He opened the box and withdrew a yellow butterfly, wings pinched between two fingers. He let go, and the butterfly immediately flew toward the light of the window. It struck a bar and tiny sparks flew from it as the life was zapped out of it. The butterfly fell to the floor.
“Isn’t the symbolism deep? The boss just loves doing that!” Then the smile on his face vanished and he nodded. “There’s no way out, unless you do the job.” He turned and walked out. They could hear the clicking of the lock.
Nola sat on the floor, all hope gone. “He’s going to kill us, isn’t he?” she asked, picking up the dead butterfly.
“Soon as we finish the job, unless he figures we’re worth the effort.”
“What did he mean by that? “ Nola was pretty sure she knew, but hoped to be refuted.
“He ‘ll take us to meet some foreigners and make us turn tricks for them.”
“Turn tricks!” Nola exclaimed, anguished by the confirmation. This was no slow brainwashing effort, but a fast action. Like a mugging—or a rape. “I’m no—”
“Better learn. Charlie can really make you hurt, if he wants to. At least you get taken care of, as long as you perform well.”
Nola sat for a time staring at the butterfly in her lap. She thought of Mich and of Kafka, and of what Esprit had told her in her dream. As she stared at the lifeless little body she realized that, like the butterfly, she’d end up dead very soon unless she was careful. If she ever got free of this prison she knew she could find a way to save Kafka. It was up to her. What a burden it was to save a world, and more so to save two worlds. If she ever got out of here alive, maybe . . .
A tear fell onto the bright wing. She wiped it off, removing some of the brilliant pattern. She felt a hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay, Nola,” Tina said, sitting down beside her. “You got a prince who loves you. It’s like a fairy tale. It ain’t right for a fairy tale to have a sad ending. It just ain’t right.”
Nola could only nod her head. This wasn’t the way a fairy tale was supposed to begin either. She hoped Mich was okay, but somehow, she didn’t believe he was. How could he survive being shot in the gut, in a foreign world? The people they were dealing with played for keeps. This was no longer the adventure she had thought it would be. This was the ugly reality of the world. She couldn’t even imagine what kind of chaos would come if people lost their dreams. And what of poor Tina? Nola really couldn’t blame her for losing her hopes and dreams. She was beginning to lose her own.
Tina was no better off. She put her head in Nola’s lap and silently wept. At first she had been sad for the loss of her friend and the cruel way that he had been killed, but then she realized that her love for him was false. He had brought her nothing but misery all her life.
Sure, he was good to her, not taking too much of the money she earned, but whenever he owed someone money, he used her to pay. Well, this time he had been the one to pay. She was glad for having made new friends. But now she was sad for getting them into this mess. Nola and Mich could, indeed, have a fairy tale relationship if it weren’t for her. Why did they care so much about her? She was nothing but a worthless slut.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured. Unable to say anything else, she closed her eyes and slept.
Nola understood. She knew that Tina must be ravaged by guilt, but what could she say? It’s okay? It wasn’t okay. So she just stroked her hair.
Dawn was coming, and soon Charlie would come for them.
Tina stirred in Nola’s lap. Nola was glad that she was able to sleep. She wished she herself could get the same rest, but her heart and mind would not let her.
Tina sat up as she was wakened by the sound of a motor and of a loud zapping. The two girls jumped up. The sound came from the window above. They watched as the metal bars were pulled away from the wall. Large sparks shot out in every direction and the bars fell away. A rope ladder was lowered through the window and then a smiling face appeared.
“Mich!” Nola cried. “You’re alive!”
Tina was aghast. “You’re alive!” she echoed.
“Yes! Now come on, before the dogs come again!”
Tina climbed the ladder to the window. The window was small, but she was able to fit now that part of the wall had been torn away with the bars. Mich helped her out, then he helped Nola.
Mich was overcome by her touch on his arm. He had been so worried that something was going to happen to her and he ‘d never get to touch her again. When she was through the hole, he pulled her into his embrace. He held her close and kissed her.
“I was so worried about you,” Nola said, dazed by the kiss. “I thought you were dead. What about the shot?”
“Never!” he said and kissed her again.
A female voice shouted to them. “Come on, will you? Here come the dogs!”
That was Lori’s voice! Nola turned and saw the car with a rope attached to the bumper. Attached to the other end of the rope were the electrified window bars. Tina was already in the front seat and Lori was behind the wheel. Nola saw four boxers running toward them, snarling and barking loudly.
Nola and Mich dashed for the car. The dogs arrived just as they slammed the door shut. Mich’s window was open and a dog stuck in its head and snapped at him with its white fangs as he rolled up the window. The dog couldn’t get its head away quite fast enough and the rising window caught the creature’s tender nose and upper lip. It howled with pain and jerked away.
Lori slammed her foot on the gas and the tires skidded for a moment on the grass; then the car sped across the lawn. Nola and Tina sagged in their seats, overwhelmed by relief. Thank God for good friends, Nola thought weakly.
“But how did you ever find Lori?” she asked Mich. “You don’t know your way around this world, and she’s in another city.”
“Ah,” he said, pleased with himself. “I used the magic she explained to me when we talked before. The magic box number.”
“Magic number?” Nola asked blankly.
“The phone,” Lori explained, laughing. “I told him how to use the phone, and how to call collect, in case of emergency. I didn’t realize he would remember my number.”
“I would remember anything to save Nola,” Mich said.
“But how did you know where to find us?” Nola demanded.
“I felt your presence,” he said. “You are my Creator.”
Just as Nola and Tina had felt each other’s presence, when coming together. It must have been stronger for Mich.
“Well, you took long enough!” Tina said. At that, they all laughed.
Lori drove them back into the city to her apartment. Once there, she made them some food and they sat talking.
“So, that guy killed Johnboy?” Lori asked as if this were routine, but her face was grim.
“Yes, and he would have killed us also if it weren’t for you two,” Nola said, stuffing her face with chili. This was mostly to conceal her own reaction to the killing, but it had another cause: she hadn’t realized how hungry she was. It was good to eat again.
“After making us turn tricks for his clients,” Tina added.
“Tricks?” Mich asked. “You perform tricks? I would like to see some of them.”
Tina opened her mouth to explain, but Nola cut in first. “Never mind!” She also felt much better knowing Mich was safe, his innocence almost intact. “Mich, I thought that guy had killed you.”
“Killed me? Ha!” he said, assuming a macho pose. “He didn’t know who he was messing with! I gave him a few punches and he ran away as fast as a pink bunny.”
Nola saw that his shirt was bloodstained in the midsection. “How did you get the bullet out?”
Lori interrupted with the explanation. “I’ve been working part-time at the hospital. I took it out for him with a razor and a pair of needle-nosed pliers. Fortunately it was superficial. I expected him to scream his head off. He didn’t even say ouch.”
Tina turned somber. “I’m sorry I got you all into this mess. You should h
ave just left me.”
“Don’t be silly,” Mich said. “You’re too pretty to—” He caught Nola’s look, and changed tack. “We need your help. You’re a Creator too. You can’t lose faith, no matter what happens.”
“If you do, you’ll make more trouble and we ‘11 all be dead,” Nola said.
Tina, Mich and Lori turned to look at her.
Nola saw that she should elaborate. “Mich, do you remember what the worm king said about the Fren?”
“Yes. They are the product of a shattered dream.” He suddenly realized the enormity of what she had said to Tina.
“Yes, they are. I realized something. The Fren are borne by a shattered dream; that means that they don’t actually kill certain creatures. It is the faltering Creators who make the Fren strong, and unless we do something about it, their numbers will increase.”
“Maybe we can do something here,” said Tina.
“I thought about that too, but the more I thought about it, the less sense it made. We can’t just walk up to people on the street and say, ‘Hey, are you a Creator?’ Even if we can tell by the tug of their minds, the chances of getting close enough are remote. The world is just too big. We were lucky that the two of us found each other, even considering the affinity we felt. Maybe we could train ourselves to tune in from afar, as Mich did on me, but that would still take so long that the battle would be lost before it started. The best thing to do is to work through their minds in Kafka—through the cumulative dreams of mankind. That way we can reach all Creators without having to search for the individuals. Even if we could find every Creator on Earth, we could not convince them to have faith and not let people smash their dreams into Fren.”
“What are you saying?” Tina asked, clearly interested.
“I’m saying that we have to attack the Fren directly.”
“Isn’t that what we have been trying to do?”
“Yes. The only problem is, how can I destroy them? To destroy them you have to disbelieve them. I can’t disbelieve someone else’s dream. That’s up to the other Creator. How can we contact the other Creators, once we ‘re in Kafka, and tell them how to destroy Fren if we don’t know ourselves?” No one could answer that question. “Well, it’s a problem we’ll have to deal with in due course.”
“Why don’t you all get some sleep?” Lori said. “I’ll pull out the couch for Tina and myself, and you and Mich can take my bed.”
“Thank you for your help,” Mich said as he led Nola to the bedroom. Lori winked. She evidently liked him, and in other circumstances might have done something about it, as she had with some of Nola’s prior boyfriends.
Mich showered while Nola changed. He found the shower another novel experience. He just turned a knob and not only did the water pour out, but he could pick how warm he wanted it. His hair was tangled and dirty, but a little squeeze of this liquid soap fixed that. Like the wheeled, speedy vehicles, this was novel magic.
When he was done, it was Nola’s turn. She was glad to have a shower. The water seemed almost to wash away her cares. Almost. When she was done, she blow-dried her hair.
She stepped into the closet and found an oversized night shirt with Mickey Mouse on the front, and donned it. When she stepped out, Mich was waiting for her under the blankets. He smiled when he saw her. She wondered what he could see in her. She was about to destroy his world, literally. She wasn’t sure if she ‘d ever discover a way to cure Kafka of its shattered dreams.
She climbed into bed and sat up next to him. He put his arms around her and put his head on her shoulder. She could feel a hank of his black hair fall against her skin. It felt like cool silk. She couldn’t resist running her hand through it. He closed his eyes and seemed to drift off. There was no way she was going to let him go. He was, after all, the man of her dreams. Too bad he hadn’t yet gotten up the nerve to take proper advantage of opportunity. Maybe she should nudge him a bit under the covers and see what happened.
She lay for a moment in silence and tried to fathom the secret of destroying the Fren. In her dream, Spirit had said that she had to disbelieve them. How could she do that? Should she just walk up to them, one by one, and say, “I don’t believe in you,” and they would disappear? That was too easy. It couldn’t be that simple.
She pictured Kafka in her head, in all its splendor. She pictured the River of Thought and all its changing colors. She pictured the Shattered-Glass Glade and the Centicores. Not wild and terrorizing, but going about their business in the glade, grazing and sprinting about with their babies. She thought of the castle, and being there with Mich and her friends.
She looked down at the shining cross around her neck. The moonlight that poured through the window bathed the star sapphire in its center. The stone seemed to almost catch the light and play with it; then it released the light in a dazzling display of bright, laser-like beams. She was surprised as one shone in her face. This seemed familiar. When had she experienced something similar?
Suddenly, there was a loud Crack! and a ball of swirling lightning bolts appeared in front of her, then disappeared.
Mich was started awake. He stared. In a moment, there was a louder Crack! and a hole appeared, hanging just over the bed. There was an actual gap in the air. Wind started coming from it, and it brushed their faces with scent.
Nola remembered what it was that was so familiar.
Tina rushed in, holding her billowy robe shut with one hand, clutching her purse with the other. She stopped short, behind the swirling hole. “What’s that?”
“It’s a bed spell,” Nola said, smiling. “I’ve seen one before.”
Mich jumped out of bed, his hair blowing into his face, and noted the splays of light that emanated from Nola’s cross.
“Where did you get a bed spell?” he demanded.
“I don’t know. I didn’t know it was a bed spell. It’s different.”
“Yes, it is. The light, it’s moonlight, not magic light. How’d you do that?”
Nola looked bewildered. “I don’t know, but let’s go through it before something abolishes it!”
Both Tina and Mich hastily agreed to that. One by one, they jumped into the black hole and were immediately whipped by a magic wind that dropped them gently into . . .
Suddenly they were standing on a landscape, Nola in her Mickey Mouse nightshirt, Tina in her billowy robe, and Mich in white undershorts. They would have been embarrassed, but there were more pressing sights to see.
“Where are we?” Tina asked, looking at the blackened ground. “It looks like Kafka, but everything is burned!”
And so it was. Kafka had been decimated. Nola felt as if she was going to collapse; the scene was just as it had been in her dream.
“What happened to—?” Mich asked of no one in particular. He was too abashed by the sight of his ruined home to finish his statement.
It has been too long.
The three of them turned around to see Spirit, accompanied by Heat. They scuffed the ash-covered ground with their hooves.
“Is it too late?” Nola asked sadly.
It is never too late, Spirit thought, but he seemed doubtful.
“What happened?” Mich asked.
Heat stepped forward and nudged Mich lovingly. The Fren have destroyed most of Kafka. They have been multiplying in your absence and it seems there are half as many Kafkians and twice as many Fren. The Fren are running rampant and destroying things.
“I was afraid something like this would happen,” Nola said.
Spirit focused a green eye on her. Its horizontal pupil contracted and expanded. Congratulations on your fathoming of the secret. Now our world may be saved.
“But I don’t know it!”
Of course you do! What do you think converted that celestial dream-stone into a bed spell?
She looked down at the cross that dangled on her chest. “Celestial dreamstone? It’s just a star sapphire.”
No. It is one of the rarest types of dreamstone in Kafka. I have yet t
o see another like it.
“How did you know about the stone and the bed spell? That happened on Earth.”
I watched it in your mind. My mind can touch yours anywhere hope exists.
“Oh,” she said, remembering that they shared minds. “But I don’t know what I did.” Nola could feel that Spirit was disappointed. “I’m sorry, I just have no clue,” she said.
Replay the scene in your mind. Perhaps we will be able to find out what you did.
Nola closed her eyes and remembered as Spirit watched, tuning in on her thoughts.
She saw herself getting into bed with Mich and she remembered the feel of his hair, and her wish that die innocent lunk would do something. She held the cross in her hand and closed her eyes, missing Kafka.
What are you doing there? he interrupted.
Nola was startled. She had forgotten that Spirit was in her mind. “I’m looking at my cross,” she said.
No, your eyes are closed.
“I was just thinking of Kafka, and wishing—” She broke off as she caught on.
You were here, he finished for her. You see, you have found the power within yourself.
“I understand!” she cried and jumped up and grabbed Spirit’s neck. “Thank you, Esprit! Thank you! Now I think I can do it!”
I may be wrong, but the cross you wear seems to be a catalyst that amplifies your thoughts. I had not known its nature before, but I assumed there was a magic about it because it appeared before me one day, at my feet.
“So you think the cross had something to do with it?” She paused in thought. “That seems feasible. This cross means a lot to me. But why did you get it? Why not me?”
Your world is too corrupted for magic ever to work there. There is no room for magic in a world of science.
Mich hugged her. “I knew you’d figure it out,” he said. “But you said the Fren don’t kill people, so that means they can be saved. What about the Welties? I figured they were—Forgotten.” He hesitated on the word, dreading the thought of it.
Nola thought about that. The Fren were crushed dreams, but it did not mean that they were Forgotten dreams. “The only reason I can think of for that is that they were also transformed into Fren. Maybe if the Fren remain in that state for too long, they get Forgotten. It could also be that when a Kafkian creature is destroyed, or crushed, it happens in degrees. For example, if you are a child with an imaginary friend and your parents tell you it is not real, that is a light crush, but if you believe wholeheartedly that your dream will be real, only to find it isn’t, that could be a big crush. Maybe the big crushes are Forgotten faster.”