.”
“You’re going to make it fall on us. You’re insane,” said Mel as Freddy squeezed off another bolt.
Josiah’s tentacle was trembling. Cuerva Lachance’s had vanished into some sort of vortex. Flowers were growing on another one. “One at a time isn’t good enough,” said Mel. “There are a hundred of the things. He does this in every game. It’s all one creature. We need to aim for the head.”
“Classic zombie tactics,” said Josiah, “got you. Cuerva Lachance!”
There was no reply. A tentacle roared past, snapping the mast. The whole boat jolted, and everyone fell down. “Damn it,” said Josiah, “she’s gone completely unpredictable. She does this when I stop paying attention. Cuerva Lachance, we need you to aim for the head!”
“Did someone want me? I was counting things. Then I got bored. Then I went to Egypt. Then I got bored again. Why does that one have a gun?” said Cuerva Lachance, who was now standing on the deck with them, looking in exactly the wrong direction.
“Will you concentrate?” Josiah inquired with brittle, exaggerated impatience. “On the tentacles? Behind you?”
“Oh!” She turned around. “I remember that from ten seconds ago.” Three of the tentacles turned into what appeared to be pasta and fell, steaming, into the boat.
It all got frantic. Tentacles shot down from the sky. Everything smelled strongly of rotting fish. Freddy squeezed out bolt after bolt; finally, her gun sputtered and died. She looked around for the others but could see only Josiah scrabbling at a tentacle with his bare hands as it fought to lift him into the air. Freddy threw the gun aside and leapt for the tentacle, not sure why she did. A few minutes ago, she had been almost willing to let Roland turn Josiah unreal.
She had underestimated the tentacle’s size and strength. It curled around her as well, seemingly without effort. “Freddy, what are you doing?” Josiah gasped. Then both of them were high above the sea. Fighting to free her arms, Freddy saw the world tilt dizzyingly. “Just hang on,” she said.
“Do I have a choice?” he said. The tentacle whipped them back and forth beneath the pleasure-dome. Freddy’s stomach tried to rise into her throat.
Their tentacle, still high in the air, slowed and stopped. It seemed to be taking a break. “The others?” said Freddy, yanking one arm free.
Josiah was squeezed up against her. “No idea. I saw Mel a minute ago. Your stepbrother’s a psychopath, incidentally.”
“I think he’s just overreacting to everything right now. But we have to find some way out of this.”
“The fun bit is that it may kill him. Then we’ll truly be stuck here, except maybe for Cuerva Lachance.”
“But he created it,” she panted. “He should just kill it. Why doesn’t he?”
“He has to follow the story. He told you. Look out … here we go!”
The tentacle plunged downward. It was a little too obvious why. “There’s got … to be … some sort of mouth…”
“There,” screamed Josiah. “Right in the middle! Teeth! There!”
The creature’s mouth was half the size of the high school. The teeth were as big as houses. Aim for the head? If this was the mouth, the head wouldn’t have even felt a bolt from her gun. The stench of the mouth was unbearable. “You’re not real,” Josiah was howling at the creature. “I refuse to be eaten by something that doesn’t exist.”
Someone screamed from below.
They looked. Mel was clinging to one of the teeth. “Freddy,” she was shrieking. “Grab a tooth as you go past!”
“It’s making it drop us that’s the problem,” said Josiah. “We need something to stab it with.”
“Oh,” said Freddy.
For the second time in the last fifteen minutes, she pulled out her keys.
The creature dropped her first, then Josiah. Freddy landed firmly on a tooth, but Josiah almost went straight into the maw. He would have done so if Freddy hadn’t caught his arm as he tumbled past. Clinging to her, he dragged himself to relative safety. Mel was on the tooth next door. “Roland?” said Freddy.
“I don’t know,” said Mel.
“What are we supposed to do?” said Josiah.
Mel said, “Isn’t it obvious?”
They looked at her. The creature juddered, and Freddy was nearly flung clear of her tooth. Josiah growled, “No, it’s not obvious. Nothing is ever obvious with you.”
“Cuerva Lachance can beat it,” said Mel, “or she could if she wasn’t surrounded by logical people. We’re holding her back.”
“Do you want the entire universe to turn into raspberries?” said Josiah. “We have to hold her back.”
“No,” said Mel. “We have to set her free. Roland set up an impossible story. He didn’t mean to. But there’s no way out without cheating.”
“I thought we had to follow the rules,” said Freddy. “I thought it was the only way.”
“It is for us,” said Mel. “It isn’t for her. That’s her character. That’s what she’s for.”
Freddy and Josiah looked at each other. Tentacles writhed overhead, but the creature didn’t appear able to sense their current location. They still couldn’t hang on forever.
“Listen,” said Josiah. “What happened to the house earlier … that was Cuerva Lachance let about a tenth off the leash. For this to work, she needs to be off the leash entirely. Anything cou
ld happen. Anything. Balance will be lost. You need to be prepared for that.”
Freddy and Mel nodded. “We understand,” said Mel.
“Then hang on.”
He closed his eyes.
For a moment, Freddy couldn’t figure out why he had done that or what seemed wrong about it. Then she knew. She had never—never—seen him close his eyes before, not even to blink. The closest he had ever got was letting various people punch them, and even then, he had been able to see through the slits. Something shifted in the air around them. Even the creature, seething and moaning beneath and all around, seemed to hesitate for a moment.
And Cuerva Lachance was there, her clothes torn to ribbons, her hair over her face. “This hasn’t happened in a while,” she explained in a voice that was far too cheerful. “No peeking, Josie, dear.”
The world went strange.
* * *
Freddy was walking down a road, Roland at her side. It was winter. Her mother’s funeral had been the day before. Mel had cried. Freddy hadn’t. She hadn’t really spoken to her mother in nearly twenty years.
Roland stopped in place and signed, I think you’re in denial. You need to see that. The argument had been going on for some time.
She looked at him. He was about forty now, tired-looking, with a sparse black beard. I’m not in denial, she signed. We never had anything to do with each other. Most of the time, she didn’t remember I existed.
Was it all her fault? Did you ever even tell her you had a problem with the way she treated you? I don’t think she knew she was doing anything wrong.
“Oh,” said Freddy, “and it was my job to tell her? She should have seen it herself.”
“Not everyone is good at seeing things,” said Roland.
Seeing things. The words tripped a memory, vague and far away. “He closed his eyes,” said Freddy, then wondered why she had.
Roland’s own eyes narrowed. “Who did?”
“Josiah.” It was a name from her childhood; she hadn’t thought about it in years. She hadn’t remembered she’d ever known a Josiah. There was something tragic about the thought of Josiah closing his eyes. Unexpectedly, she felt the faint prick of tears. No. She hadn’t cried for her mother. Why should she cry at a name from long ago?
She didn’t cry. She looked at Roland and knew he thought she was the coldest person he had ever met. She didn’t cry, and she didn’t care.
Her right hand shot into her pocket, groping for something that wasn’t there. Keys? She kept her keys in her purse. Freddy blinked furiously against the tears and tried to force her brain to work properly. She couldn’t let herself cry. Why couldn’t she?
She signed, What happened back then? I can’t remember.
The story didn’t end, signed Roland. It’s still going. It’s been going ever since. Josiah still hasn’t opened his eyes.
She saw a boat on an impossible sea and a forest of tentacles boiling into the air. She saw herself firing a gun. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “We went on from there.”
He shook his head. “The story went wrong. Didn’t it?”
“The time is out of joint,” said Mel from behind Freddy. She turned. Mel was twelve years old, dressed in bunny-rabbit pyjamas.
Freddy said, “Oh cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right.”
“Shakespeare,” said Mel. “You’ve never read Hamlet, and yet here you are quoting it. You two need to regress, and fast. Remember where we really are.”
“You can’t be real,” said Freddy. “I’m dreaming. We’ve just been at a funeral.”
“Josiah still hasn’t opened his eyes,” said Roland. “It means something. I wish I knew what. No, I don’t. I don’t know. Where did you leave the car?”
“It means we’re still trapped in an imaginary world inside the house on Grosvenor Street.” Mel crossed her arms and came as close to glaring as she ever had. “This is all just the house on Grosvenor Street. Something’s tricked you into thinking you’ve grown up. None of this is happening.”
The boat and the sea and the sparkling pleasure-dome. “It was all out of a poem,” said Freddy. She groped for the key again. It should have been there. She thought back to her mother’s funeral and saw Mel in bunny-rabbit pyjamas, bouncing along beside the coffin. Again, there was a prickling behind her eyes.
Roland massaged his temple with his fingers. “It was ‘Kubla Khan.’ Why do I think that matters?”
“Stop being so stupid.” Mel actually stamped. “I can’t believe you’re both being so stupid! We have to make Josiah open his eyes! Getting him to close them was only the first part! Do you want all this to turn out to be real?”
“Isn’t it?” said Roland.
Now Freddy could remember the funeral going wrong. At the burial, skeletons had danced up out of the graves. Freddy’s mother had clambered from the coffin to join them. The minister had been made of glass. Everything was changing inside her head. “Roland’s telling the story. Is he? He needs to end it!”
“Look.” Mel flung her hands out towards the landscape surrounding them. “Look at where we are.”
She had thought it was snow. It was just … white. They had been walking down a road through nothing, not a road through winter. Freddy felt her carefully constructed past collapse inside her head. She was forty years old, and she didn’t know why.
“I take back everything I’ve been saying,” said Roland. “I won’t look.”
“You never wanted to,” said Mel. “You need to want to. For better or for worse, you’re at the centre of all this. Snap out of it. He needs to open his eyes.”
“It started with the poem,” said Freddy, struggling. “It should end with the poem. How does the poem end?”
“It doesn’t. You interrupted it. You remember interrupting it,” Mel told her. “But this is where it stops:
“Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ’twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!”
“No,” gasped Roland, “stop. Stop! I can’t do it. I don’t know how. We were at a funeral. It’s too late. I’m afraid…”
But Mel continued, inexorably:
“And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.”
“We’re still under the dome,” said Freddy, feeling as if she were forcing the words out through deep water. “We’re still in the house on Grosvenor Street.”
Tentacles snaked out of the whiteness. “No, Roland, stop it,” said Mel. “Cuerva Lachance changed that. But now you need to bring Josiah back. He’s stuck at the end of the poem.”
“Anything can happen.” Freddy heard her voice growing younger, softer. “And one of the anythings is that he doesn’t know when to open his eyes.”
“I don’t want to go back,” said Roland in anguish. “I don’t want it not to be too late. I don’t know what’s going to happen next.”
In Freddy’s head, the funeral dissolved into a carnival on the third floor of the house on Grosvenor Street. The carnival was getting scary. Cuerva Lachance was moving through her mind, changing everything. She saw her mother’s coffin floating in the middle of the carnival. The tears were back again, stinging, for a different reason.
It was Roland holding them here. She couldn’t imagine how afraid he must be.
“Nobody ever knows what’s going to happen next,” said Freddy. “But we need to find out.”
He was breathing very quickly. She held his gaze as long as she could. It was hard; tears were blinding him. She felt the tears she had been struggling to hold back herself well up again. For t
he first time in years, one slid free, trickling down her cheek.
Roland nodded slowly and took a deep, shaky breath. “Weave a circle round him thrice…”
He was growing younger now, too. The pleasure-dome was building itself again over their heads. The tentacles were melting away, but Cuerva Lachance was everywhere, dangerous and unchecked. Everything could change again. The world wasn’t stable.
“I made her a PC,” said Roland. “I won’t go back on that; it wouldn’t be fair. But where’s Josiah?”
“In the poem,” said Mel, “since that’s how you started it. ‘Close your eyes with holy dread,’ right?”
They looked.
A lake of fire had bubbled up out of nothing. Josiah knelt on an island at the centre, huddling against the flames. The only way across was … Freddy blinked, trying to clear her vision. For a moment, the dancing rainbows from the prism of the pleasure-dome seemed to have become intertwined with the fire of the lake, twisting their way into a seething, ever-changing bridge made of colour and light. She blinked again, and it was only a rope bridge after all, just on the verge of catching fire. “I think time’s stopped for him,” said Mel. “I think strange things happen when he closes his eyes.”
“Cuerva Lachance must have done the lake,” said Freddy.
Roland, fourteen again, nodded. “One of you needs to wake him up. I’m sorry,” he said as they turned to him, “but I’m just telling the story. You’re right—I have to finish it—but I have to do it with the characters I have, and that’s you. We have to go back to the logic of the story, or we’ll be playing into her hands.”
It was only then that Freddy really saw what Roland and Mel had kept trying to tell her about the story’s rules. Weave a circle round him thrice … the man in the poem wasn’t random at all. He was the poet. And he could imagine the hell out of the pleasure-dome, but he also had to be controlled. It was the most frustrating balancing act she had ever heard of. Like … like …
“Rope bridge,” said Freddy.
Roland spread his hands. “It’s never easy at the end.”
They approached the bridge. It was just three strands of rope at different heights. “If we fall in…?” said Freddy.
“You die.” Cuerva Lachance had slipped into existence beside the lake. “I don’t terribly badly want you to wake him up.”