 
### Clara Drummond and the Book of Mrunelight

Book #2 of the Bestselling Word Bender Chronicles

By Malachi Moose-Rat

This book is work of fiction. Any reference to historical events, real people, or real locales is used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Cover design by Mariana Meerkat

Copyright © 2018 by Malachi Moose-Rat

Published by Critters Unusual at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

All rights reserved.

*****
CHAPTER ONE

Clara fixed her bright eyes on the sky. It was blue over the house; but in the distance, coming rapidly nearer and nearer, was a terrible black cloud–a cloud almost as black as ink–and already there were murmurs in the trees and cawings among the birds, the breeze growing stronger and stronger--the prelude to a great agitation of nature.

For days the weather people on TV have been saying that the city should expect heavy rain, wild winds and snow in the mountains. They say it will be the biggest storm this winter and there may be damage done.

But Clara had an odd feeling about the ominous black clouds bullying the sky as they thundered in. She had a feeling that Krygzyk may have something to do with this sudden and unusually violent storm.

Deciding it best to head indoors and join everyone inside, she moved swiftly to the house. What she did not expect to find was Aunt Flora huddled on the living room floor with her arms tightly around Fauna who was sobbing like a baby.

Patches stood his ground in the corner, hissing and pacing. When the animals go kooky, there is definitely something strange happening.

Her aunt, with terror in her eyes, sought Clara out and yelled, "SIT DOWN SOMEWHERE ALREADY. WE'RE DIGGING IN FOR THE LONG HAUL!"

"Where's dad?" Clara yelled back.

"NEVER YOU MIND, MISSY. DO AS YOU'RE TOLD!"

Not even when everyone was pulling together and fighting for their lives could Aunt Flora speak in a soft, kind voice. Clara wondered not for the first time if her aunt even had such a voice.

She thought that maybe such a voice, if she indeed had one, was kept locked up tight in a crusty dusty jar in a deep dark closet full of squeaky nasty things.

Things got kinda fuzzy after that as the storm raged on with a force highly unusual for a place with consistently mild weather. There was much fretting and hand holding and rocking in place with Aunt Flora more than once yelling to the ceiling, "Please make it stop!" in exasperated tones. In this high stress situation it seemed the only thing cousin Fauna could do was whine, sob and hug her mother.

Rain water was pouring through the closed windows; the trees were bent in half. There was a huge crash as a ceiling fan smashed to the floor.

Everyone had surrounded themselves with mattresses and huddled in the crowded living room which had now been turned into a makeshift command center. Aunt Flora took cover as if her and her daughter were the only important things in the world.

Gee, Clara thought, I can see what she thinks about ME!

Clara did the same in the basement as she fended for herself. Nobody from upstairs came looking for her, like she was better off down there.

The storm raged on causing each second to morph into minutes of sheer terror. Aunt Flora kept shouting at the ceiling as if expecting and answer from there. All one could see was a plump petulant woman screaming her head off while holding a sobbing girl, voicing strong words and commands to a rather unresponsive empty ceiling.

Like most people Aunt Flora longed to be a film star herself, though it was difficult to imagine what parts she could play, except for nasty aunts with odious daughters.

The horror show continued unrelenting while Clara hunkered into her own safe place well below. More than once Clara thought they were surely going to die.

When everything settled down after what seemed a full scale enemy assault, "Oh thank goodness" sighed Aunt Flora, and she and her daughter drifted off to fitful sleep.

In the basement, sleep came blissfully quick but was not long lasting. Clara shivered awake to the sound of the screaming wind thudding against the side of the house; Hurricane Zara had doubled down on its destructive efforts with a roar.

Clara didn't know if her father had ever come home. Aunt Flora wasn't talking about it but Clara figured he must be staying at work and taking shelter there. He had done the same another time during the great storm two years ago since it was not safe to travel in the violent weather. So it made sense he'd be doing the same thing this time.

The walls were shaking, the cat was hissing, and Clara was sure the house was about to collapse. The radio was playing full blast upstairs broadcasting the minute by minute storm tracking updates. There was nothing to do but to wait and listen to the crackling radio signal that came and went. The radio news team said it was the worst storm they had ever seen...anywhere.

Nobody came downstairs to check on her.

With her feet curled beneath her, Clara held out by sitting on her bed with her feet off the floor since it was now covered with water. The bottom part of her dresser looked like it was already soaked through and Clara was happy she had put most of her clothes in the topmost drawers.

She hummed a little song as she sat to help calm her, something she had done for as long as she could remember. It was a trick her mom had taught her. Being still a little girl at an impressionable age, there were many times when she missed her mother and wondered why she had to leave them. She missed her mother terribly right then. Huddling her cat all alone during a massive storm and she could sure use a mother's love.

Clara began humming her song louder and more frantically as she rocked in place and tears began running down her face. She could still picture her mother's face but then she was no longer sure if it was mother's face she pictured or not. She knew there were pictures around somewhere but her father had hid all the pictures once it was all too clear that mother was not coming back home.

She could still remember how her father had spent weeks or maybe months where he didn't say much, but spent most of the time shaking his head sadly and mumbling to himself. When the day finally came where Clara saw tears in her father's eyes, she didn't know what to do but hug him and cry herself.

But even in his agony, her father showed his love to her without hesitation.

"We'll make it through this difficult time, sweetie," he said, choking back tears and hugging her tight. "I promise. And you know what? I feel like as long as I have you with me we can do anything. I love you soooo much!"

He pushed her hair back and out of her eyes in attempt to smooth it down. She thought it not appropriate to remind him that the waywardness of her light brown curls was strictly the fault of nature.

Well, that was then and as if seizing upon the bad news along came the auntie and cousin squad. Would we make it through THIS difficult time daddy? she wondered.

The tortuous night seemed to drag on forever. All she could hear was the wind and rain lashing harder and harder against the house as if they were taking turns trying to outdo each other to see who could inflict the most damage.

Every now and then the terrifying sound of tree branches snapping apart could be heard. To Clara it sounded so loud sometimes she was afraid branches would explode through the walls like spears.

She grabbed Patches and hugged him tightly to her chest. He purred franticly, obviously spooked. Clara felt a little better holding him close. She felt that together they could survive anything.

She was surely her father's daughter. Just to be safe, she crossed her fingers, not wanting anything to jinx her luck.

Hugging Patches close and whispering "Please...please," she laid back against her pillows as her eyes slammed shut...

She was in a dark place. So dark she couldn't even see her hands. And the air felt cold, moist and thick. She could feel her feet touching water. Where was she? Her heart was thumping in her chest as she walked slowly forward.

She bumped into a wall and stubbed her toe.

"OUCHH!!" she cried.

She turned around feeling for the wall and leaned back against it to take the weight off her foot. Immediately she heard a soft buzzing sound. She tended to her sore toe as the soft buzzing continued in the background. By degrees the buzzing got louder and louder grabbing her attention till she could feel it thrumming and vibrating through her, causing her to tingle.

Out of the corner of her eye she caught sight of a purple light. The light glowed softly at first then burned brighter and brighter like a multi intensity light bulb.

She slid along the wall in an effort to get a closer look at this light.

As she came closer to it, she felt the light radiate heat as it burned brighter. Then, like being struck by an electric jolt she saw the immense purple light shooting out from and completely surrounding the now open Book of Mrunelight as it lie splayed on the floor, buzzing, glowing, and sparking.

Above the pages, the oddest sort of letters like runes or hieroglyphics leapt and bounced, spinning in concentric circles. The letters wheeled faster and faster in a kind of hypnotic ritualistic dance.

When Clara saw the picture of the Færsceaþa float up from the book, opening as it spilled more letters into the spinning circles, an icy chill went up and her spine causing her to grind her teeth.

Pulled to the scene as if by magnetic force, her feet were glued in place, her eyes unable to look away. Her heart was beating so hard she could hear it pounding. Shock turned to cold horror when she heard a sinister baritone voice in heavy echo begin to speak the words forming above the book: ɛɛacən ɛɛaldian ɛɛaldor ɛɛaldorbiscop ɛɛaldorduuguþ ɛɛaldorləas ɛɛaldorlice ɛɛaldormann ɛɛaldorþegn ɛɛaldre ɛɛældɽʲht ɛɛaldsəaxan ɛɛalduung ɛɛall ɛɛalle ɛɛalles ɛɛællgylɟn ɛɛalluunga.

Clara shuddered.

She felt like she was in a horror movie where the evil villain arrives to kill the unlucky victims. The powerful voice reverberated and shook the walls. Her knees were knocking. She wet herself. She was sure death was...

She woke up screaming kicking her feet up and down and slapping at the bed.

Her kicks were so frenetic she had kicked Patches from his sleeping place at her feet sending him sprawling across the wet floor with a sickening SPLOOSH.

"KRAAAHHKKK!" he screeched.

As Clara's screaming ceased she settled down. And suddenly an unnatural silence took over the room.

"Werod earfoþhwil wician widewe," Clara mumbled in zombielike monotone, repeating it in a continuous loop as if some type of enchantment or hex.

Patches stood in a corner hissing and clawing the floor.

Clara kept on mumbling as if unstoppable. Her arms were held stiff and straight at her sides, her hands balled into fists. She was squeezing them so tight her knuckles turned white.

Her eyes rolled back in her head.

"Werod earfoþhwil wician widewe..."

Patches ran across the room, jumped on her chest and began trilling loudly, mrrroww, mrrroww, mrrroww, scratching fiercely at the blanket covering her. It was obvious the claws had reached Clara's skin when she slapped the cat off her chest and sat up straight.

"AAAACCCHHH!" she shrieked. "What is WRONG with you Patchy?"

Now the cat began a steady "Grrrr!" sound, never taking his eyes off his master.

Not understanding what had just happened, Clara treated it like it was an extension of her nightmare. This gave a whole new meaning to the term "painful nightmare".

"Did your bad mommy knock you off her chest?" she cooed to Patches. She slapped at herself, "Bad...bad...mommy!"

The cat looked at her quizzically, its headed tilted to the right.

"Come here sweetie."

Not sure if it was safe to go to her, the cat backed into a corner as he stared her down.

Clara made a pouting face and rubbed her eyes. She had no idea what had happened with the storm while she slept. But looking around her it was clear the house had not collapsed. At the basement level anyway.

Upstairs, the living room/command center appeared much as it was when Clara last saw it, except for the mess of dishes and food debris scattered everywhere. She noticed that both her aunt and cousin had lain down to sleep right where they had put their mattresses after they had been used as barricades.

They all had been very lucky. It was a devastating storm, sure to become legend. And when it was finally over, the electricity was out, water cut off and there were no phone lines. And water splattered just about everywhere it seemed.

Clara got ready for school then went off to find her friend Jenny.

Wow! Outside looked like a war zone. There was water everywhere, fallen tree limbs, banged up cars, and trash trash and more trash much like her mangled living room only on a grander scale.

She met her friend at her door but Jenny was surprised to see her.

"You know school's off today, right? Some parts of the school even collapsed."

"Whoa! I had no idea. We have no electricity at my house."

"We don't have any either but my dad went by the school this morning and saw the principal walking around shaking his head. He said there was more damage than he expected. He said it looked like the gymnasium and lunchroom had collapsed. Maybe some classrooms too."

"I've noticed when grownups shake their heads it usually means something is really wrong."

Jenny chuckled. "Yeah, I've noticed that too. The principal said he doesn't know how soon school will be back in session. But no school for today anyways. He said they'd be calling the parents when they knew more about it."

"If the phones are working that is."

"Yeah. If the phones are working. Do you think if the phones don't start working soon we might be off for like the whole week?"

"Geez," said Clara. "Wouldn't that be totally awesome?"

"Yeah. Something like."

"What if this is like one of those science fiction movies, right? Like maybe we're like the last people on Earth?"

"You're kinda goofy Clara. That's why I like you."

"And you're kinda goofy too."

"Yeah. We're like two totally goofy girls who totally have no school today. What should we do?"

Clara thought about it a minute and had an idea.

"How 'bout going by the school to see for ourselves? Might be interesting."

"Go by the school? You must be bored silly as my mom would say."

"Not bored. But we're like the last two little girls on Earth, right? And we're exploring and stuff to see what kind of survival supplies we can find."

"Oooh! Girls with like awesome fighting skills and monster backpacks?"

"Yeah. With ray guns and stuff."

"We should have a pet monkey."

"Ummm," Clara murmured while she thought.

"Hey. How about your cat being the monkey?" chirped Jenny.

"Patches?"

"Sure. If we can be the last little girls on Earth exploring for anything we can get our hands on, he can be the monkey."

Clara thought that Patches was not too happy with her this morning, so maybe not. And besides. She didn't want to go home and wake the Terribles when she had such a fun day planned.

"I know," enthused Clara. "We don't just have a monkey. We have a superhero ghost monkey. Nobody can see him, but he can see and do everything."

"Cooool. And walk through walls and stuff?"

"Yep. And walk through walls and stuff."

"Wow Clara. This sounds so great we should build a game or something. You know, so we can like sell it to our friends."

"Whoa now. Slow your roll as my dad would say. Let's get to playing our game first. Then we can talk about making a real one to sell."

"That's very adult of you Clara."

"Thanks. But I think of it more like play now build something later. 'cause I just wanna play!"

"Me too. Let's get going then!"

So off skipped the last two little girls on Earth, with their awesome fighting skills, monster backpacks (with ray guns), and their superhero ghost monkey.

That night Clara had a terrible nightmare where some crazy looking creature was trying to electrocute her and she was screaming her head off but no one came to help her.

She woke up right before the creature was about to electrocute her. But she woke up feeling like what she imagined electrocution felt like. For at least three minutes she felt this tingling feeling all throughout her body. She was scared and confused and glanced over to Patches for comfort.

Entirely oblivious to her plight, he was curled up at her feet snoring contentedly.

"Glad you slept okay," she said, not entirely sure she meant it.

Why did she get nightmares and her cat slept right near her peaceful as a baby? She rubbed her eyes and shook her head at her foolishness.

"Nightmares are not contagious, silly" she whispered.

Patches meowed softly as if in agreement.

See, she thought, he thinks so too.

Suddenly she giggled as she recalled the fun her and Jenny had the day before being explorers in a dangerous world. The ghost monkey had caused all manner of mischief. Popping through walls and stuff with a ray gun. He ended up being the best part of their adventure.

They had collected enough materials to make a small base camp close to the school in the nearby grove of hedges. They named it Hedge City.

From there they could look out at the school to see if anyone else was left on Earth searching for survival supplies. But they had only seen a few dogs come around poking their noses around.

Then a shudder went through her.

That's right! They had seen dogs digging around the rubble and Jenny had pointed out the electric lines hanging from the power poles.

"You don't wanna get near those. You could get electrocuted."

Clara remembers feeling sad for the dogs when Jenny said that. Could you imagine if one of those poor dogs touched those lines?

ZZZAAAPPP!!!

Her stomach tightened up.

YEOW! Now she understood where the electrocution nightmare came from. No idea where the strange nightmare creature came from though. Unless it was like a scary version of the odd creatures she had met when she visited with the Wurzel.

All this thinking so early in the morning was hurting her head.

But she knew precisely where the things in the nightmare the night before came from. Huge thick black books of magic and powerful magic bags were all too familiar to her now. The big scary booming voice though was a mystery.

She supposed the nightmare was not really a nightmare till the big scary monster voice showed up.

Yeah, before that it was just a weird dream, she decided.

Flibbertigibbet. Why did that word pop into her head now?

Well, she had been thinking about all sorts of stuff since waking up. Maybe that's why.

Then she remembered one of her teachers had used it when they were describing Tonya, a girl in her English class because she was always talking talking talking. Clara and Jenny just thought of her as blabby.

For sure they would never think of telling her ANYTHING! Unless they wanted the whole world to know.

What did Jenny say?

"If you tell that girl ANYTHING, it goes from her lips the ears of the world."

"May as well just tell everyone yourself then," Clara added.

"Exactly. So I tell her nothing."

"Wait a minute. You do tell her stuff sometimes. Dumb stuff that makes HER look dumb when she tells everyone."

"Well, that's just having fun."

"Yeah, but when she tells everyone YOU told her that stuff, you act like you don't know what they're talking about."

"I know. Genius, right?"

"Yeah."

"But you know the best part? When I tell her again something so stupid it can't be true? She repeats it to everyone as always. Like a windup monkey."

Clara guessed that yeah that did make her kinda like a windup monkey. But not like the totally cool superhero ghost monkey.

"It never gets old," Jenny sniggered.
CHAPTER TWO

It is morning and Clara is dressing, performing her daily routine. She dresses slowly, in measured stages. She has an extensive wardrobe; it seems only polite having been given so many well-made clothes to give some thought to their effect. They are, after all, a language; they do not so much say things about us, they are what is said.

She never gives much thought to clothing but today she decides to take a studied approach to dressing and clothing choices. As if she was studying for a test.

She combs her hair (pleasantly light brown, and just curly enough to give it body) and selects a vest and frilly shirt. She admires her reflection for a moment, and checks that her cuffs are even, her vest centered, collar straight, and so on.

She is ready for breakfast. The bed needs to be made, and yesterday's clothes require cleaning or putting away, but for now she just lays them on the bed to be dealt with later.

From the lone window in the room, she looks out onto a blue, bright day. No birds pecking at her window so that's a plus.

This morning she is feeling unusually chipper.

She hears the sound of planes and looking up through the small window she can see a formation of aircraft is flying past, from the direction of the school. There are three of them, identical, single-engine monoplanes, flying one above the other.

They fly past, engines droning, course steady, propellers glittering like huge protruding glass discs, and from the tail of each aircraft little dark bursts of smoke issue, seemingly at random. The small black clouds hang in the air, strung out like some strange code. A long trail of smoky signals marks the course of the planes, disappearing into the distance like some strange airborne fence.

The planes' piston-engine noise gradually fades as well. The thinning black clouds seem to have a vague pattern; they are grouped in three-by-three grids, carefully spaced. She finds she is oddly attuned to this event, as if she cannot or must not look away.

She watches the gradually moving cloud-groups, waiting for the merging smoke-puffs to form letters or numbers, or some other recognizable shapes, but after a few minutes, all that is left is an indistinct hanging curtain of dull air being blown slowly schoolward like a gigantic scarf of soiled gauze.

Maybe an airshow is going on. These happen on occasion and perhaps today is a commemorative event of some kind. She has attended these before and they were always kind of fun.

Maybe she'd go outside and chase it down, see where the show is centered.

Well, assuming there was no school today.

She pauses as she walks past the mirror, noting she had certainly dressed as if she was indeed going to school. More elaborately so than usual. These were not exactly the type of clothes for exploring and trundling about as was her habit.

Of course she was certain the Terribles would cast some criticism or derision her way for her clothing choices. To this she paid no mind as it was just part and parcel of her new world order.

The new normal.

She steps into the living room shocked at what greets her eyes. The room is wide and tall, and the walls were typically impoverished of embroidery of any kind with only a large flat screen television pinioned at the front corner, immediately next to the large front yard facing bay window, where one can look out—perhaps twelve hundred feet or more—in the direction of downtown. That is, when the view is not obscured by the grey clouds or fog which often submerge the scenery from above, typical of a beach town.

But today, the room had undergone a massive facelift. Gone was the confused jumble of impromptu gear and subsistence materials concomitant with the conversion of the room into ad hoc survival command center during the recently assaulting storm.

In its place, several useful and decorative pieces of furniture and a scant but judiciously chosen collection of small paintings and little figurines and sculptures. But what struck Clara most, like an invisible lightning blast from a cloudless sky, was the theme of these new paintings little figurines and sculptures.

To call them dark and moody would be tragic understatement.

Gracing the front facing wall, a picture with high russet rocks, coal black sky, gloomy sea, and a single white figure erect in a beach-bound skiff.

A shudder ran through her.

Then on the adjacent wall, done up in blue-grays and blue-blacks, a picture filled with energetic dancing creatures, pink, plump and blatantly evil.

The little figurines and sculptures placed on and around the new furniture were in two cases also dancers, frolicking in evident glee around a central object. Swinging bulky mallets at one or more deformed human figures.

Though calling the figures human was being too kind. They were ghastly beings of unknown origin, demonic even.

The dancers and hammerers were so animatedly done that they appeared in motion before her eyes. And given the diffused light in the surrounding area, they shimmered indistinctly and menacingly.

The sculptures were of different bent, multi-legged forest creatures of unearthly origination frozen in bronze.

Escaping her child's mind was whether this new aggressive room arrangement was intended to be an improvement upon the former passive one.

Frightening was the only description that came to mind.

"Oh hello dear," enthused Aunt Flora as she bounded into the room, startling Clara. "I see you're admiring the new look. Whaddya think?"

Was this Aunt Flora, her Aunt Flora whose voice and manner up until this golden moment had been nothing but corrosive and dismissive?

And was she standing over Clara...smiling?

It was a horrible sight; the corners of her mouth were drawn up towards her eyebrows, and her eyebrows were pulled up towards her widow's peaked hairline. She had evidently been practicing smiling all morning, but it was not nearly for long enough.

A face so unused to the stretch effect of smiling needed a lot more practice to soften up some. To look natural like. Not like the smile of a creepy clown.

UUUGH!

The poor girl was to say the least, dumbfounded.

"Uhm, uhm, it's okay I guess—"she managed.

"I know. One could say it's a shock to the system, especially given how bland the room was before."

Clara was near catatonic as she could only nod in response.

"See. I knew you'd agree. As I always say, Clara has good taste."

She said it still smiling, though by now the strain was beginning to show, like somebody desperately trying to hold on to the edge of a cliff by her fingertips.

Now Clara KNEW she must have stepped into an alternate dimension. Her aunt was complimentary now?

"The pictures and stuff are kinda scary though," Clara ventured, testing the apparently new kind and placid waters.

"Yes, they do take some warming up too, dearie. Isn't that right Fauna?

Dearie? I must be losing my mind, thought Clara.

How attack dog Fauna had slipped into the room Clara was unsure. In any event her cousin had evidently developed an ability to move with feline silence.

"Yeah, that's right," chimed Fauna, flashing a rare smile and placing an arm around Clara's shoulders. "We'll just buddy up like always and whoop those scary thoughts."

Clara's stomach began roiling. Either she was getting sick or the new improved aunt and cousin show was making her nauseated. Then she glanced out the window and thought she could see the horizon tilting.

Maybe I'm seasick? she thought absurdly, right before passing out and dropping to the floor.

If she thought the happiness squad treatment was unsettling, she was in no way prepared for the royal treatment to be generously lavished upon her during her new convalescent state.

When she opened her eyes she was recumbent in her room. Not the basement room that she had been so unceremoniously relegated to. Her one and only ORIGINAL room, which until the hostile home invasion had been uncontestably hers.

And miracle of miracles, cousin Fauna was bringing her breakfast in bed, complete with convenient folding lap tray.

"Oh hi, cuz, glad you're awake now," said Fauna. "I'm sure you're still a little weak and stuff, so I thought bringing you a nice breakfast tray is just what you needed."

"Uhm, this was your idea?"

"Uh huh, I felt so bad when you collapsed, bless your heart. I told my mom that I wanted to bring you a beautiful breakfast to welcome you back home."

"But I was already home," said Clara, confused.

"Oh of course silly. I meant welcome back to not being passed out."

"Of course," said Clara, now feeling stupid and ungrateful. "And thank you so much. I really appreciate it."

"Knew you would knew you would knew you would!" beamed Fauna, flapping her arms and jumping in place. "See how WELL I know you, cuz?"

"Yep," said Clara, deciding to play along because surely she was being punked. "You know me all right."

"Well, I'll just let you get at your breakfast then while I..."

"Uhm, before you go. You sure it's okay I'm in YOUR room? I mean, you know, your allergies and stuff."

Fauna now did something so bizarre, so unexpected, Clara was now SURE her mind had flown. Unless this was NOT her cousin but an imposter.

"Allergies?" said Fauna, a placid confused look on her face. "I got allergies? News to me."

"But your mom said—," protested Clara.

"Jes jawin'. Don't mean diddly-squat."

Sporadically using hillbilly grammar. This was definitely her cousin.

"And anyway. It IS your room, silly. I mean, come on!"

These last words cleanly closed the conversation as Fauna smiled, gave Clara a mock curtsy, and went on her merry little way. Leaving Clara to go at her breakfast and ponder the significance of the sea change that had occurred.

Clara had no reason to complain. Who didn't like being treated with kindness? Still, she thinks this whole turnabout stinks to high heaven.

OMG!

Now cousin Fauna even had her THINKING hillbilly and would no doubt soon have her SPEAKING hillbilly. That settled it. Clara was SURE this was a dream that she would soon awake from.

It had to be.

Clara has evidently gone to sleep and wakes as shadows slide across the walls. Her food tray is gone and her pillows are fluffed up behind her.

A hissing sound begins.

At first, as she quickly stands up and goes to her door to listen, she thinks it will be a leaking pipe— water or gas— making the noise, but no, as she turns around she can see for the first time a TV hanging from the wall. It is switched on and is hissing.

It shows a view of an obviously sick girl in bed, silent and still and in monochrome.

When did her room get a TV?

She switches the set off. The picture vanishes. She switches it back on; the sick girl reappears, and the channel-changing control has no effect. The light is different.

There seems to be a window set into the wall on the far side of the bed, beyond the encircling machines. She looks carefully for any further clues.

The picture is too grainy for her to be able to read any of the writing on the machines; she can't even tell what language is being used. How can the set switch itself on?

She turns it off, and hears a droning noise outside.

From the window, she looks out onto the red, yellow, and orange splashed colors of a fading day. A formation of aircraft is flying past, from the direction of the school.

There are three of them, identical, rather cumbersome-looking, single-engine monoplanes, flying one above the other. The lowest aircraft is about level with her, the middle plane is fifty feet above it, the highest plane another fifty feet above that.

They fly past, engines droning, course steady, propellers glittering like huge protruding glass discs, and from the tail of each aircraft little dark bursts of smoke issue, seemingly at random. The small black clouds hang in the air, strung out like some strange code. A long trail of smoky signals marks the course of the planes, disappearing into the distance.

This both puzzles and excites her. She has not seen or heard of any aircraft at all since she'd woken up that morning. But these planes looked strangely similar. Or were these the same planes flying past again in some kind of weird movie rewind effect? With the way the day has been going, nothing would surprise her at this point.

The puffs of black smoke start to drift with the slow wind, heading towards downtown. They dissipate as they go, into the wide and red-tinged sky. The planes' piston-engine noise gradually fades as well. The thinning black clouds seem to have a vague pattern; they are grouped in three-by-three grids, carefully spaced.

She watches the gradually moving cloud-groups, waiting for the merging smoke-puffs to form letters or numbers, or some other recognizable shapes, but after a few minutes, all that is left is an indistinct hanging curtain of dull air being blown slowly away like a gigantic scarf of soiled gauze.

She shakes her head.

At the door she remembers the malfunctioning television; it transmits a series of slow, not-quite-perfectly-regular beeps at her. The television has switched itself on. The sick girl reappears, but this time the girl sweetly smiles right as the set switches off and the picture vanishes.

Now Clara was SURE she did not like this show.

Time to go. The world may be going mad, but a girl must still leave her room sometimes. And the sick girl on the television? She can take care of her own sickeningly sweet smiling self.

Pausing for a moment with her hand on the doorjamb, she lets it sink in that she is back in her own sweet room, and how nice it is to suddenly have a television. She considers what she might do about the malfunctioning television; but when she thinks about what she might say and to whom, it sounds ludicrous.

The television I didn't know I had in my room isn't working? Oh yeah. That definitely sounds like she'd gone catawampus. She decided to keep quiet about it; for all she knew the television would be gone when she got back.

She reaches down and pulls the television plug out of the wall socket so this sickly sweet girl cannot just pop into view again.

Clara bounces down the stairs heading for what she was not entirely sure, because at this point she was fairly sure that she had spent the whole day in bed.

She did not know if school was still closed due to the previous storm situation but she figured since nobody had woken her up maybe it WAS still closed.

As she arrived downstairs to see Aunt Flora sitting on the couch watching the 6:00 evening news, she realized she definitely must have been sick after all and slept away the whole day.

"So...I've been like asleep all day?"

Aunt Flora, too engrossed in the news, did not answer.

"Uhm...auntie?"

Spinning around like she was expecting an attack, Aunt Flora stopped herself short, stretched out her arms and smiled a bit too wide and terrifyingly creepy at Clara.

"Yes dearie?"

There's that "yes dearie" again.

"Uhm, I was sleeping all day then? I mean, no school today?"

Aunt Flora made a mock sad face, pouting for effect.

"You were sick, poor baby," said her aunt with soothing tone. "And yes, no school today anyway. I know you're SOOOO sad about it, right?"

Clara smiled slightly, looked at the floor and said, "Oh...just wondering."

"There you go then sweetie," said Aunt Flora and went back to watching the news.

So one day had slid effortlessly into another leaving Clara sleeping on the sidelines as the world ambled along.

The rest of the late beginning day she spent wandering around the neighborhood, visiting a while with Jenny, then heading back home to read a book.

The TV she kept unplugged to make sure the sickly sweet girl could not just pop into the room again.
CHAPTER THREE

Come sunrise, Clara was surprisingly not far behind it as she woke up refreshed and ready to leap into her day. As she came downstairs and into the kitchen for her breakfast cereal, ingrained to the point of codified law as she simply loved her morning cereal, she found Aunt Flora at the stove making pancakes, sausage, and scrambled eggs.

Clara didn't know the woman could cook.

Clara stopped in her tracks, rubbed her eyes, closed them, then opened them and looked again.

It was really happening.

Her Aunt, who had always been one to get takeout for breakfast, was moving around the kitchen and cooking a sumptuous breakfast with the ease and apparent skill of a practiced gourmet chef. And once again Clara thought that somebody had replaced her Aunt with an imposter.

"Oh hello, sweetie. Sleep well didja?" said Aunt Flora, spinning around to smile at Clara.

Geez, sounded like her aunt too, the voice anyways. So maybe she DID have a soft kind voice that Clara never knew about? Sure seemed that way now.

"Uhm, yes I slept well."

"And your stomach...done with the queasiness?"

"My stomach does feel good," said Clara, surprised to find that yes, it really DID feel good. "Not like yesterday."

Aunt Flora smiled. "Well that's fantastic because as you can see I've made a healthy tasty breakfast for my two girls."

Now Clara was one of HER girls. This just kept getting weirder.

Fauna the smiley crazily happy girl bounced into the room right on time.

"Great! I'm starving. You look like you slept well cuz. How ya feeling?" said Fauna.

'Feeling great cuz," there goes Fauna making her talk funny again. "And hungry too!"

Clara stepped back mentally to think about this new reality playing out before her astonished eyes. At her back lay the Terribles, ahead the Wonderfuls.

Between the two, half submerged by each as by converging seas, Clara's former ruined life now resurrected into something entirely opposite. Good, she knew. But something about this rapid spin around gnawed at her child's mind.

Maybe I'm dreaming, she thought, even though she was entirely sure she was awake. She also thought maybe someone had hypnotized her, like those TV magicians. But there were no magicians in this house.

So she kept slamming back into the hard wall of sight. She saw the Terribles had changed like Transformers, though smaller and non-metallic. So why did she not believe it?

"Is my dad coming to breakfast too?" said Clara, hopeful she could talk to her father about this weirdly dramatic change.

"No sweetie," said Aunt Flora. "Seems he just had too much work to do. Never did come home."

Now Clara knew something was wrong. Her father has never stayed at work so long. Especially after a deadly storm like the one just passed. And that was two days ago. He suddenly didn't care if they were okay?

"Did he call to see how we were after the storm?"

"No. I suppose he just figured if I didn't have things under control I would call HIM."

"But still he didn't...call? I mean it's been like two—"

"I just said as much...Clara," said Aunt Flora in slightly elevated tone, her eyes turning hard, her hand tensing into a fist as she hit the table. "Eat up now."

And there it was. The hardcore Aunt Flora she had grown to fear and despise. So she WAS in there somewhere.

"So, anyway," said Aunt Flora, "I was thinking that today, since school is still on shutdown, we could go around the house and do some spring cleaning? It's long overdue."

"Do we have to, mom?" whined Fauna.

"Yes, daughter, we do. I was thinking first we'd start in that nasty basement. Get rid of things like that big ol' nasty chest."

"Uhm..." interjected Clara as the fair weather inside her house told her it was time to have a voice, "that chest has got some of my mom's things in it. We shouldn't get rid of it like."

"It's just a nasty chest, Clara," bellowed Aunt Flora with a firm resolution. "Besides, Fauna says it scares her, isn't that right, honey?"

Fauna rushed over and huddled against her mother.

"Yeah," uttered Fauna, in a faint and fear struck voice. "I can't bear it any longer."

Clara was stunned to silence. She couldn't believe the act she was watching. Fauna had stayed down there maybe one night, or not, and suddenly she was so scared of an old chest, THE old chest, that she couldn't bear it any longer?

A sick feeling waved across Clara's stomach. Pictures raced across her mind: The raging storm. The missing father. The redecorating of the living room. The oh so sweet and nice conversion of her aunt and cousin who only days before were her worst enemies.

Why the sudden interest in the chest?

Did they...?

"There WAS a big book in there mom. A HUGE one! I saw her reading it once even. And I don't know..."

"Where is the book, Clara? And don't tell me you haven't looked in that chest before because it had clearly been opened before Fauna looked in it," Aunt Flora raged, no sweetness to be found.

Now Clara's stomach seized up twisting into a tightly knotted mess, and as a powerful upsurge of bone shivering terror raced through her she keeled over and vomited right on the kitchen floor.

"Oh my god, mom. She..."

"I can SEE what she did, Fauna. And I know WHY."

Now Aunt Flora turned sharply on Clara, viciously tearing back the veil of niceties that up until this moment had guided her most recent behavior toward Clara.

"You think I'm blind, little witch? You will clean this mess up, Clara le Crafty. And then you will bring me that BOOK!!!!"

Fauna, the ever helpful, went below the kitchen sink and drew forth some rags, a bucket, and 409. These she threw at Clara and sashayed out of the room.

"Have fun, cuz," she warbled as her parting shot.

Once again the battle lines were drawn and Clara was again cast out beyond the sunshine and rainbows.
CHAPTER FOUR

Suddenly a sound like thunder is heard from high up on the mountains, which glides and whirls downwards with headlong speed.

Clara can be dimly discerned as she is whirled along with and enclosed within the masses of windswept leaves.

Mist-clouds close in over the scene, climb up over to the right and soon disappear among the lower clouds. Keen storm-gusts hurtle and whistle through the air.

Trudging head down, arms tucked deep in pockets, Clara is embarking on a desperate journey back. Back to the library. Back to Mrs. Plumwrinkle. Back to the place where perhaps sanity may again reign.

In the type of absurdity she had of late become all too familiar with; a singsong began in her head:

I am free! I am free! I am free!

No more life in the prison for me!

I am free as a bird! I am free!

I must first pass through the mists, and then—

Yes, through all the mists, and then right up to the summit of the library tower that shines in the sunrise.

The mists clear away as if sucked away by a vacuum, leaving a clear cerulean sky. She drops into the library perimeter as if dropping into another world.

An open park-like place with a fountain, groups of fine old trees, and shrubbery. To the left, a little pavilion almost covered with ivy and Virginia creeper. A table and chair outside it. It is calm, warm and sunny summer morning.

The library shines in the near distance. A warm feeling of homecoming radiates through Clara. Then her eyes land on the gruesome gargoyles. Warm cuddly feelings or not those twisted gargoyle faces were creepy.

"Thanks for ruining the mood," she grumped.

weofɔd ɛɛaldɔrlɨce weɔrpan ɛɛaldorþegn weɔrþmynd weɔsend werɔd wəsan

Strange words and sounds invaded her, crowding out her sound field. These odd vaguely human words that now danced in front of her eyes and invaded her ears.

Were the gargoyles answering her?

wɨdəwe wɨduuwe ɛɛaldhettende wielm wierþe wɨf wɨfmann

A ripple of electricity tingled through Clara as she instantaneously began speaking in tongues.

ealdgestreon ealdhettende wəard ealdhlafɔrd ɛɛaldhlafɔrdcynn ɛɛaldian wəg ɛɛaldɔr wecg ɛɛaldorbɨscɔp ɛɛaldorduguþ wɨder ɛɛaldorleas ɛɛaldɔrlɨce ɛɛaldormann ɛɛaldɔrþegn wəaxan ɛɛaldre ɛɛaldrɨht wəearg ɛɛaldseaxan...

FLASH! FLASH! BANG BANG!!!!

Sound cracked and splintered bursting open the library door and ushering forth Mrs. Plumwrinkle.

"All that one hears or reads about them is that they are very hot, that their sunlight is very glaring, and that there is a sand-storm, a thirst, and death waiting for every traveler who ventures over the first divide.

"There is truth enough, to be sure, in the heat and glare part of it, and an exceptional truth in the other part of it. It is intensely hot near gargoyles at times, but the sun is not responsible for it precisely in the manner alleged," said Mrs. Plumwrinkle, speaking to no one in particular and waving her arms.

"Mrs. Plumwrinkle?" stammered Clara, confused as ever.

The googly eyes of Mrs. Plumwrinkle fixed on Clara as if seeing an extraterrestrial for the first time.

"Why, yes dearie. And who might YOU be?"

Before Clara the speechless could open her mouth to speak, a painful whistling noise invaded.

She put her hands over her ears. The ground rumbled. Something very large and weighty was moving steadily toward her. The whistling continued, intensity increasing slowly, the ground rumble growing, until materializing out of thin air, a train exploded into view.

Shock and awe overcame her. Frozen in place she stood as if awaiting the swing of the executioner's axe. She listened, trying to catch some hint of the engine's busy noise as it steamed toward her. She wanted to hear its panting breath, the clatter of its valves and slides. She was immovable, wondering if this was something she saw or only imagined.

The train moved steadily forward until shuddering to a stop right in front of her. When the squeal and screech of the train brakes and its slight air release hiss died away, she stood for a while, facing the ghost train, reluctant to utter a sound. Some wisps of steam or smoke, only slowly dissipating in the moist, warm air, hung above her head.

An odor of burned coal and the damp, used smell of steam seemed to cling to her clothes. The whoosh of steam sweeping across her face told her this was no figment of her imagination.

"If you allow the doors to be open during a sand storm while you're sweeping, you won't get very far."

"WHAT??!! WHO SAID THAT??!!" shouted Clara.

The train door slid open and out popped the Wurzel.

"Good day, young sprout," he sang cheerily. "Air is made mainly from molecules of nitrogen and traces of many other gases. Together, the molecules of these gases scatter the blue colors of sunlight much more effectively than the green and red colors.

"Therefore, a clean sky appears blue. This type of sky also makes it easy for sound to travel and words to bend quite on their own. I was enjoying a peaceful stroll upon Turlypock ridge when a jumble of words dropped from the clear blue onto my head then spun to the ground and formed a triangle of words telling me you were in over your head, djibia t'ik fɹada dǣskɹii!"

"Uhm...hello?"

"I bring you good cheer from across the time portal and call to mind the ancient debate between summer and winter who sought to decide who among them was the primary and most essential season. Their father, the king of all lands, decided that due to the fact that winter provided the much needed water for the desiccated climate, it was he who would prevail."

Clara looked confused.

"So...that's nice and all. But...WHAT??" she said as a big cartoon thought bubble with a huge question marked popped up over her head.

"Yes. I see the confusion. Among winners and losers there is a matter of the poor winner and sore loser? It seems Krygzyk threw in with the losing side and has been battling to achieve dominance ever since."

"Oh. So Krygzyk is like summer?"

"ukreyka-oreʧhto-akàthoy-la!" squeaked the Wurzel, spinning and waving his hands over his head. "Hardly. Krygzyk's power is diminished in winter. He prefers the summer storms, heatwaves, bugs...the assorted biting nasties"

Now Clara received a clear picture of the manner of Krygzyk. The recent violent storms were maybe his doing as she had thought. And maybe even...

"Yes, the storms were his doing. This time. Though not all storms emanate from him. But often, the more ferocious and uncharacteristic storms spring from his hand."

Almost forgotten in the background was Mrs. Plumwrinkle, who up until now had stood in silent awe.

"Wurzel! Wurzel! How wonderful to see you after so long," enthused Mrs. Plumwrinkle. "It has been...so...so..."

"ukreyka-oreʧhto-akàthoy-la, dear friend," chimed the Wurzel.

"fɹada dǣskɹii pur'kɹii findɹal ch'k..." responded Mrs. Plumwrinkle.

"ɛɛaldre ɛɛældɽʲht ɛɛaldsəaxan," Clara put in quite unexpectedly.

"Ahh," said the Wurzel, shaking a finger at Clara. "And it is because of your recent attainment of proficiency with the Ynakxic Xibà tongue that time brings me to you most urgently. It appears it is you who have called the thunder."

"The thunder?"

"Krygzyk," darling, said Mrs. Plumwrinkle. "His name amongst the inner circle."

"Wait a minute," said Clara. "You know who I am now?"

"Why of course you silly goose. How could I forget?"

"But...but..."

"The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it. Be fearless and always speak the truth, regardless of the consequences."

"I must caution you to use only the Chàryx tongue in conversation," said the Wurzel, again shaking a finger at Clara.  
"The Ynakxic Xibà tongue is for incantation only...
CHAPTER FIVE

The sun descends quickly and she is alone. She begins to run. Each time she falls, she searches for the path through hidden cabinets of her mind.

The darkness envelopes her like a burlap shroud.

She can feel it scratching at her skin. She can taste the moisture in the surrounding air.

Each time she breathes, she goes unnoticed. Her path is flawed, but each step she takes speaks otherwise. She is constantly searching through empty fields it seems.

It's dark and she trudges on with hope that she may find peace and safety. To feel tranquility is all she desires.

The library. The school. Her house. These are vector points on her scale.

The patterns of the world knock her into a pit of turbulence. She is unsteady on her own two feet.

She is lost in the soft wind.

With a vacant cry, she yells. In the distance she can see a faint twinkling.

The school?

She can no longer feel her body. She can no longer think. She is lost within herself.

Uncertainty overwhelms her as she finds herself moving toward a ragged cliff. She had thought she was on home ground.

One more thing that had become her new normal.

One minute she's talking to the Wurzel and the next minute she's trudging through vaguely foreign ground. In the dark even.

Transported once again, somewhere, anywhere.

Scattered about were familiar elements but arranged in odd unfamiliar patterns. The most offsetting configuration of all; the same but different.

Walk up to a familiar building and come through the front door only to find the people, the language, EVERYTHING, is not at all what you expected.

Like a dream world but NOT.

She looks back and can no longer detect the twinkling lights.

She goes towards the slope and descends. Far beneath she goes, onto the lower slopes, and into the thickest parts of a forest.

The crepuscular critters are swarming. She wondered if bears were to be found in the naked mountains.

A sudden clearing.

A shack. An oddly shaped little shack.

CRASH!!

The pink moon dropped through the roof of the shack and was bursting into flames as she began to run again, forced on through the woods by two bulging silver eyes that grew in immense astonishment in the center of the fire behind her. She could hear it moving up through the black night like a whirling chariot.

"Got to crawl now," she whispered.

She wriggled through a low tunnel, broad enough to take three people abreast, but not two feet high. Halfway through she felt suffocated, for she never liked holes, and she had a momentary anxiety as to what she was after in this tunnel quest.

Presently she smelt free air and got onto her knees.

There was a jar and a bump as if the roof of the tunnel had loosened. She turned sharply.

She thought and felt like she had been in some sort of accident. Battered. Confused. Disoriented.

Something had miscarried, and she had come out of the tunnel straight into the cellars of an unfriendly house. She was not so much frightened as exasperated. She turned from the tunnel mouth and groped into the darkness before her.

She might as well examine the kind of prison into which she had blundered.

She took three steps, no more. Her feet seemed suddenly to go from her and fly upward. So sudden was it that she fell heavy and dead like a log, and her head struck the floor with a crash that for a moment knocked her senseless.

She was conscious of something falling on her and of an intolerable pressure on her chest. She struggled for breath, and found her arms and legs pinned and her whole body in a kind of wooden vice.

She was sick with concussion, and could do nothing but gasp and choke down her nausea. The cut in the back of her head was bleeding freely and that helped to clear her wits, but she lay for a minute or two incapable of thought.

She shut her eyes tight, as a girl does when she is fighting with a swoon.

When she opened them there was light. It came from the left side of the room, the broad glare of a strong electric torch. She watched it stupidly, but it gave her the zest needed to pick up the threads.

She remembered the tunnel now and the Wurzel.

Then behind the light she saw a face which pulled her flickering senses out of the mire. She saw the heavy robes and the hair, which she had realized, though she had not seen, outside in the dark laurels.

They belonged to the Wurzel.

But she saw his face now, and it was that face which she had said she could never mistake again upon this earth. She did not mistake it now, and she remembered she had a faint satisfaction that she had made good her word, though a bit foggy as to what that word was.

She had not mistaken it, for she had not had the chance to look at that face till this moment. She was looking at the Wurzel, the word bending master, who had done more for the elemental universal battles than any army commander.

She was dazed and awestruck. She looked the part of the sacrificial goat

She looked at him as one might look at some cataclysm of nature which had destroyed a continent. The face was smiling. "I am happy to offer you hospitality at last," it said.

She pulled her wits farther out of the mud to attend to him. The crossbar on her chest pressed less hard and she breathed better.

But when she tried to speak, the words would not come.

"We are old friends," he went on. "We have known each other for years, which is is is a long time in a war of the cosmos. I have been interested in you, for you have a kind of c-c-crude intelligence, and you have compelled me to take you seriously. If you were cleverer you would appreciate the compliment. But you were f-f-fool enough to think you could beat me, and for that you must be p-p-punished. Oh no, don't flatter yourself that you were ever d-d-dangerous. You were only troublesome and presumptuous like a mosquito one f-f-flicks off one's sleeve."

He was leaning against the side of a heavy closed door. He lit a gold cigar from a little gold tinder box and regarded her with amused eyes.

"You will have time for reflection, so I propose to enlighten you a little. You are an observer of little things. Did you ever see a c-c-cat with a m-m-mouse? The mouse runs about and hides and maneuvers and thinks it is is is playing its own game. But at any moment the cat can stretch out its paw and put an end to it. You are the mouse, my poor girl--for I believe you are one of those funny amateurs called a n-n-natural. At any moment during the last five months I could have put an end to you with a nod."

Her nausea had stopped and she could understand what he said, though she had still no power to reply.

"Let me explain," he went on. "I watched with amusement your gambols at your home and school. My eyes followed you when you went to the Wurzel and in your stupid twistings in Turlypock Ridge.  
"I gave you rope, because you were f-f-futile, and I had graver things to attend to. I allowed you to amuse yourself at the library with childish investigations and to play the fool with the Wurzel.

"I have followed every step of your course in Turlypock Ridge, and I have helped your idiotic friend, Mrs. Plumwrinkle, to plot against me. While you thought you were drawing your net around me, I was drawing mine around you.

"I assure you, it has been a charming relaxation from serious business."

Now confusion gripped her strong and painful. He had watched her with the Wurzel? Then he was NOT the...

"Aha, well played clever girl. Put that together, have you? Indeed I am the one and ONLY, Krygzyk the Great. Well, there is is is one reason that extremely wise and intelligent beings like myself bother to teach unutterably ignorant and naïve beings like yourself. Because there is is is just a sliver of a chance that one of the better minds amongst your scuttling insect selves might answer one of the questions that no one of my i-i -ilk – despite the aforesaid wisdom, intelligence, et cetera – or any previous being has been able to answer definitively, like why is is is the Wurzel the master of all when it is is is all too clear that honor is rightly MINE, why is is is a trained albeit talented sprout like yourself unique, where did the Book of Mrunelight come from originally and precisely, and how does the Færsceaþa work? That sort of question."

FLASH!! BANG!! BOOM!!

Krygzyk's Wurzel guise vanished, and in its place a squat, grubby, big eared, huge handed being who looked a lot like a troll doll with wild green hair. She barely suppressed a giggle as she looked at the altered character.

Through her mind raced a cartoon of a tiny mouse challenging a huge gorilla. This dumpy nothing is Krygzyk?

He had her at his mercy, and was wreaking his vanity on her. That and his squat character made him smaller in her eyes, and her first awe began to pass.

"I never cherish rancor, you know," he said. "In my business it is is is silly to be angry, for it wastes e-e-e-energy. But I do not tolerate insolence, my dear girl. And I have the habit of  
e-e-e-exacting justice on my enemies. It may interest you to know that the end is is is not far off. With free hands I am about to turn upon your rabble in the west and drive it into the Pacific. Then I shall deal with the ragged remains of incompetents and the handful of noisy upstarts. By midsummer there will be peace of a new world order dictated by Krygzyk the triumphant."

"Oh no, there won't!" she had found her voice at last.

"But of course there will," he said pleasantly. "It is is is what you call a mathematical certainty. You will no doubt die bravely, like the savage tribes that your people used to conquer. But I have the greater discipline and the stronger spirit and the bigger brain. The real problem is that intelligent people are full of doubts, while stupid people are full of confidence. Stupidity is is is always punished in the end, and you are a stupid race. Do not think that your kinsmen across the cosmos will save you. When they have blustered and bayed a little they will see reason and find some means of saving their faces. Their comic leader will make a speech or two and write me a solemn n-n-note, and I will reply with the serious rhetoric which he loves, and then we shall kiss and be friends. You know in your heart that it will be so."

A great apathy seemed to settle on her. This bragging did not make her angry, and she had no longer any wish to contradict him.

It may have been the result of the fall, but her mind had stopped working. She heard his voice as one listens casually to the ticking of a clock.

"Why do I tell you these things? Your intelligence, for you are not altogether f-f-foolish, will have supplied the answer. It is is is because your life is is is over. As your Shakespeare says, the rest is is is silence.

"No, I am not going to kill you. That would be crude, and I hate crudities. I am going now on a little journey, and when I return in twenty-four hours' time you will be my companion. You are going to visit Dylos Grawddwy, my dear girl."

That woke her to attention, and he noticed it, for he went on with gusto.

"There are unwatched spots on the boundary, and we have our agents among the boundary guards, and we have no difficulty stopping invasions. It is is is a pretty device, and you will soon be privileged to observe its-its-its working. In Dylos Grawddwy I cannot promise you comfort, but I do not think your life will be dull."

As he spoke these words, his urbane smile changed to a grin of impish malevolence. Even through her languor she felt the venom and she shivered.

"When I return I shall have another c-c-companion."

His voice was honeyed again. "There is is is a certain pretty though tubby girl who was to be the bait to entice me into battle. Well, I have fallen to the bait. I have arranged that she shall meet me this very night at a mountain inn on this side of the divide. I have arranged, too, that she shall be alone. The large rotund one who sought to protect her is is is naught but a dunce. Yet the girl, she is is is an innocent child, and I do not think that she has been more than a tool in the clumsy hands of your friends. She will c-c-come with me when I ask her, and we shall have a most merry party."

Her apathy vanished, and every nerve in her was alive at the words.

"You perv!" Clara cried. "Fauna detests the sight of you," she lied, still not understanding the connection with her cousin.  
"She wouldn't touch you with a ten-foot pole."

He flicked the ash from his gold cigar. "I think you are mistaken. I am very p-p-persuasive, and I do not like to use compulsion with a child. But, willing or not, she will come with me. I have worked hard and I am entitled to m-m-my pleasure, and I have set my heart on that little girl. Not for the reasons your simple mind might imagine, but she is-is-is MINE!"

There was something in his tone, gross, leering, assured, half contemptuous, that made her blood boil. He had fairly got her defenseless, and the hammer beat violently in her forehead. She could have wept with sheer rage, and it took all her fortitude to keep her mouth shut. But she was determined not to add to his triumph.

"Time passes," he said. "I must depart to my charming assignation. I will give your remembrances to the girl. Forgive me for making no arrangements for your comfort till I return. Your constitution is-is-is so sound that it will not suffer from a day's fasting. To set your mind at rest I may tell you that escape is-is-is impossible. This mechanism has been proved too often, and if you did break loose from it my servants would deal with you. But I must speak a word of caution. If you tamper with it or struggle too much it will act in a curious way. The floor beneath you covers a shaft which runs to the lake below. Set a certain spring at work and you may find yourself shot down into the ice water, where your body will remain submerged for a time only to rise and rot in the spring. That, of course, is-is-is an alternative open to you, if you do not care to wait for my return."

He lit a fresh cigar, waved his hand, and vanished through the doorway. As it shut behind him, the sound of his footsteps instantly died away. The walls must have been as thick as a prison's.
CHAPTER SIX

Gone from the clutches of the maybe evil but ultimately comical, Krygzyk. The rewards for success are vast, as the sanctions for failure are fatal.

Now Clara was in control. At peace. Just when she thought she had her program under control, she found out it had a mind of its own.

Somewhere out there was blue sky.

A cargo train came clattering along across the frontage road of the library. She was aware of its existence but had been tuning it out. It came fully to her attention when its squealing became deafening.

She contemplated putting her fingers in her ears. She smiled at the pixie beside her.

A lame attempt at communication.

She glanced over and half-expected her to have her fingers in her ears. She didn't.

She watched the pixie flicking her ticket between her fingers. She was chewing gum. She wanted gum. Her mouth was dry from the heat.

The cargo train was now at its peak noisiness. But underneath the sound was another one. It was the bellow and jingle of a crackly radio signal, or the boom from the sound of a loudspeaker drifting in the wind.

It came in and out of focus. It wasn't crucial, this secret broadcast of the cargo train; but she felt happy for the experience; it seemed like something that she might write about later on.

She felt she was someone who casually noticed strange phenomena in the midst of the mundane and didn't even shrug.

She was also thinking that it was too bright and that her skin was sticky with the heat.

Boarding the train with the other passengers, she wondered what the pixie to her right was thinking.

The day began with shooting stars and the June bugs were supergroovy. Both in us and around us life is fermenting and throbbing as fiercely as ever! The sun may freely look on us. All the powers of light may freely look on us and all the powers of darkness too.

You can see it in her face, the way she does her hair.

Looking down the aisle Clara saw an odd sight. A rumpled man who wears a blue suit and a black hat and has white skin. With amazing clarity she can hear the white skin crackle like pork rind in the hot sun.

She shakes her head and wrings her hands, distressed that such sights, such twisted thoughts, command her attention.

Drifting quickly away, she recalls a happy childhood moment. A frizzled chicken is striding backward in the yard while Mother airs out a tablecloth and Father closes the shed door, axe in one hand, wiping the sweat from the back of his neck with the other.

The heat seemed disturbed.

Clara pushed up close to a window and took a view of the grim world outside.

The sky above was dull and grey and uniform. The light was at once shadowless and pervasively dim.

The train lurched and creaked, rumbling heavily over the rutted road, away from its dark position and into the darker forest.

The road climbed through the trees, past small clearings and over hollow-bellied wooden bridges. In the darkness and the silence of the forest, the torrents beneath the bridges were rushing oases of pale, white light and chaotic noise.

The way steepened between the thinning trees; the train labored up the rutted track, into the lower reaches of the dark grey overcast, wisps of barely seen cloud mingling with and absorbing its ghostly white breath. The valley beneath was a formless black pit; not a single light, no fire or movement, and nothing that could be detected issued from its depths.

The small, stunted trees just visible at the sides of the rough track looked like the dwarfish, deformed sentinels of some phantom fortress. The train's diffused headlamps encountered the damp vapor like contrary shadows, obscuring more than they revealed.

The train approached the saddle of the pass and the small plateau beyond. Dark shadows spread from the rocks on either side where the beam of the headlamps struck them.

A wild riven mountainside, with sheer precipices at the back. Snowclad peaks rise to the right, losing themselves in drifting mists. To the left, on a stone-scree, stands an old tumbledown shack.

A battered sign hung askance from the door, "Lord of the Winds".

She was almost there, when... Smash! Crash! Bash!

The green moon dropped through the roof of the shack and was bursting into flames. Two bulging angry eyes grew in the center of the fire.

A trilling sense of déjà vu tingled through her.

The train passed the shack moving deeper into the dark. Even the dim light was now withdrawn, relinquishing the whole domain to the evening gloom, which had rushed so instantaneously from the black surrounding woods.

But some of the black shadows rushed forth in ghastly shape.

It could not be the fauns and nymphs, driven from their classic groves and homes of ancient fable, which had sought refuge as all the persecuted did in the fresh woods of the west; these were Gothic monsters.

Many turned away their faces; others kept a fixed and rigid stare. The young pixie giggled hysterically and fainted with the laughter on her lips.

Rushing from the gloom in improbably phosphorescent form, a stampeding gaggle of gruesome creatures; long horse-like green faces, black dashes where there would be eyes, tiny droopy antennae, long swayback green bodies low to the ground, four gangly knob kneed legs rising above the body on either side, each anchored by unusually large and knotted feet.

The sheer mechanics required for locomotion boggled the mind.

Yet onward these impassive creatures lumbered. Their faces benign, emotionless, but the consuming presence of these rampaging creatures terrified the soul.

When they slammed into the train broadside, knocking it off its path, the trip had reached a frightening denouement.

The Gruffudden, as these creatures were known, now surrounded the train in classic old west enemies-encircling-a-wagon-train fashion.

A showdown was imminent.

There must have been hundreds, if not thousands of these Gruffudden, reaching back into the dark forest perimeter. It seemed that biologists had created synthetic DNA capable of evolution.

When suddenly, a cleaving began as a widening channel opened up between the biomass of creatures, allowing for the passage of one of their kind to glide up the middle of the grouping and take point position, one of their kind saddled with a rider, bringing into full scale view the image and form of Krygzyk, waving one arm like a valiant conquistador. At his back none other than Fauna, her arms encircled around him, his motorcycle mama so to speak.

"Hey, hey, slaves," he shouted, smiling like the weasel he was. "Welcome to Dylos Grawddwy. The Gruffudden," he waved his arm around in an all-encompassing gesture, "will lead you to the place where your insufficiencies will be put to daily use, devoted to the quarrying and cutting of stone for stupendous architectural uses."

Krygzyk has megalomania, a gruesome case of it.

The Gruffudden nudged the people onward in a relentless and insufferably lumbering pace. People whined, cried, stumbled, fell to the ground, yet the mass of people and creatures trod over them as if insignificant collateral damage.

Plodding pace or not, in short measure the passengers arrived at their dystopian paradise. The shocked eyes of the innocent were greeted with something wholly unexpected.

A chain gang working inside a tumble of stones, a string of starved, half-naked creatures whose skins were caked with building dust and crisscrossed with freshly opened red weals.

They looked about them dully, too locked in their own misery to have any thought for the goings on in the outside world.

A large burly worker who looked in better shape than the others, kicked a sledgehammer towards the group.

"Get hammer. Stay busy. Serious consequence," he said, motioning towards the creature with the freshly opened red weals.

So much for long introductions.

Groups of people were shackled together, at the ankles, to perform acts of grueling physical labor, such as digging ditches, building or cleaning roads, and chipping stone.

Occasionally some would attempt to make an escape while shackled together — something that they usually learn "the hard way" after chained individuals try to run in opposite directions, which will immediately stop them dead in their tracks.

Having seen enough of this treatment on television, the assembled newbies were well aware of the possibilities. But this was definitely NOT the trip they had bargained for.

One by one the corralled people got to work by adopting the attitude and actions of the incumbent misery mass. The Gruffudden stood encircled, sentinels at post, their inexpressive faces bobbing, as if in silent song.

All but one captive answered the call to immediate action. The pixie sat upon a pile of stones twiddling her thumbs and chewing gum, entirely apathetic.

The Gruffudden moved in on her and roughly nudged her into action. She protested at first, slapping at them. But when one of the beasts rammed his pointy snout into her solar plexus, she fell to the ground whimpering and gasping for breath.

Retribution was swift and savage.

Clara thought of grabbing a sledgehammer and going after one of them, smashing that fat green head to smithereens. But these thoughts were quickly quelled when she realized their sheer number made this untenable.

The legion of Gruffudden adjusted their position and moved in closer as if in direct response to Clara's thoughts. She looked around for allegiance, seeing only bodies bent to their work, eyes turned to the ground.

The new order was set in hard stone.

Each day began at sunrise, ended at sunset. Crushing toil coloring each dolesome moment for twelve to fourteen hour days of labor, toilet, labor, labor, and toilet.

Each night the weary workers slumped back to their bunks for a bowl of watery gruel and sleep that seemed much too short.

Minutes begat hours begat days begat time in its relentless ticking. The glum and harsh surroundings became the new normal as each settled into the new reality.

Regimented labor became the rule of life. Brutality substituted for loving kindness, decent humane treatment.

The Gruffudden stood guard unprotesting. As slavish to their masters whims as the human chattel.

Life in the work camp was broken down to life's base elements. You live with your feet in the stones and there's no time to be thinking about how you got in or how you're going to get out.

"Why do we continue in this fashion," murmured one man, skin hanging off his battered bones. "Have we no self-respect?"

His hollow vacant eyes betrayed a man at his end. A man whose reason for life had fled long ago.

Three Gruffudden surrounded him, constructing a crude cage. The screams did not last long as he was devoured by the voracious beasts; his legacy reduced to a pile of bones and a blob of blood.

All continued working, barely a glance in the direction of the condemned man, knowing that to pause during this meting out of punishment would be viewed as rebellion.

A cross action, a stray word was all it took to bring the hammer of brutal punishment down upon one's head. None could escape this tragic fate.

Barbarous. The poison kiss of work camp love.

Three trucks had driven up that morning and dumped a new load of blocks to be broken down by the captives.

Truly there was no rest for the weary.

A growing noise erupted in the distance. Over a small ridge could be seen rising smoke, as war whoops weaved through the resultant dust fog.

Suddenly a band of red-haired riders on horseback raced in and stirred everything into a chaotic whirl. They were stunted and ugly.

Hammers swung as if in a fugue. There was pointed stone, here and there, but most of the formations were just odd misshapen lumps.

One laborer wandered aimlessly, mumbling to herself, and scratching wildly at her head.

What the riders were here for was patently unclear. The Gruffudden rushed the riders in effort to quell the disturbance. A few riders were knocked of their mounts and trampled.

A pandemonium of panic had descended.

Clara ducked behind a cluster of rocks, hoping to be ignored in this madcap melee. She dropped to her knees in a crouch. The blisters and open cuts on her hands hurt when she touched anything. Her hands screamed in pain as she touched the ground.

She had grown worn and sallow in the last month, but she had kept her bearing in the end.

"ʃarlha jehʃalonà wǣjia," she mumbled under her breath in the Chàryx tongue.

Alarmingly, the Wurzel strolled up behind her, knocking her out of her stupor, his hands clasped behind his back, commenting on the scene like a renegade commentator.

"Nothing like a band of red-haired robbers from Dunwaddy Grun to liven up a party," he said, a pleased look on his face. "Things had become quite morose."

Clara studied him slack-jawed.

"Ya think? People were beaten and killed!" said Clara, tears coming to her eyes.

"I realize this is difficult and perhaps too much for youth to bear" he said in soothing tone. "To have come so near death so many times...you have a remarkable constitution, Clara, not to have cracked under such a strain. You're a lucky girl. But let me remind you, we are in a state of galactic war."

"And let me remind YOU, I am just a little girl!" she said, surprised at her sudden boldness, feeling the tears welling up again and not feeling at all LUCKY.

"And can't you at least give me WARNING before popping in like that?"

"That would defeat the element of surprise, would it not?"

"Whatev," grumped Clara, not sure anymore if she liked his tactics. "Look at my hands, my face" she said, holding them out in front of her and thrusting her face forward.

"Time for us to depart, young sprout," he said with barely a glance in her direction.

"Whoa. Wait a minute. What about the others?" she responded with a sniffle.

The Wurzel looked around at the clustering mass of bodies in action.

"They have their own destinies to fulfill. As do you."

"But...but!!!"
CHAPTER SEVEN

It was only later that Clara realized that the invading band of red-haired riders, the Red Bandits of Dunwaddy Grun, was orchestrated by the Wurzel to facilitate her escape. He assured her no one would be hurt beyond the abuses of the work camp itself in this mock raid as the bandits were there only to fulfill their function as distraction.

It was only required that he provide them a bag of gold to ensure their cooperation in this escapade.

The bandits were quite a terror on their home ground, the territory situated on the boundary between the Modwellau Marshes and Dunwaddy Grun. Several of them had been hanged for crimes committed in ancient times. And they were still considered a threat to unwary travelers making their way through the narrow pass between territories.

They were known to utter strange cries and shouts throughout the territory in order to frighten wayfarers. But they were still willing to make a deal for their services, for money made on the slightly legal side of the street.

Yet the Wurzel made no mention of the brutal work camp Clara and the other subjugated train passengers had been subjected to. Avoided the topic almost purposely it seemed. As if he was embarrassed he had let Krygzyk slip in and cause untold mayhem.

Was the Wurzel not to be some kind of protector, some kind of assurance against the Krygzyks of the universe? Maybe she had misunderstood much in the way of anything in this tragicomedy of errors she had been cast into.

So this is the way of the world, the magical realms or otherwise, she solemnly concluded. Adults decide the course of action, put their children up to fight their battles, and offer not even the slightest explanation or apology for the resultant atrocities.

And in truth, what good is explanation or apology. Words cannot undo the abuses or bring back the dead.

No time had passed, she found, as she dropped right back into the home scene at her last point of departure. Nothing had changed either. Not the heat, not the boredom, not the endless space of summer lay out before her.

She was down in the basement rummaging through the massive chest.

She knew the book of Mrunelight was last left safely in the hands of Mrs. Plumwrinkle. Though so much had happened since that chance encounter, it seemed years ago, that Clara was unsure of much of anything concerning the whereabouts and circumstances of the book.

At least she knew where the Færsceaþa was, safely in her pocket where she always kept it. She reached down to her pocket and patted it in a show of sharp satisfaction. Smug satisfaction turned to piercing horror when she realized her pocket was...empty!

Swiftly she was interrupted in her reverie as another matter was thrust into the fold. A chill ran up her spine.

There appeared to be several spirits dancing fantastically around her. She also heard the sounds of a bugle-horn and what seemed like invisible hunters riding by.

"Fear not, young sprout, it is only I," spoke the disembodied voice of the Wurzel. "As you are in the spotlight lately I thought it best to keep the Færsceaþa close to me for safekeeping."

"So the dancing spirits and bugle-horn and riders going past me are your way of giving me warning?"

"Touché. I rather thought the bugle-horn was a nice touch."

Better than a long creepy Gruffudden, she supposed. But still startling.

"You've got to be the world's toughest ten-year-old," said the Wurzel. "That's the only way you're going to survive. And in order to do that, you've got to figure out what it means to be tough."

Aunt Flora burst into the room like a whirlwind, dropped to the floor and began to toss from side to side and moan and cry in a loud voice.

"The Hroovatua....the Hroovatua."

Clara tried to calm her agitation, but she flung herself on the bed, and cried: "Chloe, my dear, my dear."

Clara wondered if this Hroovatua was anything like the Gruffudden with which she was well acquainted. Where had her aunt been wandering to lately?

Clara stopped her restless thoughts for a moment.

Who was Chloe? She had no idea.

"What?" she said.

Aunt Flora cried again: "Chloe, my dear, my dear."

Her Aunt was slipping in and out of reality.

"What should I do?" said Clara, looking around her and throwing up her hands. But there was no answer. The Wurzel had popped out just as suddenly as he had popped in.

His parting message lingered in the air around her:

MUST DEPART. WILL SEE YOU SOON...

The floating words swiftly dissolved and fell like snowflakes around her.

Clara very slowly turned her head, a bit frustrated with all the Chloe my dear my dear stuff, and said: "Auntie, the Hroovatua has not come."

Aunt Flora was wet through from head to foot, muddy all over, her face and eyes flushed red with fever, and her limbs all trembling.

That night she was delirious.

The next day, Clara thought she should find someone to call a doctor when Aunt Flora opened her eyes flushed red with fever, looked up to the ceiling, and said vacantly: "Chloe, has the Hroovatua come yet?"

Aunt Flora turned her eyes about the room, as if expecting someone or something to come. At last, with an air of disappointment, she sank her head back on the pillow.

She turned her face to the wall with a deep sigh.

Clara was flummoxed at this recent spate of incongruous and strangely tangential occurrences. Did the world suddenly spin 180 degrees on its axis?

Then through her head spun the end of a childhood poem:

One little pig to stay at home

One little pig that loved to roam—

Over the fields to run so free.

A squealing pig tied to a peg he now will be.

Maybe her aunt was the little pig that loved to roam in this case. Quirkily funny given the circumstances.

But this bit about the Hroovatua was a curious topic. One that became curiouser and curiouser as the minutes ticked by.

But when that pig came back—Oh! Then,

He wished that he had not left the pen.

How sorry he did feel!

For the master tied the naughty pig's leg,

With a good stout rope, to a good stout peg.

Oh! You should have heard him squeal!

Oh little pig little pig your image flooding through Clara's mind got the memory wheel turning.

She unexpectedly remembered that some time past she and her friend Jennifer had been entertained reading an old dusty library book that showed pictures of astounding mythical creatures and one WAS called the Hroovatua. Now it struck her like a bat across the head.

The creature was said to have an unquenchable hunger for shadows. And once he ate a shadow entirely, the body attached to it would cease to exist.

Where did her aunt learn of this creature?

Then she remembered the creepy pictures her aunt had recently installed in the front room. She ran upstairs to look at them again.

Immediately something caught her eye.

One of the largest pictures in the new installation was a picture filled with energetic dancing creatures, pink, plump and blatantly evil. That's what Clara had noticed the first time she saw it. But now the picture had in it a massive six-legged creature with long pointy tipped tubular beak, and extremely nasty sharp teeth visible by virtue of its wicked grin.

The picture again changed, and by the way the six-legged creature was using its beak to gobble up the shadow of the dancing creature next to it—the beak acted as a vacuum cleaner hose and sucked up the shadow quick as a wink—this was clearly the Hroovatua. In fact, the creature whose shadow it was devouring was already halfway gone, its body fading from the head down, the crazy legs continuing to dance away like zombie limbs.

Oh the chill began wildly running up and down her spine now. A living picture whose images change on their own?

Creepy was an understatement.

As she looked on in horror, the unfortunate dancing victim and the Hroovatua vanished completely.

Suddenly a strong, musky animal odor invaded Clara's nostrils. She was afraid to turn around and look behind her.

An insistent clicking, like the stamping of hooves began emanating from the kitchen area. When she heard a loud snort shake the walls, she panicked.

Evidently, the Hroovatua had indeed come. Clara fled for her life.

She hit the door running, leaving it swinging open behind her.

What is happening here? Even at home fearsome creatures come after me. Is there no escape? I am just one little girl!

The Wurzel's parting words played through her mind you've got to figure out what it means to be tough, bà kɔɔba.

She was glum to the core, and her face looked like one who had made a long journey.

Just a few blocks from home, sapped for strength due to extreme anxiety, she took shelter under a tree's shadow to not cast her own while she caught her breath.

She was rigid with fear and though stock still her heart pounded and her face drained of color.

As soon as I overcome one obstacle, another one is rapidly conjured up like a rabbit out of a top hat. I know it's pretty bad when I start to miss my old life, she thought despondently.

She had begun to doubt everything that she previously accepted as correct and true. She could no longer afford to close her eyes and stop up her ears because new ideas are ridiculous and absurd.

The next time someone says it's raining cats and dogs she would stay out of the rain to avoid being pummeled by plummeting pets.

The way things were changing, she was starting to doubt which way was up. More so, she felt as if she were living on the ceiling. Sometimes she thought how weird the world would look from up there.

The trilling buzz of déjà vu tingled her bones. Maybe I am up on the ceiling, she thought. Things just fall into place sometimes, Clara, her father would say.

Geez. That sounded like a bad dad joke right now.

She felt like the idea of being a regular ten year old was over about fifty years ago.

At least she knew landing on the moon was no longer out of the question. Maybe the Wurzel could send the Hroovatua to hunt shadows up THERE!

There was a cluster of trees nearby, and from it she could hear the cry of a lyrebird that sounded mechanical. The sound grew closer and closer until it came flapping by right above her head. The light zigzagged off its long body and extended wings. She could see the shining metallic separations in its feather pattern and see the mechanism in its clear plastic head.

It WAS a mechanical bird!

While she was occupied looking overhead, Patches raced toward her and jumped into her arms which she opened right on time. His heart was beating wildly as he growled frantically. In the distance, emerging from the direction he had just come, she could see the immense black shape of the Hroovatua trotting toward her.

"Up in the tree, Patchy," she said, slinging him across her shoulders as she speedily climbed. The cat grumbled steadily latching his claws onto her. "Ouchie," she complained but kept on climbing.

She got up to a safe place to brace herself as she awaited the monster's arrival. As if ordered to it, a stray cat came strolling along but immediately stopped in its tracks as it saw the approaching behemoth.

It froze momentarily, hissed, then jetted off in a direction directly opposite the direction of the tree. The beast gave chase but was no match for the more agile terrified cat.

In any case, the beast was quickly gone as it kept trotting along, snorting and howling into a distant anywhere else.

She couldn't help but wonder if the Wurzel was responsible for sending that cat in the nick of time. She hoped of course that the cat would get away, while believing that it no doubt would.

"You'd get away from that nasty beast. Wouldn'tcha Patchy?" she cooed, cuddling him and kissing him madly.

You know I would, the cat seemed to say as it snuggled up against her, licking her face. Now he was mewling steadily.

Her thoughts went to Aunt Flora. She wondered how she was holding up. Finding comfort in the fact that the hulking beast would in no way be able to negotiate the narrow stairs, she decided her aunt was safe enough.

Yet she thought it best to go back and confirm.

A dull layer of clouds filled the sky. The weather forecast had predicted rain. Heading home, she found herself humming "The Itsy Bitsy Spider."

This was the season when creepy crawlies were becoming more abundant.

The sharp sunshine striped the surface of the ground with the hard shadows of the branches that stretched overhead. Without wind to move the branches, the shadows looked like lifeless saltwater eels, disfigured and still.

A few small clouds floated in the sky, their shapes clear and precise, like the clouds in children's drawings.

She wore a T-shirt, crumpled jeans, and tennis shoes, but walking in the summer sun, she could feel a light film of sweat forming under her arms and on her chest. The jeans she had worn to bed the night before, given that she had been cast in the role of first responder to her aunt. The T-shirt she had pulled from a pile on her bedroom floor.

The houses that lined her neighborhood fell into two distinct categories: older houses and those built more recently. As a group, the newer ones were smaller, with smaller yards to match.

Most were painted powder blue, earth yellow, or sand with reddish-brown roofs and siding. Some had fallow spots in the front yard brought on by a combination of drought and intense sun.

Others were a sick yellow due to poor stewardship.

The older houses, gave hardly any sense of life. These were screened off by well-placed shrubs and hedges, between which she caught peeps of scattered children's toys.

Where there were children, there was life expressed.

The dazzling sun cast sparkles on the sticky spider webs dominant in the overgrowth. The news had reported that the conditions were perfect for a boom year for all spiders and insects.

No sounds of any kind were present lending an eerie chill to the place. She could almost hear the blades of grass growing in the sunlight.

One yard had become the dumping ground for every toy known to child kind. Widespread children, present tense.

There were tricycles and toss rings and plastic swords and rubber balls and baby dolls and little baseball bats. One yard had a basketball hoop, and another had macramé lawn chairs surrounding a glass table.

The abiding perimeter a landscape painting: The Lives of Children Past.

The white chairs were caked in dirt, as if they had not been used for some months or even years. The table-top was coated with lavender jacaranda petals, some beaten down by the rain; others dry husks like cast away faery gowns.

Her front yard had nothing but a stone statue of a bird. The statue rested just next to the front door and was surrounded by a thick growth of spider webs and insect bodies. The bird had its beak open as if screeching a warning to its friends to avoid this dangerous place.

Aside from the statue, the house front had no decorative features.

Her family appeared to be a no frills type. Except for the bird of course. The only concession made to front yard decor.

Her mother had been a sculptor, she'd been told. A sculptor of some repute according to her father. Now she wondered if the bird was her mother's creation. Looking at the screeching bird with this thought fresh in mind cast a strange prophetic tinge.

If it was her mother's creation, why would her father keep it? He had long ago hidden or destroyed all her pictures. No evidence helps the heart grow stronger, he had said.

Which explained her mother's tossed away garments, etcetera, pushed into the chest in the basement. So why not the bird?

She rolled this around in her mind.

So maybe the bird is not...Uh oh. The chest. She had left Aunt Flora in the basement!

That night she had a strong vivid dream. In the streets of a strong-walled city there lay a sword. The shape of it was strange and the people thronged round. They held it up to her and said she was to take it with her on her adventures.

She saw it and was glad. She took ahold of it, deeply drawn toward it.

She thanked them, and wore it at her side.

Outside, birds were chirping and flitting through the trees. One tapped at her window. Two other birds flapped behind it squawking a ruckus.

When Clara didn't stir the bird tapped more insistently. Another bird joined the first one and they went at the window in unison, tap tap tap tap tap tap...

Clara woke up rubbing her eyes and grumbling, "WHAT???"

The birds began hovering and chirping as if oblivious to causing her distress.

She stared them down.

"You know you were making a big noise to wake me up. Now you're gonna act INNOCENT?" she said, waving her hands and shouting as if deranged.

The birds continued to hover and chirp happily.

Well before being interrupted in her very engrossing dream, she had a deep sense of satisfaction and security after receiving the gift of a sword. Was suddenly feeling invincible.

Then the free-for-all had broken out at window central.

Now she was a bit edgy.

To her foggy mind came the memory that the last time a bird had been frantically tapping at her window, she had let it in to have it lead her through the house at which point she had found the Færsceaþa.

Was this another adventure hunt?

Not having any other information to go on, she walked up to the window and looked at the birds hovering in front of it.

I'll just open it a crack to let one bird in. Just one.

She thought this as she began lifting the window. Matters were quickly taken out of her hands when all three birds squeezed through and began fluttering wildly about the room.

"OMG," she yelled. "What am I gonna do now?"

She began waving her arms and yelling at the birds to go out, even opening up the window and shooing them toward it. This will give them the message, she thought.

Guess again.

The birds were having none of it.

She slammed the window and raced toward them again. Yelling at them and waving her arms around and slapping at them, attempting to push them out. But this was not getting the message across.

Like unruly children they refused to submit.

Clara, at a loss for ideas, sat on the bed with her head in her hands.

The birds began circling around her head, squawking such a cacophony of noise it hurt her ears.

"WHAT??!!" she screamed in frustration.

The birds changed tactics, stopped squawking and immediately made for the open bedroom door and flew into the upstairs hallway.

"No, no, no!" she shrieked, jumping to her feet.

She whipped open the door as she ran into the hallway to see the birds flooding down the stairwell.

Bounding the steps two at a time, she raced after the fleeing birds in a blind panic. What are they up to now, I'm in so much trouble, echoing in her mind.

When she reached to bottom of the steps she froze stock still in shock.

"Ergh," she growled.

One bird was pecking wildly at the large picture of demonic dancers. While the other two birds were lifting up then dropping the equally evil ceramic figurines. She tried jumping between the two birds to stop them, but they pecked at her, even drawing blood, to keep her away.

This was absolute madness!

Three figurines already lay in pieces on the floor. Attempting to break the bronze multi-legged creature figurines, the birds succeeded only in denting the flooring.

Not willing to accept failure, they clamped the figurines with their beaks and began slamming themselves into the front door.

Clara was all too happy to comply as she let them fly free and away from her.

She watched as they all zipped up into the blue, making a beeline for the beach, no doubt hoping to drown these demonic monsters.

The picture was torn to shreds, hanging in pieces from the twisted and mangled frame. With the painting's terrifying aspects greatly diminished, she chuckled thinking that now its current arrangement suited it to a tee.

Strips of pecked and torn canvas hung from the tilted pieces of frame, appearing as an ugly tilted house with shredded siding or looking much like a multimedia modern art painting of a demented pasta drying rack, missing the yummy pasta of course.

The thought crossed her mind that maybe if she threw it in a trash bin nobody would notice.

She wasn't sure if this would work but she had no other ideas.

Gathering up the mangled picture fragments and the busted bits of oh so creepy ceramic figurines, she swiftly moved to the backyard trash bins burying the evidence under some full bags of household trash.

"EEUW," she moaned as she touched the bags, "These are ICKY!!"

She felt distressed not because these creepy items had been destroyed. For this she felt immensely glad. Her concerns were only toward her own chances of coming out of this unscathed, of evading both verbal and maybe physical bashing.

Her aunt had seemed genuinely enamored of these horror house oddments. Clara thought this behavior strange but reckoned she didn't really know the woman anyway.

"Well," she mused sitting on the steps. "What's done is done," as her father would say. "No use crying over spilt milk."

And what of Aunt Flora? Last time she saw her aunt was in the basement as her aunt was recovering from high fever and intense delirium and asking for Chloe. Going on and on about the Hroovatua coming. Slipping in and out of reality.

Then the dreaded creature did appear causing Clara to run for her life. What an adventure that was.

Clara's eyes sparkled at this realization. Auntie was downstairs, Clara was upstairs, and that meant that the savage censure of the viciously brutal avian art critics was missed entirely.

Still, Clara would be grilled when asked where the figurines and painting disappeared to. Well, she could always perform the classic childhood shoulder shrug and blank faced "I don't know" routine.

Or she could blame her father for a dissenting opinion concerning Aunt Flora's art tastes. Or blame Chloe.

But her father seems to have done a disappearing act of his own when the massive storm arrived. Where was he anyways?

The thought rumbled through Clara's already occupied mind like an avalanche of granite boulders and cobbles.

Yes, she needed to solve the mystery of her magically disappearing father; disappeared like a card up a magician's sleeve.

First she had to face Aunt Flora.

When she got downstairs she found her aunt lying much like she'd left her but as she came closer she confirmed she was no longer burning up with fever. But her aunt was still in a state of some confusion, twiddling her thumbs and mumbling unintelligible monotone phrases to the ceiling.

Clara couldn't decide if this was an attempted dialogue or a rambling monologue. As she listened closer she did not detect her aunt asking but telling.

Rambling monologue it is then.

At least she wasn't calling her Chloe.

But before Clara got to patting herself on the back for deducing THIS mystery, she reminded herself that she still had at least two more mysteries to solve:

1. Where is father?

2. Where is Fauna?

Starting with number 2, she knew where Fauna was, kind of. Last time she saw her Fauna was riding a Gruffudden with Krygzyk.

Not the kind of ride that interested Clara in the slightest.

She believed she would need the help of the Wurzel to recover her. There was no WAY she was going to go up against that lunatic Krygzyk, alone. Sure, he was short, grubby, and nasty. But Clara definitely thought she needed assistance for this tall order. Pun intended.

Plus he was so full of himself it made her want to hurl.

For number 1, father, well, she was sure his work number was somewhere in the house. She'd start in his bedroom and go from there.

Typically she would enlist her aunt's assistance, on a good day of course. But as her aunt was intensely engaged badgering the ceiling, she did not expect any help from her.

So once more, Clara was on her own.
CHAPTER EIGHT

"Heller, Hardclaw, and Grimms, how may I assist you?"

"Um...Mr. Drummond? I think he's a paralegal or something?"

"Sorry, no Mr. Ruman here."

"No, not Ruman. Drummond. D-r-u-m-m-o-n-d," Clara spelled out clearly "Mr. Charles Drummond."

Now the tone changed entirely.

"Oh, Charles. Why yes, he's a doll," the receptionist sighed.

"Um...that's nice," said Clara, feeling a bit embarrassed. "But can I speak with him, please? I'm his daughter, Clara?"

"Oh Clara dear! He's said so much about you, yes. The apple of his eye and such and such. So sweet. So smart. Yes, dear Clara. Of course."

"So can I?"

"Can you...what?" spoken a bit tetchy.

"Can I speak with him please?"

"Were he not out on assignment, yes dear. Would you like to leave a message?"

This was very frustrating. Yes she can talk to him but he's out on assignment?

"Just please ask him to call me as soon as possible?"

"ASAP then. Of course," the receptionist wrote on a sticky note, adding a little smoochie face to it.

The phone call left Clara with an odd unsettled feeling. She felt as if someone had force-fed her a clump of foul smelling mush. Spitting it out did no good. She could still feel it inside her mouth.

Having not seen her father for more than one week, she felt like she was fighting an uphill battle just to try and speak with him. As if he was hiding or BEING hidden.

A misty rain was falling. The sky was closed over with dark, low-hanging clouds. A sad procession of people and umbrellas walked up and down the street outside.

It seemed that the blazing summer was taking a break.

A bristly despond began to settle upon her. Incongruously, she began scanning colors through her mind asking herself which was the saddest of all the colors. Blue she knew was the accepted saddest color. Blue mood the number one usage.

But for her black was the saddest color of all. It represented a big nothing. Empty space. A black hole. Very much consistent with how she was feeling right then.

She felt an overwhelming numbness.

In a flash, she flipped the switch.

"He'll be here any minute now. He's coming. He's coming through the grass, past the fence, stopping to sniff the flowers along the way; little by little father is coming closer. Picture him that way, get his image in my mind," Clara told herself, attempting to manifest him through the power of thought.

Delusion became her only respite. Fool yourself to fool others.

Clara's father, while employed at Heller, Hardclaw, and Grimms, was not a paralegal, but was a lawyer's gofer. He'd go to different government offices to pick up documents, put materials in order, check on legal precedents, and handle court procedures--that kind of stuff.

It was indeed plausible that her father was currently out on assignment. But she had seen neither hirsute hide nor shaggy hair of him in over one week.

She spent the day reading and playing with her newly developed word bending skills, causing words to dance off the page and run circles around her head, climb up the walls, out the door, and back again; slide under the bed, into the closet, and climb back out on the outside of the closet door.

Make them grow HUGE. Miniscule. Almost microscopic.

She even through a few together to send a message:

CALLING THE WURZEL. I NEED YOU!!!

Anything to pass the time. And time passed as time will do, one sticky tick at a time, its steady rhythm temporarily soothing her woes.

Soon, the sky overhead was filled with stars, and millions of crickets were chirping. She fell asleep listening to the chirping, letting the tick tock tick carry her away to slumber land.

Another day in the life of Clara Drummond had drawn its blinds closed.
CHAPTER NINE

Sunday morning was a time when everything sounded soft and hollow. She listened to the pigeons cooing, to someone calling a dog in the distance. She stared at a single spot on the ceiling for the longest time.

Replay of a conversation she had heard between her father and her aunt trickled through her mind:

As you know, we live in a violent and chaotic world, Flora. And within this world, there are places that are still more violent, still more chaotic. Do you understand what I mean?

A dull layer of clouds filled the sky. The weather forecast had predicted rain. Her mother believed that human existence was largely controlled by the elements of water.

"I'm only ten," she said to nobody, "and I don't know much about the world, but I do know one thing for sure. The adults in this world who are not pessimistic are a bunch of idiots."

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.

Dylos Grawddwy was gone and here they were in the grey light of a dawn that was hours too early, on a low hill surrounded by marshes with a big river coiled across the landscape in the direction of the still-cloud-obscured rising sun.

Gone was not just Dylos Grawddwy. Not just Krygzyk and the Gruffudden.

The whole planet had gone.

Great, thought Fauna.

Scattered all about, stretching to the horizon, lay ruins.

Fauna felt like she was going to keel over and she and the Wurzel did a bizarre dance for a few seconds as the Wurzel held her hand and tried to stop her falling flat to the ground. She sort of staggered and revolved around him, trying to get her balance back and gasping as her shoes slipped on the tussocky grass on the cold hilltop.

Finally she got her legs spread far enough apart to stop gyrating and the Wurzel pulled her to a stop, taking her by both shoulders while she bent, breathing hard and fast, and not believing what she was seeing whenever she took a look out across this deserted landscape of grey marshes and black ruins.

"I'm okay," she said. "I'm okay."

She straightened up. The Wurzel kept one hand on her elbow.

She took a few deep breaths, holding them a handful of seconds each. She looked around.

Couldn't see another soul.

The ruins spread in every direction. A few were on the horizon, darkly jagged. Towers and bits of domes; bitten, slumped-looking squared things that might once have been tower blocks or big office buildings.

There were some dressed stones sitting half-overgrown by longer grass a few steps away down the slope towards the nearest marsh.

"Let's sit," the Wurzel said. He sat her down on the cold hard stones.

"Where the heck is this?" she asked when she had her breathing back to something like normal.

"Another Earth, another time dimension," he said. He sat beside her, half turned to her.

She rubbed her neck. "YOU did this whack stuff?"

The Wurzel spoke harshly to the disheveled Fauna, "You have been frolicking with a dangerous creature, child, who travels through alternate time dimension. Time is the seed of the universe. Has the poisonous breath of the beast smitten you?"

She looked at him groggy eyed, running her hand through her soiled bushy hair fluffing it up. It did not help. She looked the epitome of ragamuffin.

"Just something different, like. I mean, so what?"

"This universe is full of creatures who play games to the death. Genocidal maniacs, slavers, and minds whose main enjoyment is derived from high-speed destruction."

"Oh, whoopie doo."

"These minds are good only out of cheerful indifference, or perhaps disinterested engagement."

"You story has become tiresome," she said, yawning for effect.

"Your dear cousin has asked me to retrieve you."

"Oh Clara? Well, I mean, I know she...uhm..."

"wǣjia yribu ʧaɽʲ!" shouted the Wurzel in the Chàryx tongue, throwing up his hands. "Never lose sight of what makes you human, child: conflict and compromise."

"Did anyone ever tell you like look weird? I mean that beluga sausage nose is so...so..."

"Touché miniature dirt clod."

"And your hair is like gnarly..."

"Gnarly? A new coinage to my two-thousand year old ear canals. weofod..."

"Two thousand? Really? You're like...ancient."

"Millennial actually."

"And you're..."

"Enough, dung child. Time dimension bendation is upon us."

"What did you call me, snot guzzler?"

"Your quite accurate description. Take my hand, it's time to depart."

"Take your hand? You pervy lame..."

The Wurzel spun his eyes to hypnotize the verbacious Fauna and once she collapsed he slung her over his shoulder like a sack of rotten potatoes. Less time invasive this way.

To his viewpoint Fauna was a lethal time sponge.

His was not to question why where concerned the human condition. Yet he did consider devising a way to turn this demon child's lethality into a useful tool for the cause.

His protégé Clara wanted her returned to home quarters, thus he would comply with her wishes. If Clara was capable of bending time dimensions, he would have gladly passed this particular recognizance mission off to her.

This child was repugnant and a soap dodger extraordinaire. With a mouth like a Himalayan Pit Viper.

Despite these correctible flaws, she could indeed be a useful addition to his arsenal of word and time dimension bendatories.

Indoctrinate them young goes the axiom.

The full moon blared through the black vault above. Masses of horses die when the moon is full.

Science has no answer for this phenomenon. Statistics hold sway.

A single pigeon lent its monotonous cries to the scene.
CHAPTER TEN

Clara's father finally appeared the day after Clara had called his office. Looking a bit rumpled and baggy around the eyes, it was no doubt her father despite looking like a vagabond.

Running up to him and wrapping her arms around his midsection, she almost toppled him with her fervor. She noticed he smelled a bit...ripe.

"Whoa...whoa...slow down honey. Or are you intending to kill me because I've been absent so long?"

Clara squeezed even harder and thought this over. She didn't want to kill him, but she certainly wanted to have him promise to never disappear like that again.

Tears streamed from her eyes.

"I missed you sooooo much. It was stormy. Scary. Lonely. It was...it was...and Aunt Flora was like..." She lost her words as she began a watershed of tears.

"I'm so sorry, peanut. Work is well...WORK, and you had Aunt Flora and your cousin here so I thought—"

"DON'T EVER DO THAT AGAIN, DADDY!" Clara shouted, surprising both her and her father.

Charles Drummond was at a loss of how to handle this. His wife had only been gone a short time and he was still new to the single parenting game.

His wife had handled all the girl things. Clothing, cuddling, soothing.

Trying to console his insecure daughter was out of his wheelhouse he felt. But this was not acceptable.

He had to do something to quell her fears.

He hugged her tightly, removed her arms from around his waist, and dropped to his knees to speak to her at her eye to eye.

"I'm so very, very, very, infinity times SORRY my baby," he said, squeezing her tight. "You are still a little girl, and I guess I just needed to be reminded of that. A very smart and mature little girl for your age, yes. But still a little girl...a little girl who still needs her daddy."

He hugged her tighter as tears came to his eyes.

"I told you we'd get through this tough time together, right?"

Clara nodded sadly.

"Yes I did and it seems I broke my implied promise," he said, authoritatively, mentally slamming down the gavel.

"Promise?" Clara said, wiping her eyes.

"Yes, promise. Get through this together means TOGETHER. And I was absent for some of the TOUGHEST times yet!"

"You were, daddy," said Clara with a cry in her voice. "You really were."

"Let's make a pinkie swear, baby. Okay?"

Clara was familiar with the pinkie swear. The most sacred of all swears. Topped only by the on your life swear.

He extended his right pinky finger to his daughter, and she extended and wrapped hers around it.

"I, Charles Drummond, father of my beautiful and smart daughter, Clara, promise to never disappear again unless I get her permission first!"

A warm feeling of pride raced through him, bringing on a little sweat. I think I'm starting to get the hang of this soothing bit, he thought.

Clara kept squeezing his pinky so tight, trying to squeeze every bit of that humongous promise's power out of it; it seemed she was trying to keep his pinky for herself.

"Okay, baby. If you squeeze my pinky to death there'll be no pinky left to honor the swear," he joked.

Clara giggled a bit and wiped at her eyes.

"I love you daddy," she said, letting his pinky go and wrapping her arms around his shoulders.

"And I love YOU, my baby...Always have...Always will."
CHAPTER ELEVEN

The next morning Clara woke up to find a furry thing wriggling around and poking at something in the corner of her room. Small, furry, bushy tail, she thought it was a rat.

And where was Patches when she needed him? He had woken nearer to sunrise and found his late rising master a bit too sleep minded for him.

So off he had skedaddled to attend to business that every cat knows of but won't tell.

She rose from bed slowly, not wishing to disturb the deeply involved critter. Whatever it was after, she figured, better it than me.

Slowly she crept towards it a trill of fear riding up her arms.

If this is a rat, she thought, I'm gonna—

"Meow...."

A kitten? OMG!

Now that the fear was removed she reached out gently to grasp at the kitten. As she put her hand around it she realized it was so tiny it fit neatly into the palm of her hand like a baby toy.

Bushy dark auburn hair, streaks of golden hair interwoven, and...Oh! The cutest face and the greenest eyes she had ever seen. And, and.

Oh, look at that! A single yellow speck in its left eye.

Clara had woken with not a thought in her mind. But now she knew absolutely KNEW she was deeply and desperately in LOVE with this kitten!

"You're so tiny," she cooed, nuzzling her face against it. "No more than a smudge."

The kitten mewled and purred enjoying the attention.

"Oh Patches is gonna be SO upset when he sees you. I mean, how can I not pay attention to you?"

She nuzzled and kissed it and rolled it on its back in her hands.

"I don't know but I think you're a girl kitty. What do you think, Smudge?" she asked the kitten, who drank her in with its vast green eyes and purred softly.

"Smudge. Yep, that's your name all right," satisfied with the name.

All she had to do was ask her father if she could keep it, but what could he say? Though she thought it possible that he had brought this kitten as a gift because of the recent events.

As she was up earlier than normal, she had time to see her father off to work. No time like the present to get this kitten business out of the way.

She heard her father in the bathroom attending to his showering and shaving routine which was his typical arrangement. Holding Smudge close to her she lingered outside the bathroom door deciding she'd catch him off guard when he stepped out.

The wait was not long.

"Hey, peanut," he said, running his hand through her hair, "And how are you this fine..."

"Meow"

"Oh, what have you got there?"

Clara held up the kitten so her father could take a closer look as she began running off its specs.

"Found her in my room and she's got bushy dark auburn hair streaks of golden hair the cutest face and the greenest eyes and a single yellow speck in her left eye and and..."

"Okay baby, slow it down to walking speed."

Clara beamed so much love and joy to him he knew had no choice but to grant her what she was obviously asking for.

"So, I suppose you want to KEEP this mystery kitten?"

Clara nodded her head enthusiastically.

"No idea how it came to be in your room?"

She shook her head no and made a pouty face.

Her father looked at her, remembered his recent emotional moments with her and the written in stone promises he had made and he knew he was sunk.

"Well..." he said, drawing it out for effect. "I suppose..."

Clara stood in front of him, giving the kitten so many kisses and nuzzles her father thought the poor little thing might wish she had let it prance off to wherever it had come from.

But he knew this would not happen. Nor would he be able to say no to his daughter.

Now the pleading wheel spun full speed, causing a slight breeze.

"Please please please please please please please please please...," she rat a tat tatted bouncing up and down in place.

"Okay, okay, okay already. I give up," he said, raising his hands above his head. "Keep the kitten, Clara. I don't want to be responsible for breaking up this romance," he said with a warm loving smile.

"Thank you thank you thank you, daddy," said Clara, wrapping her arms around his waist and hugging him, cupping Smudge softly in her right hand.

Clara skipped off to her room, kitten snug against her chest and sat down on the bed running her hands through its fur. So many things had happened in such a short time. Too many to untangle.

She feels like she has lived more than one life already.

Minutes begat days begat weeks begat begat begat. And now this kitten arrives from nowhere.

A warm tender feeling overcame her and reminiscing took her away.

Her mother, Mira, had a star shaped birthmark on her right cheek, a very attractive and unique beauty mark. And her mother WAS beautiful. This part Clara remembered well.

Clara had a similar mark on her left butt cheek. Her mother's was an obvious sign for everyone to see, Clara's was more the private sign, for only special people to see.

Her mother made a point of using a mirror to let Clara see the mark on her backside when she was about five or six.

"Oh," Clara had said, wrinkling her brow. "It's ugly!!" she cried, looking up at her mother with a fierce glare, a tear running down her cheek.

Her mother had remained calm and soothed her.

"Oh, Clara sweetie," she said, hugging her tightly and kissing her warmly. "It's a mark of beauty, like the one on my cheek. It means that you are very special. More special than anyone or anything else. Did you notice how it's shaped like a beautiful star?

Clara's crying had diminished to a dull whimper. She thought about the star shape. But she had looked so quickly, was so upset at seeing the mark, she needed to see it again.

"Show me again mommy?"

This time Clara looked at the birthmark with new clear eyes. And suddenly she saw the beauty her mother had spoken of. Yes, it was a beautiful star. A five pointed beauty like no one else had. A beauty mark that made her just like her mother.

A deeply personal bond was forged that could not be broken.
CHAPTER TWELVE

"Are you completely CERTAIN that the picture and figurines have been compromised, and by that I mean destroyed?"

"Yes, master. There is no doubt."

The Supreme Being, Doldhor, had neatly arranged for a courier to deliver the nefarious pictures and figurines to the Drummond house. Just assisting the effort, he had assured Krygzyk. But this did not sit well with Krygzyk for he knew Doldhor did not trust him.

Doldhor despised his choice of minion.

Krygzyk grunted and glared at his minion. Yes, he was surrounded by bumbling buffoons. But their loyalty was absolute. The gall of Doldhor, thought Krygzyk, he knows it is I, Krygzyk, Scoundrel Extraordinaire who never fails to deliver. I am so...sooo...sooooo...

"The asset has been placed?"

"This morning, master. Right on schedule."

"And the so-infuriating-I-want-them-ripped-apart-and-liquefied birds have been neutralized, exterminated, obliterated?"

His minion grew silent and stared at his own two feet.

"Well?" hissed Krygzyk, his anger seething.

"The birds flew out to sea and were lost in...when we..."

"IDIOTS!!! YOU CAN'T ELIMINATE A FLAPPING FLOCK OF BIRDS????"

The minion was shaking now.

"The forces of nature as always are stacked against me, idiot; with these twittering chirping birds. And here, surrounded by IDIOTS, they foil and shame me. Have I not even the most MINISCULE of control over my minion?"

His minion stood up flagpole straight.

"Not so master. You DO have the most miniscule of control over your minion."

Krygzyk looked ready to pop like a bulbous zit. His face red, his teeth gritted, spit flying from his mouth as he hissed. His eyes drilled pure evil intent toward the unfortunate minion.

Still the minion continued, "In fact I was just today saying..."

"GADSLAPPIT!! IDIOTTTT!!!!!!" Krygzyk wailed. "This is unbearable! Bring me Havok!"

"Havok, master? He is involved in..."

"Havok, idiot! Gone deaf have you?"

"No master."

"Why do you yet remain in my sight, buffoon??!! MOVE IT!!"

Bumblich shuffled forth on rubbery legs, weaving unsteadily, wishing he were intangible, like air.

Rather than risk going up against Havok alone, Bumblich sent instead an urgent note on the back of the courier beetle Fott, a common method of passing communication during wartime.

Bumblich thought this wartime enough, given his master's elevated emotions and Havok's penchant for doling out impulsive cruelty, especially where concerned messengers.

And Fott, well, no great loss considered Bumblich. Though trustworthy, Fott emits a stench most foul.

In truth, Havok utterly disregarded the maxim "don't kill the messenger". He had his own maxim, "kill the messenger".

Aggravate Havok, pay the supreme price.

The ordained beetle arrived on site as Havok was noisily gulping his fifth and last rodent ala bisque today and he so despised being interrupted during mid-slaughter.

Looking down at his feet he saw the beetle scurrying toward him. The note affixed to his back told him this was NOT good news.

He scooped up the zealous beetle, ripped the message from his scaly back, read it, cussed, spitting masticated fragments of rodent flesh, slammed the beetle to the ground, then squashed the loyal servant with a satisfying CRUUUNNNCCCHHH!!!!

Perhaps Bumblich contained within his enslaved form a bit of hard won wisdom.

Havoc interpreted the message content as such: Interrupt your far more important work to take over the tasks of some worthless IDIOTS!

Primed to mow down a mountain range, Havok was in top form.

Let us pause to meet Havok.

An eight foot tall monolith of multifarious stones interspersed with innumerable flecks of trash, a few decomposed animal bodies, and a preponderant overcoat of a substance most foul, his presence was announced—well ahead of his arrival—to all the available senses.

Havok was indeed a force.

He was also, the top rung of the Krygzyk ladder of doom and destruction, and was overseeing the construction of the massive compound his master wished to have in place when his plan of complete domination came to fruition. A top performer, a being who completed every task fully ahead of schedule and with unspecified wicked embellishments added for effect, Havok was that one laborer in any assorted grouping of workers who was in truth, irreplaceable.

His beginnings were oddly enigmatic.

The rest of his tribe of peculiarly constructed creatures was killed by ferocious granite farmers 20 years prior to aligning with Krygzyk. He was the sole surviving member. Living alone and eking out a subsistence living hunting for small forest animals and trash dump beasties and collecting assorted materials to construct crude sustainable housing.

Much like a boa constrictor, he would swallow the beasties live and whole.

If any unfortunate varmint was able to cross over his deleterious threshold, it would never leave. In fact, he'd perform a little celebratory dance, complete with mumbling his special atonal ditty:

Life goes on

But not for you

Goodbye freedom

Hello cruel food...

One could accurately utter many execrable things about him. But one could not say he was a creature of unrefined tastes.

In him Krygzyk saw himself as a young miscreant. A young ne'er do well. An embryonic psychopath.

Where Krygzyk committed atrocious acts of destruction and eradication as a matter of course, part of his process you might say, Havok performed heinous acts of unrestrained cruelty purely for pleasure, for the sinister chuckles it brought to his sardonic face (if face it could be called), unadorned precision. To see him affect his twisted cryptic smile with exposed silver triangular teeth would cause beings to soil themselves.

In short, he was evil incarnate, topping even Krygzyk who thought himself the ne plus ultra.

This created for Krygzyk a small dilemma. How to adore a creature for his intense evil inclinations while simultaneously despising him for embodying everything Krygzyk considered his exclusive eminent domain alone.

When Krygzyk asked him—while trying to contain his gushing adoration—how he managed such astounding successes without fail, "It's my magic touch," Havok replied flashing his trademark poisonous smile without a hint of humor. And that was all he said.

One could say Havok had Krygzyk wrapped around his filthy little finger. The very finger adorned with the only bauble he deigned to wear; a screaming human face contorted and disfigured by unspeakable torture and mutilation. His calling card one might say.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN

"I have discovered some unanticipated and fabulous things about this book. The things it says. The things it does not. The things better left hidden and unsaid for a multitude of eternities. The kinds of things..."

Mrs. Plumwrinkle went on and on, unraveling one mystery while simultaneously concluding another, rolling into one conundrum, reeling it out, before slamming face first into a dead end. So rambling was this monologue that Clara's eyes soon began to close. She couldn't help it.

Mrs. Plumwrinkle was obviously very smart and wise, and tended to say what she was thinking. She was the type of person who thought things out while speaking.

Clara was not like that.

"...for instance, I found deeply embedded into the book's ciphers, its system of organizing information, a very complex matrix that often combines and transects disconnected chapters and sections of the book, resulting in entirely, and sometimes contradictory, interpretations. This is deadly material. Not for mass consumption. I suppose in some respects it is not unlike another long standing, deeply cherished, hotly debated, heinously misunderstood, publication of ancient origin: the Bible. With the caveat that there is nothing even remotely divine or angelic contained within its boards."

Now Clara was utterly flummoxed. Was this book a GOOD thing to have?

"If you're wondering why anyone would wish to rummage through this book seeking benefit of any kind, look no further than the dankest, darkest, wickedest, most innately corrupt quarters for your answer. In other words, using the name of this book and good in the same sentence is an oxymoron. Unless the sentence states 'it would be a grand and GOOD thing to destroy this book'"

"Wow," Clara gushed. "This book sounds AWFUL!"

"Indeed it is, my child. Thus why your mother had it locked and hidden securely away from inquisitive eyes. Unfortunately, she did not account for the inquisitive and relentless eyes of a child."

These revelations struck a jagged note with Clara. If it was as dangerous as Mrs. Plumwrinkle said, why hadn't it been destroyed long ago?

"I realize I supplied you conflicting information of a sort myself. Understandably, you likely wonder why, if this book is the mother of all evils so to speak, why it has been allowed to flourish in concrete form. The answer I'm afraid is unsatisfactory in that the book's elimination is adamantly unlikely. It can only be irrevocably annihilated by the proper conjuration, interestingly enough contained within the book itself, performed simultaneously and in vastly disconnected locations, by an oldblood and a youngblood."

"I don't understand."

"Quite simply, by one who is an old master at conjurations and one who is new to them. But not just one who is new to conjurations, one who is new to conjurations and near as skilled as a well-seasoned old master."

Clara tried to sort this out. She had already met a few people, like the Wurzel for instance, who were old masters. While she, was a newbie. Wasn't that enough?

"Uhm, I'm new to conjurations, and the Wurzel is..."

"I believe you have not misread my words, naturally. But it seems I may have unintentionally misled."

"I don't understand. I mean, I'm...you know...new...and..."

"How I misled my dear is by omitting the gargantuan fact that this newly skilled initiate must have been awarded the one highly prized and rarely earned honor: Badge of Vikkus."

"Badge of Bykiss

"No, Badge of Vikkus."

"Uhm, Badge of Bykoos."

"No, no," Mrs. Plumwrikle said with some frustration. She pulled out a page from her notebook and scribbled it down then handed it to Clara.

"Oh, Badge of Vikkus. Why didn't you say so?"

Mrs. Plumwrinkle cast her a barbed glare and wiped her brow.

"Sometimes speaking is far too laborious, my dear. A moment of silence please..."

The woman pointed her fingertips upward and joined her hands together fingertips to fingertips. Like praying. A very common pose Clara had become accustomed to seeing adults do when they were lost in thought.

After some time, Mrs. Plumwrinkle regained her composure and decided to speak to Clara again.

"Once again, I apologize my dear. I realize I bludgeoned you with far too much information for a mind so young."

She paused and slapped at her forehead.

"Oh fuddle, Leonora! Far too much information for ANY mind. As I am but an initiate myself, I propose we consult a higher authority in this matter for a final ruling on the oldblood youngblood conundrum."

"Higher authority?" questioned Clara.

"Yes, my dear. The Wurzel."

Yet again Clara was cast into the dark cloud of confusion.

"Who is Leonora?"

Mrs. Plumwrinkle looked at her with wet, apologetic eyes.

"Why Leonora is I, my dear, chastising myself for being so obtuse. You know...sometimes when one thinks they know so much, they find they no nothing at all..."

"Oh, can I call you Leonora?"

"No my dear. It is a name I reserve for rebuking myself on occasion."

"Just...sometimes, I mean..." Clara attempted.

"Absolutely not, child! It would be remiss of me to not remind you to mind your manners."
CHAPTER FOURTEEN

"Oh Leonora, what have you gotten yourself into now?" chittered the Wurzel.

Clara's astounded eyes were present for this abomination. He called Mrs. Plumwrinkle the "L" word.

"Well, Priobostolopologinkaman, time was of the essence so I jumped in both feet."

"Indeed you did. Directly into a poisonous pool.

"Geez," said Clara to Mrs. Plumwrinkle. "What was that humongous name you called him?"

"Priobostolopologinkaman you mean? His official ten times winner of the Badge of Vikkus name. After ten times you're given a specially appointed title/name. One that sets you apart, and declares to all the fact of your supreme mastery of the precepts of advanced conjuration."

"Oh."

"I referred to him by THAT title because it is for the reason of his supreme mastery that we now visit. Giving him advanced warning you could say."

"Wow," said Clara, despondently. "I guess I DO have a lot to learn."

"I detect a hint of upset in your tone, young sprout. But please do not despair. There is much good news to share regarding your query."

Clara's eyes lit up, "Really?"

"Yes, really. All we need do is scale mount Pointilar, slay a wild Runinteer, drink its essence within a circle of Hellioz, proclaim the tenets of the Whincotte from the top of mount Yullich in Eastern Tromboc, then swim the Diarannus ocean to deliver the carcass of the Runinteer back here to Turlypock Ridge, all before the Blood Moon."

Now Clara slumped in dizziness and defeat.

"I could never do THAT stuff in a gazillion years. Maybe I'm not the one to..."

The Wurzel smiled mischievously.

"As Grand Priobostolopologinkaman, I was given the power to change long standing but largely improbable rules and regulations. Mount Pointilar no longer exists as it was obliterated in an ancient war 220 BC. The wild Runinteer hasn't run or been seen for millennia, so no chance of drinking its essence. Doing anything in a circle of Hellioz has been declared ludicrous, thank Gulloz. Proclaiming the tenets of the Whincotte from the top of mount Yullich in Eastern Tromboc is impossible since Tromboc was destroyed in the Covnacht War, also 220 BC. And swimming the Diarannus Ocean to deliver the carcus of the Runinteer or anything else is moot since it has been reduced to dry earth circa the time of your Earth's Ice Age."

"So why did you tell me all that impossible stuff?"

"To show you how arbitrary and silly some of these ancient laws were. Temporal things change. Time rules all as you know. So our laws should account for and adapt themselves across all boundaries. But mostly, to inform you that we need to accomplish none of these things."

"Then what DO we need to do?"

"Get you some in depth boot-camp-grind-you-down training ASAP and be ready before the next Blood Moon."

"The next Blood Moon?"

"Visible on planet Earth every so many years when Mars is at its closet, a total lunar eclipse occurs, and the Earth is farthest from the sun. Elliptical orbits allow this odd confluence. Thus, we get you trained and prepare to launch the Book of Mrunelight into oblivion on the night of the Blood Moon when cosmic energies are peaked. That's it."

Clara suddenly felt a renewed sense of hope and purpose.

"Okay. How do we start?"

"ealdor wecg ealdorbiscop! I will get to that. But now that this two-thousand year old Grand Priobostolopologinkaman has conveyed to you how difficult it was in ancient times to achieve the Badge of Vikkus, let me assure you I DID need to achieve my first three badges in the quite circuitous way I described."

"Two-thousand years old?" Clara interrupted, so astounded she rubbed her eyes.

"Yes, two-thousand. Once I achieved three badges, it was mine to adapt the rules to modern application. Thus my next seven badges were greatly accelerated."

Clara looked impressed, "So you..."

"All of it."

"Even the..."

"Yes, the essence too."

"And the..."

"Indeed, the Runinteer carcass as well."

"And...and..."

"Suffice to say, yes to all the above, three times over."

"You made things easier then."

"Indeed. I realized that all of the wildly incongruous challenges decreed were nothing more than heroic challenges such as the ancient Greek heroes were assigned for to gain their place in the pantheon of the gods. Challenges largely symbolic, brutal, simply to test the strength and fortitude of the hero in question. Yet for our unique purposes, and to expedite the eternal destruction of the Book of Mrunelight, I broke it down to the essentials: an oldblood of accelerated talent, a youngblood of the same, and the Blood Moon. Mix them together with a fatal conjuration, and the Book of Mrunelight is gnome dust."

"And all the rest of that...stuff?"

"Cruel window dressing."

"What about the supreme mastery of the youngblood. Doesn't that take like...years?"

"In a word, yes. But in the universe of time dimension bendaries, years become days. Certain things will always remain as riddles, of course. There are many things I still don't understand."

A person's destiny is something you look back at afterward, not something to be known in advance.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN

She knew her bed was taller the night before. She just knew it. One night ago if she sat up in bed to watch television, she'd be viewing it with eyes centered on the screen.

Tonight however, her eyes were directly in line with the bottom edge.

"That is so weird."

Getting down on the floor to take a look at the bed's legs she saw fine scatterings of sawdust. On the legs she noticed stray slashes and newly sawn raw wood edges.

As if someone was shortening the legs and slashing them in frustration.

Termites with hand saws?

Immediately she thought of Fauna, the trickster. Very funny, cousin. I love you too.

She decided the use the element of surprise to catch her cousin out.

"Been spending some time in my room, cuz?"

Fauna lifted her groggy head from her huge bowl of cereal, "Say what?"

"My room? Spending time there lately?"

Fauna gazed at her incredulous, chomping loudly in bovine form. "Got a bee in your bonnet, cuz?"

"No...I...um..."

"I've only got one thing on my mind," she mumbled, groggily, "and that thing is right here in front of me. See, this big ol' bowl of cereal, and I'd like to get to it if that's all right with inspector Clara."

Now Clara felt like a bumbling fool.

"Looks yummy," said Clara.

"Yeah," she uttered and went back to munching happily.

"Well, my bed is a bit on the short side this morning and I thought that maybe you knew or..."

Fauna stared at her incredulously, her mouth hanging open with half mashed cereal.

"So you thought," she said huffing and spitting some of the mashed mess at Clara in the process, "that I did like..."

Clara noticed how her cousin grew demonstrably ugly as she stumbled through her words with a mouth full of food.

"...and that I..." purposely spitting a waterspout full of mash at Clara and giving her the stinkeye.

"There is something SO wrong with you cuz."

The picture of placidity, Clara smiled wanly and brushed the mush off herself, telling herself she didn't like her morning clothing choice as much as she had thought.

"I probably deserved that, cousin," said Clara almost believing it.

Fauna stared her down, nodding agreement.

"But still, if you...I mean like..."

Staring her down with intense evil eye, Fauna began munching in exaggerated cheek expanded fashion, a vicious full cheek squirrel, a stern warning of out-spraying spewage.

Clara took the hint.

"No more questions. Bye!"

Fauna went back to munching steadily, enjoying her morning sugar load.

Clara had launched a thorough investigation. Used the element of surprise. Even going so far as tormenting Fauna during her morning repast—quite against her nature—in an effort to break her.

Attempting to make her trickster cousin confess.

But no luck.

Ultimately, waltzing back to her room and unknowingly using the element of surprise, she found it was not Fauna but axe wielding assault faeries sent by you know who. She happened to catch one of the three inch perfectionists coming round to check on its work.

"Why my bed?" she asked.

"Assault Faeries, mission complete," it squeaked, its croaky voice at a frequency difficult to hear. The faerie then wiggled its ears and flapped away into the ether, vanishing entirely.

At least the legs are all even, she resolved. Good carpenters these assault faeries.

When the sun goes black and the earth rumbles, Havok is on the move.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN

A single pigeon lent its monotonous cries to the scene.

She dreamt of jellyfish. Swimming far out in the ocean by herself, she wandered into a whole school of them. By the time she realized what she had done, she was surrounded. She never knew there were such vivid pink jellyfish. Or glowing purple and green ones.

The variety of jellyfish swimming in the oceans of the world was enormous. She was grossed out about by the slimy, cold feeling of them touching her. In the center of that whirlpool of jellyfish, an immense terror overtook her, as if she had been dragged into a bottomless darkness.

Now she was enveloped by a darkness that was total. No amount of straining helped her eyes to see a thing. She couldn't tell where her own hand was. She felt along around her to establish a sense of place.

The movement of her hand seemed to cause the darkness itself to shift, but that could have been an illusion. It felt extremely strange not to be able to see her own body with her own eyes, though she knew it must be there.

Staying very still in the darkness, she became less and less convinced of the fact that she actually existed. To cope with that, she would clear her throat now and then, or run her hand over her face. That way, her ears could check on the existence of her voice, her hand could check on the existence of her face, and her face could check on the existence of her hand.

Despite these efforts, her body began to lose its density and weight, like sand gradually being washed away by flowing water. She felt as if a fierce and wordless tug-of-war were going on inside her, a contest in which her mind was slowly dragging her body into its own territory. Was this how it felt when the Hroovatua swallowed your shadow?

The darkness was disrupting the proper balance between the two. The thought struck her that her own body was a mere husk that had been prepared for her mind by a reshuffle of the signs known as chromosomes. If the signs were reshuffled yet again, she would find herself inside a wholly different body than before.

Yes, it was possible for her to meet the Hroovatua in her mind and for her to be erased in reality. In truly deep darkness, all kinds of strange things were possible. She shook her head and struggled to bring her mind back inside her body.

In the darkness, she pressed the fingertips of one hand against the fingertips of the other thumb against thumb, index finger against index finger. Her right-hand fingers ascertained the existence of her left-hand fingers, and the fingers of her left hand ascertained the existence of the fingers of her right hand. Then she took several slow, deep breaths; attempted to take several more. Nothing stirred. The silence was deep and thick and suffocating. The oxygen was disappearing. No, no, NOOOOOOOOOO...

She woke up sweating and gasping for breath as if she had been suffocating.

She had sweated in her sleep, and now the sweat was beginning to grow cold and chill her. She shuddered several times. The sweat made her think of that pitch-dark place, the ocean, and the millions of slimy jellyfish sliding all over her body. She remembered the slippery sensation it had given her when they brushed against her, like swimming through a mass of gelatin.

"EEEUUUUWWW!!!" she yelled.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

She took one careful step at a time, and soon there was a growing hint of warmth in the surrounding air, and then a distinct smell of grass. The cries of insects reached her now. She rolled onto the soft surface of the earth.

For a while, she simply lay there on her back, thinking of nothing. She looked up at the sky and sucked the air deep into her lungs over and over-the thick, warmish air of a summer night, filled with the fresh smell of life.

She could smell the earth, smell the grass. The smell alone was enough to give her palms the soft sensation of touching the earth and the grass. She wanted to take them both in her hands and devour them.

There were no longer any stars to be seen in the sky: not one. All that hung in the sky was a sharp crescent moon.

How long she went on lying there she had no idea. For a long time, all she did was listen to the beating of her heart. She felt that she could go on living forever, doing only that-listening to the beating of her heart.

Eventually, though, she raised herself from the ground and surveyed her surroundings. No one was there. The garden stretched out into the night, with the statue of the bird staring off at the sky, as always. No lights shone inside her house. There was only one mercury lamp burning in the yard, casting its pale, expressionless light as far as the deserted alley.

In any case, the first thing to do was go home—to go home, drink something, eat something, and take a nice, long bath. She knew she probably stank something awful.

She had to get rid of that smell before anything else. Then she had to fill her empty stomach.

Everything else would come later.

For a while, she sat there gazing at the moon, a slim white sliver of moon that looked as if someone had just finished sharpening it. That such a thing could actually go on floating in the sky seemed almost miraculous to her.

She did a slow scan of her surroundings, which turned out to be filled with the usual real world. People were moving from one place to another, each with his or her own purpose. She didn't know who they were, and they didn't know who she was. She took a deep breath and went back to her task of looking at the faces of these people, without a thought in her head.

Please don't let me dream, please just let my sleep be a blank space, if only for today.

But of course she did dream.

One of the major downsides to her new life was that she rarely had sweet dreams anymore. When she slept, it was the nightmares that came to her.

Nightmares with sharpened teeth.

They waited patiently, and they were always eager to play.

But this she knew this was the cost for the life of an adventurer.

She performed the same actions in the dream as she had in reality, the train getting captured by Krygzyk and him saying hello slaves, Welcome to Dylos Grawddwy. But after that it was different.

Krygzyk, drooling and laughing wildly, jumped off the Gruffudden and pulled a knife from his robe—a small, sharp looking knife. The blade caught the faint evening glow that spilled in from the moon, reflecting a white glimmer reminiscent of bone.

But Krygzyk did not use the knife to attack her. Instead, he took all his clothes off and started to peel his own skin; his mottled, sickly, inhuman skin as if it were the skin of a rotten apple. He worked quickly, laughing maniacally all the while.

In no time at all he was surrounded by many piles of bloody skin.

Soon, as if in response to his unnaturally loud laughter, his peeled skin began to slither across the ground toward her. She tried to run away, but her legs would not move.

The skin reached her feet and began to crawl upward. It crept over her own skin, Krygzyk's blood-soaked skin clinging to hers as an overlay.

The heavy smell of blood was everywhere.

Soon her legs, her body, her face, were entirely covered by the thin membrane of Krygzyk's skin. Then her eyes could no longer see, and Krygzyk's laughter reverberated in the hollow darkness.

At that point, she woke up.

Confusion and fear overtook her then. For a while, she even lost hold of her own existence. Her fingers were trembling.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Her tennis shoes looked especially dirty and worn out. It was time for her to buy a new pair of shoes, she told herself. These were just too awful.

That much was as clear as counting crows on snow.

She wore the same shoes all grimy and worn and full of holes. These disgraceful shoes looked as if they had been forced to accept an unfair portion of the world's exhaustion and burdens. As if through some kind of reincarnation, it were possible to be reborn as Clara's shoes, with a guarantee of rare glory in the next rebirth,

Typically, her mind would be floating around somewhere else, like a balloon with a broken string. She'd be thinking about one unrelated thing after another.

But today she was thinking about her shoes; her old, worn out, faithful, possibly reincarnated, need replacing shoes.

A big "Pffff" puffed from Clara's mouth as she pondered the significance of worn tennis shoes and reincarnation.

Minuscule grains of pollen suspended in the air shuddered with the sound, like living organisms. Each tiny ripple of sound passing through the air brought more of them to sudden life.

Just as the rubbing together of stones or sticks will eventually produce heat and flame, a connected reality takes shape little by little. It works the way the piling up of random sounds goes on to produce a single syllable from the monotonous repetition of what at first glance appears to be meaningless.

Someone is pounding on the door. As if someone is trying to drive a nail straight through the wall. It comes in a pattern: two knocks, a pause, two knocks.

Clara gasps.

The floating pollen shudders, and the air gives a great lurch. Clara had been overtaken by the illusion that huge grasshoppers, the size of bullfrogs, were leaping all around her.

Maybe the world was like a revolving door, it occurred to her as her consciousness was fading away. And which section you ended up in was just a matter of where your foot happened to fall.

She had wandered in silence through the gloomy labyrinth that spread out between illusion and truth.

The wind grew stronger than it had been in the morning, sending one heavy gray cloud after another on a straight line east. The clouds looked like silent travelers headed for the edge of the earth. In the bare branches of the trees in the yard, the wind would give a short, wordless moan now and then.

No more thoughts came to her, and she just lay there, inhaling the aroma of the room, listening to the grasshoppers' wings, and feeling through her skin the dense membrane of shadow that covered her.

And in the end her mind was sucked into the deep sleep of afternoon.

Clara remained sound asleep and she slept for a solid twenty hours, as if she had been knocked unconscious. Her father shouted and slapped her cheeks to no avail. She might as well have sunk to the bottom of the sea.

The intervals between her breaths grew longer and longer, and her pulse slowed. Her breathing was all but inaudible. Then she woke without warning, as if some great power had dragged her back into this world.

The summer sunlight baked the ground with dumb intensity. The whole world seemed caught in a deep paralysis, and one could easily surmise one had stumbled by accident into the land of the dead.

Aunt Flora continued to hole up in the basement, speaking to the ceiling on occasion, or to her hands, or to the walls, or to any sort of inanimate object as if she expected to snap them out of their silence since she had caught them out and blew their cover.

This went on with stunning regularity.

Her father continued to work and came home at more normalized hours, also with stunning regularity. As well as his secretary coming by with stunning regularity.

She was exceptionally pretty and well dressed, Clara thought, but she did not understand why she needed to come over so much. There was so much about the adult world Clara did not understand she just resigned herself to thinking she would understand one day.

Or not at all.

Cousin Fauna, having been rudely and entirely displaced from her basement bed, used her childhood wiles to fashion an improvised bed out of a few blankets, deciding that sleeping on the floor was kinda like camping out.

Oddly whimsical girl, her cousin.

Due no doubt to all of the simultaneous changes, a hollow quiet ruled the house. This was no longer a home she recognized, the place where she belonged.

But then again, she wasn't sure if anybody could claim to belong ANYWHERE!

It seemed to her like she had for a while just hung around at home, like a dog with a broken leg.

Smudge was her steady companion.

She could see where the low clouds had been torn in spots and carried off by the wind, but above them was yet another, thicker layer of cloud.

She did a slow scan of her surroundings, which turned out to be filled with the usual real world. People were moving from one place to another, each with his or her own purpose. She didn't know who they were, and they didn't know who she was. She took a deep breath and went back to her task of looking at the faces of these people, without a thought in her head.
CHAPTER NINETEEN

Patches was covered from nose to tail tip with clumps of dried mud, his fur stuck together in little balls, as if he had been rolling around on a filthy patch of ground for a long time. He purred with excitement as she picked him up and examined him all over.

He might have been somewhat emaciated, but aside from that, he looked little different from when she had last seen him: face, body, fur. His eyes were clear, and he had no wounds

He certainly didn't seem like a cat that had been missing for six months. It was more as if he had come home after a single night of carousing.

She fed him in the living room: a plateful of cat food. He was obviously starved. He polished off the food so quickly he would gag now and then and spit some back into the plate.

She found Patches' water dish under the sink and filled it to the brim. He came close to emptying it.

Having accomplished this much, he started licking his mud-caked fur, but then, as if suddenly recalling that she was there, he climbed into her lap, curled up, and went to sleep

Patches slept with his forelegs tucked under his body, his face buried in his tail. He purred loudly at first, but that grew quieter, until he entered a state of complete and silent sleep, all defenses down.

She sat in a sunny spot in the living room, petting him gently so as not to wake him.

She had not thought about Patches' special soft, warm touch for a very long time. How could she when she was spending so much time traveling between time dimensions in the midst of an intergalactic war and when she wasn't, cuddling with Smudge. So much had been happening to her that she had all but forgotten that Patches had disappeared.

Holding this soft, small living creature in her lap this way, though, and seeing how it slept with complete trust in her, she felt a warm rush in her chest. She put her hand on Patches' chest and felt his heart beating.

The pulse was faint and fast, but his heart, like hers, was ticking off the time allotted to his small body with all the restless earnestness of her own.

Where had this cat been for six months? What had he been doing? Why had he chosen to come back now, all of a sudden?

She wished she could ask him these questions. If only he could have answered her!

She brought an old cushion out to the living room and set Patches down on top of it. He was as limp as a load of wash. When she picked him up, the slits of his eyes opened, and he opened his mouth, but he made no sound.

He settled himself onto the cushion, gave a yawn, and fell back asleep. Once she was satisfied he was resting, she went to the kitchen to put away the cans of cat food on the counter. She placed the cat food in its compartment in the cabinet, then glanced out to the living room again.

Patches was sleeping in the same position.

How did the simple life of a ten year old girl become a massively complex and terrifying world where death and destruction seemed to be around the corner at every turn? She sometimes felt she had spent so long now looking around corners for trouble she couldn't see in a straight line.

She was glad her father had happened to buy some cat food just at the time Patches had chosen to come home. She doesn't remember asking her father to buy it, but was glad he did.

It seemed like a good omen, fortunate for both her and Patches.

Patches slept as soundly as if he had been knocked unconscious, his quiet breathing like a distant bellows, his body rising and falling with the sound. She would reach out now and then to feel his warmth and make sure Patches was really there.

Patches was still there the next morning. He had not disappeared. When she woke up, she found him sleeping next to her, on his side, legs stretched straight out. Smudge slept by her head, right alongside her pillow.

He must have wakened during the night and licked himself clean. The mud and hair balls were gone.

He looked almost like his old self. He had always had a handsome coat of fur. She held him for a while, then fed him his breakfast and changed his water.

Then she moved away from him and tried calling him by name:

"Patches."

Finally, on the third try, he turned toward her and gave a little meow.
CHAPTER TWENTY

Clara's looking at her reflection in a mirror, her reflection as she looks off to the side so half her face is in shadow and her smile is neatly cut in half. It's like one of those Greek tragedy masks that's half one idea and half the opposite. Light and dark. Hope and despair. Laughter and sadness. Trust and loneliness.

She tries to decide which one is the REAL her.

The light one, the dark one, this half, that half, she's all split up and she feels weird imagining herself this way.

Half in the real world, half in the Wurzel's world.

She realizes she IS kinda split up.

But even more than that she was split not only by worlds, but by time dimensions. A multiverse of dimensions. So many dimensions, she would lose count.

This thought hammering her mind she glanced at the mirror again. Okay, I need twenty mirrors looking into each other and then maybe that would symbolize my predicament best.

Now her head was hurting.

This is too much thinking for a soft summer day. It's weird, no question about it, but I don't need to solve the mystery.

She hit the front door with a resolute stride, a stride that says I don't know WHERE I'm going, but I'm just going outside anyway!

In short measure she was given reason to reconsider.

Wherever she walked, huge grasshoppers scattered. Grasshoppers of unusual size. Jurassic period grasshoppers.

Not the oops I stepped on one kind of grasshopper. The OOPS it jumped on my head and almost crushed ME kind!

A Jurassic size grasshopper flew over her like a bird and disappeared into the crowded sky with a noisy beating of wings.

The smell of summer grass hung in the air. Mixed in with the deafening screams of cicadas, the shrill screeching of trees, the chirruping of dangerously low flying grasshoppers, the day fashioned an environment of doom.

A flock of little birds sped back and forth across the sky in an intricate pattern as if splashing a coded pictogram up there, and then, in a flash, they were gone.

Everything was intertwined, with the complexity of a three-dimensional puzzle—a puzzle in which truth was not necessarily fact and fact not necessarily truth.

A bear in the driveway prevented the UPS driver from leaving a package next door. The driver yelled obscenities as he sped away.

Fact may not be truth, and truth may not be factual
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The Book of Mrunelight lay splayed open on the huge drafting table.

"This entire section is about upsetting the forces of nature. Oceans become ice-fields, or mud puddles, or red poison, remaining that way despite weather patterns. Raindrops become granite balls, pummeling the Earth with relentless destruction. Mountains become narrow spires, shorter or taller, and grow or shrink based on the weather. The sky changes color daily, nightly, randomly. Sometimes midstream. And the sun multiplies as does the moon so Earth may have three suns and twelve moons. The numerical increase uses the base of 3. So, 3 moons, 6 moons, 9 moons, but never 4, 5, 7, 8, etcetera. And the electromagnetic spectrum? That mysterious force that even now retains its mystery? Unreliable. One day operates as always, next day operates randomly, with entirely arbitrary results. As if a malicious child keeps changing his mind. Neatly coinciding with the ascension of Grülokk, the intergalactic doom child. This is perhaps the most terrifying aspect of this book. The texts of Doloran foretell a time of intense tribulation, when a vicious child holds the reigns of the entire galaxy. Many galaxies even. Imagine having a rambunctious, malevolent child with unlimited power and access to and ultimate control of all the forces of nature, of life itself. The probabilities boggle the mind. This "child" is in infant form, small, soft, corpulent, a mind spinning like a whirlwheel, his thoughts malevolent. Man his plaything, and one for whom he reserves his most horrible evils. An advanced telepath, all of his communications are transmitted through his mind as he lacks the essential tools of speech. But let this not disabuse you of the fact that he lacks communicative ability. In fact, entirely the opposite, a living testament to mind over matter. What the body cannot yet provide, the mind can in startling over compensatory fashion. The voice one hears telepathically is a monotone, booming, voice of perfect enunciation and malevolent intent, a voice of bored disaffection, a being with nothing to lose."

That night she dreamt of a ginormous rotund baby in a sitting position floating through the sky, randomly defecating on people then dropping on them and crushing them to their death. From his mouth uttered the most malevolent giggling she had ever heard, springing from the most innocent baby face that quickly mutated into a face with twisted malevolent smile and eyes flashing undiluted evil.

She woke up with a hammering heart so terrifying was this dream. She would never again look at an innocent baby the same way.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

At the present time there were three parties most interested in seizing the book of Mrunelight: The Wurzel, Krygzyk, Legbone, and anybody's guess who else.

Why Krygzk wanted the book was a well-known fact. He was a psychopathic lunatic bent on intergalactic domination.

But then out of the clear blue pops Legbone leaving the question, is it for himself he seeks this prize or was he simply a courier for a distant and shadowy master.

In the days of Gorram, many unusual beings were potentially about, seeking or selling an incalculable number of commodities for to bestow a prize of infinite power upon themselves or multifarious sinister masters.

The Clacks were a clan of cave dwellers whose form was entirely skeletal. Meaning not so skinny they looked skeletal, but meaning they were actually skeletons. People, pets, you name it. Any creature that contained a skeleton while living was part of their clan.

Cursed by forces ancient and elemental, Legbone was of this clan.

The particular clan of the Clacks under discussion was encamped in the farthest labyrinthine reaches of Tilly Frieda Bell Park. In the deepest darkest of nights Legbone would extricate himself to wander among the living for reasons only he would know. Not that he'd be offering, mind you.

Over the years, malicious teenagers continuing the time honored tradition of hormone fueled criminality crossed out the unnecessary first name in the signage for Tilly Frieda Bell Park, and modified the capital B to produce Hell. And further desecrating the honorary appointment to not only convert the name from bell to hell, but changing her maiden name "Frieda" to crudely mock her eventual disfigurement with the moniker "Freaka" arriving at the disappointing Freaka Hell Park, appealing primarily to hormonal angst ridden youths.

The locals today refer to it simply as Bell park, unless at the pub or with groups of friends where Freaka Hell Park may pop up on occasion.

Dear saintly Mrs. Frieda Bell must surely twist and roll in her grave to know of the desecration to her namesake park. In the day, Tilly Emeline Frieda or Tinker Bell as was her moniker, was to the ballet stage as oxygen to humankind. To see her adagio, arabesque, and fly across the stage was to witness the splendor of the gods, complete with a legion of trumpeting angels.

Mr. Claudius Bell Esquire, business magnate, sometimes attorney, and obscenely wealthy man had in his possession many things. Things that were after all just inanimate things.

But the dainty Ms. Frieda, happily spinning her saintly form across stage upon stage worldwide, was not prepared for the machinations of one Mr. Claudius Bell Esquire. In his view, the fact of her saintliness was a dovetail match for his lack thereof. Add to that the expedient fact that the fair Ms. Frieda was universally known as Tinker Bell, which conveyed to him that nature had clearly designed this particular female for him alone being that the name Bell was already affixed.

Using numerous hit men and manservants, Claudius Bell remained well apprised of the doings of one Tilly Frieda, positioning a man in every city, country, and town she performed. He sent her tremendous bouquets at more than one performance with blank card attached. To the provincial mind of Ms. Frieda, this was much like her 19th century tragic romance infused mind had imagined real life was like. Steeped in Bronte, Austen, Hugo and a smattering of Dumas, she was as well prepared for the savagery of the adult world as a newborn babe. Yet she was enchanted beyond words as her imagination ran wild with thoughts of a dashing romantic gentleman lover roaming the world, heart and head flooded with her alluring image, stoically enduring each grueling day outside her presence.

Yet some classic narratives explore the darker side of romance; the poisonous side effects that result from giving your heart to another. Let alone having your heart or some version thereof appropriated by another.

When the enigmatic and voracious Claudius Bell could stay his ardor no longer, when his requests for her audience were repeatedly denied—innocently of course, but to his way of thinking a deadly insult—he had his henchmen accost her and deliver her trembling form to his swank penthouse apartment where over the course of three hours, he committed the most heinous immoral and atrocious acts upon her person to make her absolutely and irrefutably his.

Her tear streaked face and loud wailing brought not an inkling of remorse from the stone faced Mr. Bell, who elicited only a smug satisfaction that stertorously proclaimed: what Claudius Bell wants, Claudius Bell gets, by whatever foul means necessary.

Sadly after this vicious assault on her person, the sweet Ms. Frieda walked with a twisted sideways crabwalk that effectively ended her time as the angel of the balletic stage. Nothing more than an acquisition and divertissement in his world, it was not long before the once unspoiled country girl turned big city performer became Mrs. Frieda Bell, prisoner of an unrelenting master. To the objective eye all appeared well in house Bell, concomitantly appearing well with Mrs. Tilley Frieda Bell.

Yet none understood the deep reserve of talent in this wounded woman child, the masterful genius, the actor in disguise.

Though her tremendous wealth and esteem in social circles worldwide still placed her before deeply admiring eyes and tongues, it could not warm the forever frozen heart of a little girl whose dream had been so deviously and decisively ripped from her, leaving her only half a woman, shuffling her cane wielding twisted form through a frigid uncaring world.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

She heard the hard-edged sound in the middle of the night. She came awake, reached out for the floor lamp, and, once it was on, sat up and looked around the room. The time on the clock was just before two. She could not imagine what might be happening in the world at a time like this.

A sound came from outside the window, she was sure. It sounded like someone dragging a stick across a chain-link fence.

In the middle of the sky hung a large white moon, the full moon of late autumn, filling the yard below with its light. The trees out there looked very different to her at night than they did in the daylight. They had none of their usual friendliness. The evergreen oak looked almost annoyed as it trembled in the occasional puff of wind with an unpleasant creaking sound. The stones in the garden looked whiter and smoother than they ordinarily did, staring up at the sky impassively like the faces of dead people.

She thought she detected a faint off-key whistling. The tune unfamiliar but in a minor tonality which lent an eerie funereal sound.

In the shadows she thought she could see a raggedy man in long dark coat and floppy hat, moving along in a lopsided lope, uttering his scratchy off-key tune. But she also knew the dark played tricks on your eyes so she wasn't entirely sure if she had seen anything.

The figure in the dark coat came to a sudden stop and looked up at her window. Now she got scared. It began wagging a long finger at her while whistling what she recognized as the unmistakable Beethoven's fifth symphony: pa, pa, pa, PUUUM!

The figure's features are not visible in glaring close-up as though to see too much would be too horrible.

She sees a shadow on the wall which looks like a long fingered gloved hand, but it's just a tree branch outside.

She dropped down to the floor so she could not be seen, crawled over to her bed and pulled the covers over her head.

She was shivering like a dry leaf in the wind.

Her teeth were clacking so loud she was sure everyone in the house could hear. She was also sure she would shatter a tooth or two.

Legbone walking...Legbone talking...Legbone come for you. Legbone walking...Legbone talking...Legbone come for you....

The off-key whistling became croaked words instead of musical notes as the rough deep voice from outside her window grew louder now and suddenly insistent as it delivered its message.

Then the window bursts inwards and Clara is sprayed with shards of broken glass. Fear and trembling came upon her, making all her bones shake.

She pulls her head from under the covers slightly to peek into her room and when she looks up she sees chains hanging from the ceiling. They rattle like bones.

Her head is back under the covers quicker than you could say, bye!

Patches starts making whining noises like he hears something.

Seen from behind is an enigmatic figure as he picks up a knife and takes it to a workbench where he welds and reshapes it along with others to create finger-knives for a glove.

Suddenly the shadowy figure is standing in her room, right in front of her. She can see its shadow through the covers. She begins whimpering.

Patches is hissing.

The figure takes a few steps forward and puts its cold bony hands on her head.

"See you in your dreams..." it whispers in a rough deep voice.

Clara passes out.

Gloves and spade and shovel and cutters and pliers and angle and spatula and bowl and blowtorch and roller and boots and tape measure and hard hat and flashlight and steel pipe and gears and bolts and cones and stethoscope and TAC kit and book and beaker and glasses and water hose the room was astoundingly full of items as it was cavernously empty. All was glazed and dark and eyes were purposeless in a pitch so unyielding.

It was probably in Timbuktu.

Clara bumbled and stumbled and struggled through her mechanistic surroundings, a great, draughty, crumbling monstrosity, feeling as if pushing through unresponsive gel, blind as a bat but lacking the compensatory sensory perception.

Her digits were no more than neurologically disconnected dowels.

Her mouth moved but no sound came forth.

And she seemed to be shrinking more and more, getting weaker and littler while he got stronger and bigger. And she began to think maybe he was going to do it that way.

The branches of the dogwood quiver and countless knives flash in the darkness. The window is her heart's window, the door her soul's door.

She'd stand at the window, staring out at the fields with their jungle of weeds and vines. The wind rippled through them, making them sway and wiggle and squirm.

And there was a chirruping and a shrieking in her ears—but after a while it went away.

Everywhere, everywhere she looked, the jungle swayed and wiggled and squirmed. It shook that thing at her. There was something sort of hypnotic about it, and she'd still be weak and sick, but she wouldn't notice it.

There wouldn't be a thing in her mind but that thing, and he'd wake up again.

And then it was like she was running a race, she was trying to get to something, get something, before the chirruping came back. Because when she heard that she had to stop. But all she ever got was that thing. Not the other, whatever the other was.

The grasshoppers always won.

The days drifted by, and he knew that she knew, of course, but they never talked about it.

Havok kept her there, never more than a few feet away from him. He was always right close by, that thing was, and outside... he was out there too. He seemed to edge in closer and closer, from all sides, and there was no way to get away from him.

And she no longer wanted to get away.

She kept getting weaker and smaller, but she couldn't stop. There was nothing else to think about, so she kept taking that line of thought. Her mind in a fugue. She'd go for it fast, trying to win the race against the grasshoppers. And she never did, but she kept on trying.

She had to.

Afterwards, when the chirruping began to get so bad she couldn't stand it, she'd go outside looking for the grasshoppers. She'd go running and screaming and clawing her way through the fields, wanting to get her hands on just one of them.

And she never did, of course, because the fields weren't really the place to find the grasshoppers.

It was not a modern kitchen at all. It was enormous, like a bus depot, and it had a stone floor, and a huge iron oven, and a long wooden table with long wooden benches placed on either side. There were hooks from the ceiling for hanging hams and herbs.

There were two stone sinks side by side with plate racks nailed on the wall above them. There was no fridge, no washing machine, no dishwasher.

In the corner sat a skeleton creature on a low stool. Floppy hat and knife fingered gloves. It flicked its fingers about, whistling a tuneless twaddle, a constant non-melodic whistling that doesn't go anywhere, doesn't sound like a recognizable anything, but continues almost non-stop.

She ignored this creature and it stayed its place. Though once she was sure it winked at her.

On the first day in this place she'd raised up the trap door that was set flush with the kitchen floor and gone down the steep narrow steps , taking a flashlight with her, and she'd looked all along the shelves, packed tight with bottles and packages and canned goods. She'd circled around the room, looking, and she came to a sort of setback in the walls—a doorless closet, kind of. And the entrance to it was blocked off, stacked almost to the ceiling with skulls. People, animals, skulls upon skulls upon skulls.

She saw then how it was going to be.

The rooms were all the same. And wherever they were the grasshoppers were always there. She couldn't ever catch them but she knew they were there.

Could tell by the insane swishing of their wings.

They'd come up out of the fields and moved into the cold building with her and Havok, and sometimes she'd almost get her hands on them but they always got away. He'd get in her way before she could grab them.

He was so huge it was amazing he was ever anything BUT in her way.

His game. What was his game? She didn't know. Thought she COULDN'T know. But she knew she must figure it out soon.

Always there. He was always there. A constant reminder of the hopelessness of her situation.

But he barely moved. Hardly. Clumped along until finally sitting down. A monster boulder crashing to the ground.

The room breathed in. The boulder paused in its crashing.

Something in her and something outside her leapt together and waited in the crashing.

In a daze. A constant daze. Day was night was some other time, was a whirlwind of things but none of them with more substance than smoke. She thought and she thought about it, and finally she knew how it must be.

They'd been there all along, the grasshoppers. Right there, hiding inside of him. So it wasn't any wonder she could never win the race. She knew they were in him, where else could they be, but she had to make sure.

By this time the thunder was deafening. Lightning zigzagged across the sky, followed, a moment later, by the roar of thunder. The air shook, and the loose windowpanes rattled nervously.

Dark clouds capped the whole sky, and it got so dark inside they could barely make out each other's faces.

They left the light off, however.

He talked to her. He'd been talking all the time, and not to the grasshoppers either. At night they sat on her chest chirruping.

She stayed in the basement as much as she could. He couldn't get her down there. He wasn't good enough on those clunky tree sized legs and clodhoppers to come down the stairs.

And somehow she had to hang on.

The two unlikely inhabitants were frozen, wrapped in the midday darkness. Suddenly the wind picked up again, lashing rain against the window.

Thunder rumbled, but not as violently as before.

The last race was over, and she'd lost them all, but still she hung on. She seemed to be right on the point of finding something...of finding out something.

And until she did she couldn't leave.

She found out one evening when she was coming up out of the basement. She was so small now her head barely came even with the floor at the top step.

And she was kind of dizzy.

She felt completely empty. Never before had she any idea that feeling empty was so terrifying.

A loud rumble ripped through the sky, and the lightning was close by the sound of it.

She leaned her arms on the floor, steadying herself. And then her eyes cleared, and there were the tree sized legs and clodhoppers right in front of her.

Braced.

His huge hand flashed. Her hand, her right hand, jumped and kind of leaped away from her, and Havok swung his hand at her again.

He moved in closer, cupped his huge hands and scooped her up like a baby chick and stuffed her into an empty bottle. He slammed the cork in place with a THWRP and then she went over backwards, down and down and down, turning so slowly in the air it seemed that she was hardly moving.

And then what was left of her was tumbling through the dark dusty air, faster and faster.

She didn't know it when she hit the bottom. She was simply there, looking up as she'd been looking on the way down.

The darkness and herself. Everything else was gone.

She began to cry

She rolled the bottle along by tumbling and pushing and inched her way along; and she missed it the first time—the place she was looking for.

She circled the room twice before she found it, and she was hardly moving at all and running out of air. She rolled the bottle with one last HEAVE and tipped it up over the pile of skulls, and went crashing down the other side. The bottle did not crack.

She was panting heavy, her chest hurting from the exertion.

And Havok was there, of course. And the skeleton creature. With a blender.

Smiling...

She woke up screaming, her mouth open like a crater, the words streaming out, "I'm out, I'm out, I'm out. I can't take it anymore. These...these...these..." she sputtered as she broke into all-out wailing.

Smudge sat at her feet staring at her, eyes spinning and glowing red, sparks jumping from them, a low grrr coming from its throat. Clara, lost in post-nightmare terror failed to notice. But there was definitely something wrong with this kitten.

Her mind spun around about a thousand things as she thought of all that had changed in her young life since happening upon this big book in a chest in the basement. She wondered many things. But most of all she wondered how she could back out of the whole Pandora's box that had befallen her since those now seemingly long ago events.

Just the nightmares alone had gone from creepy, to terrifying, to far too vivid death scenes for which she could thank her young healthy constitution for her survival, for she was sure as shingles she would be dead otherwise.

The perplexities compounded and hurt her head.

Why had she even agreed to be involved in this intergalactic kerfuffle anyways? Because some dotty librarian said so? Because some long nosed starry haired weirdo said so?

Didn't she have a CHOICE??!!

Too much thinking before morning cereal.

"Enough," said Clara, and noticing Smudge shivering or pulsating at her feet, reached for her.

"CRRAAAAOOOWWWWW" the asset shrieked, clawing at her hand and drawing blood.

Clara pulled away stunned and shaken.

"WHAAAAA...??!!"

But before Clara could complete her sentence, Smudge—the asset—vanished in a puff of air.

Clara's jaw hung open so wide she could demolish an entire civilization of flies.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

"I don't get it. You say you moved in, scared her, and just wheeled away like a tumbling bonehead?"

"Plant fear half battle in m'business, m'lord."

"Must I remind you chopsticks that your business is MY business?"

"Legbone come. Legbone come again. Legbone succeed...always."

"Cut the quibbling, chopsticks. KILL THE CHILD!!"

Legbone stared him down refusing to say another word. He'd spoken his piece plain and simple. He'd been assigned the task, he would deliver, as promised. But the Man just had to peck and poke and keep him in line by calling him chopsticks.

Claim dominance.

Being at the lowest rung of the food chain, there was a certain amount of grief Legbone was willing to take.

TO A POINT!

"Listen, Bone Bag McRiddles. You go ahead and lope along your own way, but let me be deadly clear. No get book, no succeed. Got it?"

"Got it!" said Legbone, thinking to add "meat sack" but decided to let it be. He would have his day, every dog did.

Of course unbeknownst to him, the Book of Mrunelight was not in Clara's possession when she was visited by this Ghost of Christmas Never. So there was no chance of Legbone completing his mission on that particular visit.

But Legbone's method was of the Chinese water torture variety. As small repeated drips to one vulnerable spot collectively become large concavities, resolve is weakened, success is his.

A tried and true methodology.

He had already delivered Aunt Flora and cousin Fauna, swiftly and quite invisibly, with his door to door "aggressive negotiations" strategy. It was not short of pure amazement for him to discover how much a covering of baggy thrift store clothing could disguise the bone man within.

Trench coat, floppy hat, sunglasses, gloves, carefully placed scarf.

Okay, so the pictures and curiously creepy statuettes didn't stay long. But long enough to deliver the twin prize: mother and daughter.

The Man surely recognized that as a true Legbone success. He was just ensuring his courier was kept firmly under his thumb so as not to forget his place in the scheme of things.

His role, albeit tangential, in the master plan.

But Legbone did not need to be reminded of his miniscule part, his pissant place in the scheme of things. When you've been reduced to a clinking clanking bundle of bones, it was pretty clear how far down you'd fallen.

Even if you were walking chopsticks.

Legbone viewed himself with delight in his cracked, tarnished, trash dump special mirror.

"Looking suave, Legbone Smiley. Ten thousand years been GOOD TO YOU!"

Cut the quibbling, chopsticks. KILL THE CHILD!! The drastic declaration kept playing through him, rattling his bones. The Man was demanding as he was ruthless.

Man, woman, child, giggling newborn. You were in the Man's way, he cut you down. Never getting his hands dirty, mind you, he was too "civilized".

These were animal jobs for his handpicked collection of specialized animals.

To Legbone, he prided himself on a slow assault, move slow you see everything, move fast you miss the details. His particular method had always produced the intended result. And truth be told, he considered himself somewhat of an artiste, a smooth player, a tragedista.

His friends: Splatter, Breakneck, Groan, Mums, all specialists in their field, exquisite calamity clowns. And Legbone Smiley was a specialist in HIS OWN field.

The curse of the truly unique.

But with firm resolve he would not call on any of his friends for this most exquisite assignment. He preferred to handle the kids, on his own.

His own time.

His own place.

His own hands.

The others, the Man included, were too quick to fatal conclusion. Whereas Legbone enjoyed savoring the slow squeeze, wincing it out of his targets until the pain of silence became too much to bear.

If you can't cure it endure it, only went so far with the mini meat sacks, whose pain threshold could be measured on the atomic scale.

They didn't understand suffering like Legbone.

They did understand knee knocking fear though, however you rolled them bones.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

"There's something coming. Something big and something bad. I can feel it."

"Of course you can feel it, wriggle wraps. Your bindings get the creepy crawlies at the slightest air particle shiver. You sure you're up for this long game?"

Mums thought about this. Thought about this hard as he had been doing since that curious loser two thousand years ago thought it wise to unleash the curse of Jonttarch and peel the lid off his coffin. Right when he was in the middle of a sweet dream about Eloin.

Sure shocked the eiswein out of that interloper. He left a splatter of wet behind him mottling up the dusty chamber.

Enjoy your curse, slow tem, said Mums. But the poor sap that chose so poorly was going going GONE lickety-split.

And now Mums was facing Cooty who was throwing this primeval weakness in his bandage swathed face.

For the long game there were none more prepared, considered Mums. I'm wrapped, packed, and shipped intact.

This unwanted and uncontrollable shivering would be the death of him, if it hadn't been already.

"No, C. This is not some knee jerk response to a small tremor. I'm talking a triple jumbo helping of bad! Something BIG is on the move..."

"You're a funny guy, Mums. Wasn't it you who said so surely that Bad was your middle name?"

True, his mother and father, ancient comedians of the Egyptian world, had thought to throw a bone to the protecting spirits and stack the deck of fate by naming him Badd, after his great uncle, Baddabuch Babbak Bahar.

Sticklers for passing along the family names.

Yet these auspicious beginnings were cruelly and irrevocably changed when his repulsive cousin Amon threw a bucketful of camel spiders, on him while he slept. Camel spiders eat or chew on people while they sleep, repulsive indeed.

Mums—birth name Nour—popped up out of bed screaming, wetting himself, unleashing a stream from Cairo to Kom Ombo, thus creating a Nile tributary, and from then on broke out in uncontrollable shivers when terrified.

A Pavlovian response brought on by primeval fear.

Amon had got his recompense when a rabid camel chewed off his right leg. The Karmic wheel spun up revenge so sweet.

There was shouting. There was camel whipping to near death. A howling camel is a terror to behold.

There were interfamilial threats and curses.

And thus were they cast into a furnace of fuming fire as there commenced wailing and gnashing of teeth.

With tears abounding and teeth bared all the clans folk called down a thunderstorm of grief.

But Nour, circumspect and savoring this cosmic revenge, was conspicuously absent from this group grieve out. He took up a post behind the family tent, smiling and shivering as spiders and scorpions meandered by, entertaining fantasies of his one legged cousin speed crawling across the hot sands with carnivorous, frothing camels in hot pursuit.

"Badd WAS my middle name. Now I'm the man of one name, Mums..."

"So..." said Cooty. "Mum's the word?"

"Ha ha. Let it be told, C, I'm just giving you advance warning of this firestorm heading our way. Sometimes you and I are the only ones who can stand against it. And you know me and fire don't get along. But if you wish to bow out..."

"Bow I do not, highness."

"So I surmise."

"Evil to he who does evil."

"On to Peppermore, comrade."

"Should I stir my multitude, Mums?"

"I believe it best, yes."

"Let all foes beware...the Cooties cometh!"

It had been years since the pair had teamed up on assignment. Before that it had been one altercation, one war, one intergalactic episode after another and they could not seem to get themselves free.

The years had thundered by, heavy and unstoppable, a Tyrolean boulder rolling downhill.

A break was due. They'd both longed for one.

Cooty'd gone away. Five years he'd spent on a sprawling farm on the outskirts of a small town in Utah. He had a hog for company, and occasionally company of the human variety, but he kept that to a minimum. He didn't want to be alone with his thoughts, but he deserved to be.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

The breakthrough came soon after her recent nightmare. Her new sweet little kitten was neither new, sweet nor hers. It was a tool of the enemy.

It was the kitten that had brought the nightmare of this monolithic beast named Havok and his skeleton sidekick. The other nightmares she was told were the result of the visitation of demons. Evidently she was surrounded by them.

Her recent nightmare had shown that if she ran from an axe-wielding maniac, he could find her no matter where she hid; especially when she wasn't hiding and just coming up the stairs.

Her lucid dreams had changed the way she looked at life.

What else had this kitten done?

Questions abounded, answers were lost at sea. She thought that the answer to some questions was another question.

There was so much she didn't know that when she piled her knows and don't knows in one big stack, higher than a steamboat steam stack, the mathematical complexities produced a sum of zero. And zero was nothing at all.

And sometimes less than that.

But still she had to go go go. To where, to what, to why, was jammed in there like jelly in a peanut butter sandwich in the middle of her know don't know stack. And the steam stack was spouting out a mighty fog.

And then this kitten, no more than a nugget in a stream of jiggedy jaggedy stones had gifted her horrendous nightmares and who knew—or who could tell—what else.

Quick as a flash from a twice tossed away thrice returned lighter, she recalled the words of Mr. Natterton. "We're all going so fast that we're taking Time with us. Nobody's got any time nowadays, rush, rush, rush. There's no time left. Time's running out like everything else on the planet. We're heading for big trouble..."

She remembered once seeing a gauze kerchief blowing in the wind and now she sensed the future as though it twisted across some surface as undulant and impermanent as that of the windblown kerchief.

Starlight displaced just enough of the night to charge each shadow with menace.

Seahorses.

She looked at patches of blackness.

Sea monsters.

Black is a blind remembering, she thought. You listen for pack sounds, for the cries of those who hunted your ancestors in a past so ancient only your most primitive cells remember.

The ears see.

The nostrils see.

The hippocampus remembers...
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

She must have blacked out for a few seconds, because when she came to, she was falling through the air, the wind slamming past her face like a punishing wall. Between her feet, she saw the shape of a large bird, and around it, something that shimmered and glittered, at the very edge of visibility.

She was falling head first, and as she watched, the bird shrank to a tiny white smear and vanished.

She doesn't know how long she fell like that, head first, down towards the ground. She felt a great sense of sluggishness, as though she should just let herself fall.

Only little by little did the thought come to her that what she had to do was open her parachute.

She fell for another minute while her brain worked out, step by step, how she should manage the feat of opening the parachute. Only when the line of the horizon had already crept into the line of sight of her eyes did her hands finally fumble for the ripcord.

And as the parachute slammed open and jerked her the right way up, she saw the ground rushing up. Only a short distance below, fields, with a village in the distance.

She had only enough time to prepare herself for the impact before she struck. Falling over, she struck her helmeted head hard against the ground.

I think I was supposed to tumble, she mused in great afterthought.

As she lay on her back, looking up, far, very far above, she saw a speck of starlight.

And then it was gone, followed by a glorious wash of mesmerizing red...

The Blood Moon blared through the black vault above. The time was right and everything had been arranged.

Clara was late arriving to the scene.

The Wurzel paced back and forth with his hands clasped behind his back. Clara, still stunned from the fall kept staring at the moon.

The training had thankfully ended with Clara gaining sufficient mastery to carry out this one task.

She had left the Wurzel's boot camp with a few scrapes and bruises and slaps to her wounded pride, but she had emerged victorious.

Then, surprise surprise, she fell from the sky in a method of traveling she hoped to never use again now that she'd completed training. Couldn't she just be ZAPPED somewhere as usual and not have to fall from the sky and slam into the ground?

Evidently not. Now she had to prove herself.

Again.

The Wurzel stepped forward, a grim determination evident from the tightening of his elongated features. Like a rattle snake coiling up before it springs.

"Did I have to fall from the sky like that," she whined, shaking her head and throwing her helmet to the ground.

The Wurzel cast her a disapproving look.

"Any ripples along the electromagnetic pathways could be detected and bring a gaggling gale of interlopers upon us. young sprout. So more mundane methods were called for."

You are transparent. I see many things. I see plans within plans.

She marveled at the difference in interpretations between her and the Wurzel on this matter of "mundane".

"We must totally obliterate this book. The entire universe depends on its power. He who can destroy a thing controls a thing."

The reticent Wurzel extended his hands forward, fingers splayed wide. This was Clara's cue to follow suit, approach him with her hands in exactly the same form and join her fingertips to his.

The Wurzel nodded and they began in unison using the Ynakxic Xibà tongue:

As they chanted the mystical words of Gynårr, the Book of Mrunelight became enringed by a faint pink light, rose up from the ground and hovered overhead. A faint sparkling began at the book's outer edges soon progressing into a massive dazzling ball, much like simultaneously lighting a bundle of fat sparklers.

A pronounced fizzling sound could be heard.

With stunning speed, the sparkling mass stretched itself out like a tremendous rubber band, and then as if the two fingers that were holding it let it go, it snapped and wobbled and the blazing Book of Mrunelight vanished with a loud fizz.

Clara's dropped jaw and wide eyed stare were the epitome of astonishment.

"And so it goes," muttered the Wurzel.

The Wurzel kept his eyes fixed upon the shimmering moon but something about his reticence gave Clara a bad feeling.

"That's it?" questioned Clara.

"By Gynårr, so it goes..."

They walked away like two beaten monks; shuffling steps, loping gait.

The Book of Mrunelight had been obliterated as planned and the pair slumped away with the melancholy of all things completed, thus attaining the spiritual advantages of non-possession.

To live because the mountains do not laugh and the worms do not sing.

Watch for Word Bender Chronicles Book #3: Clara Drummond and the Age of Grüloch.
