“I always wondered where rain came from,” Larry remarked. “Of course that begs the question of where the water comes from to fill the clouds.”
The path led on to the outer wall, which seemed to be made of solidified cloud-stuff. The front gate was open.
“All I wanted was a wall,” Squid said, bemused.
They entered the front hall. There was another sign. AIR CASTLE SHUT DOWN FOR NIGHT. PERSONNEL WILL RETURN IN MORNING.
“Just our luck,” Larry said. “We’ll have to make do on our own.”
“If this is all in my imagination, how can it be incomplete?” Squid asked.
“Did you ever think about it before?” Larry asked. “Work out the details of such an edifice? Of the personnel required to maintain it?”
“No. So I suppose I can’t complain.”
“We can find a guest room for the night, and inquire about the keyboard in the morning.”
Squid glanced at the peeve. “Does that make sense?”
“As much as any of this does,” the peeve agreed.
“Is it safe?”
“As safe as your sanity.”
“That’s not completely reassuring.”
Larry chuckled. “Who can ever know he is sane? We are all at risk.”
“Tata and I are sane,” the peeve said.
“He’s a machine,” Larry snapped. “And you’re a bird brain.”
The peeve was unruffled. “What’s your point, girlie?”
“Break it up!” Squid snapped.
“We’re just joshing,” Larry said. “The peeve is a bird brain, and I am a girl.”
Oh. Squid realized that she was too tense, even in her own vision.
They made their way to an upstairs guest suite. There, to their surprise, was an inset pantry complete with packaged biscuits and cheese, together with bottles of boot rear.
“You must have imagined more detail than you thought,” Larry said.
“I think I worked it out just now when I realized it was incomplete.”
“It will do,” the peeve said.
“Thank you.”
Tata and the peeve found a niche and settled down for the night.
They snacked on what offered, then took turns showering, not bothering to hide their bodies from each other. If they weren’t a couple, they were close to it, and the Adult Conspiracy seemed to lack force in this hallucination. “A shower does make sense in this context,” Larry said. “I wonder where the expended water drains?”
“Down below,” the peeve said. “If the folk who love summer showers knew where they came from, they would not be so pleased.”
There was just one bed. “I’ll take another suite,” Larry said.
“Don’t bother,” Squid said. “I’d rather have you near me.”
“I appreciate that. You remain appealing, in your slightly advanced age.”
That made her wonder. “What happens here doesn’t really count, does it?” she asked.
“Are you thinking what I think you’re thinking?”
She blushed. “Yes.”
“That we might anticipate the adult state somewhat, and make love?”
She blushed harder. “Yes.”
“And there would be no violation, because it’s all in a dream?”
Her face was burning. “Yes,” she breathed.
“Not to mention that you are a cuttlefish and I am a girl.”
“Not to mention,” she agreed.
“It is tempting, because being with you like this makes me curious to experience such an aspect of love, that we may never otherwise encounter.”
“Yes.”
“All we have to do is stop holding back and let nature take its course.”
“Yes. Kissing and fondling and being close together. It must lead to something.”
“Something wonderful.”
“Oh, Larry, let’s do it!”
“I want to. Unfortunately there is a caution.”
“Bleep! One of those things!”
“It would make us technically adult, and therefore liable to Demon capture.”
“But not if we only imagine it.”
“Adulthood is an emotional more than a physical thing. We could remember the experience, and become adults in children’s bodies.”
She knew he was right. “Bleep!” she swore, bursting into tears.
He enfolded her comfortingly. “I am sorry. You know we can’t risk it.”
She knew. “But it seems so good!”
“That may be the trap. This whole sequence could be another device by the enemy Demon to subvert us, so that he can win Fibot.”
“Catching us when we least expect it,” she agreed.
“We are up against a devious mind.”
“Bleepity bleep!” Her ability to utter such a curse suggested how close she was to maturity. But that certainly seemed to be it. They had to balk their own feelings.
Yet how it hurt! She put her face against his shoulder and cried herself out.
Then they settled down on the bed, chastely side by side, and Squid was soon sound asleep. It seemed she had worn out her wakefulness.
In the morning, Squid saw by her reflection in the shiny bathroom door that that she had reverted to her natural age. The elderberries had worn off.
“You still look very good to me,” Larry said. “I can age us those three years if you want.”
“No, let’s save that for when we need it. That age just makes me want to do naughty things I shouldn’t.”
“I know exactly how it is.”
They ate some more crackers, then stepped outside the suite. There was a new sign on the wall.
RETURN OF PERSONNEL DELAYED. GO ANYWHERE BUT HERE. There was a little map, showing one room of the castle outlined in red.
“They are telling us exactly where not to go?” Larry asked. “Isn’t that like dangling candy before a baby’s nose?”
“My imagination seems to like trite elements,” Squid said. “An open castle with one forbidden chamber.”
“I wonder who posts the signs?” Larry asked.
“It could be automatic,” Squid said. “Pre-programmed.”
Naturally they went directly to the forbidden room. The sign over its closed door said UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
They exchanged a four way glance, Tata and the peeve included. “Is that a typo?” Larry asked.
The dogfish’s screen flashed. “Maybe the sign maker got muddled,” the peeve translated. “He might have wanted to say that we are not authorized to enter.”
“Yet if this is all in your imagination, Squid,” Larry asked, “how can you be barred? You should be the one deciding these things.”
How, indeed? “Let’s go in.”
They went in. There was a mirror on the opposite wall. Above it was a sign. HERE THERE BE ANSWERS.
“A magic mirror!” Larry said. “Of course.”
Then a subtext appeared below the mirror. BUT YOU WON’T LIKE THEM.
“I am wary of that,” Squid said.
“I remember a saying,” Larry said. “To the effect of ‘Ask not what concerns you not, lest you learn what pleases you not.’ Something like that. Such warnings are seldom frivolous.”
Squid glanced at Tata. “Is this a true warning?”
The screen flashed. “Yes,” the peeve said.
“So let’s pass it by, at least for now. What I came for was a key to the answers I need. Maybe it’s here.”
And there beside the mirror was the keyboard with assorted keys hung on its little hooks. The keys were all shapes, ranging from piano keys to key lime pie slices.
Then she spied one that appealed. “A skeleton key!” It was in the shape of a skeleton finger, with the nail grotesquely hooked. “D
on’t they open any locks?”
“That may be the one,” Larry agreed. “Since it was the Skeleton Key island that started off this mischief.”
She lifted it from the hook. It lay in her hand, quiescent. “Now if I can just figure out how to use it.”
“What, no user manual?”
“Ha. Ha. Ha.”
“Then take it with you. It’s yours regardless.”
She nodded, and tucked it into her emulation hair.
They looked around, but found nothing else in the chamber. “So do we try the mirror after all?” Squid asked.
“Do we? It’s your decision.”
“I still can’t decide.”
“Then let’s take a break and explore the rest of the castle. We were so eager to come to the forbidden room that we ignored other parts. There might be something important we missed because of that distraction.”
She nodded. “That’s another way to go wrong. Focus on what we think we shouldn’t, and pass by what we would otherwise find.”
They left the Unauthorized chamber and methodically explored the rest of the castle. One room held a bright purple ear chained to a perch. A sign said AURICLE.
“A confined ear?” Larry asked.
Squid glanced at Tata. “What is it, really?”
The screen flashed. “It can hear the future,” the peeve answered.
“Does it mean Oracle?”
“It is the auditory version,” the peeve said. “You ask it a question, and it hears the answer.”
“But what good is it to us, if it can’t tell us what it hears?”
The bird shrugged. “It’s your dream. It doesn’t have to make sense.”
They moved on. There was a small park on the level roof of an upper floor, with a flowing stream. There was a dam in it, forming a pool. The dam was made of live hamsters. It was labeled HAMSTERDAM.
“Hold me, somebody,” Larry said. “I think I’m going to groan.”
“I guess I have a sick imagination,” Squid said apologetically.
“Other cuttlefish would surely be amused.”
They moved on. Elsewhere in the mini park was what appeared to be a clump of trees, but turned out on closer inspection to be a group of police officers.
“What are you?” Larry asked them.
“We are tree cops or a copse of trees, depending how you spell us.”
“You police the trees?”
“In a manner. See that you don’t litter the park, or we’ll have to arrest you.”
“We won’t litter,” Squid promised.
They left the park. The rest of the castle seemed to contain nothing notable.
“So do we or don’t we?” Larry asked.
She sighed. “I’m ready to face the mirror. It can’t be worse than these puns.”
They returned to the UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY room. Squid had half expected it to have disappeared, once they left it without a decision, but it was unchanged. There was the magic mirror, exactly as before.
“You said not to ask about what did not concern me,” Squid said. “Lest I learn what I don’t like. But what I want to know does concern me. So maybe I’ll like that answer.”
“Nevertheless I don’t trust this,” Larry said.
“Neither do I. But what else is there? There may be a reason we have come here, and why the demon was trying to make us forfeit it last night.”
“Or the magic mirror could be another ploy to make us forfeit.”
“Oh? How?”
“By giving us answers that scare us off, so that we don’t rescue Caprice Castle and our friends within it.”
That gave Squid two thirds of a pause. Could he be correct?
Then she decided not to be balked by such a guess. “I’m going to ask it.”
Larry sighed. “It is your hallucination.”
“Yes it is. So I’m going to use it or lose it.”
Larry glanced at the dogfish. “Do you concur, Tata?”
The screen flashed. “It is dangerous either to indulge it or to ignore it,” the peeve said.
“Fat lot of help you are!”
“We try to oblige.”
Squid faced the magic mirror. “Here is my first question. Are there any limits to my questions to you?”
A nebulous face formed within the mirror. “No.”
“That’s interesting,” Larry said. “I understand that usually such devices are so limited as to be virtually useless.”
“It’s my hallucination. I prefer to have it useful.”
“By all means.”
“Mirror, am I really the most important person in the universe?”
“Yes, appallingly.”
“But this one seems merely obnoxious,” Larry said.
Squid had been braced for some evasion or denial, so this set her back half a moment. But she rallied, rather than waste the rest of the moment. “Why?”
“Because the universe depends on you for its existence.”
She lost the rest of the moment anyway, unable to speak.
“The mirror does not pussyfoot much,” Larry remarked.
Squid finally got back with it. “But I’m nothing!”
“Is that a question or an observation?” the mirror asked.
“Uh, neither.”
“Good, because as a question it lacks coherence, relevant as it may be as an observation.”
“I want a hammer!” Larry said. “This thing is aching for breaking.”
“Go find your own hallucination, dolt, if you want to break things,” the mirror said snidely.
Squid finally got organized again. “You said the universe depends on me for its existence. How so?”
“You must struggle with two or three absolute horrors, and if you lose, as seems likely considering your incompetence, the universe is doomed.”
She marshaled a thought. “Can you be more specific?”
“Yes.”
She nerved herself. “What is the first horror?”
“This.” A picture formed in the mirror. It was the figure of a ten-year-old girl whose hair was fluttering in her face.
“That’s my friend and sibling Win!” Squid exclaimed. “She’s absolutely no horror.”
“In fact she’s a nice girl,” Larry said. “And cute.”
The mirror was silent.
Squid tried again. “What is there about Win that makes her such a horror?”
Now the girl in the mirror spoke. “You must kill me, Squid.”
“I can’t do that! You’re my closest sibling and dearest friend.”
“Yes. We love each other.”
“So why should I ever kill you?”
“Because if you don’t, the universe will perish.”
“This is crazy!” Squid protested. “I’ll do no such thing.”
“Too bad.” Win faded out.
Squid ground determinedly on. “What’s the second horror?”
Now a picture of Larry appeared.
“That’s me!” Larry said.
“You’re no horror,” Squid told the image. “You’re my boyfriend.”
“Not exactly,” the image said, and there was something frighteningly alien in his voice.
“That’s not me!” the real Larry said, appalled.
“This—this other Larry,” Squid said. “Do I have to kill him too?”
“You can’t kill me,” the mirror Larry said. “But you need to persuade me not to destroy you.”
“I’d never try to destroy you, Squid,” the real Larry said. “I love you.”
That distracted her again. He had never actually said that before. “Oh, you mean as a friend.”
“As a girlfriend. I fought against the realization, but this crisis makes it clea
r. I want to move us both into adult range and make love.”
“But you’re a girl!”
“My body at the moment is male, with the male urges I have tried to avoid before. But with you, I believe it would be wonderful! Then I’d like to pass through the portal and be my real female self again, and have you with me as a boy, and do it again that way. I love you whichever way we are. You’re the one for me, Squid.”
“But we’re children!”
“In age, perhaps. Not in spirit.”
That was true. She might be only eleven years old, but she was a woman. “But I’m not human!”
“You’re a person, whatever your form. You could turn cuttle and wrap your limbs about me and I’d love you that way too.”
Squid was silent, because she realized that she felt much the same. She wanted to do it with him, and again with her, and to bleep with the strictures of the Adult Conspiracy, which saw naughtiness instead of love. What really counted was their togetherness, whatever their genders. They truly understood each other.
“Too bad I have to destroy you,” the mirror Larry said. “Otherwise I can appreciate the appeal of making out with your cute underage body.”
Trust the foul image to demean it. “Get out of here, you fake,” Larry said.
“For now,” the mirror image said. “But this isn’t over. There is worse coming.” He faded out.
They looked at each other. “Does any of this make sense?” Squid asked.
“Ask Tata.”
The robot screen flashed. “It all makes sense,” the peeve said. “We have been treated to a glimpse of the future.”
“The future,” Squid said. “Where I have to kill my best friend, and that’s not even the worst.”
“Yes. It is all true.”
She looked at Larry. “If that’s the future, then what about now?”
“Do you mean—?”
“Yes. At least we can have that much, before the universe ends. What do we have to lose?” She stepped into him, held him close, and avidly kissed him.
He met her as avidly. Now little hearts did fly out and orbit them. It was indeed true love.
But then he paused, and the hearts froze in place. “Unless this whole thing is a trick to dazzle our common sense and make us do it, and ruin our mission.”
“Bleep!” she swore.
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