“Yaaaa—!”
The halos shoot out from me and move up. My feet shimmer and disappear below my ankles. The pain ascends my spine as the ring eats my stomach, and then I feel my stomach isn’t there, as if it fell asleep the way my legs did on the toilet reading the Other Normal Edition.
The ring moves up my chest—my chest disappears. It takes my neck and my face. The forest explodes in light, brighter than the sun. The light comes from me, from my eyes.
My mouth doesn’t exist, so I can’t scream anymore except in my head, but that does the job—Yaaaaaaaaaagh!— bridging the moment between when everything explodes to the moment after, when I realize I’m somewhere different, somewhere with a roof.
“Aaaaaagh!”
I am in the center of a chamber, on the floor. My body is back, but it’s naked.
29
A CIRCULAR ROOM. DARK WOODEN WALLS. No windows. Barrels and crates are stacked around the perimeter, along with shelves holding folded sheets of burlap and small sacks that look like ice packs. A few smooth-worn, bone-colored levers stick out of the wall. Fat white candles in simple metal sconces provide light; the smoke leaves through a dainty chute in the center of the ceiling. It reminds me of a submarine, or a witches’ den.
Mortin stands in front of me, wearing a brown loincloth. He has good musculature. He’s rubbing something under his eye, like sunscreen. He turns away to finish up, as if he’s hiding something from me, and then I notice a girl standing next to him.
She seems about my age, with pale skin and bright blue hair. My brain registers two things: First, she’s beautiful. Second, I’m naked. Women allegedly like naked men, but I’ve never seen this confirmed. I cover myself on the floor.
“Hey!” Mortin says, whirling around. His face looks fine; I don’t know what he was doing to it. “You made it!”
“Where the hell are my clothes?”
“What did I tell you? You didn’t take them off?”
“No! There was a … where’d they go?” I lower my voice. “And who’s she?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“How’m I not supposed to worry about it? Where am I? That hurt!”
“Don’t whine. Does it still hurt? Is it starting to itch?”
“What do you—”
It starts in my feet, the way the halos did, but then it blooms: the most ferocious itching I’ve ever experienced. It creeps up my legs and around my sides. My stomach itches. My spine itches. My eardrums itch. As the itching burrows deep into my body, it gets stronger, and I wonder if an itch can get worse and worse indefinitely. With pain, at some point you black out, but with itching, what happens? I send my fingernails into my naked skin, clawing—
“Stop!” Mortin yells. “Here!” He grabs an ice-pack-like sack from a shelf and tosses it to me. “Press that against your chest!”
It has green liquid inside with a brand name on the front. The text is some weird language, but it’s red and yellow, which is how I know it’s a brand name. I press the sack to my chest. It has an immediate miraculous effect. It crackles and sparks where it touches my skin. Rays of comfort and joy flood my body. The itching rushes to the bag and leaves.
“God … phew … okay,” I say. I feel like a new man. I feel like a man! I pull the sack away and inspect it.
“Ugh!” Inside, tiny green tadpoles swim around, agitated. They seem to notice me, turning to attack the inside of the bag.
“What do they want, to get in my body?”
“Did they solve the itching or not?”
“What are they? Giant green sperms?”
“Hepatodes.” The girl speaks up. “They sense discomfort and eat the electrical signals that cause it. But you’ve gotta keep them in the bag; otherwise they’ll paralyze you.”
“You’re welcome,” Mortin says.
“It’s better than hurting you to make you forget you’re itching, which is the only other way to handle it,” the girl says. “Itching is a side effect of transit. Would you like some clothes?”
The girl hands me a folded piece of burlap from a nearby shelf. It’s a loincloth, like Mortin’s wearing. I put it on quickly. I remember Anna, who Mortin told me I was supposed to kiss; it seems odd that I would meet two women in the space of an hour and have them both be willing to speak to me. It almost seems odder than meeting a fantasy creature and being “transited” into another world, which is where I suppose I am. I heard somewhere that the way it works with women is that one minute you have two and the next you have none (and this always frustrated me because I thought, How do I get to two?), but apparently it works the other way: zero women can become two without warning.
“What happened to my clothes?” I ask Mortin, looking at my legs in the loincloth. They’re too skinny.
“You can ask me,” the girl says. “You don’t have to pretend I’m not here, and you don’t have to be scared.”
“Trust me, he’s scared.”
“No I’m not!”
“Your clothes have been eaten by the multiverse,” the girl explains. “Everybody comes through naked. You’re wearing a getma now, don’t worry.”
“What about my keys and wallet and cell phone? They were in my pockets.”
“Your getma fits you. Consider yourself lucky.”
“I’ve gotta report my phone missing? Jeez.”
“I told you to get naked,” Mortin says, affixing a different lighter to his tail. “We’re born naked and, if we’re lucky, we die naked.”
I wiggle my toes. I’m on springy, forgiving dirt. I didn’t notice before: although a wooden floor runs around the circumference of this room, the center is a bare dirt pit. I look into the dirt and see a web of tiny white threads that spread and pirouette as they dive into the ground. The threads form a close-knit honeycomb; they remind me of pictures I’ve seen of neurons in the human brain, drooping in empty space and connected in the most complicated way imaginable.
“What am I standing on?” I ask the girl, to show I’m not scared. Her ears are high and light, with pointed tips. She has deep eyes and full lips. She wears a getma, too, with a belt and what I can only describe as a stylish animal-hide fanny pack. Her top, which hangs from her shoulders on two wide straps, drapes over her body so that I think I might be able to see her belly button, but it could just be a shadow—or maybe she doesn’t have a belly button. Why do I find this attractive? I picture running my hand over her stomach....
“Why do you look at me that way?” she asks.
I stumble. I’m not sure how to play this, but then I make a decision: she’s too beautiful ever to be interested in me. It’ll be counterproductive to think of her that way. Plus, she’s seen me naked, so she knows my deep and hairless secrets.
“No reason. We should do this properly. I’m Perry. Pleased to meet you.” I stick out my hand. Businesslike.
“I’m Ada Ember,” she says. “Mortin’s intern.”
We shake: strict, cordial, nothing romantic about it. I like Ada’s handshake. It’s better than Anna’s, where I just shook a mitten.
“You know what my mother would ask if I told her you had an internship? She’d ask if it was paid.” I chuckle.
“It’s not,” Mortin says.
“Your parents are fascinating specimens,” Ada says. “We’ve been studying them. Did your mother give you the pewter—”
“Ah! Ada!” Mortin interrupts. “Let’s keep some things under wraps! We need to prepare Perry for analysis and orbitoclasty—”
“He’s not going to remember this, so why can’t we talk about what we want?”
“What am I not going to remember? I’m going to remember this for sure.”
“You maintain the correspondents’ sense of free will,” Mortin hisses, ignoring me. “If they realize what’s happening to them, their heads explode.”
“Hello? If my head were going to explode, it would’ve happened already. Guys? What’s this thing I’m standing on that looks like white plant roots?”
/> “A thakerak,” Ada says, before Mortin can stop her. “It’s biologically analogous to a fungus’s hyphae, which are the parts of a mushroom that you don’t see, that perform all the functions besides sex.”
“It’s alive?” I smack the ground.
“Stop!” Ada grabs me. The threads under the dirt pop and rustle. “Don’t hit it!” She pulls me aside. “Is that the first thing you do when you see something new—hit it?”
“Sometimes, yeah,” I admit.
“Are we all being civil in here?” a voice calls from across the room.
30
A DOOR, CARVED SURREPTITIOUSLY INTO the wall, has opened a crack. A man pokes his head in. It’s a bald, pugnacious head.
“Everything’s fine, Gamary,” Mortin says, rushing to close the door. The person outside, Gamary, pushes back. “Who’s that?” he asks. He gives me a stern look. His head is very high off the ground.
“I’m just … Perry Eckert; pleased to meet you.” I stick my hand out.
“Mortin!”
Gamary shoves the door open and knocks Mortin over. He steps into the chamber, and I see why his head is so far off the ground: it’s attached to a short torso that turns into a large potbelly that turns into light-brown fur on top of four hoofed legs.
“Centaur!” I blurt, like a kid yelling out the name of a dinosaur at a museum.
“Mortin, I told you, no more tweaks!”
Gamary kneels on his two front legs and starts punching Mortin. Mortin scrambles away and reaches behind a barrel. He pulls out a short, unadorned sword and tosses it from one hand to another.
“Don’t touch me, okay? I paid for this space.”
“No illegal transits!” Gamary reaches for a saddle mounted on his own back and pulls out an ax. Crap. I back up, flabbergasted, but as animal fear kicks in, some analytical part of me notices that he’s too small to be a real centaur. His lower half is six feet long, not ten like a full-grown horse. He looks more like a man on top of a deer, with horizontal stripes on his forelegs and backward-pointing knees.
Gamary and Mortin circle each other. Mortin jabs with his sword. Gamary easily blocks with his ax. Sparks sprinkle toward the ground and the thakerak buzzes as if in answer. I can’t tell if they’re just playing or if they’re really trying to hurt each other. They’re very talkative.
“My father rented thakeraks from your father, and you won’t even give me the courtesy of a little privacy?” Mortin slaps Gamary’s leg with the flat of his sword.
“Your father wasn’t a degenerate pebble addict like you are!” Gamary brings his ax down a centimeter from Mortin’s foot.
“That’s my medicine! Don’t talk about my medicine!” Mortin slashes at Gamary’s hand.
“You brought over some scared human child who’s going to soil himself on my property!”
“Hey! I’m not gonna soil anything!”
In sync: “Shut up!”
“Stop it, both of you!” Ada rushes between Gamary and Mortin. Gamary holds his ax over his shoulder. “This boy is the one we were telling you about,” she says. “The one who has to do with the princess.”
“Princess?” I ask.
“Ada! Quiet!”
“Him?” Gamary inspects me.
“What princess?” I want to know more. The word princess has a seminal place in my head. But instead of giving me answers, Gamary stands over me, putting me in a shadow of candlelight. “You sure you got the right one? He seems a little small. And dumb. He called me a centaur.”
“I know you’re not a centaur,” I say. “You’re too small.”
“Excuse me?” He raises his ax. “You want to go home in two pieces, princess boy?”
“Gamary!” Mortin shoulder-checks him. He drops the ax. Ada grabs it and locks the door. Mortin raises his sword and holds it against Gamary’s neck. “Don’t touch him.”
“What do you want me to do? If the authorities find him”—me—“they’re gonna have me arrested!” Gamary twitches his tail. “My daughter’s sick, Mortin. The bad fever. As soon as I can, I’m taking her to Laurentia for medicine. I can’t do that if I’m rotting in a cell, you understand?”
Mortin puts his sword down.
“So you’re gonna send him back, right? So long as you send him back, it’s no problem.”
“Yes, we’ll send him back.”
“When?”
“A few minutes.”
“Back where?” I ask. “Back to camp? No way!”
“He doesn’t sound like he wants to go back.”
“Don’t worry. He’s quite timid.”
“Hey!”
Gamary picks up his ax and heads for the door. “I’m sending one of my interns to look after you. Just in case.”
“Who? Your punk kid?”
“He’s a good kid.”
Before he leaves, Gamary has final words for me: “Princess boy, I’m not a centaur. I’m an okapicentaur.” He puffs his chest out. “That’s part man, part okapi, like the African ungulate. What are you, racist?”
I can’t think of a good answer in time, so he leaves shaking his head. I don’t think I’ve earned his respect.
31
“I’M NOT GOING BACK TO CAMP, OKAY? I’d like to make that clear. I’d also like a full explanation of what’s happening,” I tell Mortin and Ada.
“No problem. Get up here,” Mortin says, hitting a lever. A wooden table swings out of the wall and chunks into place. He pats it like doctors do when they want you to sit for an examination. As I consider heading over versus making a run for it, the door reopens and a new visitor enters.
He’s a guy, not a centaur, but not quite human. He looks like Ada: light-blue hair, pointy ears. He seems about my age, in a leather vest with a getma over his crotch. He has streamlined muscles, pale arms full of spiral tattoos, and a lip ring. I always hated lip rings. His sneer is familiar; I’ve seen it on the faces of people who make fun of me in school, all the way back to Justin Racho and Jacoby Myers. It’s the sneer of a bully. Ada glares at him. Mortin scowls at him. I see that neither of them trust him, but under Ada’s dislike I suspect an appreciation of his triceps.
“Don’t mind me; I’m just here to make sure you all observe protocol.”
“Ryu, good to see you,” Mortin says.
“Ryu? Hold up. Ryu like at camp?”
“Excuse me? Don’t speak to me, tweak.”
“What’s a tweak? That’s rude. Do you have to be rude?”
“You are a tweak. It’s not my fault you don’t know it. I can call you whatever I want.”
“No, you can call me Perry. Pleased to meet you.” I stick out my hand. I’ve been shaking a lot of people’s hands lately. “I’m from New York. Brooklyn. Well. My parents are divorced—”
Ryu ignores my hand but perks up at the word Brooklyn.
“Do you know the Beastie Boys?” he asks.
“Uh … I know some of their videos.”
“You don’t know them personally?”
“No.”
“Then what do I need you for? You two carry on; send him back.”
“On the table,” Mortin reminds me.
“No, wait, stop!” I stand my ground. “How am I meeting two people named Ryu in one day? That’s not normal.”
“You’re still concerned about normal?” Mortin asks.
“You got a problem with my name?” Ryu presses.
“Look: I get punched in the head by a kid at camp named Ryu, and now there’s a Ryu here with blue hair? That’s not a coincidence. Dreams are used to store memories. Is that what’s happening right now? I don’t want this to be a dream because it’s a lot better than my real life, but I need one of you to start explaining. If my parents find out I’ve been kidnapped to the ‘World of the Other Normals,’ they’re going to find their lawyers—”
“Didn’t your parents leave their lawyers in the woods?” Ada asks.
“How do you know that? I assume they picked them up—”
??
?Perry,” Mortin says. “All we want to do is check out your ankle. How does it feel?”
I touch it—after all the itching and subsequent excitement, I forgot about it, but now it throbs. “Hurts.”
“Good. Where there’s pain, there’s life.”
Mortin pulls another lever on the wall. A system of pulleys squeaks to life, and the room’s ceiling slides back like a mechanical football dome. It reveals a gargantuan pool of water above, held in by clear glass. I shield my eyes. The water stretches up far enough to erase any chance of gauging its depth. Light pours in from the top. It’s bright and blue and clear, with no fish or plants of any kind. As soon as I see it, I hear a quiet, pleasant hum. The thakerak likes the water.
“We’re underwater?” I ask in awe.
“We’re at the bottom of the Great Beniss Basin,” Mortin says. I stare up at scaleless blue as Ada offers me her arm and leads me to the table. She moves lightly. I feel bumbling and stupid, my elbow in hers, as I hobble on my bad ankle. It’s the first time a girl has ever touched my arm. Her hand is warm and smooth.
I lie down. Mortin stands at my head. Ada stands at my feet. Ryu watches everything with his arms crossed, making me feel small and inadequate, even though he isn’t taller than me, like the Ryu at camp wasn’t. It’s his attitude that makes him tall. What a trick!
Ada pulls a rope down from the ceiling and puts it around my ankle.
“Ow! Not too tight!”
Ryu laughs. Ada raises her eyebrows at me.
“Fine. Make it tight.”
She pulls the rope taut. It grips my ankle like a claw. I wince but hold the pain in. The rope leads to the glass above me, where it attaches to a hook. Above the hook, on the other side of the glass, a thin metal rod sticks into the Great Beniss Basin. I shake my foot. The rope moves; the hook and rod move with it. It’s like I’m attached to a car antenna. It’s fun. I kick my foot aside and accidentally clip Mortin.
“Ow!”
“Stop him!” Ryu says. “Keep him still!”
“Don’t move,” Ada whispers, grabbing me.