This Isn't What It Looks Like

by Pseudonymous Bosch

“Are there… things to see?” Cass asked, growing nervous.

  “There is always something to see… just not always with those two marbles you call your eyes.”

  “With what, then?”

  “Have you heard of the inner eye—the third eye?”

  “Yeah, I guess, but I never really believed in it….”

  “A tiny housefly has hundreds of eyes. Why should it be so hard to believe you have three?”*

  “Are you saying I’m a…”—Cass stumbled over the word—“seer… like you are?”

  “Perhaps not so much like me, but we are both called Cassandra, aren’t we?”

  Cass nodded hesitantly.

  “And your Secret? Did you find that?”

  “No, at least, I don’t think so…. No, wait, that’s it—that’s why I remembered the lodestone!” exclaimed Cass, almost jumping off the stool in her excitement. “The lodestone hanging around Mrs. Johnson’s neck—the Jester said he would leave the Secret under it. Or, like, a message about the Secret.”

  “Oh?” queried the Seer mildly. “The Secret must be very short if it can be written under such a small stone.”

  “So then… you don’t know whether I’m right about Mrs. Johnson’s necklace?” asked Cass, a little frustrated that her revelation hadn’t been greeted with more enthusiasm.

  “I can only tell you what the cards tell me—”

  The Seer flipped the next card over with a breezy wave. On the face of the card, a robed man held his wand aloft in his right hand while pointing down with his left—the Magician.

  “Remember: as above, so below.”

  “I remember—but what does it mean?”

  “That depends on what is above and what is below, naturally.”

  Based on her previous experience with the Seer, Cass had expected the Seer to lay out several more cards, but it appeared from the way the Seer folded her hands that she considered the reading finished.

  “OK, then. Thanks, I guess.”

  Cass stood up, distinctly unsatisfied, but anxious to tell her friends the news.

  Max-Ernest and Yo-Yoji were waiting impatiently outside the tent.

  Before either could say a word, Cass launched into a breathless account of her adventures with the Jester, almost all of which she now remembered, ending with the Jester’s promise to hide a message about the Secret under the lodestone. “The thing is, I don’t know if he ever even found the Secret. He hadn’t even heard of it until I told him about it.”

  The other two Terces members stared at her in disbelief.

  “How could he not have heard of it?” asked Yo-Yoji. “He’s practically the only one who ever knew it!”

  “I know, I couldn’t believe it, either. But the worst thing was that Lord Pharaoh already knew about the Secret—that’s what the homunculus told me—so I made the Jester promise to find it before Lord Pharaoh did….”

  “You… you made him?” Max-Ernest stammered.

  “Wait… you didn’t… meet Lord Pharaoh, did you?” asked Yo-Yoji, stammering as well.

  Cass nodded, seeing again the dark green, reptilian-looking eye magnified by the Double Monocle. “Yeah, it was pretty scary.”

  Her friends shook their heads in amazement, unable to hide how impressed they were to hear Cass speak in such a familiar way about the Jester and Lord Pharaoh—the Terces Society’s legendary hero and legendary villain, respectively.

  “Well, logically, the Jester must have found the Secret eventually,” said Max-Ernest, recovering. “He did start the Terces Society, didn’t he?”

  “And you think that rock around Mrs. Johnson’s neck—that’s the Jester’s lodestone?” asked Yo-Yoji.

  Cass nodded. “Uh-huh. Well, carved up. But from the same rock. I know it sounds crazy. Like how would she get it? But it looked exactly the same when I looked at it through the monocle.”

  “Maybe it’s not so crazy,” said Max-Ernest. “Mrs. Johnson said the lodestone came from the same witchy aunt of hers as the Tuning Fork.”

  “Wait… wasn’t her name Clara?” asked Cass, noting silently that the name was the same as the Seer’s.

  “Yeah. That’s the one. How ’bout that?”

  “So that means if we want to see the lodestone up close, we have to get it from… oh man!” Yo-Yoji groaned.

  The others nodded glumly in agreement. Once again they were going to have to retrieve a precious heirloom from their principal.

  “That’s it, it’s over. This time we won’t be expelled; we’ll be sent straight to juvenile hall!” declared Max-Ernest. “I almost wish you never went to talk to that mannequin.”

  “What mannequin?” asked Cass.

  “Uh, the one in the tent you’ve been in for the last twenty minutes. You must have fed it a lot of quarters.”

  “What do you mean?” Cass’s ears began to tingle with panic. “There’s no mann—wait just a sec. I think I forgot something.”

  She turned and ran back to the tent, throwing aside the striped curtains.

  Sure enough, sitting behind a window in a small booth, where a moment ago she’d seen the Seer, or thought she’d seen the Seer, there was now a mannequin. More accurately, an automaton. A robot fortune-teller in a red velvet turban. The kind you see at carnivals. The kind that hands out little cards that say things like You will live a long and prosperous life or You will have many children.

  Other than Cass, the only living thing in the tent was a fly buzzing around a dusty shaft of sunlight. Not even the tree stump was there.

  Cass stared at the booth, shaken.

  It was true: she was seeing things. And hearing them, too.

  She looked down, expecting to see the monocle lying on the ground. It wasn’t there, either. Strange. But by now she was so unsettled, so insecure about her perceptions, that she couldn’t be certain she hadn’t left the monocle someplace else earlier. Or perhaps she’d never had it at all and she’d just imagined the monocle as she’d imagined the Seer?

  Distraught, Cass was about to exit when she noticed the coin slot next to the fortune-teller’s hand. It read: 25 CENTS. On impulse, Cass dropped a quarter into the slot.

  The carnival-style lights that circled the booth started to flash and the robot fortune-teller nodded jerkily.

  “Greetings, traveler. Clara the Clairvoyant sees all,” said a recorded voice that sounded nothing like the Seer’s. “Ask your question. Then read your fortune.”

  Cass looked over her shoulder to make sure she was still alone, then whispered, “Was what I saw real? Was Cassandra here?”

  A bell rang and a small card appeared in the fortune-teller’s hand. Gears creaking, the fortune-teller lowered her mechanical arm and dropped the card into the dish at the bottom of the small opening in the booth window.

  What am I expecting? Cass asked herself as she took the card. It’s probably just going to tell me what my lucky number is or something.

  She turned the card over.

  As above, so below, it read.

  Cass was so startled she almost dropped the card. That was when she saw what the fortune-teller was wearing. The monocle magnified the automaton’s pale blue eye the same way it had the Seer’s. Only the automaton’s eye was marble.

  “So she was here…. You are here…,” Cass whispered.

  The fortune-teller’s bell rang; and as Cass watched, the fortune-teller lowered the monocle and dropped it into the dish reserved for the fortune-telling cards.

  “You want me to… take that back?” Cass stammered.

  The bell rang. And the fortune-teller dropped another card into the dish next to the monocle.

  You have a gift. You will have need of it.

  Cass blinked, unsure whether the message was an answer. Did it mean the monocle was a gift? Or was it another reference to second sight?

  Again the bell rang. Again the fortune-teller dropped a card.

  You are haunted by the past.

  “Do you mean haunted haunted?” Cass asked nervousl
y. “Or just, like, worried about the past?”

  Again the bell. Again a card.

  As before, so now.

  Thoroughly mystified, Cass waited for another card to drop. But none appeared.

  She pulled the first card out of her pocket and placed it on top of the others.

  Your lucky number is seven, it now read.

  Cass walked out, clutching the monocle tight in her hand and wondering if this was what it was like to be crazy.

  Inside the tent, the fly continued to buzz.

  When Cass emerged from the fortune-teller’s tent for the second time, Max-Ernest was standing alone.

  “What happened to Yo-Yoji?” she asked, blinking in the sunlight.

  “He went to go sign up for the joust.”

  “You mean, like, to be in it? That’s crazy!”

  “How else are we supposed to get close enough to Mrs. Johnson? She’s been surrounded by Amber and Veronica all day. Plus that secretary lady—”

  “I can’t believe they would let Yo-Yoji sign up. I thought kids weren’t allowed.”

  “We’re not. That’s the beauty of it! If he wins, he gets knighted by the Queen. If he gets caught, he gets sent to the principal. He sees Mrs. Johnson either way. It’s win-win. How ’bout that?”

  “How ’bout that…?” Cass didn’t like the plan (mostly, I suspect, because it had been concocted in her absence), but she didn’t have an alternative plan to offer.

  “By the way,” said Max-Ernest, lowering his voice. “I figured out what the warning was that Pietro sent me. What you said before about Lord Pharaoh and the Secret, it reminded me.”

  “Yeah, what?” asked Cass, still focused on the joust.

  “Well, I got this note—it was in code but it said LORD PHARAOH LIVES.”

  Cass snapped to attention. “Did you just say ‘Lord Pharaoh lives’?”

  “Uh-huh. I thought it was from the Midnight Sun. You know, like kind of a taunt. But now I think Pietro must have written it. I just can’t figure out why.”

  “Well… it could be true,” said Cass slowly. “Did you think of that?”

  “True that Lord Pharaoh is alive? But he would be five hundred years old,” Max-Ernest scoffed. “Besides, didn’t Mr. Cabbage Face say he ate him? We even saw Lord Pharaoh’s grave—”

  “You’re right, it was a crazy idea.”

  Cass shivered. A horrible, horrible thought had occurred to her, but she pushed it away.

  The important thing was to get her hands on the lodestone. To learn the Secret.

  Your Majesty, dukes and duchesses, counts and countesses, barons and baronesses, lords and ladies, knights and damsels, lads and lasses, yeomen and serfs, peers of the realm, and—whom did I miss?—students from the Xxxxx School, let the games begin!”

  Standing in the middle of the stadium and dressed in a suitably bright and ballooning satin outfit, the announcer, or “Master of Arms” as he’d introduced himself, lowered his bullhorn and raised a trumpet to his lips.

  “In the real Renaissance, I don’t think they would’ve had Porta-Potties next to the royal stands,” complained Max-Ernest, who was sitting in said stands next to Cass. The Porta-Potties were directly behind them, and the smell was distinctly unpleasant.

  “Trust me, in the real Renaissance, it was worse,” said Cass. “People just went wherever they wanted to.”

  “Gross…. How do you know where people went in the Renaissance, anyway?” asked Max-Ernest. “—Oh right, I forgot.”

  “Actually, you’re right. How do I know? I don’t know anything anymore,” said Cass grimly.

  “What do you mean? What’s wrong?” asked Max-Ernest. He had seen Cass in many moods in the past—but never in a self-doubting one. It was disturbing to his sense of order.

  Cass shrugged. “Nothing. I don’t mean anything….” She wasn’t about to tell Max-Ernest the true reason behind her state of mind. Not today, anyway. If she told him about her experience—or non-experience—with the Seer, he would probably rush her to the hospital.

  As they spoke, about twenty knights on horseback (or men and women dressed as knights on horseback, I should say) rode into the ring. Each wore a number over his or her breastplate and each held a flag, some representing nations, others representing local businesses or bowling leagues.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I now present the finest knights in the kingdom,” declared the Master of Arms. “They have come from all over the country, indeed from all over the world, to compete in a contest of skill and will. The winner will be honored by the Queen herself.”

  He proceeded to introduce the contestants, each of whom had adopted a grand title for the occasion: Sir Daniel the Daring, Sir Michael of the Moors, Lord Phillip the Fair, and so on.

  Cass and Max-Ernest applauded when they heard Yo-Yoji announced:

  “And here, from Feudal Japan, comes Sir Yoji-San, the Samurai Knight!”

  Yo-Yoji rode into the ring on a feisty black horse. He was dressed in traditional European-style armor (a couple sizes too big) but holding a samurai sword and carrying a Japanese-style flag (decorated with what I can only describe as some sort of anime alien—or perhaps it was meant to be one of Cass’s sock monsters). As his horse pawed the ground and jerked his head this way and that, Yo-Yoji squirmed in his saddle; he looked as if he might fall off before the games even began.

  “Since when does Yo-Yoji know how to joust, anyway?” asked Cass.

  “He doesn’t. I don’t even think he knows how to ride a horse,” said Max-Ernest. “But he knows all about swords from all those kendo lessons with Lily. Plus he has samurai experience, remember?”

  “Oh great. I’m sure this will be a piece of cake, then.”

  “Quiet! The Queen speaks!”

  A hush fell over the crowd. Mrs. Johnson stood up in the royal box.

  “Loyal subjects, we thank you from the bottom of our royal heart for being here today on this great occasion,” she said, attempting to maintain her English accent as she shouted into a bullhorn. “Brave knights, who among you will be our champion? To earn our patronage, you must have the courage of a lion and the cunning of a fox, the eyes of an eagle and the ferocity of a wolf, the heart of a bear and the mind of a… well, never mind. May the best man win!”

  The crowd clapped and cheered, “Long live the Queen!”

  I regret to say Yo-Yoji’s first effort was not auspicious. Despite his vaunted samurai experience, he passed by the quintain entirely, got thrown from his horse, and wound up pole vaulting over his lance—a neat trick but hardly a way to earn points in a hastilude.*

  Happily, he was able to stand up immediately afterward, a bit bruised but mostly unscathed. The audience’s laughter was, as you can imagine, uproarious.

  Soon, however, the games turned from military showmanship to direct combat. Now on foot, the knights competed in a round-robin of hand-to-hand matchups featuring a variety of weapons, including not only swords but flails, battle-axes, and spears—all, of course, stage props and not real weapons. (This was, after all, not a real knights’ tournament but a staged event at a faux Renaissance Faire.) I am pleased to inform you that Yo-Yoji’s performance improved greatly with every matchup. Highly trained by martial-arts master Lily Wei, Yo-Yoji was light on his feet and extremely deft with the sword and flail especially. He had an unerring instinct for when to thrust, when to parry, and when to leap over the heads of his opponents (well, perhaps not literally over their heads, but he did jump quite high considering the weight of his armor).

  By the time the knights were supposed to remount their horses, Yo-Yoji’s score, previously the lowest, qualified him for the final round of jousting—the result of which would determine who would become the Queen’s champion.

  The competition had come down to four contestants.

  Compared to the first round of quintains, the targets were smaller, the stakes higher. But luck was on Yo-Yoji’s side. The first of the four contestants seemed to lose his grip on his lance
at the last moment, so that he barely grazed his quintain and earned a low score of four. The second contestant, fighting a gust of wind, missed his target entirely.

  Yo-Yoji was next. When the Master of Arms’ whistle sounded, Yo-Yoji spurred his horse. This time, he sat firmly in his saddle—it was clear he intended not to be thrown off again—and he held his lance straight, connecting near the center of his quintain and earning a more-than-respectable nine out of ten points.

  A moment later, the whistle sounded once more. The fourth contestant was about to make his move when suddenly his horse bucked as if spooked by something. The unfortunate knight was thrown to the ground. While he shouted for his horse to stop, the horse tore off in the direction of the stables, kicking up a cloud of dust in its wake.

  “Is it possible Yo-Yoji just won by default?” asked Cass.

  Before Max-Ernest could answer, there were shouts and cries from the other end of the stadium. Like everyone else in the audience, Cass and Max-Ernest turned to see what was causing the commotion.

  “This is part of the show, right?” asked Max-Ernest.

  A hitherto unseen knight had charged into the ring. His tall horse rearing, he broke through the ranks of the other knights—causing their horses to buck and rear in turn. He seemed to have an agitating effect on everyone present, whether equine or human.

  “You on the gray horse! What are you doing here?” cried the Master of Arms. “This tournament is for people who have reserved spots only—I’m sorry, you will have to leave the ring immediately.”

  But the mystery knight did not leave. On the contrary, he reined his horse and settled in the center of the stadium. The picture he created was unnerving, to say the least. Whereas the other knights all wore brand-new armor that sparkled in the sunshine, he was clad head to toe in dark and rusty sheets of steel that reflected no light, even though his horse was standing in full sun. A medieval-style helmet masked his entire face, a single narrow slit enabling him to see but not be seen. Scale-like gauntlets covered his hands and forearms, giving them the quality of dragon talons. And he wore steel boots on his feet that looked heavy enough to sink a ship. His horse, meanwhile, was a good five or six hands taller than the other horses, and a great deal wilder-looking.