Epithet Erased, page 16
The Scaregrow growled, whipped around, and loomed over Trixie. “Did you REALLY think that would work, you little peanut!?! I oughta squash you!” Trixie was about to drop her brave face and skedaddle, but the purple crow with the visor landed on the rim of the monster’s hat and caught her attention. It tilted its head and stared at Trixie. There was a message in its eyes.
“Choose violence,” it said.
Trixie nodded. She reached into the pocket of her own hoodie and pulled out her secret weapon . . . something she had been saving for herself, should the need arise.
“TWO CANDY CORNS!?!” The crows frenzied!
Feathers scattered through the air like an exploded pillow. They dive-bombed the monster, pecking it apart, nip by nip, bite by bite. The Scaregrow tried to keep them away, yelling at them and batting them with its vines, but it was no use. They were motivated now. Two candy corns?! Their tiny bird cups runneth over! What was next? Three candy corns? Four?! The possibilities were ENDLESS! They simply HAD to follow this small glowing imp’s instructions!
The birds pinwheeled into a tornado of black feathers and sharp beaks. The Scaregrow’s massive form screeched! Its vines punched through the whirling dervish, clocking one or two birds out of the sky, but it wasn’t nearly enough. The murder lived up to its name and by the time they were done with the Scaregrow it was little more than a wooden frame with the tiny green pumpkin left on top of a henpecked hat, cheater-cheater-pumpkin-’eaten.
“Nooo . . .” it hissed in a tiny voice. “This wasn’t supposed to happen! I can’t fail . . . I’m the final guardian before the Hare-idan’s Hovel!”
“. . . The ‘final’ one?” Molly asked? “Just two of you? That’s weird. Usually Lori throws way more at me.
“Yes, well, she’s busy doing something very important.”
Molly rolled her eyes. That’s a first.
“Crows!” Trixie called. “Hear me! I am your King now!”
“OKAY!” they agreed.
“Actually wait, no. Aces are better than Kings and Queens so I am the ACE OF CROWS, GRANDMASTER OF MURDER!”
“OKAY!” they parroted (class traitors).
She threw the first candy corn into the air and it was devoured by the flock like a midair woodchipper. They stared at her, hungry for more. “Hear me, my subjects! Help me and my friends, and not only shall I give you this OTHER candy corn . . . but I shall tell you where to find MORE candy corn!” The flock exploded into yays and yahoos, clucking and cawing with glee. “Now, your Ace orders you to carry us over this big ‘ol thorn sea to that island!”
Trixie’s new crow army squawked in triumph! They dove underneath the girls and swept them off their feet, carrying their little bodies up into the air. The Scaregrow shook its tiny, viny fist in anger, but its cries went unheard. They were already soaring into the sky, up, up, and out of sight.
“Well done, Trixie!” Feenie said, bouncing along with the flock as they burst through a cotton candy cloud. Trixie opened her mouth like a fish and let the little pink sugar particles fly in. “What a marvelous idea! I never would’ve thought to offer them candy corn!”
“Yeah,” Trixie licked her lips with a contented smile, “One of the crows told me to do it!”
“Which one?”
“The one with the card visor.”
“Oh!” Phoenica said. “I didn’t see that one.”
“He was the purple one?”
“Purple?” Molly asked. “I didn’t see a purple one.”
Oh.
Must’ve been a ghost.
Trixie had seen ghost animals before, but usually they couldn’t talk. The rules must be different here in the dream bubble world. She shrugged. It didn’t matter. She did a good job! She was useful! And now she was King—no, ACE of Crows! Ace Trixie ordered her subjects to do tricks and fly loop-de-loops to pass the time as they made their way closer and closer to Lorelai’s island.
7
Prison of Plastic
A plate of warm cookies sat on the table, waiting for judgment.
Lorelai had decided to go a different direction with the second batch. These new cookies were rainbow and spiral-shaped, made up of interlocking doughs dyed in different colors. She hoped she could earn some points by dropping the chocolate chips and focusing instead on the decoration, but she wasn’t satisfied with the end product. The spirals were lopsided. The cookies were all slightly different sizes. Two of them had even fused together . . . Plus, the blue dye that she had used was much too vibrant compared to the other six colors and she thought it looked ugly. She tried to make some white clouds with some of the uncolored dough, but when they came out of the oven their fluffy shape had oozed all over the baking sheet and turned into an amoeba.
She was visibly frustrated. If she had been allowed to use magic then these would’ve turned out so cute. . . . She could even have the rainbow change colors like a neon sign! Or at the very least make the blue color a little less ugly.
Giovanni surveyed the cookies with his hands on his hips. Co-judge Naven sat on his shoulder.
“So,” he said, “What have you made for us today?”
“Well, um . . .” Lorelai fiddled her foot back and forth. “These are rainbow cookies.”
“Tell us about them!”
“Uh . . . they’re . . . rainbow. And these . . . well, they were supposed to be clouds.” She frowned. She saw mistakes everywhere she pointed. She hated them. She hated that he had to look at them. Her hand was hidden behind her back, fingertips itching with magic, waiting for a chance to snap and fix them the moment he looked away.
“I love it!” he beamed.
“Huh?”
“Very cute!” He picked one up. “Especially how you used the sprinkles to make the rainbows sparkle!”
“Oh yes, very nice,” Naven added. “These would be just perfect for a child’s birthday party.”
Yeah right, she thought, Molly doesn’t even like cookies. Molly and Lori’s birthdays were only a week apart from each other so the girls had always celebrated them together. Two years ago she’d made Molly a bunch of treats, but she barely touched any of them. She said she was “tired of eating sweet stuff all the time.” The year after that, Lori had spent the entire weekend making a world for them to play in as a gift. She planned big events and monsters and adventure and it was going to be so much fun, but then Molly said she was hanging out with her friends instead. She hadn’t even given her a heads up!
Stupid jerk.
“Well, let’s see how they taste!” Giovanni took the cookie in his gargoyle claws and snapped it in two. “Oooh, good snap, good snap.”
“Good snap,” Naven agreed.
Why was a snap good? Lorelai had no idea. She nodded along anyway. Giovanni tore off an even smaller piece of the cookie and passed it to Naven. He nibbled the crumb like a little mouse.
“Well!” he declared, “I think that is absolutely scrummy.”
Scrummy???
“Just cram-jam full of flavor.”
What?????????
“Agreed!” Giovanni said, breaking into the cookie like a shark breaking into a seal. “Great work! You pass!”
“I do?!” her eyes literally sparkled.
“Yup! On to the next round!”
The sparkles froze in midair and fell to the floor, shattering like ice cubes.
“. . . Next round?”
“Oh yeah! Minion aptitude is pretty complicated. There’s a lot to observe, so the test has two rounds in total! In the first one I write up a recipe and you have to figure out how to make it on your own. In the second, I give you an incomplete recipe and you have to extrapolate! Which is like math, but with imagination!” She looked absolutely crestfallen. “Unless . . . you’re not interested?”
“No!” she sputtered to life like a clown car. “No, no! I’m . . . I’m interested. I can do that.”
“Okay, great! I’ll start thinking up a recipe. Hmm . . . an appropriate challenge for a new minion . . . hmmmMMmmMMmmm . . .”
Before he could come with an answer the doorbell rang. Giovanni hopped up.
“I’ll get it!”
“No!” Lori cut him off at the doorway. She’d only put a doorbell on the hovel for the sake of immersion. She hadn’t intended for anybody to actually use it . . . which meant that it must be Molly and her friends at the door, here to ruin her chances with Vincent! “It’s probably the delivery man!” she lied through her teeth. “I’ll handle it! You stay here and write down your recipe!”
“Okay!” Giovanni said, questioning nothing. Lorelai bolted around the corner and put her mean face on, ready to greet whoever was at the door.
* * *
The travelers touched down on Lorelai’s island a few minutes prior. Ace of Crows Trixie gave her avian subjects the remaining candy corn as payment and sent them on their way.
The island they landed on was a drop of sunshine in an ocean of withered vines. Every edge of the island was a sheer drop almost fifty feet down into spikes. It was a good thing they flew! Even if they had managed to defeat the Scaregrow in battle and forced it to move the vines out of the way, they probably wouldn’t have been able to climb the cliff face.
The outer edge of the island was adorned with huge weeping willow trees. Their dark green branches swung low and heavy, curtains keeping the outside world at bay. Molly brushed the branches aside and blinked away the sudden light.
An eternal yellow sunset colored the inside of the island in honey just like it did over the cobblestone bridge. The artificial night that hung over the patchwork farmland and the ocean of thorns seemed a million miles away now. It was impossible, but then again, so was everything in this place. Molly, who had seen this wonderland a million times over, ignored it all and power-walked towards the center of the island. Nothing was real here except her sister. There was no reason to look at any of it. Nothing but the hovel ahead. She brushed past the daffodils and the sweet grass at her legs. She ignored the earthy mint smell of water nearby somewhere she couldn’t see. This place would be gone soon enough, if everything went well.
. . . Still. It all seemed . . . familiar somehow.
That was strange. Lorelai hated playing in the same world more than once. Sure, she would reuse ideas from time to time, but Molly had never walked into the same dream bubble twice. So why did it feel like she had been here before?
A nostalgic pollen hung in the air and tickled at her nose. She waved it away. It didn’t matter. She arrived at a pair of willow trees with a hand-painted picket fence gate between them that only came up to her waist. She swung it open and walked into the grove.
The Hare-idan’s Hovel rose prominently above the rest of the clearing with its double-eared roof. A water wheel spun quietly at its side,
lazily lapping against a sparkling evening creek. Blue and green damselflies flitted back and forth between the cattails and the sound of the bugs, water, and sunshine all mixed together into a constant, quiet hum.
Molly looked the hovel up and down. Hm. No gun turrets on this one. That was good. Better than the last time she had to break into one of Lorelai’s castles. They could probably sneak in through the window? Maybe even the chimney if they waited for the smoke to clear out and why was Phoenica flying over to the doorbell oh no oh no oh no—
“Ding dong!” said Phoenica.
Molly grabbed Phoenica’s entire body like a carrot and moved away from the door.
“Feenie . . .”
“What?”
Trixie shook her head. “We can’t just ding-dong the door, you goon! We gotta sneak in! Why would Lori just let us inside?”
“Well, it would be very rude of her not to after we’ve come all this way.” Molly stared at her.
“Feenie. My sister is rude.” Phoenica gasped in surprise like she hadn’t thought of that.
A small mirror hanging over the door frame began to rattle. It was circular and convex, the same kind they used in their store to keep an eye out for shoplifters. Lorelai’s face appeared in the mirror, warped and bulbous. Her voice was wrong, like it was twisting its way out of a drive through speaker.
“Well, well, well,” she crackled, “If it isn't Feenie, Meanie, Miney and Mo.”
“Which one am I?” Rick asked. “Am I Feenie?”
“Obviously not!” Phoenica said. “Trixie is Feenie. You’re Miney and Molly is Mo.”
Trixie tilted her head. “You’d make yourself ‘Meanie’?”
“All of my friends are wonderful . . . Therefore it stands to reason that . . . I must be Meanie.” Phoenica began to cry big, dumb, sacrificial tears. Meanie was . . . one of the meanest words she knew. . . .
“Phoenica . . .”
“‘All of your friends’ you say! I accept!” Rick surged with power and the black string between Phoenica and him reattached for a third time. She gasped!
“Oh, darn it Rick, you shyster! . . . Very well. You did try to destroy that awful pumpkin monster, so I suppose I can forgive you. For now. But you’re on thin ice, buster brown! And you still need to apologize for almost eating Trixie.”
“Yes okay I am sorry!”
“Yeah, yeah, alright,” Trixie sighed. “That’s more than I get from the junkyard dog when he tries to eat me, at least.”
“HOORAY!!!” Rick screamed, strings sprouting from his heart left and right.
Lori banged the internal edge of the mirror to get their attention. “Okay, I don’t know what’s going on but I didn’t order a clown circus. And if I did they would be a heck of a lot funnier than you four! Get outta here! I need to make cookies!”
“Cookies?” asked the clowns.
“Yes! Now go AWAY!” Iron vines shot out of the ground and twisted their way across the front door and the brass knob popped like a balloon. There was no way to open it now. Lori huffed and turned away. Molly cried out as her image started to fade from the mirror.
“Lori, wait!”
Lorelai turned back and glared one icy eye at Molly. The mirror transformed it into something round and mean, like an owl’s. She’d called her “Lori” again. Ugh. Blugh!
“I don’t want to talk to you. Go. Away.”
“. . . I’m sorry.”
“What are you apologizing for!?” Trixie asked. Usually the devil on your shoulder gave bad advice, but she had the right of it this time. In Trixie’s family it was common courtesy to call her siblings out on their malarkey, so she thought Molly kowtowing to her literal witch of a sister was insane.
Molly frittered her boots together. “I . . . I just . . . I just want Naven back. And Boss. And if you could maybe make the bubble in the store just a little smaller—”
“I said I don’t want to talk to you!” Lori stomped. She heaved her shoulders in exasperation and sighed. ”. . . I don’t have time for this. If you won’t go away, then . . . here. Another minion.” She waved her wand and a blubbery green ball rolled out from the mirror like a rotten gumball, splatting on the ground in front of them. It stood up on two baby legs and blinked a single eye at them.
Not her best work, honestly.
The sisters made eye contact through the warped mirror. Lori shied away. “Just. Don't ruin this, okay? I . . . I need this.”
The mirror buzzed with static . . . and in a flash of light it reset to empty silver. Molly tried to squint into the reflection to catch a glimpse of her sister, but she was gone. Nothing to see there but her own big-headed reflection and Rick popping out of her hair with a dopey grin on his face. Meanwhile, Trixie had picked up a stick and was poking the green ball Lori had left squelching on the floor.
“Ey!” the ball protested, “Quit it! You don’t wanna make me mad! I’m an ogre! Bleaaah, I’m an ogre!”
“It’s small.” Trixie said. “Why is it small? Ogres aren’t small.” The ogre huffed. It puffed out its one-foot-tall chest and made a grand show of pulling up its loincloth like it was a very intimidating diaper.
“H-Hey! You can’t just ask someone why they’re small! Why’re you small!?!”
“My mom says that my twin and I used to be one normal-sized person, but we split in half in her belly and now we’re both really short.”
“Why were you in her belly???” Phoenica asked.
“‘Ey! Don’t ignore me! I’m an ogre!”
“We know,” said Trixie. “So, what’s your gimmick?”
“I’m . . . I’m an ogre!”
“Yeah, but like. What powers do you have?” The ogre looked down at itself. It had just been born eight seconds ago and was not entirely sure what it was capable of.
“Uhh . . .” The ogre lifted one leg . . . then put it back down. It lifted the other . . . then put that leg back down. Having confirmed that it was indeed capable of lifting both legs, it did a tiny baby-sized dance in front of them, ending with a spin. “Ta-da~!”
“Oooh!” Phoenica clapped politely.
Molly walked over and tapped the ogre on the top of its head, silencing it like an alarm clock and deleting it from existence. Feenie screamed.
“Molly! You . . . you can’t just . . .” her voice dropped to a whisper. “You can’t just . . . k-k-kill people like that! He was just a baby!”
“He wasn’t real,” Molly said flatly.
“He was a BABY!” she flailed.
“You get used to it.”
“That is the WORST POSSIBLE RESPONSE!!!”
Phoenica was visibly sweating but Molly didn’t notice. Rick suction-cupped his way down her forehead and whispered in her ear.
“Don’t worry, bestie! I getcha! You lose feeling after you’ve destroyed so many! You have to! If you feel every time someone suffers, it hurts too much to think about! Am I right?”
“I don’t like that we can bond over this.”
“Hey, me neither!” He laughed another hollow, canon-fire laugh, like a bully stepping on a squeaky toy over and over again. This was by far the saddest lizard Molly had ever encountered. She might even befriend him out of pity if she wasn’t so worried about getting murdered.
“C’mon,” she said, redirecting the group. “We need to find another way inside.” They walked along the edge of the house, ducking under windows and crawling through bushes to stay out of sight. Molly ran her hands between the bricks looking for a weak spot. She could punch through wherever she wanted but it was important that they found an infiltration spot that Lorelai wasn’t likely to discover. They also needed to find a spot that wasn’t load-bearing, otherwise the whole hovel would collapse on their heads. Molly turned back to her friends. Trixie was running her tongue along the building and eating it like a termite.
