The Severance Game, page 18
Harry made a motion to extend his paw, but a pained expression crossed his face as he did so, causing him to wince and withdraw his arm.
“You okay?” I asked.
“What? Oh, it’s nothing. I was protecting this hole, keeping watch around the area—you know, checking things out—when I came across, like, ten giant wolves sleeping in a clearing. I got a little freaked out and fell down a hill in the process.”
“Oh, sorry about that,” I said as I realized he had been the noises I’d heard in the trees. “They’re with me. And they’re Therewolves by the way—completely friendly. I wouldn’t worry about them.”
“Friendly or not, I don’t trust anything with teeth that are bigger than my entire body.”
“Not a bad rule to live by.”
Harry tried to smile, but winced again. I noticed that he’d been subtly rubbing his arm the whole time we’d been talking.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” I asked him.
“I’m fine,” he insisted.
But then a drop of blood fell onto the fur of his foot.
“No, you’re not. You’re hurt.” I tore a piece of fabric from the hem of my dress and got down on my knees. “Come here. Let me help you.”
Harry rubbed his arm self-consciously. “I really don’t think—”
“I said come here, Harry.”
He sighed. “Okay, okay. Just please tell me you’re certified in this kind of first aid.”
“Are you kidding?” I smiled. “I’m a princess. Taking care of injured talking animals is practically in my job description.”
Moreover, it was one of the few courses I’d taken at Lady Agnue’s that I didn’t totally suck at. My Animal First Aid elective had hardly been my favorite subject at school, but I was grateful now that I’d paid attention.
Harry seemed a bit reluctant, but he hopped to my side nonetheless. He sat down next to me and I began to clean the wound on the back of his arm. After a few moments I worked up the nerve to ask him the question that had been buzzing in my head since he’d told me who, or rather what he was.
I cleared my throat as I kept tending to his arm. “So, um, Harry. About that hole you’re guarding . . . Does it really lead to—”
“The Wonderlands?” Harry interrupted. “Yeah. It does.”
I paused. “Hold on. Did you just say Wonderlands? As in, plural?”
“Yup. The holes in this realm’s outer In and Out Spell create portals to all of the Wonderlands—my hometown, which is actually called Wonderland is one example. But there’s also Oz, Neverland, Camelot, Cloud Nine, Limbo, and a bunch of others. It just depends what route you take once you get down there.”
“Seriously?” I asked. Then something else clicked. “Wait . . . did you say holes in the In and Out Spell?”
I thought back to ages ago. On the night of the ball in Adelaide when I’d ditched the dance and found a secret route to the beach I’d met a mermaid named Lonna Langard. She was a sassy, outspoken girl and (as it turned out) one of the princesses of the underwater kingdom of Mer. What was most interesting about her, though, was the information she’d let slip.
“Someone said something to me about that once,” I continued slowly. “Can you tell me what it means, holes in the In and Out Spell?”
Harry scrunched up his nose. “You don’t know?”
“Would I be asking if I did?”
“Fair point to you,” he countered.
Harry thumped the ground anxiously with his foot as he thought on the matter. “Um, okay, look,” he eventually said. “You’re pretty nice, and you’re helping me out, so I guess it’s only right that I level with you. But I should warn you—some of this information can be a bit overwhelming. You don’t have a weak constitution, do you?”
I huffed in amusement. “No. I don’t.”
“Alrighty then.” Harry twitched his nose a bit, but his ears relaxed. “First off, you do know that Book isn’t the only realm with an In and Out Spell protecting its borders, right?”
“Um, no actually,” I said, super stunned. “I didn’t.”
“Well, it isn’t. There’s a protective barrier around every realm—Wonderland or not. They’re what keep our worlds separate. I don’t know when exactly they were cast. In the beginning, I guess.”
“By the Fairy Godmothers?”
“That’s what they’d like us to believe, I suppose. But who knows really. Anyway, whoever’s responsible, they did a heck of a job with those spells for them to last this long. But all things, even magic that powerful, wear away over time. And in terms of an In and Out Spell, the more it disintegrates, the more holes—or wormholes if you will—start appearing in its walls. These are essentially tears in time and space, cracks that allow things to slip from one realm to the next.”
“How many are there?” I asked. “Holes, I mean.”
“There used to be just a handful,” Harry explained, “but more have been showing up in the last couple of years. There’s enough now to keep me and the other White Rabbits on duty practically twenty-four seven. That’s what my kind does, see—we monitor the holes.”
“All of them?”
He gave his head a quick shake. “No, just the ones to the Wonderlands. I’m one of the rabbits assigned to Book, so I try to show up wherever holes appear here. It’s usually not that hard—a majority of them are concentrated in this forest. Although they do pop up kind of regularly in Century City, Midveil, Clevaunt, and a few other kingdoms too.”
“You said you guys only keep track of the holes leading to the Wonderlands,” I thought aloud, connecting the dots. “Are there holes that create portals to other lands too?”
Harry shrugged. “A few, like Earth, Ickblat Five, Dreamland. But we’re not responsible for those. Mainly because we can’t usually get to them. They’re really sporadic and only turn up in really inconvenient places like the deep ocean, Alderon, or random caves in the northern mountains. Out of our reach, but out of anyone else’s too, so I guess it’s fine.”
I completed the final knot on Harry’s makeshift bandage. “All done,” I said.
“Thanks,” he said as he admired my handiwork. Then panic streaked his face. “Oh no, what time is it?”
Without warning, a second White Rabbit popped out of the silver hole beside us. This rabbit (I suspected) was the actual White Rabbit from the Alice in Wonderland stories.
That wasn’t me being racist—not all talking White Rabbits look the same to me. But based on the monocle, red suit jacket, collared shirt, and the bronze pocket watch in this White Rabbit’s paw, I felt like I had a pretty good foundation for the assumption.
“Junior, you were supposed to come back down two minutes ago,” lectured the White Rabbit. “We’re going to be late for the next hole.”
“Dad, relax. I was just talking to this girl here.” Harry gestured to me.
I raised my hand awkwardly. “Hi there.”
The White Rabbit’s ears flared up in the rabbit form of rage. He whipped his head toward Harry. “Cotton head! Your mother and I have told you not to talk to humans when you’re on Rabbit Hole Patrol. Now come on, we only have a few minutes before the next shift starts.”
“Yeah, yeah, Dad. I’m coming. Just give me a minute, okay?”
“Fine. But that’s it, son. Sixty seconds. I mean it this time.”
The White Rabbit tapped his pocket watch as he glared at Harry. Then he shot me a small glare, along with a cordial nod, before diving back into the sparkling hole and disappearing into its depths.
Harry rolled his eyes. “Sorry about that. Punctuality is kind of his thing.”
“So I’ve heard,” I replied. “I take it that it’s not yours, though?”
“Eh, let’s just say the old guy and I don’t have a lot in common. I’m not exactly what he or any of the other White Rabbits expect me to be.”
I smiled slightly. “Believe me, I know the feeling. But that’s a conversation for another day. I’ve already kept you long enough. You’d better get down there before your dad’s whiskers fly off.”
“Yeah, I guess.” Harry shrugged sadly. Then his eyes and ears perked up at the thought of a new idea. “Hey, you wanna come with?” he asked. “I could show you around the Wonderlands when my shift is over.”
I was intrigued to say the least. Frankly, it sounded awesome. It took all my willpower to stop myself from accepting his offer.
“Tempting,” I said, “but I actually have a previous engagement at the moment. Rain check?”
“Definitely.” He nodded.
Something seemed to cross his mind. His ears twitched then he swiftly removed the timepiece from his wrist. “Here, take this,” he said. “It’s a Hole Tracker. We use them to monitor hole locations in whatever realm we’re currently in.”
I blinked, shocked at the gift. “Don’t you need it?”
“Nah, White Rabbits are taught how to make these when we’re barely old enough to hop. I’ll just whip up another one later. Now come on, I insist. My way of saying thanks for the patch-up. Plus, when you finally decide to cash in that rain check, you’ll have a way of finding me.”
Harry fastened the watch around my wrist right next to my SRB. I held the timepiece up to the moonlight. It was terribly intricate and there were multiple hands on the face pointing to twenty continuously moving, tiny circles with numbers next to them. Most of the circles were gold, but a few pulsed with different colors. Currently three pulsed silver, two pulsed orange, one pulsed red, and another pulsed black.
“Wow, thanks,” was all I could think to say.
“Junior!” The White Rabbit’s voice bellowed from down below.
“You’re welcome,” Harry replied. “Now I gotta go. This thing’s about to close and my dad’s gonna flip if I don’t meet him.”
Harry got up, straightened his pants, and shook some twigs from his vest. I stood up to dust away a bit of the dirt clinging to my leggings too.
“See you down the Rabbit Hole some time,” I said.
He turned and winked. “Count on it, Crisanta Knight.”
With that, Harry dove back through the hole. Just seconds after his hind legs vanished, the entire thing disappeared. The ground sealed itself shut like the fascinating, inter-dimensional wormhole had never existed.
Well, that’s just . . . phenomenal, I thought as I started to head back to where the others slept. Of course, then something else caught my eye, altering my plan.
No, not another wormhole in the ground. A flash of golden light.
Although it had only been visible for an instant, it had appeared just beyond the trees no more than forty feet away.
Curious, I pushed my way through a handful of branches and cobwebs, ignoring the eerie sounds of forest nightlife and the darkness that consumed the terrain as the moon was gagged by clouds.
A few moments later I came upon another clearing. It was about half the size of the Valley of Edible Enchantments and had its own very distinct brand of weirdness.
Quills, wooden baskets, artwork, candles, and other miscellaneous objects were strewn about as if someone had just dropped them from the air. The clutter was especially dense in the center of the field.
I saw a spot where the grass looked like it had been flattened out from people walking on it. Lying there amongst the bric-a-brac was a large book with gold sparks trickling off it. The book was brown with the name “Russell Caulfield” imprinted on the front cover like a title.
I picked it up and flipped through it. The pages were all empty except for the last page. There, inked delicately in the parchment, I discovered a simple signature: The Author.
Holy Cow; this is a book! This is a protagonist book!
I whirled around and looked at the place with fresh eyes. This was where the Scribes lived! This was where the Author’s fate-prophesizing, life-ruling, realm-order-keeping protagonist books appeared!
On the other side of the field I suddenly took notice of a cave. I put Russell’s book back on the ground and ran to the cave as fast as my legs could carry me. As I entered, my mouth hung open in wonder. The passage seemed to stretch underground for an eternity. There was a single shelf running along each side wall for as far back as I could see, and every inch was lined with protagonist books. The books varied in color and size, but each copy emanated a sense of importance that made it sit erectly on its shelf with pride.
Levitating candles illuminated my way and called me inward. I began to wander through the cave and gaze at the names on the spines. The books didn’t appear to be in any kind of order, but I imagined the Scribes had to have some kind of system for keeping track of them.
Most of the volumes I passed were unfamiliar, but there were a few titles I did recognize. Some old like Rapunzel and Jack & Jill, some new like Mauvrey Weatherall and “Blue” Dieda.
Part of me wanted to give Mauvrey’s and Blue’s books a little looksee. But I quickly thought better of it. Blue had more or less told me about hers, and I respected my best friend’s privacy too much to go rifling through the specifics of something so personal. Meanwhile I really couldn’t have cared less about what the future held for Mauvrey. It was likely just built around extravagant jewelry, gowns, and snootiness. Or (if we were lucky) a long episode of unconsciousness like her mother, Sleeping Beauty.
The candles began to grow scarce when I was some hundred feet deep into the cavern. The thought occurred to me at that point to go back and fetch the others without wasting more time. But before I could commit to such a decision, I came to a fork in the road. The route on my right led to a door marked “Placeholders.” The path on the left was aimed for a door with the words “Other Realms” printed on it.
I chose the one on the left.
The door was heavy, and I had to give it a good shove to get it open. When I managed to squeeze inside I found myself in a huge, stone room. It was tall and round, much like the library back at the Capitol Building in Century City where I’d almost gotten killed.
And where you saw that book on Shadow Guardians, my subconscious whispered.
The fleeting memory surprised me. I barely recalled seeing that book in the Capitol Building library when I’d been running from Arian’s forces. Add to that, the term “Shadow Guardians” meant nothing to me—making it a mystery why it had even stuck to my subconscious at all.
Hmm. Weird.
I shrugged off the strange memory.
Continuing with its similarities to the Capitol Building, the Scribes’ library also had a rooftop window carved into a spiral design. The intricate shape mirrored the temporary burn marks we received when our prologue prophecies appeared.
I guess in hindsight the architectural similarities made sense. If the ambassadors and the Scribes, along with Lena Lenore, were taking protagonist selection into their own hands, it was only fitting that their bases of operation were marked with a common symbol—the symbol we received on our foreheads the moment our fates were taken from us.
I shuddered in disgust.
That spiral design had always reminded me of being branded like a cow—marked like an animal that had been selected by the Author to serve a certain purpose. However, now I knew that the herders charged with wielding the hot iron had their own agendas too.
I shook my head bitterly. While I wasn’t sure how yet, I swore to myself that I would find a way to put this right one day. Now that I knew the truth, I had a responsibility to.
I stood beneath the center of the spiral window. The floor and shelves of the library were flooded with foreboding moonlight. The tiles on the ground appeared to be constructed of moonstone, which absorbed the luminescence and reflected it fervently.
This would have been a beautiful effect had it not been for the way the floor felt. As I moved across the space, it was as if a steady heartbeat was pulsing beneath the stone—causing my boots to vibrate ever so slightly with each step.
Trying to keep from wondering about the cause of the reverberation, I focused on the books that encircled me. At first I didn’t recognize any of the names on the spines. But then on the fifth shelf of a mahogany bookcase a title caught my eye: Alice in Wonderland. Soon after I noticed a few more familiar names. Peter Pan sat on a shelf several cases over. Directly next to it, King Arthur.
I wasn’t sure which of these volumes to pursue first, but then another book won the battle for my favor. This book was electric red and had the name Natalie Poole inscribed on its spine.
Heart and mind racing, I bolted for the bookshelf and stopped in front of my great discovery. I’d first experienced this type of anxious curiosity when I’d snagged that file with Natalie Poole’s name on it back at Fairy Godmother Headquarters. Then I’d undergone the same blood-surging intrigue beneath the Capitol Building when I’d found the Natalie folder that belonged to the antagonists.
Alas, neither source had provided me with answers. If anything they’d only filled me with more questions about the mysterious girl who consistently haunted my dreams.
But this book, this protagonist book, was different. It could tell me everything. Like for starters, why did Natalie even have a protagonist book? She wasn’t from this realm. She lived on Earth and shouldn’t have any connection to Book or to me. And yet, as the evidence piled up, it was becoming increasingly clear that somehow Natalie was tied to us both.
I suppressed my nerves and began to reach for her book, regarding the precious object with trepidation and excitement.
Finally, I would have some answers. Finally, I’d—
BAM!
Something akin to a bolt of lightning struck the back of my head. The blast surged powerfully through every cell in my body and shot me against the shelf. I dropped to the ground, some of the books on the shelf falling to the floor with me.
I heard the mumbling of voices. Fading scarlet sparks of leftover magic fell around me as the voices drew closer.
Several pairs of footsteps echoed off the moonstone. They accompanied the floor’s steady pulse and my own wavering one like a half-dozen hushed metronomes. Most of them stopped a slight distance away. However, one set came closer.
A pair of light pink pumps with glittering silver straps stopped in front of me. I’d seen a flash of these high-heeled shoes in one of my visions many nights ago, the night we’d spent at Chauncey’s.
