Leven stepped back. Farrow whistled again, and a second creature slipped out from the trees and stood behind the other. It too scratched its forehead and began to rock. Soon they were cooing and bouncing in harmony. Two of them were far less cute than one. A third appeared at the side of the trail and also cooed, erasing any trace of cuteness.
“Clover,” Leven whispered, “what are they?”
A fourth emerged from the dirt while a fifth and a sixth shimmied down a tree and stood behind Leven—all staring at him and cooing loudly.
“Seriously, Clover!” Leven said desperately. “Where are you?”
Three more dropped from the trees onto the path. Seven rolled in from behind. A dozen emerged from the forest—all of them cooing, their combined sound growing. Fifty of them pushed up from the side of the trail and joined the gathering. Some of them began to stand on the others’ shoulders. Leven began to panic. Clover had clearly abandoned him, and the growing crowd was quickly closing in. The ugly creatures gave off a dirty, rank odor.
Leven closed his eyes and willed his gift to kick in.
Nothing.
“Farrow,” Leven pleaded.
“Where is Geth?” Farrow barked.
“I have no idea. You said—”
“What does he look like? What form is he in?” Farrow pressed.
“What?” Leven answered, confused.
“The Lore Coil was short on description,” Farrow growled. “The locusts the Sochemists sent out only described him as being small.”
“He’s not small,” Leven lied. “And he will be here any moment.”
Farrow looked around nervously and then stamped his feet in a rage. The hundreds of creatures surrounding Leven tightened their circle. And when a loud whistle sounded in the distance, Farrow smiled and whistled back.
“Tell me where Geth is!” Farrow raged.
“He’s coming,” Leven insisted, holding his chin out and staring Farrow down with his eyes. “You won’t stop him.”
“I brought you here to give you a chance,” Farrow seethed. “But I can see now you are no good to us. You know nothing and should be buried.”
Farrow began to tremble and shake. His lower half darkened and cracked, exposing the fake that he was. Like a cover being pulled off to expose a statue, Farrow, as Leven had known him, vanished. In his place were five of the little creatures stacked on top of each other like a totem pole. They squealed with delight, and the top one spoke.
“It’s a first-impersonation quilt,” he said, nodding down to the cloak they had been hiding under. “We tharms need them to disguise ourselves so we can make better first impressions. Our smell and shape seem to turn people off.”
The five tharms that had once been Farrow hopped off each other and joined the hundreds of others pressing in on Leven.
“You should have given up Geth,” they cooed in unison.
Another whistle sounded, and all the tharms jumped at once toward Leven. Instinctively, Leven sprang forward into the thickest gathering of them. He knocked over a half dozen before he was dragged to a stop by all of their tiny hands grabbing and holding him. Their third arms were particularly strong.
When Leven tried to scream, a couple of dozen little hands crammed his mouth into silence, and he was lifted off his feet. Hordes of the cooing creatures piled in under him, their tiny hands pinching and hoisting him higher. Then they took off running, holding Leven above them. Moving with surprising swiftness, they raced into the forest. Suspended on his back, Leven could see tree limbs flying over him, inches from his head and body. The pack of tharms pushed up a steep mountain not slowing in the least; in fact, they were gaining speed with each step, cooing madly like a million psychotic pigeons.
They crested a rocky mountain cap that was covered with a white, spongy fungus and rocketed down the backside, flying across the landscape. Leven was being held by a thousand hands, but he still bounced up and down with each movement and step. Leven’s mind flashed back to his life in Oklahoma. He remembered the afternoons when he had tried to get home from school without the neighborhood ruffians Brick and Glen throwing rocks at him or running him over with their bikes. Leven had always run to get away, but now he was beginning to feel different. He could see the value in fighting for himself. As the tharms held him in their hands, running, Leven wanted desperately to act instead of being acted upon.
Leven’s legs and arms burned as if they had fallen asleep and now blood was racing back into them like pins and needles.
Suddenly the creatures flipped him like a gangly pancake onto his stomach, so that he was being carried facedown and backwards. A great swarm of bit bugs hovered over the racing horde of tharms, their mass glowing brightly. The light from the bugs combined with the glowing bark of fantrum trees and a dim moon to give Leven more than enough light to see what was happening.
After a time, the strange escorts slowed, and Leven could see hundreds of other tharms standing in a circle around a large, dark hole in the ground. Each had all three of its arms raised above its head, fists full of soil.
The sight wasn’t exactly comforting.
“Clover!” Leven screamed. “Winter! Geth! Anyone!”
It was no use. Nobody was going to help Leven. As they approached the hole, the tharms cooed in a great chorus, and the ones surrounding the hole parted to let the others through. The tharms carrying Leven stopped abruptly. They drew their arms back in sync and heaved Leven into the air over the hole.
Leven yelled, frantically grabbing for something to prevent his fall, then dropped like a rock into the hole. It was about seven feet deep, and in an instant he landed painfully in the bottom.
Immediately, the tharms began throwing handfuls of dirt in on top of him, pelting his whole body and quickly pinning him down. The clumps of soil clutched at Leven. Leven tried to stand, but the weight of the dirt was too much. He was being buried alive.
Leven’s eyes burned gold. He tried to picture fate in a saving manner, but all he could see was the little bit of air around him in his hole—the same hole that was quickly filling up with dirt. Leven wanted to fight. He could see soft wind blowing through the trees of the forest. Leven manipulated the wind to snake through the dirt like a bionic worm and create a bubble of air around his body. The wind drew in and enveloped Leven like a bubble-wrapped mummy. Dirt continued to rain down. In a few moments Leven was entombed seven feet beneath the surface of the Swollen Forest, wrapped in thick, soft air.
Leven concentrated his thoughts to keep the air intact around him. The tharms were working like mad to fill in the hole, and the weight of the dirt piling up on top of it was overwhelming.
The air he had worked in began to heat up, and sweat poured into Leven’s eyes. He trembled violently, fighting the very soil as it settled and acted upon him.
Chapter Eight
The Ring of Plague
Jamoon stood towering over Winter. There were eleven red-robed beings behind him. Winter had seen their eyes reflecting back at her from the puddle water she had been cleaning herself in after climbing up out of the gunt.
She stood to look directly at Jamoon.
Jamoon’s thick black robe obscured all but his right eye, which was glaring. A bright red ring was embroidered on the cuff of both his sleeves, indicating Jamoon’s status. Winter quickly pushed Geth up her sleeve as her heart rose to her throat.
A warm wind blew against her wet hair.
Jamoon’s robe billowed, giving him a greater form than he already possessed. Winter would have been terrified just seeing Jamoon, but it was the robed figures with him that bothered her most. Eleven beings stood tall behind Jamoon—six on one side and five on the other. Each of them wore a scarlet cloak with a black band running around his lower sleeves. From a former memory, Winter knew who and what they were.
The whole of Foo knew who they were.
One of Sabine’s most effective weapons of war had been his establishment of the two great Rings of Plague. Each Ring consis
ted of twelve nits, each possessing a different gift. Nits were people who were snatched from Reality by fate and brought to Foo, where each was given two things: a sycophant to help them cope with the shock, and a unique gift that they were expected to use in the work of enhancing dreams.
The gifts didn’t come in nice red boxes with yellow bows. They were abilities that developed slowly and over time, based on the nits’ needs and personalities. The gifts were ultimately bestowed by one of the Thirteen Stones in the Veil Sea.
Within each Ring of Plague Sabine had organized there was a complete assortment of powers: one to fight with ice, one to see through the soil, one to throw lightning, one to fly, one to fade, one to shrink, one to breathe fire, one to run like the wind, one to burrow, one to see through rock, one to levitate objects, and one to push and bind dreams.
Possessing all these gifts, the Rings could not be easily defeated. There was almost nothing they couldn’t do or fend off. Under Sabine’s direction, these Rings of Plague traveled across Foo, capturing any who would not join them in their quest to fuse Foo with Reality, and causing accidents to those who opposed them. A third of the inhabitants of Foo resisted Sabine’s leadership, but most of those beings lived in Cusp or the beautiful, well-protected, and prosperous city of Cork. Now, the members of the Ring of Plague were looking to find a way to infiltrate these last few strongholds of resistance.
They had no mercy, only a quest.
And that quest was to achieve the ability to move freely between Foo and Reality. Having been originally snatched from Reality, the members of the Ring knew what they were missing and desired to go back, taking with them the gifts they now had. Like Sabine, they believed it was possible.
For all its power and determination, the Ring of Plague was not an invincible foe, however. With the help of Winter and others, Geth had defeated the first one years before. Using his ability to travel by fate, Geth had succeeded in capturing the twelve angry nits and now had those devoted followers of Sabine held captive in secret places throughout Foo. Only Geth and Antsel knew where they were being detained, but of course Antsel was now gone, which left the secret to Geth alone.
Enraged by Geth’s disruption of the first Ring of Plague, Sabine was driven by an insatiable hatred of Geth, who as the head token of the Council of Wonder was the legitimate heir to the throne of Foo. Many years before, Sabine and his shadows had succeeded in capturing Geth and forcing his soul into the seed of a fantrum tree. But the rightful king of Foo had somehow escaped, and in some disguise was now back in Foo. If it was Geth’s aim to pick off the members of the second Ring of Plague, Jamoon was determined to prevent it.
Winter was now confronted by Jamoon and eleven ominous members of the second Ring of Plague. As a rant—an ungifted offspring of a nit and a cog—Jamoon was a being of such weak determination that he couldn’t ever just manipulate a dream and move on. As with all rants, his left half was in a state of constant change, continually reflecting dreams coming into Foo from Reality. Even so, Jamoon had somehow risen to be Sabine’s first in command and exercised some control over the members of the Ring.
Winter counted those there and realized that the Ring wasn’t complete. She wondered what gift they were missing. Had she realized that the absent member was Sabine and his gift of freezing, she might have simply frozen them all and fled. Unfortunately, because of her fear and confusion, that fact didn’t register.
Jamoon cleared his throat. “Hello, Winter,” he said calmly, suppressing all surprise. “You have returned. I would not have recognized you were it not for your eyes.”
Winter looked directly at him with her green eyes, fearing him, but having no clear understanding of who he really was.
“Where’s Leven?” Jamoon asked.
Winter was silent.
“Where’s Leven?” the eleven Ring members echoed in an ugly chorus, inching closer to the wild-haired girl.
Winter’s skin crawled.
“How should I know?” she shouted, getting to her feet and trying to act brave. “Those stupid rovens knocked me out and split us up.”
“And Geth?” Jamoon asked, as if he had only a casual interest. “Where is Geth?”
“Gone,” Winter snapped, hoping they wouldn’t search her. She pointed. “Look at the size of that chasm. He could be trapped anywhere in there.”
The gunt had completely filled in the rip, but that didn’t make the size any less spectacular. As far as anyone could see there was nothing but the dull shine off the gigantic river of gunt. It looked like a massive glacier that ran for miles.
“The rovens did an above-average job,” Jamoon smiled. “And Geth was in there, you say?”
“I’m sure he was,” Winter said sadly.
Jamoon and the members of the Ring hovering behind him began to hiss and shake, but whether they were registering frustration or joy, Winter couldn’t tell.
“And the old woman?” Jamoon asked.
Winter’s green eyes burned with hatred. She made a tight fist with each hand and could feel her fingernails digging into her palms, but she forced herself to take a deep breath and then release it. Gradually, the hatred in her eyes was replaced with sadness.
“She was trapped in the gunt,” Winter answered defiantly.
“Then she is dead,” Jamoon said sharply.
Winter was surprised by what Jamoon knew, but she forced herself to remain stone-faced and passive.
“Your eyes always could hide mountains,” Jamoon sniffed. “But I can see that the Lore Coil did not sweep over you—perhaps when it echoes back . . . For now, take comfort knowing that all of Foo knows of your mortal state. The Coil has been spotty on many things, but it spoke clearly about this. You are capable of dying. Reality, it seems, has made you vulnerable.”
Winter’s mind was racing, filled with impulses and synapses, frantically searching for some memory of what a Lore Coil was. The thought of everyone knowing that she and Leven could die was as frightening as any thought she had ever had.
As Winter was searching her mind, Jamoon tilted his head back slightly and clucked his tongue. Then he raised his arms, and the bottom half of his robe began to billow and sway.
Winter stared as bits of black seeped out from under his robe and rose into the air, where they separated, screaming and spitting and filling the sky. In just seconds, Jamoon and the Ring were surrounded by black, dead, yellow-eyed fowls. Jamoon motioned his arms forward, and the entire gathering of decaying nihils swooped toward Winter.
Winter froze them, but it didn’t slow the dead birds in the least. Frozen they screamed even louder, hurling toward her like an aggressive ice storm. The nihils swirled about her like a frigid twister, violently whipping her hair, the beating of their wings sucking the air from her lungs. A single nihil landed on her shoulder, clinging to her with its ice-pick talons. The nihil pecked Winter sharply on the neck.
Winter felt the sharp beak penetrate her skin, sending frozen waves of dark emotion and fear throughout her body. Winter swatted and yelled, fighting the hundreds of other birds away. It was useless. Her vision pulsated like a dying star. She felt her knees buckling, and her mind and body were filled with thousands of dark and troubling thoughts.
As Winter sank to the ground, Jamoon lifted his arms and the nihils gathered into a cloud, then swooped down and disappeared up under his robe, as though they had been vacuumed up. As they did so, their hissing and screaming ceased, and silence descended over the scene.
In the darkness, Winter lay on the ground, her body twitching and shivering.
“Bring her,” Jamoon ordered. “We will see what she remembers.”
Two members of the Ring of Plague picked Winter up. Geth pushed up against Winter’s wrist and scooted farther up her sleeve, hoping to remain undetected.
Chapter Nine
Friends Come in All Sizes, but Usually They Are Bigger Than a Toothpick
Dennis Wood didn’t have his own office at Snooker and Woe, but he had discovered
and claimed for his own a small, unused utility room—a closet, really—with a little window overlooking the street. Two years before, when the firm was throwing out some old furniture, Dennis had snuck a desk and a banged-up metal filing cabinet for himself and set them up in the closet. On the top of his desk was a cheap metal holder with a plastic strip embossed with the word Janitor on it. The name holder was the one thing he had been given by his boss. Dennis didn’t view it as a gift; he viewed it as one more way for his employers to make sure he knew exactly what he was.
Dennis kept his cleaning supplies in one of the drawers of the filing cabinet and tools for building model toys in his desk drawers. He spent a lot of time at that desk pretending to think, assembling model planes, tanks, and cars. Sometimes he could waste an entire day just sitting there. It was a good day when nobody came looking for him to clean something or empty something else.
Of course, his time was never completely wasted. Dennis loved assembling his plastic or balsa-wood models—the more intricate, the better—and he would spend hours lost in the act of building. He wanted desperately to own a plane that could fly him away or a tank that could bust him out of where he was. But Dennis knew that would never happen, so instead he spent his money and time building what most of the world would call expensive toys.
Dennis wasn’t building today.
For the last two hours Dennis had been sitting at his desk, staring at the toothpick he had come across during lunch. The toothpick felt warm and seemed to vibrate just a bit when he held it.
Dennis studied the sliver carefully, holding it underneath the thick magnifying glass he used for building models.
It was a long toothpick with a dark grain of wood running up and down one side. Just beneath the purple fringe top there looked to be the tiniest round knot, and above that to the side was a slight notch in the wood. The knot was no bigger than the tip of a dull pencil. Dennis reached for one of the X-Acto knives he kept in an empty mayonnaise jar on his desk and picked up the toothpick.