“All right, all right,” Emily said impatiently—but the fact that she said it at all showed she was reasoning along the same lines I was. “No diving out of windows.” She looked at me as though evaluating. “I wonder,” she said, “if I could pick you up in my mouth by taking hold of your head, very gently, using just my lips...” She tried curling her dragon lips over her dragon teeth. “...I could kind of swing you around...” She angled her massive head over her shoulder to see how far back she could reach.
I, of course, had lost it the moment she'd said she'd take my head in her mouth. I think I finally got through to her the fifteenth or sixteenth time I chanted no.
“All right, then, Grace,” she said, “your turn to make a suggestion I can poke holes in.”
Since I wasn't able to get rid of the mental image of her dragon teeth making Swiss cheese of my skull, that was unfortunate phraseology on her part.
“How about,” I suggested, “if you lie down again, and you don't tuck your front arms under you, but stretch one of them out, sort of like a ramp for me to use?”
Scornfully, Emily muttered, “A handicapped-accessible dragon,” but did as I suggested.
I scrambled my way up talon, wrist, forearm, elbow, before I saw there was just too much back muscle for me to be able to climb farther.
“Can't do it,” I told her. “May I try it on your wing?” Sort of the way a kite is made with paper stretched over a wooden frame, the dragon's wing was leather stretched over bone. Being careful to put my weight only on the edge of the wing, I hauled myself up onto my sister's back. It was no harder than, for example, climbing up that stupid rope they have in obstacle courses—which, by the way, I've never been able to do.
But, eventually, I made it. I even found a relatively flat spot between her wings to sit. Well, actually, I was more lying belly-down, since that seemed more secure. Except, of course, that her scales were already scratchy on my face—dermabrasion for the fantasy set. “Okay,” I said, summoning all my bravery and my optimism, “this might work.”
Then she flapped her wings, and that changed everything. “Down,” I screamed. “Down, down, down!”
“Just hold on,” Emily said.
“To what?” I yelped.
She rose higher and higher into the air.
“No! Stop! Let me get off!” But meanwhile, I finagled my fingers under one of her scales to have something to hold on to, all the while wondering how likely it was that I'd accidentally pluck out the scale.
“See, you're fine,” Emily said.
“No wonder the sprites hate you,” I told her.
Emily didn't answer, and I realized it had been a cheap shot. What I should be doing was working hard to raise her spirits so she wasn't so depressed. But I mean, come on!
As wonderful as flying in my dragon shape had been, flying on a dragon was the exact opposite. Even going beyond the sheer terror of I'm-going-to-fall-and-plummet-something-like-a-gazillion-feet-to-the-ground-and-go-splat!-and-probably-still-not-have-the-luxury-of-being-dead-despite-the-fact-that-I'll-be-feeling-every-shattered-bone-and-ruptured-organ, it was not comfortable riding on the dragon's back, and every wing flap tipped me forward, backward, and sideways. Emily was flying no higher and no faster than I'd been, but my stomach was lurching. Yet I knew if I started throwing up, I'd be sure to fall off. I tried closing my eyes, thinking that might cut down on the dizziness, but it added to the out-of-control feeling. Plus, I kept picturing the inhabitants of the Land of the Golden Butterflies going, “Ick! It's raining vomit!” which made me even queasier. I figured I would be likelier to maintain my balance and stay on the dragon, plus keep my stomach contents actually inside my stomach, if I could see what was happening.
I won't say it got easier with time, as my hands and arms ached from holding on to the scale so tightly, and the panic didn't exactly fade, but a certain numbness set in.
And time did pass.
A lot of it.
And eventually, I realized that Emily was gliding downward.
“Are we there?” I asked.
It didn't look like we were there.
All I could see was forest, no Victorian house on the edge of a lake.
“No,” Emily said. “I just need a rest.”
There was a river cutting through the forest where Emily found a section of bank with a large, level sandy spot and coasted in.
“Do you know where you're going?” I asked. “Are we lost? I didn't need a rest stop when I was flying.”
“You weren't carrying you,” Emily said. She transformed back to herself just as I shifted my position to sitting up, and for one totally weird moment I was sitting on her back while she was standing up—and then I slid down and hit the ground, butt first.
“Besides,” Emily added, sounding defensive, “I haven't eaten since lunch with the gypsies yesterday.”
“Ooo, lunch with the gypsies,” I mimicked, since the only food that had passed my lips in this game had been that single cinnamon cookie when I'd first arrived. I was hungry, I realized.
“I'm going to take a nap,” Emily said. “Just a few minutes. Maybe you can make yourself useful and find something to eat.”
"Find something?" I echoed. “Like what? Lake dolphins? Unicorns? What does one eat here?”
“All the fruits are edible,” Emily said. “If there are gypsies nearby, they always have stuff like hot dogs, and taco salads, and macaroni and cheese.”
Ah! The traditional foods.
She lay down right where she was, making no attempt to smooth the sand or form it into a hollow or anything more comfortable, and curled herself up small. “Can you look, please, Grace? I really need to sleep. Then we can eat whatever you've found and be back at the house by midafternoon.”
“Okay,” I said. “I guess.” I was hungry and tired, too. But had carrying me been that hard for Emily, or was this a symptom of her having been in the game too long? Was her real-life body beginning to weaken? And if so, would virtual food and rest help?
No chance to ask Emily her thoughts, as she was asleep already.
There shouldn't be anything here dangerous enough that Emily would need me to stand guard, I thought. This is just a little kids' game.
Yeah, right. There were a lot of shouldn’ts in this game. I found a blackberry bush close enough that I could pick while still keeping Emily in sight. It was hard not to eat more than half, but I was just hungry, not in danger of fading—at least not yet.
When my fingers were purple and sticky, not to mention cramped from berry picking, I sat down in a grassy patch and waited for my sister to wake up.
I hadn't caught any of the golden butterflies the previous day when I'd had a sack full of gold coins, and I certainly hadn't been in the mood earlier while holding on to Emily's dragon scales for dear life. But now, while I waited, I caught half a dozen butterflies and turned them into coins. By counting “One Mississippi, two Mississippi...” I estimated that they came every five minutes or so, in pairs, evidently one for each of us. But after a while, that got so boring, I fell asleep despite my best intentions.
I awoke to find that what was left of the morning had turned to afternoon, and the berries I'd saved for Emily were beginning to dry out and look old, and finally I gave her a nudge. Then another. “Emily!” I called, shaking her shoulder, convinced I wouldn't be able to rouse her.
Her eyes fluttered open. “Grace,” she said, “really, please just give me five minutes.”
“You've slept something like three hours already.”
“No,” she mumbled, closing her eyes again, and settling back into her fetal position.
I had newfound sympathy for what our mother went through, trying to get us up for school.
“Emily,” I said, shaking her harder, “you need to wake up now.”
“All right, all right,” she grumbled, but she made no move.
I grabbed her by the shoulders and forced her up to a sitting position. “Now,” I said sternly.
She sighed and finally opened her eyes. “All right,” she said, sounding a bit more convincing this time. “All right.” She yawned and stretched. “Did you get something to eat?”
I nodded toward the pile of berries, which looked pretty paltry considering how sore my fingers had gotten. “And,” I pointed out, “another couple hours and we'll be back at the house. We can confront the sprites, and if they can't send us back home right away, we can eat in your kitchen.”
Emily, busy snarfing the berries down by the handful rather than savoring them one by one, didn't sound too enthusiastic about my plan. But she said, “All right.”
“And,” I said, “I think I figured a way how to get on your back more easily.”
“Okay...” she said warily.
“You can change into any animal, right?”
She nodded.
“Turn yourself into a Saint Bernard.”
“That'll be useful,” she scoffed. “You do know I won't come with one of those little barrels of brandy or whatever it is that those rescue dogs in the Alps have?”
“No, that's okay. What I'm thinking is that you can turn into a dragon gradually ... in different steps ... getting bigger and bigger.”
Emily still looked skeptical, but that's what we did. She turned into a big dog, and I straddled her, not putting my weight on her back until she morphed into a pony; then she became a full-sized horse; then an elephant; then she dragonized herself. There's a significant difference between an elephant and a dragon, but at least I was in position.
The flying was no more pleasant on this leg of the journey, and Emily tired out after a much shorter time. She wanted to stop again (“Just for a little bit, Grace”), but I begged and cajoled, and finally we were flying over the part of the forest I'd seen already, and that gave her the extra impetus she needed.
By then, Emily was trembling with exhaustion, and her scales had lost much of their luster. We landed in the maze, not a graceful touchdown at all this time, and we flattened a whole wall of bushes. The dragon transformed back to Emily before I could make sense of what I was seeing. I slid down off her back as she swayed unsteadily. Then, from my sitting position, I could see the fountain.
Water no longer ran out of the mouth of the marble fish. In fact, the whole thing looked dried and cracked and overgrown with ivy, as though the place had been abandoned last summer. Someone had strung yellow police tape around the fountain, nailed boards across the bowl, and hung a sign around the fish. The sign said:
CLOSED FOR BUSINESS
NYAH-NYAH
(THAT MEANS YOU, EMILY AND GRACE PIZZELLI)
Chapter 16
Dear Someone...
I'M TOO TIRED to think,” Emily said. “You tell me what to do.”
I could see she wasn't exaggerating: She sank down to sitting, quickly, as though her legs had given out.
I didn't dare leave her for fear something in this world would get her, for fear she might weaken so much that if she fell asleep, I wouldn't be able to wake her up again. Not that I had any plan of action if I saw that start to happen.
“Rest a few minutes,” I suggested. “Then we'll go in the house and get something to eat.”
“Could you bring something for me?” she asked so plaintively I was tempted—except I didn't dare.
I grabbed her arm to keep her from lying down. “You'll be more comfortable indoors,” I said, not wanting to share my fears—because I could only hope that strengthening her virtual self would give her real self more time. “Come on. Get up.” I tugged at her. “Walking is easier than flying.” I managed to haul her to her feet. “What's the route out of this maze?”
As though I needed evidence that she was muddled, Emily made several wrong turns.
“I can't think,” she protested. “Just let me rest.”
“No. Concentrate. The more you complain, the longer it will be till we get out of here.”
Eventually, we made it—not only out of the maze, but across the lawn, up the porch stairs, and into the house. By then, Emily was leaning heavily on me, just as in one of those war paintings with titles like Helping Her Wounded Comrade.
I left Emily sitting in the library, for fear she'd fall right out of one of the kitchen chairs. “Stay awake,” I told her, but I think she was asleep before I made it out of the room.
I was assuming I'd fetch the fastest-to-prepare meal I could find—maybe cereal, just to take the edge off our hunger before I took the time for something more substantial.
But when I opened one of the kitchen cupboards, it was filled with what appeared to be gift boxes, the kind with a bow on top for easy opening. It took a few moments for me to register that on their fronts were pictures of food. One shelf did indeed have boxes picturing cereal: Fruit Loops, Emily's favorite; but the boxes felt so light, I opened one up before even checking to see where the bowls were stored, just to make sure it wasn't empty. On the contrary, it held a bowl filled with Fruit Loops. There was even milk on the cereal already, and a spoon, as well as a linen napkin—the very picture that was on the front of the box. Talk about truth in advertising.
Still, How long has this been sitting here? I wondered. But when I took a spoonful, it was crunchy and fresh, as though the cold and frothy milk had been poured the moment I lifted the cover.
Interesting.
If that was the way things were...
I went to a different shelf and picked a box that had an image of a steaming slice of pepperoni pizza on it. And that—right down to the bubbling cheese—was what I found.
And the French toast box had thick slices of warm battered bread with the flower-shaped pats of butter just beginning to melt and syrup that hadn't even thought of congealing yet. And the hot fudge sundae box had ice cream that was cold and firm, with the chocolate syrup warm and drippy, all looking as though it had been packed, like, one second before I opened the box. Each item came with its own appropriate dish and silverware, and a cloth napkin—in a variety of different colors and styles.
Okay, well, that was easier than hunting and gathering.
I loaded a bunch of boxes—including soda and hot cocoa with whipped cream—on a tray and brought it in to Emily.
She was asleep. I was grateful to hear her snoring, which sounded like such an everyday normal thing. Surely the first step to fading isn't snoring.
But she did take some waking up. It was waving the pizza under her nose that finally got her to a sitting position.
She ate more than just a couple of mouthfuls, another reassurance.
I ate, too, a cheeseburger and fries. They were as yummy as could be, especially the fries, which were just the right balance of crunchy on the outside and squishy on the inside.
But now, all that done—Emily gotten back to the house, both of us fed a bit, rested a bit—now there was no putting off that it was time to come up with a plan.
And I didn't have one.
Why doesn't this stupid game come with a user’s manual like the old-fashioned computer games? I thought. You know, the kind of thing to tell you: If the system crashes or freezes, press this button to turn the miserable piece-of-junk equipment off and reboot.
And that's when it suddenly hit me—Rasmussem games do come with a user's manual of sorts: the Finding Rasmussem Factor. Of course, with this game, which seemed designed mostly to encourage preteen girls to be shopaholic princesses, I didn't know if there even was the usual safety valve.
“Emily,” I asked, “is there a Rasmussem to go to here?”
“What?” she asked groggily.
I shook her awake—or at least somewhat more awake—and repeated the question. I thought I was going to have to do it a third time, but apparently she'd been thinking.
“I don't know,” she said. “That wasn't the area I was working on.”
She seemed content to leave it at that, which I put down to her being one step removed from a stupor.
I asked, “How do I find the locals?”—which in this c
ontext meant a game character. There had, of course, been the gondolier, but even if he'd still been alive, any directions he might have rattled off would have been in Italian.
I fervently hoped sprites weren't the ones manning the help desk.
Emily said, “Write an invitation.”
Was she getting delirious?
“What?” I asked.
“Go to the library...” Then she must have remembered we already were there. “Go to the roll-top desk,” she amended. “Write a note inviting someone to come. Drop the envelope in the mail slot.” She closed her eyes.
Invite someone. Never mind that I didn't know anyone's name. Let's see ... there was hammock-swinging guy. Luteplaying guy. Throw-your-sister-out-of-your-party-then-toss-the-gondolier-to-his-death guy...
Except, of course, that Emily's guys were all foreign or mute.
Invite someone.
To something or other.
I went to the desk and found parchment and envelopes in the top drawer. There was one of those ostrich-feather pens and a bottle of ink, so I sat down and considered. I didn't want a whole mob of people, like there'd been at Emily's fancy ball. Nor did I want just one, in case that person turned out to be uncooperative. Once again the sprites came to mind, rising unwanted and unpleasant, like a burp after garlic mashed potatoes. The grandfather clock in the foyer obligingly chimed at that moment to remind me of its existence. From the doorway, I could see its face: three forty-five.
I picked up the plume, dipped it in the ink, and wrote:
To the first 5 young ladies of the land to receive this— You are invited to Emilys house for English high tea at 4 p.m. today.
This pen made my handwriting impeccable: both fancier and more legible than my usual, which my teachers certainly would have appreciated. My language could have been more formal, to go along with the graceful penmanship, so I made a little caret and added cordially to the you are invited line. The words shifted to make room.