Epithet Erased, page 22
He knocked the purple figure over. Molly felt it in her bones. She swallowed audibly.
“As for what happened to them . . . well . . .” Rick paused.
And then . . . Rick took off his sunglasses. Molly got an unobscured look at his face for the first time. His eyes were so strange: Scleras yellow, pupils black. Such a deep absence of color. Soft and black. Friendly. Quiet. Instant. The way a dreamless sleep might feel.
“There were only so many fighters in the Colosseum, of course. Only so many friends I could make. They would get hurt. Or die. And so no matter how hard I tried, my friend count kept going down, thus so did my strength. Eventually I realized that there was no way for me to win. I was a failure. They would dispose of me soon. I could not win no matter how hard I tried or how much I sacrificed.” Molly swallowed again. She didn’t need a black string connecting the two of them to know how that felt.
“So,” Rick said, “I asked my remaining friends one final favor. I would try to do what no one else had: I would escape. Using all their powers together I would flee the Colosseum and make for the surface. I had one friend who could break through glass and another friend who could swim at incredible speeds . . . Even someone who could breathe underwater. They agreed to help me escape and in my next battle they lent me their powers. I outswam the sentries. I smashed through the dome, and I alone made it out of Ocean Country, but . . .”
Molly leaned forward. She had taken a seat on a stool and now she was on the edge of it.
“But what?”
“Well . . . halfway across the sea, my powers . . . gave out on me. All at once.” He turned his sunglasses back and forth in his hands sadly. “Water filled my lungs and my strength disappeared into the sea foam. To be honest, I’m surprised that I’m alive! I guess I really am lucky! Ha hah . . . hahh . . . hahhh . . .”
Molly digested his story for a minute, turning sentences over in her head like pieces of a puzzle box that she desperately wanted to solve.
“. . . You made it out . . .” she said, her voice barely a whisper.
“Barely, but yes! Still though . . . I lost them all.” He covered his eyes with his sunglasses and put on a big, fake smile. “Honestly, it’s probably for the best! I must’ve been a pretty lousy friend if they all gave up on me like that. So . . . that’s why I’m jealous. I thought maybe I could start over here and prove my worth, but. Well. Nope!” Rick smiled at her in the way he always did. A smile that wasn’t.
She thought a bit more. She thought harder than she had in a long time, the gears of her brain oiled by just a little bit of hope. Then, something clicked. She stood up and walked over to the table with the dolls on it.
“They gave up on you . . . all at once?”
“Yes. I felt their soul-strings sever from mine. All within a minute. Perhaps it was all some cruel prank . . . sending me out into the ocean to die. A fitting end for a failure, I suppose.”
“. . . No. No, I don’t think that’s what happened at all.”
“Mm?”
“Yeah. Was escaping the Colosseum hard?”
“Oh, extremely! Tons of guards. Plus, if you get caught you die. Plus plus, once you get out of the building you have to break through the sea dome which is about ten feet thick. And then there’s an ocean in the way, and let me tell you, your lungs don’t like that thing!”
“. . . If they wanted to hurt you, wouldn’t it have been easier to stop being your friend right away? To let the guards catch you?
“Hm?” Rick blinked. “Yes, I suppose that’s true.”
Molly considered something. “Are you still friends with Trixie and Feenie right now?”
Rick grinned and threw up his hand.
“Of course, I’m—!” His power fizzled. He looked at his empty palm. “. . . not. No, I guess I’m not.” He looked like he was about to cry. Molly silently walked over to the edge of the bubble and opened it.
“How about now?”
Void lightning sparked to life again along Rick’s fingertips.
“Why . . . yes! Yes, I can feel them!” He turned to Molly and stared at her, eyes full of darkness and wonder. “What did you do? Are you ALSO a WIZARD?”
“I didn’t do anything, Rick. I just thought of something.”
Molly walked over to the dolls. She connected two of them with a nearby thread of yarn from the sweater of an old stuffie. Then, she picked up the purple figure and moved it through the air in a swimming motion as far as it could go until the yarn snapped tight.
“What if your power has range?”
“. . . Range?”
“Yeah. I mean isn’t it weird? That they would all stop being friends with you? Right at the same time? Maybe your power has a range limitation. Like . . . once you get too far away, you’re not connected to them anymore. The string didn’t snap because they cut it . . . It snapped because a string can only stretch so far.”
Rick stared at her.
“Too . . . far?”
“Yeah. Y’know what I think? I think you still have those friends, Rick. I think they know that you escaped. And if I were them, I’d be so, so happy for you.”
His eyes welled up behind his sunglasses.
“You . . . you think?”
“Sure. All your scars are from the times you let your friends win so they could grow stronger, right? . . . And you took a hit for me, even though you didn’t have to. I think you’re a really nice person, Rick. I think they probably miss you.”
Rick began to cry.
“O-oh!”
“You just . . . come on a little strong. That’s all.” She patted him on the back. His big glowing eyes wobbled behind his sunglasses.
“I . . . I’m . . . de strungest!!!” Molly reached into her backpack and produced a handkerchief that Phoenica had given her as a birthday present. Most of its career had been spent wiping up Phoenica’s endless tears, so it would probably be delighted to have a new client for a change. She reached up and pushed his glasses up on his head in order to dab his eyes.
“Also . . . you said you ‘put on the Rick Shades persona’.”
“Oh! Did I say that?”
“Yes. Is Rick not your real name?”
“Hm! Please ignore!” His car salesman smile plastered back across his face like an ugly bumper sticker.
“No.”
“Darn!”
She was getting better at this. The mask fell off and underneath it Rick looked uncertain. More openly uncertain than he’d been his entire time on land. He fiddled with the sunglasses in his hand.
“. . . I can’t tell you that. We may have to fight each other one day, and I don’t want the real me to fight you.”
“We won’t fight.” She held out a pinky. “Promise.”
“Hm?”
“It’s a pinky promise. Once you shake it, you can never break it.” He stared at her outstretched hand, uncertain, tables turned.
“Is it magic?” he asked.
“Yeah. Kinda.” Rick lifted his finger to hers, carefully, slowly, with the caution of an archeologist about to uncover a lost treasure.
“I haven’t . . . I haven’t not been Rick Shades for a very long time.” She took the glasses from him and smiled.
“Hi,” she said. “I’m Molly Blyndeff. What’s your name?” He looked at her finger, then into her button eyes, which were as certain as anything. He seemed to see something in them. An old memory sparked by a scrapbook. His own name, discarded for years and left in a corner for protection. “Rick” picked it up and blew off the dust for the first time in years.
“H-Hello,” he said, “My name is Toidei Gourami. . . . B-But my friends call me Odi.”
“Hi, Odi!” Molly smiled.
A black glow emanated from their fingertips, wrapping itself around the pinkys and forming a friendship ring. A string connected their fingers and shot through their hearts. Molly was surprised to find that the staticy sensation wasn’t at all uncomfortable like she’d been expecting. It felt like the electric hum of the nerves in the moments just before your leg is about to fall asleep. An aetherial tickle.
Odi smiled back at her. “Thank you for making my first day here nicer!” he said. “The surface is . . . much livelier than I expected!”
“Oh, gosh, no. This is all just because of my sister. Most places on the surface are nothing like this.”
“Oh, good! This sucks!”
Molly laughed out loud. She put her hand on the bubble jutting out from the wall.
“Wanna try out my power? It only works here, so you might as well.”
“But of course!” Odi took his sunglasses back from Molly and returned them to his head with a flourish, pushing the tears aside. Rick Shades flashed his patented fake toothpaste commercial smile again, but this time it was just a little bit more real, like 9 out of 10 dentists recommended him now. “What kind of wizard would I be if I didn’t sample every spell at my disposal?” Rick placed his left hand against the bubble in the same way and the two of them ripped it open, like someone had taken two large bites out of an impenetrable cookie. Molly’s portal had its usual green-and-pink outline while Rick’s was purple and black. Hand in hand with her new friend, Molly stepped inside of Lorelai’s bubble for the final time.
9
A Real Mess of Things
The pair emerged on a snowbank of shaved ice. Three-scoop ice cream snowmen smiled at them with waffle cone noses and chocolate chip grins underneath a sorbet aurora in the silent sky. It reminded Molly of Sweet Jazz City in the nicer part of the winter. The nights where snow was still falling and somehow the air felt cozy instead of cold. She threw her hoodie over her head.
“Okay. We need to find our way back to the hovel before something happens to Trixie and Feenie.”
“No problem!” Rick held up a finger. “One of the benefits of having ☆Soulmates☆ is that I can always feel where they are!” He held out his hand and two threads of black exploded out of his pointer and middle finger, shooting into the distance and disappearing off into the night. “This way!” he said, following the strings like dowsing rods. Molly tottered after him, hopping from one footprint in the snow to the next. It was deeper than she expected and her boots sank halfway down with every step.
“Oof,” she teetered, “It’s gonna take forever to get there at this rate.”
“Hmm. I believe I may have a solution! Hold on a moment.” Rick strode back to the edge of the world and opened the portal again, stepping through and vanishing. Molly waited in the soft crunchy silence for a minute or two. She began drawing in the snow with her boot, making it halfway through the outline of a sleeping bear doodle before Rick returned with an armful of junk.
“This should work!” he said, dropping the pile haphazardly in the snow. It was a random assortment of items taken from her father’s workshop. He grabbed an empty plastic paint bucket and twisted it into a snowbank, then picked up a pair of tongs and slipped a small clock face into their grip. Rick handed her the tongs with the clock in their grasp and instructed her to hold them above the bucket. And also to hold them as far away from her as possible.
“Mind your fingers now!” He smiled. Before she could parse what he was doing, Rick picked up two jawbreaker rocks and smashed them hard against the end of the tongs, bending the metal and shattering the clock face to pieces. Molly jumped at the unexpected bang.
“What are you doing?” she winced.
“Making a potion, Trixie-style! This should speed things along.” He threw various bedknobs and broomsticks into the pot. Little shards of glass, clockwork gears, and something Molly was pretty sure was acetone or paint thinner. She didn’t know the exact names of most of the chemicals lying around her dad’s workshop, but she knew that if they smelled a certain way you weren’t supposed to drink them, and this thing definitely smelled like you weren’t supposed to drink it. You probably weren’t even supposed to get it on your hands . . .
“That should do it!” Rick said, reaching a hand out towards Molly. She unconsciously passed him the tongs and he began to stir his helter-skelter mixture, metal bits clanking against the edge of the pot. “Now I’m no potion-ologist, but I know a thing or two about magic! I believe that to make a potion that speeds us up, I should start stirring normally . . . and then build up speed until I’m going as fast as I can!” Rick did just that, swirling the tongs around the slurry until he was going at the speed of a slush machine. Molly stepped forward. She was about to tell him that Trixie didn’t make real potions, just pretend ones. If they drank this the only thing it would expedite was their lifespan.
But then . . . the potion started to change.
The components swirled together like a fast-food milkshake when the food coloring drains off the candy and smears into the ice cream. The colors mixed and began to brighten, the faster Rick stirred, the stronger the glow. The next moment, the mixture was complete: A clear, sparkling drink with no trace of the nuts and bolts thrown in at the start. A bonafide magic potion. Molly stared. The surface glittered with sparkles that came and went too fast, like when you move your head back and forth to see the rainbow sparkles at the edge of freshly fallen snow. The heart-shaped patch on Rick’s chest glowed black and he wiped the sweat off his brow.
“Alright,” he said, “That looks potion-y! Bottoms up!”
Molly raised a hand. “Maybe we should—”
Gulp!
“Wow . . .” he said, wiping a sparkling milk mustache from his lip. “Oooh! Tastes like the underside of a sea ventilator tube!”
“Is . . . that good?”
“Oh my, no! Here, let’s make it less disgusting.” Rick raised a leg to take a step, then dashed across the snow so fast Molly couldn’t even see him. He slammed back into view an instant later with a handful of candy accents he had borrowed from nearby snowmen, tossing them in the pot like the cool house on Halloween. He offered the paint bucket to Molly with concerningly jittery hands.
“HereyougoMolly,Ihopethistastesbetterthanminedidbecausethat wasprettybad!HAHAHA!”
He really sped up! It was a real life fast-motion potion! Molly gasped. Rick wasn’t just able to do whatever his soulmates could do. . . . Rick could do anything that he thought his soulmates could do! And he thought Trixie could make real potions . . . He didn’t know they were fake!
“Comeon!Whyareyouhesitating?Molly!Molly!Molly!Molly!Molly!
Molly!Molly!Molly!” He was vibrating so fast that the snow around his shoes was beginning to melt. Rick's sped-up voice was hammering against her ears so she took the bucket from him just to shut him up. She looked at the sparkly cement mixture.
Well . . . it didn’t smell fatal anymore. That was good! With one last pause, she brought it to her lips and took a sip.
The potion had taken on a generic sugary flavor. Some phantom mix of chocolate and candy corn that danced on her tongue like an overactive fifth grader trying his best to get a girl’s attention at the spring fling. She did not care for it.
Molly felt her pulse beat faster and for half a second she was worried she was about to have some kind of heart attack. Then she looked up and realized the snow was falling around her in slow motion. Everything was in slow motion! Everything except for Rick, who smiled at her expectantly. She took a step towards him and the snow underfoot crunched with a stretched out, warped sound.
“Wow! It worked!”
“Yes! Why wouldn’t it? My soulmates’ skills are very reliable!” He raised a hand and followed the black strings that emerged from it like a reverse puppeteer. “Come! Let’s go!” He began walking into the distance at double speed.
Molly took a breath, stepped forwards, and immediately tripped face-first into the snow.
“Pfleh!” she spat.
“MOLLY!!!” Rick screamed like she had died. He zipped back beside her and scooped her up on his shoulders. She gripped onto him like a koala. “Are you alright?!”
“I’m fine. Thanks. . . . Hey, Odi?”
“Mmm?”
“. . . could I bug you for one more favor?”
“Of course!” he smiled genuinely. It was nice. So different from his off-putting fake one. “And you won’t be bugging me! We’re friends! Friends are happy to do favors for one another. That’s the whole point!” Molly tasted this concept in her mind and, maybe for the first time ever, she accepted it.
“Good!” she beamed, “In that case . . . I think I just figured out how we can beat my sister.”
* * *
Feenie and Trixie scrunched up together in a little ball, both staring wide-eyed at the glowing black heart beating against Trixie’s sweater. They almost shouted when it first appeared, but didn’t get the chance because Lorelai had just come back into the kitchen. Her giant form slid back and forth, gliding past their hiding spot atop the fridge dangerously like a shark’s fin on the water. Lorelai wasn’t wearing her witch’s costume anymore and she looked frazzled. Molly and Rick were still missing.
What happened?
Lorelai grabbed a ruler and began chopping squares from the trays of cold rainbow dough that she’d walked into the room with. She tried to space them out evenly on baking sheets, but her fingers were shaking and she dropped one of the purple ones, causing it to fold over and crack.
“Damn it . . .”
Feenie covered her ears.
Lorelai couldn’t focus. She imagined eyes on her everywhere, possibly because there were. Naven sat in his gilded prison on the countertop watching her scramble back and forth with crossed arms. He looked at her differently now, his face a sour mask of disappointment. The one that teachers wear when they’ve decided to hate you for the rest of the school year, constantly staring at you like they’re expecting you to do something wrong.
But she hadn’t done anything wrong.
She couldn’t have!
In her bubbles she was a hero. She was the Hare-idan and the Rabbit Knight. The Cottontail Kidd, the Lagomorph Ranger, the Jackalope of All Trades. A hero by a hundred names in a hundred other stories. She was a good person. She had to be! She couldn’t even pretend to be bad. Just look how much trouble she was having with this stupid evil minion test!
