white water that I hoped was as hot as it looked. He pushed me away and got up. I dove and caught his ankle before he could get away again. The world around us blurred away and refocused in the swamp. I could see the clockmaker’s house in the distance.
We punched and kicked at each other but we weren’t getting tired or weaker. I was once again physically immortal. I don’t know what happened when things started over but I was glad to be invincible again.
I felt that my only advantage over him was that I could control where we went. I had to find a way to use that against him. After the swamp we materialized in dark clouds. He fell straight down and I flew near him, firing lightning his way. A few made contact and I saw that he was finally feeling the pain.
And then we were in a tunnel underground riding little carts on a rail. I made the rails go up over hills and run down a steep slope next to each other. We grabbed at one another and punched every chance we got. Fireworks exploded in the sky to make it more interesting. The fans were back in bleachers beside the tracks. The carts hurtled lower into the Earth at incredible speeds. This was going to end it, I knew it. I was going to make sure of it.
Both our carts caught on fire and we quickened our assault on each other. I grabbed his head and pulled him into my cart. The thing was engulfed in flames. I couldn’t feel it but he caught on fire and screamed. I pushed him down into it. It was almost over. But then the cart flew off the track into a ravine. We fell out. He was burned but could still fight. We fell into emptiness. There was probably nothing below us. We would fall forever.
I punched and clawed and drove him into the side of the ravine. He hollered but I wasn’t going to give up. I could feel the secrets in my grasp. I had to finish him off. But then I saw his face. He couldn’t take it anymore, he was almost dead. I thought of Ambrose.
I remembered the nice meadow I only saw for a second before being impaled and we hit the soft ground there. I assessed the damage. Heradus was still alive, but barely.
The crowds were gone and the fireworks had ended. It was just me and him in the calm meadow. He groaned and flopped around. I went too far. I was supposed to defeat him not kill him.
All of a sudden my head hurt tremendously. I fell to my knees. The meadow disappeared and I was on the moon. I could see the Earth in the sky. And then that vanished and I was on a train. And then I was in a city, a bizarre, a coastline, a mountaintop, and a factory. Everything went by so fast I barely had a chance to even figure out where I was. It went faster and faster until I couldn’t see anything but flashes of light. I closed my eyes and screamed. I had no control anymore. I felt the rush and hoped it would end. But it didn’t, not for a while. The flashes continued until it was all too fast to comprehend and I only saw a solid light through my eyelids. I was moving faster than I ever had before.
And then it stopped. It was a sudden halt of motion that caused my head to swim and my body to tense. I was standing on a cliff. Waves hit the rocks hundreds of feet below. Clouds wrapped themselves around me and floated away again. This was the cliff. This is where it all started. I took a deep breath and turned around.
18. The Cabins and the Cookbook
There wasn’t a castle as Heradus had said and there wasn’t a palace as Ramonia said on the sun. Instead there were endless rows of cabins. People milled about through the streets. It wasn’t at all what I expected, not that I knew what to expect. A man saw me and jogged over. He wore a suit, a top hat, and an overcoat like he was coming back from a nice dinner in 1900.
“You made it.” He said cheerfully.
“Made it where?”
“Yes, this is the interesting part for you. The part where you find out the truth about what you’ve been up to all this time. Come with me and I’ll tell you what you need to know.”
He put his hand around my shoulder and took me up the first street. Each cabin had been made up a little differently. One had green shutters on the window and one had a rose bush in a pot out front. Some were two stories but most were only one. There were all sorts of people in doorways or walking around or hanging out of windows talking to people in other cabins. Everyone seemed to know each other and get along. The outfits they wore were all different. One person wore a suit of armor and another wore a lab coat. There was no way to categorize anybody.
We walked past all the friendly commotion until we were in a much quieter area. The cabins out there weren’t made up and nobody was talking to anyone else. The few people I did see looked worn and tired. They trudged through the street and glared at me as I passed. I stayed close to the man I was following.
“What is your name?” I asked.
“Wilmer.”
“My name’s Lawrence.”
We kept on and left the sad and lonely part of the street. The next part wasn’t any better. Some of these cabins didn’t have doors or roofs and some were falling apart. The people here didn’t bother looking at us. They were so far gone that I think some of them weren’t even alive anymore. I tried not to look at them.
Finally we came to the end of the row. A few new cabins were out this far. Their wood was a lighter shade than that of the others. Wilmer went up to the last cabin in the row and led me inside.
“This will be yours.” He said merrily.
“Why is it way out here?”
“These are the new ones. Don’t worry, if all goes well you will be in the front in no time.”
The cabin was scarcely decorated. There was a small hard looking bed and a tiny wood desk and chair. There was no kitchen or bathroom.
“Where do we eat?” I asked.
He laughed. “We don’t eat. Haven’t you noticed that you don’t eat?”
“I did at one point.”
He thought this over. “Strange. Why don’t you tell me everything that’s happened to you so far and I will try to fill in the missing pieces. It’s better if I have an idea as to what you’ve been through.”
I was anxious to find out what he meant and so I started from the beginning and told my entire story. I began with standing on the cliff the first time and ended with arriving on the cliff the last time. I went into great detail about everything in between. I told him about how I didn’t need to breath underwater and how the water disappeared. I told him all of my conversations word for word, starting with that of the clockmaker. I even told him about the wizard and Ambrose and how they were similar to me but I didn’t know how yet. He looked sad when I told him about what happened to Ambrose. I continued and hoped he would fill me in on what actually happened. Overall he seemed very interested in my story. When I finished he even clapped.
“That was great. You did more than most ever do. You make a good team. I see you being in the front in no time. You will probably get out of here quickly too. I usually have a good eye for that type of thing. On who gets on first. And I think you will.”
I tried to interject several times while he talked but he kept on going.
“That sounds great,” I finally said, “but I don’t know what you are talking about. I think it would be best if you filled me in first.”
He looked at me like someone looks at a friend before they take them on a favorite ride at an amusement park. “Are you ready?”
“I think so.” I answered nervously.
“To start with I must say that you are quite a character.”
I remembered the wizard saying that same thing to me.
He continued. “What I mean to say is you are a character. When you started out on that cliff you were just coming into existence as an idea. A man named Lawrence Foster Brickem thought you up. He gave you his face and his name and set you on your way. You are the embodiment of a story. All of us are. We are all stories that originated in people’s minds and are now in a limbo of sorts. Our stories have been completed one way or another and we wait until the world is ready for us. We have it the best. We ar
e already written. It is much harder for an idea to be forgotten about once it is written. It can happen, but it is rare. Your friend Ambrose was an idea as well. The author took his story and merged it with yours. But it did not work out and Ambrose the idea was no longer needed. He was taken out of the story and forgotten about, hence why he faded away. That is the only way for an idea to truly die; it has to be forgotten about.”
I couldn’t wrap my mind around any of this. How could I be an idea? It didn’t make sense. Ideas can’t walk around. They are ideas! They exist in someone’s mind. They are brainwaves or something, not people.
“I—um—I don’t get it.”
He chuckled softly. “I didn’t get it at first either. Nobody goes through life thinking that they are an idea. It always comes as a shock. I have to say that you are taking it well. The last person I told jumped off the cliff again. They still haven’t come back.”
“So the cliff is a starting point?”
“Yes, the cliff is where all ideas start. They dive off and enter a person’s mind. These are story ideas of course. Other ideas start somewhere else.”
“And so I’m an idea.” I said. Saying it out loud made it official somehow. I could work with it now. I could wrap my mind around it and start to make sense of it.
“And what an interesting adventure you have had.” He said. “Every idea’s world starts off