This flash of rage completely undid me. I saw little spots of color dancing in front of my eyes, followed by thick, murky brown darkness, as bold and out of place as a psychotic policeman. I had to seat myself carefully on the ground, lest I collapse on it altogether a moment later.
“Some fit of fury that was. Thank you for not launching into fisticuffs with me.” Lonli-Lokli’s voice no longer rustled like the wings of a dead butterfly. It was a regular human voice. Fairly ironic, I might add.
“Yeah, all it took was for me to get really mad,” I said, smiling weakly. “I couldn’t bear seeing you disappear on me like that. Help me up, will you?”
“Of course.”
Lonli-Lokli picked me up from the ground like I was a newborn kitten. If he made any effort at all, it was so as not to crush me by accident.
I stared at him. He was no longer transparent. He was Sir Shurf in the flesh, as real as day, now and then driving me nuts with his almost total likeness to the young Charlie Watts.
“It’s good you didn’t disappear,” I said. “Who would I have gotten to drag around these stupid bales if you had?”
“It truly is a good thing I did not disappear,” Lonli-Lokli said seriously. “I am standing here with you on the Inside-Out of the Dark Side and not going anywhere. Who would have thought it possible?”
“But why are you so sure that we are on the Inside-Out?”
“Praise be the Magicians that your practical skills far exceed your theoretical background,” he said. “Or else I would have known exactly what happens to madmen who wander into these nonexistent realms. Just look around you. Do you see how everything has changed?”
“That’s true,” I said, staring at my feet.
I was standing on the most mundane wet asphalt. That was the last thing I was expecting to see. Some sort of predatory grass latching onto my boots, talking pebbles that spew out four-letter words when a careless hiker stepped on them, or any other kind of everyday hallucination—these all would have made perfect sense to me. Anything but cracked asphalt, dark and wet, like it had recently been drenched in a downpour.
“You have the expression of someone who has just been to his own funeral,” Shurf said, surprised.
“Yep. Something like that. You know, this road looks suspiciously like a road in the World I was born in. And everything else does, too . . .”
I looked around. A dark-gray sky, wet trees, their leaves dripping, a few streetlamps surrounded by aureoles glowing salad-green, almost imperceptible in the slightly thickening twilight, the velvety surface of a hedge in the distance. All of this was very reminiscent of a landscape cut out of a picture of my World. Not a concrete, familiar place, but a general suggestion of one.
“What difference does it make what it looks like?” Shurf said, unfazed. “Maybe it looks this way to please you. Or maybe it has always looked like this. Are you sure that it is so important? What I would rather know is whether you still see the mouse tracks.”
I looked down. On the dark surface of the street, there really were the footprints of tiny paws, as distinct as if the creature had scampered across when it was freshly laid and soft and left a timeless trace in it. Timeless, that is, until the road was scheduled to be paved again.
“I see them,” I said. “Let’s go.”
We hurried into the bluish twilight gloom, where Doroth, the Elusive Avenger, was hiding from us. The road started to rise rather steeply, and soon I had to stop to catch my breath.
“You are panting and breathing as heavily on this incline as a fat farmer’s son on his wedding night, Sir Origin,” said Lonli-Lokli. “I seem to have wasted my effort when I tried to teach you my breathing exercises. Perhaps there really are things you will never learn?”
“You said yourself that it would take me at least forty years to learn them,” I mumbled.
When I had caught my breath, we continued walking along the aromatic hedge. Finally the slope ended, and we stopped in front of an ordinary wooden gate. It was open, and it squeaked quietly, swinging back and forth in the cold wind. The little tracks led into a garden, in the depths of which nestled an old three-story house topped with a small tower.
“I wouldn’t mind knowing where it is we’ve ended up,” I said.
“In a myth,” Shurf said. “Forward, Max.”
“Your eyes are glittering like the eyes of my cats when I fill their food bowl.”
“That is a mild comparison,” he said, laughing out loud. “Do you not realize what you have done for me? I could never have dreamed about an adventure like this.”
“You call this an adventure? While we were wandering about on the Dark Side, everything was absolutely strange and unprecedented, like a proper adventure. This, though, is pretty humdrum. A stroll through the Old City is way more interesting than this.”
“Sometimes it seems to me that you have an overactive imagination, and sometimes it seems to me that you do not have any imagination at all,” Lonli-Lokli said. “We are probably just very different in the way we see things.”
“That’s no surprise,” I said. “All right, let’s go. Speaking of adventures, keep behind my back. Like I’m the omnipotent Sir Lonli-Lokli, and you’re some clueless weakling like me.”
“Anything you say.”
We went into the garden and headed for the house. I had only put my foot onto the first step leading up to a massive stone veranda when a remorseless gush of memories poured over me, tearing to shreds my last bastion of common sense.
“What is it, Max?” Lonli-Lokli said, alarmed.
I guess the expression on my face reflected what I was feeling. What I wanted to know was, who was this tall stranger, and what was he doing on the veranda of my house?
A sharp pain pierced my chest, as though the Sword of King Mynin that was concealed there was shifting from side to side, trying to find a more comfortable position. It couldn’t have happened at a better time. The pain returned my memory to me and allowed me to grab onto the tatters of my former self—if only to restore the illusion that I was again the all-powerful Sir Max of Echo who could grapple with even greater problems than this. Anything to keep me from turning into a terrified lump of flesh and nerves, pathetic and helpless.
Then everything suddenly fell into place. The invisible traffic controller of my life decided to throw the right switch and avert disaster. About time.
“Okay, we’re good to go,” I said. “You are Shurf Lonli-Lokli, as I recall. I’m Max. I now live in Echo, I scare passersby with my Mantle of Death, and I work doing Magicians know what in the House by the Bridge. Before that . . . Well, never mind what happened before. But I remember that, too. Perfect. You know, just now I was absolutely sure that I had returned home. Actually, there’s a part of me that still considers this to be my own home. I’ve dreamed about this house many times, but I always forgot about it when I woke up. I . . . work here, or something. I guard the house at night. I come here at twilight and sit down in a chair covered in tattered old red velvet, in the large hall on the first floor. The people who live in the house always seemed to me to be ghosts. I think I was the ghost, and they were just ordinary people. They could never see me, but they sensed my presence. They never tried to sit in my chair, anyway. But wait, now I realize that this was all just a dream. Probably a dream.”
“Sometimes our memories surprise us,” Lonli-Lokli said with a nod. “Dreams and illusions can bear a very strong likeness to memories, and vice versa.”
“True.”
I opened the heavy door with some difficulty, leaning against it with the weight of my whole body. Even the weight of the door felt familiar. I remembered that my right shoulder always ached from having to struggle with the door every evening. I overpowered the door, and the first thing we saw was the marble floor of the entrance hall and an umbrella stand to the right of the stairs with two umbrellas: one white and one gray, with old-fashioned wooden handles. They had been sticking out of this umbrella stand for as long as I co
uld remember . . . Wait, what?
“Shurf, you’re right. Illusions do resemble memories, so much so that it makes me dizzy,” I said. “Now we’ll go into the great hall. On the left is a door leading to a glassed-in terrace. At the end of the hall are a black leather divan, a chair similarly upholstered, and a table for newspapers. To the right is a wooden staircase, and behind it, my red chair and a mirror on the wall. I have never seen myself in the mirror, by the way. There’s also a small marble table and a table lamp with a green lampshade. Sometimes someone switches it on, but I’ve never done it myself . . . Well, let’s go. And take my hand, will you? My knees are trembling, if you want to know the truth.”
“Mine, too,” Lonli-Lokli said. “There is something in this place that makes me tremble from cold and loneliness. I was such a fool as to think that cold and loneliness had long ago lost their power over me.”
He held out his hand, encased in its huge leather protective glove. I latched on to it like a drowning man clutches at the neck of his hapless rescuer, and we entered the great hall. It looked exactly how I had described it. In fact, I hadn’t doubted for a second that it would.
“Sit down on the divan, Shurf,” I said, letting go of his hand reluctantly. “A front-row seat for the only spectator. You probably shouldn’t intervene in what’s going to happen. I never know myself what that will be, but—”
“I understand, Max,” he said softly. “You are in some sense at home here. I am not. Therefore, I will simply sit and watch.”
“Good,” I said.
I went up to my chair covered with tattered red velvet, sat down, and sighed with inexpressible relief. I had wandered the devil knows where, for the devil knows how long, but now I had come home. I could rest. I so needed to rest.
I closed my eyes and almost let the gentle waves of slumber carry me off. I still can’t bring myself even to think where it might have taken me, if a familiar pain in the chest hadn’t forced me to open my eyes and shake my head vigorously. This is no time to relax, I told myself in fury. Later you’ll go home and make yourself comfortable in your armchair, and then you can turn into warm jelly. You can do whatever you want—only not here, and not now.
The pain didn’t subside. I looked down at my chest and discovered that King Mynin’s Sword was visible and palpable. Its carved hilt was protruding from my chest. The sight was so horrendous that I wouldn’t have been ashamed to fall down in a dead faint. I didn’t, though. I simply coughed and cleared my throat, making sure at the same time that I was still alive.
Then I raised my eyes to the staircase ascending into the gloom, and called out, in a voice not loud but still commanding:
“Doroth. Come here. No more hiding.”
I had no doubt that my command would be fulfilled instantly. The Sword of King Mynin, which had become part of me, was its previous owner’s plenipotentiary, so the frightened little beast had no choice but to obey. His master had summoned him.
Doroth made haste to scramble down the staircase. Never in my life had I seen a more absurd sight: a diminutive, gray, short-legged creature with a head twice as big as its body. It looked more like a teddy bear put together in a slapdash fashion than a mouse. Only its tail looked like it belonged to a proper mouse, or even a rat—it was a long, thin shoelace of lively pink flesh.
The creature dashed head over heels up to my boots and peeped a few times. Doroth wanted to make amends, by the looks of it. He was asking for mercy.
“Sorry, no,” I said. “Peeping just doesn’t cut it. I want you to turn the people you enchanted back into human form. Peeping I can do myself.”
Doroth rushed around in circles and peeped still more beseechingly. I held out my hand and, obeying a sudden urge, picked him up off the floor. For a moment I stared at him, not knowing what to do next. Then I did something that I would never have expected of myself: I carefully placed the base of his tail on the transparent edge of the sword protruding from my chest. The severed tail fell into my lap. Doroth gave a desperate shriek, thrashed about in my hand, then went limp. Several drops of viscous bluish liquid formed an intricate new pattern on my left palm, crossing out the signs depicting my True Name with fanciful swirls and lines.
I licked my soiled hand mechanically, obeying the same atavistic instinct that makes kids put any unfamiliar trash into their mouths to try it. Only then did I realize that it was Doroth’s blood—as bitter and aromatic as an apricot pit. For a few seconds my poor head tried to work through this information. Then I shook off my muddled ponderings and concentrated on what I was feeling. A heavy hot wave seemed to rise up out from the depths of my body. It softly but peremptorily announced its dominion over me, and there was only one thing I could do: let this ruthless power bear me off wherever it wished.
At last, the force that was spinning me around grew tired of its game, and it mercifully threw its new toy upon the shore of what passed nominally as reality.
I opened my eyes and looked around. I discovered that the hilt of Mynin’s Sword had again become invisible and intangible. Wonderful. Otherwise what had happened would look too much like a low-budget movie about the adventures of the living dead starring me, my favorite actor.
Everything had settled into place. I was sitting in the red chair and holding Doroth’s tail in my left fist—a smooth pink cord of flesh, still alive and almost all-powerful. The magic tail of the last mouse king of this World. Now I knew everything about Doroth and the Manooks who served him, about the Great Red Xmiro Desert and the ancient magic of Uandook, available to animals and plants but not to people. I felt as if I had known these facts forever—since childhood, at least, like the alphabet or multiplication tables. I had simply forgotten them for a while, but now that I had remembered, all was well.
In particular, I knew that Doroth was born in the very heart of the Red Xmiro Desert many thousands of years ago and had fled from it, leaving behind no descendants. He left not of his own volition but on the command of an extravagant young Origin by the name of Mynin, who had decided to bustle about collecting all the wonders of the Universe.
The Manooks, of course, were descendants of the Maxxa, a small ancient tribe of rodent charmers, cursed by all the mice kings of Uandook in succession. The curse ensured that the lands surrounding the Maxxa settlements would never bear fruit, children would inherit only the bad qualities of their parents, and good actions would never be rewarded in kind. Even King Mynin, who accepted help from these unfortunates, never showered blessings upon them. The Maxxa followed him eagerly, hoping that the good fortune of the Origin would be stronger than their curse. And so it was for a while.
Beside these curious but useless historical facts, I knew everything I needed to know about saving the people who had turned into rag dolls. That was the only thing that mattered now.
I turned to Lonli-Lokli.
“Come on, Sir Shurf, unpack our treasures.”
He really is the most perfect creature in the Universe. The whole time he had been sitting on the black leather divan at the end of the room, not betraying his presence with so much as a sigh. Now he calmly got down to work.
“You know what to do, if I understand correctly?” he said finally.
I nodded, taking the white dog from the pocket of my Mantle of Death. “You’ll be first, boy. I was born in a terrible place where it was the custom to try out experiments on dogs, and only then on people. Now you’ll be the first to come back to life—that’s a serious advantage.”
I placed the toy on the marble table under the mirror, rummaged around in my pockets, and found that the dagger I had been given on the first day of service was still with me. That would come in handy. I cut off a piece of the rat’s tail that was wriggling about in my hand like an eel, and made a neat little incision in the tummy of the dog. Into the cut I placed the small scrap of still living, warm, protesting flesh.
“There we go,” I said, carefully depositing Droopy’s soft cloth body on the floor. “Now we just have to wait. L
et’s turn away. If you look too closely into the eyes of a miracle, it can get shy and not work—if only because people’s eyes aren’t used to seeing wonders. Even our eyes, my friend. Even ours.”
I hid Doroth’s tail in my pocket and went over to Shurf. He was laying out the dolls on the reading table.
“Would you like a bite to eat?” I said. “I still have the feeling that I’m the master of the house.”
“Of course I would. Can we even do that here?”
I didn’t bother to speak my wishes out loud or even to rummage around in the Chink between Worlds. I simply opened the door to the glassed-in veranda. I knew there was a table there already laid for tea. It was always set to welcome guests. The tea in the cups was always hot, and the strawberry pie was always fresh.
“After you,” I said. “I’m becoming like Kofa. No matter what happens, I always have a table laden with food and drink at my disposal.”
“How appropriate,” Shurf said, sipping the tea. “Mmm, delicious!”
“Indeed. Now try the pie. I am as staunch a patriot of the Unified Kingdom as any other loyal immigrant, but boy have I missed strawberries.”
I took such a huge bite of the pie, I almost choked. I had to swallow it without chewing. I was more cautious with the next bite, but alas I had no time to savor it. I heard the door bang, and a moment later, Droopy rushed in, yelping in ecstasy. His shaggy paws were launched straight in the direction of my shoulders. Five hundred odd pounds of happy, completely unbridled fur descended on me, sending the pie and me sprawling out on the floor. Droopy demonstrated his undying affection by slobbering all over my nose, boots, and ears, and everything else he could reach. He chose to ignore the pie.