Well, sort of.
It’s hard to feel alive when you find yourself in a place that only weeks before you didn’t even know existed, miles below the surface, in a space so dark that death seems almost attractive if it brings with it the possibility of a little light.
“We’ve got to find Winter,” Leven said, feeling lost without her. “Which way is out?”
“Up,” Clover said, “but I think that might be a bit difficult. So our choices are that way,” Clover turned Leven’s head to look right, “or the opposite way.”
Leven held his hands against the wall and walked sideways, feeling for any opening. There was no light, no gray, no contrast, only blackness.
Leven heard the sound of chewing, followed by the noise of blowing. Suddenly from out of nowhere there was light. Leven spun to find the source and spotted Clover standing on the ground with what looked like a glowing lightbulb sticking out of his mouth.
“What are—”
Before Leven could ask what Clover was doing, the lightbulb burst, and it was dark again.
“Holm on a sec,” Clover chewed. He worked his mouth for a moment, then blew another bubble. As it grew it glowed, illuminating the area around him.
The light didn’t do much to comfort Leven; it actually revealed in an awesome way just how dark and desperate a situation he was in.
“Wow,” Leven whispered, looking around him. “We’re in trouble.”
The chasm was gigantic. Leven could see nothing but black dirt and darkness in all directions. Both walls of the chasm towered up beyond the light and seemed to extend forever. There was no sign of an opening. Leven could still hear the sound of dirt settling and water running up and down the walls in spots. The dirt in Foo vibrated, looking like great walls of staticky soil.
Clover’s bubble burst, and they were plunged into darkness again.
“What is that stuff?” Leven asked, referring to the gum.
“Bubble bulbs,” Clover chewed, his speech slurred. “I neva chew it ’cause it only comes in lemon flavor.” Clover blew a big bubble and once again lit up the chasm. He handed Leven a piece of the gum. “Only one piece left after this.”
Despite all the burns he had experienced at the hands of Clover’s candies, Leven didn’t hesitate; he put the piece in his mouth and began to chew. Clover was right: It was bitter, without even a hint of sweet. Leven grimaced. The gum was tough and tasted like the rind of an old lemon. Leven chewed for a bit more and then blew a bubble about the size of Clover’s head.
It glowed brightly.
He turned, shining the light on everything around them. He could see bits of grass and deep gashes in the steep walls of the canyon. There were also roots and rocks sticking out of certain portions of the chasm walls and floor. In spots, water ran like thin ribbons up the walls. Leven put his right foot in front of his left and began walking along the floor of the chasm into the darkness, hoping there was a way out at the end.
Leven popped his bubble with his tongue. “So you think this will lead us somewhere?” he chewed.
Clover snapped. “Seems like a logical guess.”
Leven blew. The new bubble was big but not quite as bright.
“Eventually the glow runs out,” Clover lamented.
Leven’s bubble burst.
“I’m not sure I made the right choice following you into Foo,” Leven said. “Some paradise.”
“Isn’t it nice?” Clover replied, ignoring the sarcasm. “Wait till spring, everything is so much greener.”
Leven wanted to point out the fact that they might not make it to spring, but he chose instead to light up the way. Clover glowed alongside him, two dimming bubbles making their way down the dark crevasse.
After a few minutes Leven stopped to check his swollen ankle and the cut on his head. The blood was dry, and there was no sign of new bleeding. Both the bubbles he and Clover were currently sporting popped.
“Looks like you’ll live,” Clover chewed supportively.
“I have to live,” Leven said seriously. “Seeing how there’s no killing in Foo. I might not understand everything here, but I’m pretty sure those rovens were trying to kill me.”
“Phooey,” Clover scoffed. “They didn’t push you over the edge, it was their hair.”
“So hair can kill?” Leven asked, dumbfounded.
“It can help,” Clover replied. Both were still covered in darkness, having chosen not to blow. “Besides,” Clover whispered, “you can be killed. Fate didn’t bring you here, you snuck in.”
“I was pushed in.”
“Pushed, snuck, what’s the difference?”
“So, I could have died falling into this?”
“Shhh. That’s not something you want everyone to know.”
“How do you know I can die?” Leven said, suddenly in shock.
“Your grandfather was killed,” Clover said seriously. “He cheated fate and snuck back in, and it was sort of a surprise to everyone when it was discovered that he could be killed.”
“Geth said my grandfather died, but not that he was killed,” Leven said desperately.
“You know Geth,” Clover sighed. “He’s always trying to rainbow up things. Here Geth is dying himself, and he’s still trying to act like everything’s great.”
“Geth is dying?” Leven questioned, the surprise in his voice echoing off the chasm walls. “Where did you hear that?”
“He just told Amelia,” Clover said. “Said unless he’s taken to the flame in the turrets he won’t last more than a couple of days.”
“Am I the same way?” Leven panicked.
“No,” Clover waved. “You’re not a toothpick.”
“We’ve got to get to the turrets,” Leven said, ignoring Clover. “Geth will know what to do.”
“Of course,” Clover insisted. “If Geth isn’t restored, then the battle to save Foo will be almost impossible. And as for you, you might be able to die, but I’m sure you’ll live a long and full life.”
“This is crazy. How am I even alive now?” Leven asked incredulously. “We fell such a long way.”
“Like I said, you were lucky you slid down the side just right.”
“So I’m the only one in Foo who can be killed?”
“There are a few other exceptions—Winter, Amelia, Geth, the rovens, siids, some rants, most vegetation, sheep—but aside from them, pretty much everybody else is indestructible. Of course, Sabine had creative ways to make accidents happen.”
“I heard Amelia telling Geth how some here in Foo would hate me because I destroyed the gateway.”
“Yeah, about that,” Clover sniffed, “I wouldn’t run for any sort of office at the moment. The votes might not be in your favor.”
“Unbelievable,” Leven sighed.
“Life,” Clover sighed softly in return. “I think we’ll look back on this—”
A gigantic sloshing noise sounded out from far behind them. The sloshing quickly became a gurgle, sounding as if the ground itself were gargling. Leven turned toward the sound and blew a bubble as fast as he could. There was nothing but black as far as he could see. The noise sounded again, this time louder.
“What is it?” Leven asked, suddenly shaking.
“Well, I’m not certain, but usually when the rovens rip the soil, gunt follows,” Clover explained. “Normally they don’t begin sealing the thing up so soon, but this is a big rip.”
Clover did not sound like his usual fearless self.
Leven blew another bubble. It was large, but it was dim. The noise was getting closer, but Leven didn’t turn to run. He needed to see to believe. He could feel a rising wind blowing on his face. Then in the far distance Leven saw a white glob smack the ground. Another large glob hit the wall, then another hit the opposite wall, splashing against the dirt like snowballs. There was one up high and two down low and three new ones at eye level. One smacked against the wall not too far from Leven; it looked less like a snowball and more like an albino frog. The gunt bel
ched and then oozed into the wall, waiting for another of its kind to smack up against it and begin to seal the wound the rovens had created.
“We have to go,” Clover insisted.
Leven’s bubble wilted.
It was completely dark, but the sound of gunt smacking into the walls and floor of the chasm was almost deafening now. As the growing glob drew closer it was creating a terrific wind. The air pushed past Leven, blowing his hair and clothes. Leven quickly blew another bubble into the wind.
He half-wished he hadn’t. The gunt blobs were everywhere, up the sides and piling up at the bottom of the rip. The large, white, froglike balls were wiggling and hissing and meshing together, creating a huge, undulating, sticky-looking mass that was filling up the bottom of the chasm and sticking to the walls. The mass was racing like a wave toward Leven and Clover.
The strong air popped Leven’s bubble and pushed it back into his face. Leven turned and began running. He blew another bubble; the weak light lit up only ten paces in front of him. Clover blew too, but his gum was also wearing out.
Leven jumped over a huge hole in the floor of the rip. His gum popped, and he blew another bubble as quickly as he could, hoping he would be able to keep his footing as he ran. The guttural sound of the wall of gunt mounding up behind and rolling toward him was deafening. Like the sound of an approaching tornado.
Smlooooosh!
Leven felt something glom onto the heel of his right foot. It instantly stuck like cement, and Leven’s forward motion wrenched his foot out of his shoe. He didn’t stop to try to grab it, understanding for the first time just how sticky the white gunt was and how stuck he would be if it got hold of him entirely.
Both bubbles burst.
“We’re not going to make it!” Leven screamed. “We don’t even know where we’re going!”
“Just blow!” Clover screamed.
Continuing to run, Clover and Leven blew as quickly as they could. The puny gum bulbs lit just two feet in front of them. The chasm took a turn, and Leven and Clover barely missed running into the wall. A large wad of gunt smacked into the back of Leven’s left shoulder, throwing him off balance and up against the side of the chasm, pinning him to the dirt. Leven frantically tore at his shirt until he was able to rip away from the wall.
Leven kept running, but his bubble was out, and Clover’s was wilting.
“Wasn’t there another piece of this gum?” Leven yelled.
Clover was one step ahead of him, fishing in his void for the last piece of bubble bulb. “Here it is.”
Leven felt Clover shove something in his mouth as he ran. It was a bigger piece than the last.
“I thought you said it only came in lemon!” Leven yelled, running and chewing as fast as he could. “This tastes like cheese.”
Clover didn’t say a word as he quickly checked his void. He pulled out the last piece of bubble bulb.
“Uh-oh,” Clover replied.
Leven lurched forward two more steps. His stomach began to rumble and boil, generating huge bubbles of hot air that raced through his veins and into his hands and fingers and feet and toes. Clover stuck the last piece of bubble bulb into his own mouth and got a good look at what was happening.
Leven was quickly turning into an inflated, giant wad of goo.
Leven raised his hands to his forehead to feel what was going on. Both hands stuck to his head. As he tried to pull them away, they stretched like a piece of warm taffy. He tried to lift his feet from the ground, but they too stretched, stuck to the ground like a wad of chewed gum. Leven groaned and teetered as his body bent completely out of shape. He could feel his insides sticking together and swirling. He cast a wild, desperate look at Clover.
Clover’s bubble wilted. “Sorry,” Leven heard him say. “I thought I had thrown that candy away. They haven’t made ‘You Be the Gum’ in years. Ever since . . . well, I don’t want to bother you with details, so let’s just leave it at that.”
Leven might have enjoyed the exchange he and Clover were having if, say, they had been back in Reality, sitting on a porch on a warm afternoon, watching the sprinklers and sipping a cool soda. But Leven was not sipping soda on a warm day. He was miles below the surface of Foo in a chasm ripped by rovens, being chased by roaring, gluelike frogs, and turning into a large piece of gum.
Leven’s eyes burned gold. He was startled. His gift had seemed completely gone ever since he had entered Foo. But now he was feeling a sudden sense of relief and new strength, knowing that it was not gone. He could see the ocean of gunt closing in on them. He could see the fate they would suffer if caught in the seal. He could see the powerful wind the wave of gunt was creating in front of it as it undulated ever closer.
He could see exactly what he needed to do.
“Hold on,” was what Leven wanted to yell to Clover. But his mouth stretched and sprang back like thick gum. He stretched his mouth again and through a tiny hole he hollered something that sounded like, “Muds pon!”
Luckily, Clover spoke gum, and he jumped onto Leven’s shoulder.
Leven relaxed, and his torso began to expand like a giant gum bubble, growing and stretching to the size of a parachute. His cheeks filled out as well, giving him even more buoyancy. The wind created by the approaching mound of gunt blew him forward and helped him gain speed as he began to ascend.
The walls of the chasm were racing by them as if they were on a supersonic elevator. Leven could see some light now. The gunt was everywhere below them, rapidly filling in the rip. Luckily for Leven, his previous experience navigating across the ocean in Reality had given him a little practice with manipulating wind, and he was able to help fate push him faster up out of the canyon and toward the surface.
Leven couldn’t see Clover, but he could hear him yelling, “Wheeeeeeee!”
They rose out of the chasm and were suddenly floating like a blimp over the ground. Below them, Leven could see the gunt continuing to pile up in the giant rip, and he developed a sudden urge to belch. As he did so, the air rushed out of him and he drifted to the ground.
Actually, “drifted” really isn’t the most accurate word to use.
Leven’s deflating body was propelled backward, swooping and diving, as if he were a balloon with all the air rushing out of it, and he ended up slamming into a large fantrum tree, where his gooey body stuck to the branches.
He was a complete mess—drooping and stretched in every direction. The condition was extremely painful and caused Leven’s gumball eyes to see starlike bubbles. Clover wasn’t helping the situation. He was horribly tangled in Leven’s right arm and couldn’t seem to get free. Leven tried to yell at him and help Clover understand that even though the “You Be the Gum” had saved them, he still wasn’t happy about his current state.
A weak “Waupsa donta” was all Leven could get out.
“You’re welcome,” Clover replied, not as fluent in gum as Leven had first thought.
Leven closed his eyes and passed out.
Chapter Five
And Then There Was Sorrow
Winter had experienced a number of uncomfortable things in her life. Like the time when she was ten and she was out playing in the woods with her sister, Autumn, and Autumn had dared her to swim in the river that ran behind their house. Winter didn’t usually go for dares, but she felt her sister needed some showing up. So Winter jumped into the water and easily reached the other side. After she pulled herself up onto the bank, she looked back across the river and stuck her tongue out triumphantly.
Autumn yelled for Winter to swim back across, but Winter decided to mess with Autumn’s mind a little more and ran off into the woods. She crossed the old train bridge and then followed an overgrown road at the bottom of a gully. Winter stopped where the road met up with a wide dirt lane. She was standing above the gap between the two paths where they didn’t quite match up when she looked up. The temperature was a warm ninety-one degrees, and there in the early summer sky was a brilliant shooting star.
&nb
sp; You can probably guess what happened next.
Winter was taken into Foo, snatched from her family and normal life at the young age of ten.
That had been an uncomfortable and confusing time for Winter.
Right now, however, Winter was every bit as uncomfortable as that, and then some. At the moment she could remember nothing of her previous lives. All she knew was that she was buried in gunt and was being smothered. The white stuff had oozed over and around them and hardened quickly, trapping Amelia, Winter, and Geth. The new gunt gave off a faint white glow, allowing them to see shapes and shadows.
Amelia had held her scarf over her face to create some breathing room, and Winter had pulled her shirt up over her head to do the same. Geth was pinned inside Winter’s pocket, where he was also uncomfortable but not overly concerned. He merely wondered what fate would do next.
Their only hope was that at the very last second, Winter had frozen the stream of water flowing up the side of the chasm. The little waterflight was a couple of feet wide and about thirty inches thick. The gunt had been forced to form and harden around the shaft of ice.
The only problem was that Winter couldn’t reach the ice to touch it and restore it to water. Well, that wasn’t the only problem, but it was a big one.
Winter’s voice was muffled under the layer of gunt. “If I can thaw the water, then we can try to climb up the shaft it created,” she explained. “I just can’t reach the water.”
“Push your foot,” Amelia hollered. “The gunt is thin there. If you can push through it, you should be able to reach the ice with your bare foot.”
Winter pushed as hard as she could, and the coating of gunt cracked. Her right foot touched the ice and it instantly thawed.
Sure, Winter had achieved what she wanted, but she had actually made the situation much more urgent. Thawed water began to flow up into their space, fighting to steal every inch of air. Winter scrambled up into the tunnel the frozen water had created. She dug her fingers into the mud and pulled herself up through the rising water. The hole was like a flooded, crooked chimney with no light at the top. Winter held on to the sides of the shaft as a stream of mud and water cascaded up over her.