Tim was very surprised.
One minute he was in a lake drowning, and the next he was standing on a dirt road facing a row of spectacular mountains and being swarmed by small furry creatures who insisted he was brilliant and would be best suited by picking them.
Tim screamed for only the third time in his life.
He batted and swatted and kicked. He danced and punched and rolled over and over against the ground. Still the sycophants covered him. A brown-haired one took his hand and begged him to consider choosing it. Tim flung the poor thing off to the side of the road. A red-haired one latched onto Tim’s right arm and kept telling Tim how good it was and how safe he would be if only he would choose it. Tim pulled the sycophant off his arm and tossed it to the ground. Another planted itself on Tim’s foot and looked up at him with wide eyes, pleading to be the one. Tim kicked his leg and sent the sycophant flinging a good half mile into some trees.
“Stop it,” Tim yelled. “Get away from me.”
“You’ll do fine,” one said.
“I think you’d be very smart to pick me.”
“You’re a wise human, and I am here to serve.”
The sycophants fought with one another, kicking and punching until only a handful of the most dominant ones were still fighting over Tim. Two knocked each other out, leaving only a fat gray one and a wiry blond one. Tim swatted at both of them, but they kept disappearing and then reappearing to tell him something positive about himself.
The fat one kicked at the blond one, but as it kicked, the blond sycophant pulled the fat one’s leg up, spinning its confused adversary into the trees.
The blond sycophant materialized on Tim’s right arm.
“And then there was me,” it said.
Tim screamed for the fourth time in his life. His foot slipped on the dirt path and he fell to the ground face first.
“You’re okay,” the sycophant said, disappearing quickly. “You’re in a place called Foo.”
Tim pushed himself up and stared in the direction of the sycophant’s voice.
“This is Foo?” Tim asked with excitement.
“Yes, this is Foo.”
Tim smiled a weary smile.
“You know about it?” the sycophant asked, surprised. “How can that be?”
“I’ve been trying to get here,” Tim said, standing slowly. “I can’t believe it exists. What are you?”
“I’m a sycophant. My name is Swig. But, as is customary, you can rename me if you wish.”
“A sycophant?” Tim asked.
“We are aware that the term has been perverted in Reality,” Swig said. “But it was our word here first. Somehow it leaked through dreams into your vocabulary long ago.”
“And where exactly is here?”
“Foo.”
“I know that,” Tim said. “But where is Foo?”
A horselike creature with six legs flew across the sky, landed gracefully, and galloped into the trees. Tim stared at it with awe.
“Foo exists in the folds of your mind,” Swig said.
“Impossible.”
“Really?” Swig said sincerely. “And yet here you are.”
Tim looked at himself. He looked down at his arms and legs. He shuffled his feet against the dirt and ran his hand through his hair.
“I’m here,” Tim said. “I can’t believe it’s real.”
“Believe it,” Swig said. “And I’m here to help you in any way I can.”
“It would help if I could see you,” Tim said.
Swig materialized instantly. He was about eleven inches tall, with blond fur all over his body. He was wearing a dark brown robe that hung open at the front, showing his furry stomach and chest. Swig had soft purple eyes and ears that looked like flat maple leaves that had been pressed in a book for years. His feet were bare, as were his knobby, long fingers. He smiled in a submissive, unassuming way.
“I’m looking for someone,” Tim said.
“Really?” Swig said, having never heard of a nit who had come to Foo looking for something, much less one who already knew of Foo.
“A girl,” Tim said. “She goes by the name of Winter.”
“Nice,” Swig replied seriously. “I’ve got a sister named Spring.”
Tim looked deflated. “I guess it would have been too much to hope that you knew her,” he said.
“Foo’s a giant place,” Swig said. “But if you must find her, fate will put her in your path. It brought you here.”
“Fate?” Tim asked, looking around. “Are there people around I could ask?”
“The city of Cusp is just a couple of miles down,” Swig said. “All new nits are welcomed there. Perhaps someone there has heard of this Winter.”
“Which way?”
Swig pointed.
A light rain began to fall. Lightning flashed far away in the valley of Morfit as a small storm passed through. Tim could hear faint whispering in the wind.
It was insulting.
“Ignore the thunder,” Swig said, noticing Tim wince. “It can be quite rude. Now, I’ve had one burn before you. He preferred that I walk behind him. Do you have a preference?”
“No.”
“Would it be too forward if I asked to ride on your shoulders?”
Tim reached down and pulled Swig up onto his left shoulder as the distant thunder called him weak-chinned.
“It’s like it knows me,” Tim said, referring to the thunder.
“Foo is a stranger to no man,” Swig said. “A surprise, maybe, but no stranger.”
Tim moved quickly in the direction Swig had previously pointed. He was bewildered and confused, but a larger part of him was relieved to have finally found Foo.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Dangling
Geth, Winter, Andrus, and Sait swung in small circles at the end of the moonlit floss. The rope holding them was now as big around as a quarter. The rumbling had increased to the point where they had to yell to one another to be heard.
“We can’t hang here forever,” Andrus cried.
“I’ve got no circulation in the bottom half of my body,” Sait said. “Can’t someone just loosen the rope a bit?”
“No,” Geth insisted.
“You lithens are infuriating,” Andrus said.
“Loosen the rope and we all fall,” Winter pointed out.
Clover slid down the moonlit cord and landed softly on Geth’s head.
“Everyone doing okay?” he asked.
“I’ve been better,” Winter admitted.
Clover looked at Geth closely. “Are you losing weight?” he asked. “Because you look great. I didn’t think diets made you shorter.”
“He’s shrinking,” Winter said.
“Oh, Leven had that problem,” Clover said. “Anyhow, it seems that Lith is falling apart. From up top, I could see the Want’s house crumbling in the distance. It’s gone now.”
“Our heart goes out to him,” Winter said, frustrated. “I hope we live to see the wreckage.”
“Lith’s not exactly falling apart,” Geth said, ignoring Winter’s frustration. “The soil is slithering beneath the water to join with the soil of the gloam. By morning Lith will be completely gone. Just a spot on the water.”
“I wish I had one of those cameras from Reality,” Clover said. “I know I’ll always have the memory of this, but the details—I forget some . . .”
The cavern bellowed and hissed. The cord they were hanging from bounced up and down.
“The moonlight’s spongy tonight,” Clover said.
Winter had a clever response to that, but it was drowned out by the loud scraping of sheets of rock breaking free and crashing to the ground. At the same moment, the five of them were pulled upward about six feet in a long, dragging motion.
“We moved!” Sait exclaimed.
“And it was up,” Andrus added.
“I’ll see what’s happening,” Clover said.
He scampered up the rope, hand over hand, and disappeared
out of the hole and into the great above.
The rope dragged upward another four feet. This time, after the initial pull, the rope kept moving up slowly.
“Have you thought about what might happen if we actually make it?” Winter asked, her neck hanging back from the position she was tied in.
“The circulation will return to our bodies,” Andrus said.
“It’s not that,” Winter said. “I’m pretty sure the hole isn’t big enough to pull us through.”
Everyone looked up.
“It’s not big enough to pull even one of us through,” Sait wailed.
“Any suggestions?” Winter asked Geth.
“Fate’s gotten us this far,” he replied.
“Remind me never to be in peril with you again,” Winter said passionately. “This isn’t a test to see if you believe, it’s the last moments of our lives, last moments we should be using to save Leven.”
Clover scrambled back down headfirst. When he had almost reached them he lost his grip on the slick, moonlit rope and fell, crashing into Geth’s head.
“Sorry. It’s the trees,” Clover said breathlessly. “And the bushes and even stones. They’re all uprooting and moving to higher ground. The tree you’re tied to is trying to get up to the roundlands. All the stones are rolling to the sea.”
“They know Lith is sinking,” Geth said quietly.
“That’s not such a hard thing to figure out,” Clover said. “I bet the island is halfway underwater. I can hear the water rising beneath you even now.”
“That tree better hurry,” Sait said.
The small stream of moonlight lit the cavern enough that they could fully witness its falling apart.
“What about the opening?” Geth asked Clover as they continued to jerk upward. “Can it be widened?”
Clover ran back up the shaky rope.
“Seeeeee,” Geth said to Winter, his voice shaking from the movement. “It’ll work ouuuuut.”
Twelve seconds later Clover was back down.
“There’s nothing I can do,” Clover said. “The ground is too hard to break apart.”
“Well, we’re not going to fit through that,” Sait complained as the rope dragged them closer.
“Then we’re going to die,” Andrus said softly, as if he had just now realized the true severity of the situation.
“Careful,” Geth said. “We escaped from the cage, had a pillar to stand on, and are now being suspended by moonlight. I’d say fate has something besides death in store for us.”
“I guess we’ll find out momentarily if you’re right,” Winter said.
The tree on the other end must have been getting desperate, because they were now moving up in a series of rapid jerks.
“Wow, that tree must be jumping,” Geth said.
“How sad,” Clover observed. “It probably abandoned its roots. It won’t live even if it does find dry, solid soil.”
They were twenty feet from the opening.
“This is bad,” Sait bawled.
Ten feet.
“My pathetic life is flashing before my eyes,” Andrus said. “And I’m embarrassed by how pointless it is.”
Three feet.
“Hold on,” Geth said unnecessarily, reaching up to touch the ceiling.
He grabbed at the edge of the opening and tried as hard as he could to pull at the ground. It was solid stone, and his strength was not enough to do anything with it.
The tree pulled them up farther, shooting Geth’s arm through the hole and cramming his and Winter’s heads against the cavern’s ceiling.
The moonlight holding them creaked as the scared tree frantically tried to climb higher. The rope twisted and pinned Andrus and Sait right up under Geth and Winter. Clover hopped around all of them looking for anything he could loosen or some way he could help. The cavern rumbled and choked as the sound of rushing water filling in holes increased below.
“I can’t breathe,” Andrus gasped. “The rope.”
“My lungs are being smashed,” Sait added.
Geth’s and Winter’s faces were pushed tight against the ceiling, preventing them from speaking as freely as those with bound lungs.
Up above, the frightened tree pulled as hard as it could. Just as the rope was about to cut everyone in half, the moonlight broke and Geth, Winter, Clover, Andrus, and Sait fell hundreds of feet into an entirely different mess.
The freed tree, meanwhile, hopped its way to a higher ground that would soon be nothing but water.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Into the Dark
The air above the castle was filled with hundreds of confused rovens. Their panicked screaming competed with the sound of Lith being dragged under. Over half of Lith was underwater, and every tree and bush that had ever grown on the island was tearing up roots to get to where the castle once stood.
The roundlands on the top of Lith were filling in like an old forest. Other trees, unable to make it that far, plummeted off cliffs and mountain walls down into the Veil Sea, their limbs waving desperately as they fell to their wet deaths.
The great castle that once had been was now several smaller structures covered in debris and fire. Nits by the hundred were fleeing from the scene, only to be trampled by trees or brought up short by the increasing lack of land.
Lith was disappearing.
Leven heard the sound of feet running and tried to open his eyes. His head felt like someone had filled it with lead and was now jumping on it. He could smell smoke and feel heat on the right side of his face.
He willed his eyes to open, but they wouldn’t.
His thoughts were abstract and confusing. He kept seeing his mother and Antsel, only to have their faces replaced by those of Addy and Terry. He could see the first time he had met Winter, and the dark center of the earth where he had first been introduced to Geth. He could see Clover under his bed and Geth as a man. He could see his mother and her smiling at him. He could see the Want’s eyes, shriveled and dangling.
“Help me,” Leven whispered as he lay there between the mounds of rumbling debris.
There was no one to hear him. Even if there had been any nits nearby, they never would have stopped, too concerned for their own lives.
Leven could hear the cries of the rovens and the screams of people running about. All the noise was punctuated by the ripping apart and disintegration of Lith.
“Move,” the Want’s voice sounded.
Leven’s body shook with chills. The voice seemed to push through his skin and scrape up against his bones.
“Move.” The Want’s speech was like the sound of water being poured over hot coals.
Leven opened his eyes. There was fire to the right of him and smoke everywhere. But there was no Want. Leven’s right hand was bloody from a gash he had suffered while being blown off his feet.
“Arise.”
Leven stood slowly, his black robe moving in the odd wind. He was surprised by all the trees everywhere. One tree in the distance caught fire, and he watched it jump off the edge and down into the water. Leven could see some nits still with their faces to the ground sucking on the last bits of dreams and refusing to run for their lives.
“Come,” the voice whispered directly to Leven’s soul.
“Where are you?” Leven asked the air, not expecting an answer. The Want’s voice seemed to originate more from inside of him than from some other place.
Leven turned.
There was a large portion of the castle still standing. The far side of it smoldered, and all around it lay stones and rock that had crumbled from its face. Hundreds of trees huddled together near it, as if it offered safety.
“Quickly,” the voice hissed.
Leven stepped through the wreckage and around a rectangular fire. The trees circling the castle were not about to let him through. Almost instinctually, Leven raised his hand, and the trees reluctantly parted.
“Come,” the Want’s voice whispered.
Leven’s heart was t
orn. His soul was so confused. Ever since he had seen the longing, his feelings for Foo had intensified. He wanted nothing but to set her free and let the whole of Foo feel as he did. He knew fate had a path it needed him to walk, but Leven wished the Want would just take care of whatever fate wanted so that he could release Phoebe.
“Come,” the Want’s voice said sternly.
Leven kicked at a large wooden plank that had most likely been a door at some time. He reached down and pulled it out of the way and stepped into an archway that was covered with stone and as dark as decay.
“Come.”
Leven’s heart beat like the slamming of doors—each thump more painful and perceived than the last. He moved down into the dark and found a large room still intact. Light from a fire lit it just enough for him to see his way.
“Forward,” the voice sounded.
The word seemed to give Leven a bit of hope, as if he were moving in the right direction. The ground beneath him shook like a beaten carpet. He could still hear the faint screams of rovens and nits outside. At the end of the room was a dark hallway almost entirely hidden by long, gray drapes. Leven parted the fabric and stepped behind it. The drapes settled back into place and silenced all noise from outside.
Leven looked into the dark. He moved forward, reaching out into the blackness. His hand trembled and his heart pounded loudly enough for him to hear it.
A thick, screeching form sprang from the darkness and pounded Leven in the chest. He fell backward onto the ground, grasping at his assailant, tearing away handfuls of stringy blackness. Leven rolled over, pulling the being with him. He shifted and wrapped his arms around the form, squeezing the breath out of it. Three thin lines of moonlight scratched across the attacker’s face.
“You,” Leven whispered in disbelief.
“I need the key,” the Want’s shadow demanded, shoving his dark fist into Leven’s face.
Leven saw stars and felt the earth move.
“Give me the key!”
Leven tore at the shadow’s face, ripping bits of black from its chin and neck. As quickly as Leven tore the pieces away, the shadow regained its shape. The shadow screamed and bit Leven on the cheek.