by James Comins
Loki scratched his shoulder. A raincloud began to rain down teeth on the ground. Little skull flowers grew out of them.
“So I’m really worried now. Like, what am I going to do if the gods like all this pointless bric-a-brac better than a fold-up boat or a spear that never misses? So I’ve got to stop Brock. Got to win the contest. I Change the world into one where there’s hornets that nest in forges. And they’re swarming all over Brock, and they’re stinging him, and he can’t keep them off of him long enough to keep the forge hot to make whatever he’s making next.
“But he’s one step ahead of me. He’s not making stupid stuff anymore. No more paperweights. He’s making a superweapon. He knows the gods are at war with the Yotun, and he looks at Vivaldi’s magic spear and thinks, like, a spear for Odin, a hammer for Thor. Cause Thor’s the strongest guy in the world. The hammer was supposed to create earthquakes under Thor’s enemies, but all the hornets messed him up and it got enchanted with unbreakability and boomeranging instead.
“And Thor pretends to be thrilled with it, even though the handle’s the wrong length.”
“So you lost the bet?” said Renard.
“Shut up. Yeah, I did.” He looked over at Indaell, who had his hands clasped behind him and wore a cherubic dimpled smile as he looked up at the darkened sky. “What are you laughing at?” Loki said.
“An old joke,” said Indaell. “Why is a tarantula like a teacozy?”
“I don’t know,” Loki said suspiciously. “Why?”
“I can’t remember.”
“I, I don’t understand that,” Loki said vaguely. He shook himself. “So yeah, I lose the bet and Brock wants to cut my head off. But I’m like, no way. So I’m all, you can have my head but not the neck. So the jerk sews my lips shut.”
“Omigosh.”
“And here’s the thing: when he does it, it’s in front of everyone. And they laugh. Laugh. At me.” He heaved a quaking lungy breath out and dug his long fingernails into his palms, his forehead throbbing, his eyes raw, leaning down to scream in Renard’s face.
“They LAUGH at ME,” he screamed.
“Mr. Loki, I wouldn’t have laughed at this.”
“Oh you wouldn’t, would you? He would,” Loki said, pointing at Indaell. “He laughs at everybody.”
“Can I please have my name back?” she asked again.
“Huh. You’ve been all right and all. You can have your name back or your shape back. Not both, cause I feel like being mean, just remembering all that.”
She thought. “My name, please.”
“Yeah, okay.”
And she was Lenna again. Yay hooray! She did a weasel flip and got her dress all screwy. She caught herself scampering after her tail ...
Being a weasel was fun, but it was troubling fun. It would be so much fun to bite someone really hard in the back of the neck and shake them until they stop moving. Or hop across the hard ground at a hundred miles an hour. Or ...
“Mr. Loki--”
“Not now. I’ve got a million things to do now that I’m back.”
“Back?”
“Sure. Every magic’s got a drop of all the others inside it. Everything changes. If it didn’t, the world would be a photograph. Motionless. A still life. It has to Change. That change?” He pointed to himself with both thumbs, showbusiness-style. “That’s me. Renard. Loki.” His skinny face got right in Lenna’s. “All I needed was the door.” He laughed a wild giggle, turned the handle and stepped out of the world. “So long, suckers!”
The door slid down into the dead earth.
Chapter Fifteen
Mousebones
or, I’m Not Wampire Food
For the first time ever, Indaell wasn’t smiling. His torso and robe stretched out, bringing him like a self-stretching rubber band toward the place the door had been. The dark angel swung his fists at the empty doorless air. “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!” he said to the nothing that was left behind. He twirled like a pig tail to Lenna. “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!” he told her.
“Mr. Bad Angel, I’m also trapped.”
Indaell kept screaming “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa ...”
“Where are you going to?” Lenna asked him. She waited awhile, hoping the screaming would stop. A skeleton mouse looked up at the toga-wrapped angel and began saying “eeee” along with him. Lenna picked the little bones up and set the mouse on her narrow fuzzy weasel shoulder.
“... aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa ...”
“Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”
“Hush now, both of you,” Lenna scolded. “Mr. Indaell, where are you going to? What will you do?”
“... aaaaa.” Indaell’s thin lips snapped shut. He stayed very still, frowning like a very stupid person trying to remember where he had left something.
Finally, he decided. “I’m going to follow you,” he said.
Lenna frowned at the thought. “Why?” she asked.
“It’s what I’ve been doing,” he said, “and I don’t feel like stopping now.” His voice was plaintive. No longer did it make her feel like a bell being hit with hammers, the way it had in the Nupsstaður chapel. His voice had shrunk, as if he were smaller and less powerful than he had been. Or as if she were bigger. But probably not.
She looked at the mouse on her shoulder. “I want to eat you,” she told the mouse, “except that you’re only bones.”
“Cheep.”
“But I won’t eat you. Unless I’m very hungry.”
“Eee.” The mouse ducked her skull, hiding her face in her tiny paws.
“Mr. Indaell, why were you following me?”
Indaell’s piggy black-irised eyes looked down. “I’m not allowed in heaven,” he said, toeing the ground.
“Why don’t you go back to Hell?” Lenna asked.
“She’s scary,” said Indaell.
“But why follow me? I’m just a girl. Weasel. Weasel girl. Aaa!”
“Eee!” the mouse echoed.
“I want to be a person again!” Lenna yelled to no one in particular, trying to ball her fuzzy fists and finding she didn’t have thumbs. “I don’t want to bite necks like a, a wampire!”
Whooosh. It came down from above.
“You called?”
A trio of shadows shot down from the sky and flooomph’ed into pale pale people shrouded in shadowy black cloaks. There were two men and a woman with purple eyeshadow. They all had very nice hair. She turned from them to Indaell and back to them.
“Blah,” one of the wampires said.
“I’m not wampire food,” she informed them. The mouse cheeped protectively.
“Vouldn’t you like to be one of us?” said the taller wampire man. “Ve can give you the power to transvorm into a bat.” He raised his eyebrows and went “ooo” with his lips.
“Can you show me how to transform into a girl?” she asked him.
“No,” said the other wampire-man, “it vould hav to be veasel to bat and bat to veasel.”
“No thanks.”
“Rats,” said the wampire-voman, snapping her fingers.
“Cheep?” said the mouse.
“No, not you,” she replied.
“Misters and miss wampire, do you know how to find the door to the real world?”
“Zis is the ‘real vorld,’ ” said the voman narcissistically. “Vhat other vorld is there?”
“The, the other vorld. World,” Lenna said. “The one where the magic actually is.”
“Ah, yis. I know of vhat you speak. You mean the Ootland. Vhen people go oot the door, zey vind up there.”
“Yeah. How do we get there?” Lenna asked.
“I uff no idea,” said the voman. “You, Tessek?”
“Vell, Piros, if it vas me, lookingk for Ootland, I vould ask the head wampire. Vouldn’t you, Koszonom?”
“Oh, ya, ya, who vouldn’t?”
“Where can we find the head wamp?” Lenna asked.
“The middle,” said Tessek. “Duh.”
The lady wampire
leaned over Lenna and sniffed into her crooked Roman nose. “Hey,” she said, “you aren’t dett.”
“Nope,” said Lenna.
“Neither is he!” shrieked Koszonom, pointing to Indaell, who bowed.
“We’re both alive. Well,” she said, looking at Indaell, “I’m alive and he’s an angel. We’re from Ootland. Is it oot or out?”
“Oot, definitely,” said Koszonom, the shorter wampire.
“Ootland, and he--” She was pointing at Indaell with her paw when something occurred to her. “How did you get into the Verdance of Verdandi, anyways?” she asked Indaell with her paws on her weasel hips. “The rules said that only one person could go through the door.”
Indaell buzzed his lips at her: brrrrrrrr. “I walked into a tree,” he added.
“Yes, but--nevermind. I’m still mad at you for putting that curse on me. And I’ll never never never trust you.”
“You helped rescue me from Bres,” Indaell said, looking at his splayed sandalled feet.
“Yes!” she shouted. “Talvi set you free and I was there and then you went away and then came back and you tricked me again.” She hopped forward and bared her pointy weasel teeth. “Why?”
Indaell was smiling again.
“You’re here to trick me into doing something even worse!” she told him.
Indaell swung his body back and forth like a metronome hand, bracing his arms behind him. Tick ... tock. Smile.
Lenna frowned. “I don’t want you coming with me,” she said with her paws clenched. “I’m going to see the head wamp, and you’re not.” She hmfd.
“Do you remember your parents?” he asked quietly.
She froze. “My--my realreal parents? Not Joukka Pelata?”
“Mm.” He swung back and forth above his sandals, a thin grin dimpling his strange timeless smooth-flat face. “I remember them,” said Indaell. “I remember all the decisions they made. Every one. Where they were going on that airplane. Why they were running away.”
Lenna sighed hard. She knew, knew, knew he was lying, but all sorts of pleasantly threatening ideas crept into her head.
“Mr. Indaell, I know you’re a liar. Even if I can’t see the color of lies anymore, I’m not so stupid that I’d believe what you say.”
Indaell cleared his throat.
“Airplanes to dragons
Dragons to clocks
Fire to forest
And forest to fox.
A tower for flying
A tower of fire
A tower of suede
A beanstalk spire.
A piglet for dragons
A telephone stew
A hundred-year cookie
And coffee for you.
A fall in the water
A kantele’s song
A thousand dead ducklings
A fisherman’s gong.
Lightning, cannons,
Angels, knives.
Don’t we lead
Such exciting lives?”
murmled the angel.
“Vhy is he poetting, Piros?” asked Tessek.
“Shoosh. Zey are haffing a moment.”
Lenna bounced up to Indaell indignantly. “Lying lying pants on fying. Mr. Indaell, my mouse and I are all alone in a big big world. We don’t want some old monster cat French badangel sneak following us around like a stray monster. You should find your own door. You’ve tricked me at least too often.”
Indaell stood there, maneuvering his smile around on his face as if he wasn’t sure about it anymore.
“How would you like to have a servant?” he said.
“No!” she exclaimed.
“A bodyguard?”
“Mr. Indaell. Find your own door.”
Lenna and the mousebones approached the wampires.
“Can you show me the way to the head wamp?” she asked them.
They looked at each other. Piros smiled with her fangs. She elbowed Tessek. “Ve could do that. I’m sure he vouldn’t mind.”
“Ya, vhy not? Ve can take you straight there.” Tessek shrank and mutated into a tiny bat about three inches across, flapped to Lenna’s head and started tugging at her brown and pink ear.
“Eek.” Lenna hopped as her ear got pinched and stretched.
“Eee?” said the mousebones.
“Zat isn’t working, Tessek,” said Piros. “Stop it at vunce.”
With a squirm he transformed back into a thin pale person in black shrouds.
“Vhy didn’t you join in?” he asked her. “Ve could at least uff gotten her off the ground.”
“No. It must be srough Deadvood,” Piros replied. “Zat is the way to za head wamp.”
The three wampires led Lenna and her mouse toward a red forest. Indaell stood where he was, his feet planted on the dirt, his body rocking back and forth like a dead tree, smiling sadly into the barren plain.
Chapter Sixteen
Deadvood
or, Not Zat Zere’s Anything Wrong With Pale Girls
Looming up from the distance, coming closer as Lenna scampered in her green and blue ballroom gown after the three black-cloaked shoulder-to-shoulder wampires, was a wood. The trees had grown so close together that they formed a solid leafless mass, a clot of dense twisted limbs epiphyting off each other’s reddish-dark flesh. Branches bent into strange crooked woven shapes. There was one opening, a vertical gap between the fat trunks of two pillar boles. She followed the wampires through.
The wood was a maze. From the first step inside, every corner split into two narrow avenues, and each of those split and turned and curled again and again, the rights and lefts muddled in Lenna’s mind until she gave up and forgot all about them and followed the silent forms of the walking wampires.
Each tree seemed to throb with death. Their maroon surfaces were inscribed with complex patterns and symbols oozing with blood, as if some timeless craftsman had spent centuries with a tiny whittling knife, cutting scars into the blood-rich bodies of the trees. The red leafless branches were woven together, maybe naturally and maybe by a thousand slow weavers bending the branches around each other as they grew out of the dead earth. Lenna touched the wood gingerly. It throbbed under her fingers, veins awake and in pain. In a few places someone had sawed through the wood, sometimes whole squares like windows, and sometimes, eerily, only halfway through a big limb before stopping, as if they had died or run away in the attempt to escape. The sawyers had left a few gaps that a weasel could probably squeeze through if she had to, but who knew where the gaps led to? Peeking through, she only saw more of the bleeding maze.
Sweeeep. Squiggle. Oof. A small Change, or maybe the last part of the big one she had caused.
Lenna’s stripy ballroom gown was black now. It had changed a lot, and felt very tight, squeezy-tight and sort of creepy and sort of interesting despite being gowned onto a weasel body. It had a laced-up corset with tough-girl studs and patterned with spider webs, fishnet sleeves with fur sticking out of them, leather wrist cuffs around her paws with rings hanging off them, a collar that made her feel sort of uncomfortable, like a caged dog, plastic tarantulas stuck to her yellow hair, and a long flowy black train like a funeral gown, draping on the ground behind her. It was starting to get ripped along the bottom as it dragged over the dead land and as her clawed weasel feet stepped on it. Thorny plants like hands broke through the surface of the earth and grasped at the hem, tearing it into flapping strips. The air was very cold.
“I wish I hadn’t shot the sun,” Lenna said to the mouse on her shoulder. “And I wish I hadn’t dried up all the water.” The mouse skull nodded.
The scornful arched eyebrows of the wampire turned and peered down at the girl. “Ah, but zen we vouldn’t have met.”
This didn’t seem like it would be such a disaster. It’s true it was nice not to be alone. At least she still had friends. She put out a leather-cuffed paw and Piros took it gently.
“Ze mouse needs a name, young lady,” Piros said.
“What’s your n
ame, Little Mousebones?” Lenna asked.
The mouse shrugged and cheeped.
“I don’t think so,” Lenna told her. “Cheep’s too silly a name for you. You’re too small and mysterious to be Cheep.”
The mouse nodded proudly. Lenna kicked a thorn plant away with her still-muddy boots. She looked down at them. They were black and shiny with plastic straps and buckles and silver spikes on top, and they went most of the way up her stubby fuzzy legs. They were not at all the right sort of shoes for her, but at least they were sturdier than those stupid oven mitts. Somehow they stayed on her paws. It was probably all the buckles.
Her fur was frizzing everywhere. It got into her eyes, and she tried to brush it out of her face but couldn’t. Somewhere in an empty hill of coins and bones was a hair ribbon. Probably black and spiky, too.
As they walked through the bloody forest, Tessek began moaning a funeral march:
Doresc ai un mormint mic
Acolo amsa merg a si nefericit ...
he sang.
“What’s that mean?” Lenna asked.
“Mm?” said Koszonom. “An old nursery rhyme. Something like, ‘O wouldst I had a little tomb where I could go to be unhappy.’ Cute, no?”
“Adorable.”
Piros snirked her nose. “Ah, za living. Tell us of your Ootland. All Deathvorldians love a story.”