Alex Reynard
The Library
Alex Reynard's Online Books
Chapter Sixty-One
There was no up or down. No reality to make sense of. He was falling with blue sky above, below, and on all sides of him. He was screaming, but nothing else existed to hear him.
The memory pounded inside his head like a wrecking crew tearing down the walls of his skull. Those hands that had tucked him into bed at night. Grinding his skin to ribbons. Red bathwater. The slippery squirming of his helpless, frail body. Mommy spanking him with all her strength like she was trying to break him in half.
How had he ever convinced himself it didn't matter? How the fuck had he convinced himself it was only an accident!?
Well, wasn't it obvious? When your life is entirely dependent on someone else, and you have no choice but to live in a house with them, it is much easier to rationalize away their insane behavior. To preserve the status quo. To keep everything nice and normal.
That revelation came out of him like popping a zit. Like it had been straining at his skin for years and had finally burst free. The shock of falling had allowed it entry into his conscious mind. He would have fought it otherwise, but when someone is hurtling towards oblivion, energies normally reserved for mental defenses have a way of getting diverted.
'Okay. Shit. Psychoanalysis for later. Right now I'm falling and I have no idea where I am or why-'
'Stop being so dense! You were standing in a transporter that gets its directions from whatever you're thinking. And it took your horrible memory and interpreted that as... wherever you are now.'
'Allright. That makes sense.' Toby briefly flashed on an image of his friends standing around on the other side, waiting for him and wondering where he was. Great. Now he had guilt to add to all the other emotions crashing around inside him and tearing him up.
The wind whipped at his fur and stung his eyes. He could smell soap. The aftershocks of his memory. The bathtub. The blood. The spanking.
'Stop thinking about that!!' he screamed at himself. There would be time to fix his broken brain later. Right now he was falling and probably seconds away from death. Or worse. What if there was no ground to splatter against? What if this was an endless realm of sky, where he'd fall and fall forever until he went insane?
'No, no. Shut up, brain.' If he squinted against the sharp, slicing air, he could see a difference between the shades of blue. Not a huge difference, but they were definitely separate. 'Allright, so maybe I'm falling towards water.' At least, he hoped it was water and not some kind of acidic chemical dye.
Was he falling slower?
He thought at first his brain was just speeding up due to panic. But no; that had already happened. The air did feel thicker. The water (or whatever it was) was miles below him, yet he felt like he was already in it. The quasi-weightlessness of a swimming pool. He was still breathing, though that was getting more difficult. The air was thick and syrupy now. He could feel the thickness in his sinuses when he inhaled. Was he drowning? Drowning in mid air?
It seemed to take ages. The farther Toby fell, the thicker the air around him became until he was gulping it through his mouth like a fish. Every inhale felt like suffocation. Every exhale felt like vomiting. He was terrified and revolted. The smell of soap was getting stronger.
He fought to keep himself from blacking out. He fought to regain control of his body. When he did he realized that his flailing limbs felt like they were swimming. So, he tried swimming. Aha. There were no bubbles surrounding him, but as soon as he swept his arms and legs like he was diving, he gained control over his descent.
Control felt good. Even if he was lost a billion miles away from his friends, having some tiny bit of control over his situation helped to keep panic away. It meant he was not completely helpless. Ninety-nine percent helpless maybe, but if he could swim through this air-water, he could choose his direction. Everything seemed the same at the moment, but at least he could discern 'above' and 'below', and he was curious if that stuff below was solid. The closer he got, the more sure he was it wasn't water.
Something else he was certain of now, the smell of soap wasn't just his imagination.
Moments before his feet touched its surface, Toby figured out the nature of this place. It was a desert. Endless, featureless. But without a single grain of sand. On television, the Sahara, Gobi, and Mojave were all a blistering, bleached yellow. This place he'd been accidentally whisked to, whatever its name, was the sparkling blue-green of artificial cleansers. Soap powder. Unimaginable tons of it. Chemical blue grains stretching on beyond the horizon in every direction. Enough for a trillion lifetimes' worth of dirty dishes or loads of laundry.
Nothing but soap. Everywhere.
It crunched under his paws. He slid down the dune and toppled forward. His hands sunk into it. His nose almost smashed into it. The smell. The odor of soap was paralyzing, so strong it overwhelmed his nervous system. He was choking on the smell, gagging for clean air. But of course, the air here was clean. Sparkling, sudsy clean forever.
On hands and knees, with no one around for a million miles to hear him, alone in the endless sickening blue, Toby screamed.
***
He was walking now, but for the longest time all he'd been able to do was scream. The horror of his situation and the horror of his past combined to drive all rational thought from his mind. He screamed. Breathing in the cloying stink of soap powder while remembering over and over his mother's gentle hands turning psychotically violent, he screamed. He screamed. Under the strain of an unbearable memory and an intolerable present, Toby simply broke. His mind shattered like an eggshell. He screamed until his voicebox bled.
It was unfair. All of it. The memory of being scrubbed to shreds was unfair. Being lost was unfair. Being away from his only friends was unfair. The soap was unfair. Phobiopolis tearing him away from everything he had ever called normal was unfair. All of this injustice had been boiling slowly inside of him for weeks, held back by politeness and denial. But the soap was the last straw. Its gritty texture beneath his hands was like a cat's litter box. The artificial smell burrowed deep into his sinuses. His head felt like a swelled cyst that grew until it burst.
But he was walking now. Sometime, maybe hours ago, he had simply gotten up and started walking. Robotically. There was no thought behind it. He was an empty skin that somehow moved. Pulled along by puppet strings.
When consciousness finally returned, he stopped. He looked back over his shoulder. There were miles of footprints behind him.
When he looked ahead, he realized what his unconscious self had been sleepwalking towards. With no input from the brain, his body had shrugged and reset itself to default programming. His original goal.
Out beyond the cloudless sky, barely visible except as a darker blue shadow, was Anasarca.
'Thanks, body.'
The air here still had the properties of water and every breath took effort. He was amazed he hadn't drowned or passed out or suffocated or whatever the hell happened when you lost your mind in a place where the air was liquid. He looked back again to all those perfectly outlined footprints. There was no wind here to disturb them. And bizarrely enough, no sun either. He turned all around, looking for it. This was insane. The day was as bright as a summer morning, yet the light did not come from anywhere. And he didn't feel hot. Or cold for that matter. He wasn't aware of any temperature at all.
'This is all real fascinating, but it's not helping me any,' he thought. And he was glad to find a bit of irritation in his inner voice. He did not remember much of his recent mental breakdown, but the overwhelming emotions were definitely anguish and helplessness. He'd felt like there was not only no hope, but there had also never been any and there never could be any. Irritation was a much better emotion. At least it focused him on the present.
Now that Toby was back in a functioning brain, he decided to stop for a moment and think. Heading towards Anasarca had been a decent idea for an unconscious body, but maybe he could come up with something better if he tried to relax and think intelligently. He knew that might be difficult. He still felt lightheaded and blurry. Like maybe he was still insane and this was all just the illusion of normal functioning.
For starters, his body. His feet hurt. That was the most immediately noticeable sensation. He looked himself over. He still had all his clothes. Good. He still had his bracers and pouch of throwing weapons. Better. He rubbed his arm and could feel his hammer still nestled slumbering inside. Super-duper. Nothing on him seemed injured, per se. Well, his throat did feel scratchy. He tried to say 'hello' and the pain that lanced into him felt like someone had driven a railroad spike through his neck. 'Ow ow ow ow ow!' He remembered all the screaming he'd done. He put a paw to his mouth and felt dried trickles of blood there. 'Yep, that was a lot of screaming allright.'
He could wait for his vocal chords to heal on their own. Or he could take the easy fix. He looked down at his glowing wrist.
Could he, actually...?
'Why not? I've been through enough awful crap today. Killing myself's not gonna traumatize me any worse, I don't think.'
Cringing only a little, Toby brought his palm up to his temple. He tensed the flesh inside his arm-sheath. Then he released.
The next instant he was pinwheeling his arms to keep from falling backwards. His feet slid across the gritty soap-sand. He sucked in breaths as fast as the chunky-style air allowed. Gravity was yanking on his shoulders, but thanks to his swishing tail, he managed not to topple over. He stood in the soap, feeling the grains trickling around his toes, smelling that hideous omnipresent scent, and stared at his own dead body.
There didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it. Sometimes when his friends died, their bodies would spontaneously heal. Other times a new self would pop into being a few feet from their previous shell. Toby was looking down at a little dead mouse kid with white fur and a blue vest and a caved-in skull with gallons of blood rushing down the sand like a red river.
"Blechhh," Toby said. "At least my voice works now."
He turned away from his corpse, hunting for Anasarca on the horizon. There. He was glad he'd spotted it, having felt a moment's fear that he'd been following a mirage all this time. And upon reflection, heading there probably was the best idea. His friends would assume, wouldn't they, that if any of them got separated they'd all try to converge on the most obvious landmark? The place they were all heading anyway?
He glanced back and his body had vanished.
Of course. In with the new, out with the old. He wished he'd thought to check if he could steal the hammer off his old self. Two was better than one. Though most likely it would've also vanished as soon as his attention drifted away.
'You're dwelling on random trivial unimportant stuff to distract you from how absolutely screwed you are. You realize that, don't you?'
'Sure. Yeah. But if it keeps me from having another screaming fit...'
'Allright, that's fair.'
Toby stared at the mountain for a while with his face gone slack. Thinking nothing. Not moving. He realized dimly that his mind was very, very fragile at the moment. Thoughts were like slippery handfuls of ice cream that he was trying to snatch out of the sky.
He wasn't even sure if any of this was actually happening.
'Let's assume it is. Because if it isn't, then I can't do anything about that.' Putting a voice to his thoughts helped, gave them some stability. He continued on carefully, checking each thread of logic to make sure they were all sewn properly together. "If this is real, and I am here, then I'm alone. Which means I've gotta assume that only I can get myself out of this. My friends are probably looking for me right now and maybe they'll even find me. But I can't count on that. Scary as it is, I have to assume I'm on my own for now."
He remembered some safety program that had said if you were ever lost, you should sit right down and wait to be rescued. That was probably really good advice that he was doing the exact opposite of. But on the other hand, anyone who was looking for him could just follow the trail of footprints he'd left in this windless, moonlike dreamland. 'And also, whoever said you should stay put didn't have to breathe in the smell of soap the whole freakin' time.'
He was still smelling it now, of course. That immaculate stink, that noxious artificial tang that felt like long, thin, blue arms reaching high up into his sinuses to scratch and tear. Remaining in one place guaranteed he'd keep smelling it. Whereas moving forward increased his chances to approximately 0.000001% that he might find a way out of here.
'Like Trapforest Path,' he remembered.
What if this place existed, yet also didn't? What if the soap his feet was standing in was real, but the infinite expanse of this place was an illusion?
It was possible. And he could test it out the same as he had back in the forest with Doll.
Toby took a deep breath. It was like dragging an aquarium brush through his nostrils. He was beginning to consider caving in his own septum to get away from the soapstink. The smell of blood would be preferable. 'One experiment at a time,' he thought.
He looked ahead to Anasarca. It was the only landmark, so maybe it was the target he had to hit to ring the bell and win a prize. He held up his arm, palm open, towards the mountain. "Fire!"
He watched his hammer launch out and go sailing towards the sky.
Everything tensed. He prayed for a repeat of hitting the moon.
He kept on hoping, long past the point where he knew damn well his hammer wasn't hitting anything but air molecules.
Then he saw it plop down far away in the soap powder, puffing up a little blue cloud.
"Fffffffffuck," he said limply.
The only good thing about this place was that none of the dunes rose or dipped more than a foot. He could see the spot where his hammer had landed, plain as day. Wouldn't be hard to retrieve it, he just had to get there.
But as he started to run after it, he realized something wonderful.
The air here was like water. A furson could swim through water.
Toby's steps had felt heavy and slow before. But as soon as he started running, he realized his strides were carrying him a lot farther than expected. For a second he was puzzled, then he actually managed a disbelieving smile. Keeping an eye on his hammer, he took a running jump and sailed ahead like an astronaut on the moon.
Hopping like a kangaroo in slow motion, it wasn't long before Toby was choking out peals of delirious laughter. He needed it. After all the hell his mind had been through already, he needed a release. These helpless cackles made him sound like a madman, but he didn't care. His laughter made the loneliness, the fatigue, and the stench of soap all a little more bearable. Toby bounded across the desert like a superhero, leaving a trail of gasping whoops behind him.
It really was just like swimming. Toby would land, shove off, flap his arms like a seal, and go shooting ahead like a star. Just like his old memories of visiting the pool. Just like...
'Just like a bathtub filled with red water,' he whispered internally.
"Now don't you start that shit up again!!" he shouted.
But he already knew better. The memory wasn't going to leave him alone until he dealt with it.
'But you've been doing such a good job of that so far!' the inner voice wheedled. And wasn't that the truth? He had countless examples. Throwing a temper tantrum to avoid Junella telling him what Munchausen Syndrome Byproxy really was. Waking up from that nightmare in the pink hotel room and realizing he'd come this far not missing his mother. Still didn't. Toby looked inside his heart and found no yearning for her there. Sure, there was an itch to return to a life that was safe and simple. But when he pictured this ideal life, she was not a part of it. And he knew why. He just hadn't had the courage to acknowledge it so far.
'Come on, just say it. You can feel it bubbling down there in your brain's basement. Unbolt the door and let it out.'
He jumped again, soaring on nothingness towards the little crater his hammer had made. 'Fine, I'll try.'
'Don't TRY, you wuss! Just SAY it!'
'Can't you do it for me? You're better at this than I am.'
'Allright, fine. But don't blame me if you get all upset and start boo-hooing.'
He could feel his inner self take a breath.
Then it screamed at him, top volume, 'YOU'RE SCARED SHITLESS OF HER!!!'
He nearly fell ass-first in the soap. That statement had been like a grenade going off in his brain. But like all important truths, it was something he'd already known for a long, long time. Yet it hadn't surfaced until now. He hadn't been able to see it and feel it clearly enough to articulate it.
'I am.'
'Go on, you big baby. Say it out loud.'
Toby tensed his leg muscles and pushed off as hard as he could against the soap. "My mother scares me."
'Again!!! Say what you really feel, dammit!!'
"I'm scared shitless of her!" Toby yelped. "Because... because she's crazy!!"
This time he did skid to a stop. He landed on his tush and his heels. His hands flew up to clamp over his muzzle.
He had just spoken the ultimate blasphemy. The thought which he sometimes toyed with just a little, but in a jokey, harmless way. 'Ha ha ha, Mom sure does clean the floors a lot! Are they clean enough yet, ma?' But that was nothing more than a tiny steam pressure release to keep the big truth from metastasizing and destroying his reality. His mom was not just a little bit wacky. Or 'eccentric', as some people called it. She was not merely 'under a bit of stress' from having to take care of an ill child all on her own.
She was deeply, deeply mentally ill. She was at least as sick as Toby, if not more.
Once the thought was spoken, it was like air rushing out of a balloon. All the things he'd denied or rationalized away were suddenly flooding out and could no longer be held back. 'What kind of a sicko keeps their kid locked up in the house for months and years on end? Even if I really was that sick, why didn't she get me a hazmat suit, or one of those plastic bubbles like in that movie? Was it really so dangerous to let me go downstairs, or heaven forbid, outside to the front lawn? What was the real reason she took me out of school? Why did she keep taking me to new doctors every damn week? What if...'
Toby began to crawl towards his hammer, then to stumble to his feet and run. For some reason, he just needed to touch something tangible right this second, to keep him from floating away into outer space.
He could feel it straining inside him, another pimple about to burst. He tried to hold it back. He felt like he would lose his mind and end up a gibbering pants-wetting mess if he allowed himself to think such a ghastly, impossible lie.
But it had already sneaked out anyway. Like a whisper in an airless room.
'What if I was never as sick as she told me I was?'
Toby fell to his hands and knees in the soap-sand. Tears leaked from his eyes and saliva leaked from his mouth. The droplets hit the ground and made suds.
This was something else he'd known all along without ever daring to look at directly. Another truth that he'd toyed with the edges of, to keep it from ever fully rising to the surface. What if she hadn't just been exaggerating his illness sometimes? Overprotecting him a little, the way normal mothers did? What if he had had never really been sick in the first place?
'What if all my sores and aches and pains and migraines and scabs and all the nights I pissed in the sheets and puked on the floor and couldn't sleep because my nerves were on fire, what if it was all because of the medicines she gave me? Didn't I always know? That the symptoms always got worse after the medication? Never before? What if she caused it all?'
"All of it..." Toby gasped.
A feeling unlike any he had ever felt before began to pulse through Toby's veins. It rumbled through his hands and knees like a vibration from deep below. Drool sloshed from his lips. In a blink, he'd scrambled to his feet and was running as fast as the heavy air would allow towards his hammer. He was nearly blind. There was nothing in front of his eyes but a vast blue blur and a tiny silver speck dead center. Grunts slipped from his mouth. Mindless animal noises. His feet pounded at the soap, driving him further, faster, towards the hammer.
He leapt like a tiger and skidded face first into the soap flakes. He barely noticed. He spat out blue powder and bubbles but didn't taste a thing. His hand was around the handle. That was all that mattered.
And then he was swinging. Pounding. Smashing. Whipping his hammer through the air. Sending skittering waves of soap powder flying. Trying to murder it. All of it. Crush it. Smash it. Break it. All of it.
All of it.
All of it.
***
He pounded away at the rotten world until he had depleted every last drop of fuel in his tanks. Then he was left lying on his back, panting painfully hard, staring up at the absence of clouds.
There was one other good thing about this realm besides the moon-hops. He was alone out here. His own sense of embarrassment would have never allowed him to explode like that if there was anyone within a thousand miles who could have seen him. Thankfully, there wasn't.
He had been smashing sand in a howling frenzy. Lost in frustration, loss, grief, and anger. Then after collapsing in exhaustion, he'd got up, spat the taste of soap out of his mouth, and started walking again. Once more, madness had spilled out of him like fire until the fire burned itself dead and clarity reasserted itself. It seemed Toby wasn't very good at staying batshit. His resiliency surprised him. Or maybe he'd been near-insane all along, and was developing an immunity to it.
'This was what was holding me back. The thing I saw a shadow of in Gilla's front yard. I kept making excuses for her after she scrubbed my skin to shreds. But the memory didn't go away. It sat in me like cancer. That was why I kept thinking of myself as helpless. Because I was. Even without her around, I kept that memory of being little and defenseless in a world where something huge could turn on me at any time and cause me pain.'
He could hardly believe he was facing it so easily now. After all, this was a giftwrapped box he'd been carrying for years, never brave enough to pull the ribbon and look inside. But maybe its power had come from not looking at it. Like the monster in a scary movie that stays in the shadows. When you don't see it, your imagination makes it so much bigger. His denial had been covering up his monster, like throwing a tarp on it. And underneath was something hideous, sure. But it was a lot smaller than Toby had always made himself believe it was. In fact, it was so small, once it was out in the open, it wasn't all that difficult to raise up his metaphorical foot and smash it into the pavement.
The truth in a nutshell was this: he had not had a normal childhood or a loving home. His mother had purposely kept him sick for her own insane reasons, for years, and had almost certainly used him to get rid of his father. There. That was his reality. It was literally sickening, but it was also pathetic. And facing it had not destroyed him.
Maybe it was because some part of him had been preparing for this moment all along. Down in his deepest heart, he had always known he was being slowly poisoned by a madwoman. But he'd denied it for years. And why? Partly because it was easier. Partly because of his bottomless cowardice. Partly because facing it would have meant a responsibility to escape and turn her in. He'd been too scared of giving up a life where everything was taken care of for him.
The understanding came to him as blunt as a blackjack and sharp as a scalpel. He was not responsible for his mother's abuse of him. But he was responsible for his denial of it.
His arms ached. The tendons vibrated like cello strings. He still clutched his hammer, bits of gritty soap between his fingers. The powder was everywhere. His fur from head to toe was sprinkled like blue dandruff. The smell still made him want to barf, but he was acclimating to it.
After all, he'd had a lot of practice getting used to things that made him ill.
Toby walked onward, keeping Anasarca fixed in his vision. He was surprised how clear his head was after all that chaos a moment ago. He guessed it was as simple as, the pimple had popped. Now all that was left was a slowly-healing hole. The truth he'd spent years burying had risen to the surface. It was out now, undeniable. He felt sick and humiliated and shameful and betrayed and all sorts of other unpleasant emotions. But also relieved. At least the strain in his gut was gone. Finally telling the truth felt like unzipping too-tight pants. And he reflected that he had not actually been sparing himself any pain by lying. He'd just spread it thinner so it seemed like less. A constant background migraine instead of the eruption he'd just gone through.
'This changes things,' he realized. What would happen now if he made it up the mountain and Aldridge had a way for him to get back home? He sure as hell wouldn't stay in his room another day. If he could manage it, he'd get downstairs and out the door and beg the first furson he saw for a ride to the hospital. This was assuming he could get downstairs at all, even by crawling. This was also assuming his immune system hadn't already been so compromised that a breath of outside air wouldn't kill him. 'Bravo, mom. All the things you feared would happen to me? You made them true. You brought your nightmares to life in me.'
He shut his eyes. He had faced his truth, but it was still hard to think about her. The sense of betrayal was too overwhelming. And the dichotomy hurt too much, to realize that the woman who'd kept him a prisoner in his own body was also the same woman who'd sung Happy Birthday to him and taught him how to count and hugged him when he had a bad dream. The impossibility of those two people being one and the same was a feeling even worse than the smell of soap. It was a poisonous snake living in his stomach that would not stop biting him.
He thought about his father too. He felt relatively certain his father's love had been real. Maybe Dad was still alive somewhere. Maybe some chance of finding him still existed.
But would his father even want him anymore? The lies that had come from Toby's own mouth had sent him away, possibly to prison. Could a son be forgiven for that? And did he deserve to be? Did some part of him realize what was happening when his mother coached him to lie, and had he gone along with it simply because ignorance was easier?
It was because of thoughts like this that Toby spent four minutes seeing the moving speck in his peripheral vision without really seeing it.
It was a thousand yards out to his right, coming towards him at a diagonal.
A mirage? A dust devil?
No, it was another furson. Another living soul was crossing the desert.
Toby broke into a run, his introspective thoughts forgotten.
Great big kangaroo leaps. The 'someone else' on the horizon was so far away they could barely be discerned. But they were moving. Movement meant life. Life meant help. Possibly. Maybe whoever this was might know a way out of the blue abyss. If they'd entered this desert, it stood to reason that they had to have come in from somewhere else. If nothing else, Toby could follow their footprints backwards to wherever that was. It had to be better than here.
With every lunging step, the figure in the distance became a little clearer. Toby began to wonder if it was actually some kind of strange vehicle. It seemed to be in two parts, like a tiny wind-up train. Toby stopped in his tracks for a moment to focus on getting a better look.
Squinting. 'What the heck IS that? It doesn't seem to have legs. Or does it?'
Suddenly Toby remembered that this was Phobiopolis, the land of nightmares.
The figure on the horizon was not shaped like any furson he'd ever met before. In fact, it was shaped exactly like some kind of construct.
Toby squeezed his hammer.
He stood frozen with indecision for a moment. Should he keep running towards it? Or away? The figure looked bigger than he was. Was it out here searching for prey? Would it snatch him up and swallow him whole, leaving him to suffocate/die/repeat on an endless cycle in its airless, acidic gullet? Maybe. Or maybe it was someone who'd been transformed. Like Piffle. The other half of it looked inorganic. Like a... Like a cart, maybe?
Toby licked his lips, regretted it because of the soap, then started running again.
His breath was heavy. Not just because of the thick air, but because he was readying himself for a fight. Part of him dreaded it. Part of him kept automatically envisioning himself as a defenseless weakling. Though now he had some powerful counter-evidence to that idea. Toby knew he was small, yes. But his hammer was powerful. And he remembered something else from when he'd been in the thick of eraserheads and cactusyotes: confidence was as much a weapon as anything. When he'd drifted into the fight enough to lose his neurosis, confidence had taken over and everything became easier. So part of him dreaded the prospect of having to defend himself against an unknown threat all by himself and miles from nowhere. But another small part was eagerly hopeful. 'Bring it on,' that voice whispered, trembling in thrill.
Plus, even more simply, he supposed that if he was in the kind of mental state to mindlessly pound sand while making caveman noises, it might be even more satisfying to wail on something that 1) had more solidity and 2) deserved it.
'That's assuming it's an enemy. You don't know that yet.'
Except it looked an awful lot like one. The closer he got, the more he observed. This was one ugly sonovabitch. It was definitely carrying a cart, a big obelisk-shaped thing on two wheels. And while Toby couldn't make out any details of the creature’s body, he could tell that the top half was skinny, the bottom half was fat, and there were a hell of a lot of pointy bits in between.
Toby ran straight at it, bouncing from dune to dune like a slow-motion sand flea. Maybe if he showed no fear in his movements, that might intimidate the creature.
'Yes, you go right ahead and intimidate the thing which is clearly twice your size. Maybe three times. That will work.'
'Shut up, brain!'
When they were only a few hundred feet apart, Toby skidded to a stop on the side of a soap dune. He posed with one foot forward, the other behind. His eyes were fixed on the nightmare construct. His hammer was held out in front of him, hungry for battle. He breathed hard and steady.
The thing approached him at exactly the same pace it had kept the entire time. It gazed nonjudgmentally from behind yellow discs.
It was certainly colorful, whatever it was. Most of its scales and exoskeletal panels were a glossy black, but there was a wide yellow stripe running up its center, along with highlights of violet and crimson. Its lower half was as bulbous as its top half was slender. The insectoid abdomen looked like a giant black yam. It was held up by a few dozen stubby centipede legs, all moving in chaotic harmony like the guts of a typewriter. Higher up, five implausibly long arms sprouted from its shoulders like tree branches. Three on the left, two on the right. Each forearm ended in a tri-fingered hand resembling the types of metal claws that descend towards cheap stuffed animals. Atop the neck curled a head that was a cross between a caiman and a question mark. At the end of its long snout were two round nostrils joined by a golden ring.
Twenty feet away from Toby, it stopped.
Toby looked at the thing.
Two spherical silver eyes with buckshot clusters of multiple pupils looked back at him.
Toby took long, slow breaths. He made his body as stiff as the steel in his hammer. Like he'd melded with it. Even though this creature was twice his height, many times his weight, and those spindly arms looked like they'd have no difficulty snatching him up and plunging him straight down into that crocodilian maw, he would not show fear.
"Hi," he said simply.
The thing took in Toby's body language. Its eyes traced along the mouse's arm to his weapon. "That is a fine hammer. Is it for sale?"
Toby blinked. It could speak. Well, that reduced the likelihood it was a construct. More than that, the being had spoken with a cultured tongue. The voice itself was a boom of a timpani, but with a pixyish edge.
Toby lowered the hammer. Slightly. "Sorry, but I'm kind of attached to it."
The thing shook its curvy head. "Excuse me?" It reached up to remove its ear buds. "My apologies, I didn't catch that over my music."
Toby had been focusing so much on the being's anatomy that he hadn't noticed it was wearing headphones. Nor had he noticed the cords that ran from bumpy craters on the sides of its head, down to the pocket of a blazing yellow button-down shirt festooned with images of red and green peppers. The being was also wearing several watches, a casino dealer's visor, and a pair of round, yellow-tinted sunglasses. Looking at the outfit, Toby might have guessed this was somebody's grandpa on vacation.
"I said," he repeated, "my hammer isn't for sale." Toby decided to be bold and give this odd fellow the benefit of the doubt. He popped his hammer back into its sheath and took a few steps forward for a handshake.
Its already-wide eyes went wider at the sight of Toby's weapon tucking itself away. "Now you're just teasing me! A hammer with a built-in holster? Delightful!" It clapped several hands eagerly. "Are you absolutely certain you would not consider selling it to me?"
Toby couldn't help but be puzzled and amused by its childlike fascination. The creature was staring at his arm like it was made out of gold. "I'm sorry, but by now it's pretty much a part of my body." Inspiration struck. "...Although if you can help me out, I could let you know where I got it from."
It smiled at Toby, showing great appreciation that he was willing to deal. Two of its hands shot out and clasped onto the mouse's right paw, pumping up and down with gusto. It then said, with practiced panache, "I am L'roon. It almost rhymes with 'maroon', but then doesn't. I am a peddler by trade. I buy and I sell. How may I be of help to you, small sir?"
The relief Toby felt almost knocked him off his feet. After all this day's misery, to come across someone friendly and polite out here in the middle of nowhere was more than he could have wished for.
'Might wanna keep your guard up anyway,' his inner voice said. 'He is a salesman.' Toby had never personally encountered any smiling men trying to sell him used cars at bargain prices, but he'd seen enough of them in movies. 'Then again, I don't have much he could fleece me out of even if he tried,' he thought. 'Or do I?'
L'roon reached into one of his shirt pockets to switch his music player off, and into another to pull out a wad of gummi worms, which he crammed into his mouth. He seemed to be waiting for something.
Toby remembered he hadn't introduced himself yet. "Toby deLeon!" he blurted. "And as for help, just for starters do you have any noseplugs?"
L'roon dragged a twiglike finger across his chin. Then he held out two worms. "Would these do?"
A bizarre solution, but Toby was willing to try anything to be free of the desert's oppressively fresh scent. He plugged the little wriggly candies into his nostrils. Sugary citrusness exploded his nose, but it was a change from soap, and that was fuckin' dandy. "Thank you!" he said, sounding a little more nasal now.
L'roon grinned mightily to see his improvised solution doing the job. "Good! I expect though, you require more assistance than just the blocking of unwanted smells?"
The way this guy talked reminded him a little of George. "Yes, actually." He held his arms out to the sides, indicating the vastness of the desert around them. "...I'm lost."
A chuckle. "It is hard to be lost in Dysania. Any straight line will take you from one edge to the other eventually, assuming you don't get turned around in a circle."
'It's got a name,' Toby noted. Which meant it was on the map. A known quantity. "Well, I mean, I was traveling with friends. We were on our way to the market town when we got separated. Lalo-something-ia." L'roon nodded, well-familiar with the place. Toby grimaced at the memory. "They got in a tub station. I did too, but I... didn't concentrate on the right thing. Now I'm here."
"Ah." More gummi worms. He made sure to chew thoroughly and swallow before continuing. "That can happen easily. It is why I prefer to walk. Among other reasons. But to ease your mind somewhat, any tub station has a finite range. Rest assured, you have not been transported to the opposite edge of the realm. Lalochezia is not especially far from here."
"Great! Now I just gotta find a way to hook back up with everyone." Toby nibbled his index finger. He arched an eyebrow at L'roon. "You wouldn't have anything in your cart that could help me out with that?"
L'roon looked like he could not possibly have been more pleased to have been asked. His cart was yoked to his body by a belt around his waist, so he reached behind to unclasp it. At the same time, he kicked down a stabilizing post to keep it from rolling away. Placing a hand lightly on the small mouse's shoulder, he bade him walk around to the side.
Toby was a little nervous about that clawlike hand being there, but said nothing. It was hard not to imagine how easily those needle-like digits could spear him like a shish kebab.
The cart was a wide, tall trapezoid. White-painted metal with a red stripe, shot through with rust spots. It looked a lot like a derelict space capsule, actually. There were already numerous knickknacks hanging off the sides on belts and chains, so Toby had a feeling the inside was gonna be packed with even more. L'roon reached up to fiddle with a fiendish-looking lock. Then, with a showman's flourish and the push of a button, the whole thing split down the middle like a wardrobe.
Inside was an entire junkyard's worth of treasure.
Toby couldn't help but gawk for a few minutes. L'roon stood by silently, just enjoying the moment of seeing yet another new customer entranced.
The cart seemed to defy physics with how much it held. There were shelves, racks, hooks; some items were even nailed in place. Gems. Weaponry. Potions. Musical instruments. Toys. Necklaces. Coins. Electronics. Idols. Photos. Books. Even foodstuffs. Anything and everything a person might sell their soul for. It all looked a bit in need of polishing, but none of it was dull. Everything looked like it came with a story. Toby would have bet L'roon knew every single one of them.
Toby reached out a paw towards an intricate-looking wind-up frog, but then thought better of it. Who knew how expensive this stuff was? The last thing he wanted was to break something worth a fortune.
"Now..." L'roon purred, "I might have an item in here that could aid you, or I might be able to offer information. Tell me more about your friends." He saw the cautious 'Why?' appear on the mouse's face and cut it off before it could be spoken. "I only ask because I am often many places. I travel on a loop amongst the habitable areas of the badlands: Rhinolith, Papiloma, Lalochezia, Scarlatina, and all points in between. I particularly enjoy shortcutting through Dysania because the peculiar gravity eases my feet. I say this because, in all that time, I might have met your friends before. I might know where they might go."
Toby considered that. Something inside him was telling him not to reveal too much personal info to this colorful pushcart vendor. At least not yet. So he kept his answers short. "If you know any of them, it'd most likely be Junella Brox and Zinc."
L'roon's pupils scattered back and forth as he scanned his memory. "...A vinyl-coated stinker and a mutt with hardware arms?"
Toby chuckled at how blunt that was. "That's them."
L'roon looked happy his memory hadn't failed him. "We did dealings a few times, but I didn't get to know them. Just routine transactions. They stick out in my mind only because of the pair's almost-mythic levels of swagger."
That got a full-on snort out of Toby. "That's definitely them!"
"Who else?"
"Um, there's also Doll. She's under a curse right now, so..." Toby held his hands to indicate her tiny height. "Plus Piffle, and who knows what she might have looked like if you'd ever met her."
L'roon blinked, then shrugged. "They ring no bells."
"And George. But he's been buried in the ground for the past few centuries, so you probably never ran into him before."
L'roon smiled strangely and cocked his head back and forth. "I have been in business for quite some time."
Something about that answer struck Toby oddly. He suddenly felt like he was on the cusp of a realization. He stepped back a little to look L'roon up and down again. The peddler was a bit surprised by this, but let the mouse observe.
Toby watched L'roon's centipede-like legs twitch. Like cards being shuffled. Something about that stirred memories of a half-remembered nature show. His mouth opened. But he hesitated several seconds before sounds followed. "Sir... I promise you I don't mean any offense when I ask this, but... are you an ascended construct?"
L'roon actually staggered back against his cart, making everything in it shudder and jangle.
Toby hadn't expected that reaction.
The peddler stared as if shot. Then his head whipped forward without warning, inches away from Toby's. "Where did you hear that term!?" he demanded. No, it was more like begging.
Toby gulped. Those clustered pupils were reading every atom of his face for signs of lies. "I- I'm not a hundred percent sure! George said it once while we were talking, maybe. But I've met two of them so far."
This produced an even more extreme reaction. L'roon whisked off his visor and nearly crushed it between his hands. "TWO!?" he exploded. He suddenly began pacing in circles. Just as abruptly, he stopped and shoved his face back into Toby's again. "You must mean Red, you must! But who is the other one!? Who!? Please, tell me!"
Toby's throat slammed shut from fear. He'd thought L'roon might have gotten huffy at being asked if he was actually a nightmare, but he'd never predicted this level of harried desperation. The poor guy looked like he'd just been told his whole life was a lie.
Toby struggled to speak. It was nearly impossible. He could feel the snorts of L'roon's hot breath blasting against his chin. "I- I- I-"
Realizing that he was terrifying the lad, L'roon stepped back a few paces. He folded his hands over one another. "Please," he said in a much softer tone.
"George," Toby was finally able to say. "The one who I said was underground. He's a bonecuddy. Or, he was. Now he's trying not to be. He's my friend."
At that last word, L'roon pretty much collapsed. All twenty-eight of his legs gave out and he collapsed to the ground in a puff of powder. His face went slack and his glasses slid down his muzzle into the soap. His eyes were wide as Christmas ornaments.
Toby didn't know what to think. A moment before, this being had displayed all the confident showmanship of a lion tamer. Now he looked a moment away from crying. "Sir? What is it? I..."
L'roon spoke in a very, very small voice. "You said 'friend'."
"Yes," Toby affirmed without hesitation.
L'roon shook his head, then reached up to hold it in his hands as if it might fall off. Slowly, his short legs hefted his bulk back to standing. He retrieved his glasses and brushed them clean. "You must forgive me. I have been around for quite some while. There are very few things that surprise me. Fewer still are things I find impossible. What you just said... was one of them."
Toby didn't quite know what to do. His words had obviously had a tremendous effect. "Heck, you already mentioned Red. Piffle's crazy about him. He lets her ride on his head. Me too, actually."
L'roon's eyeballs almost fell out. He turned and braced himself against the side of his cart. It sagged. "First the hammer and now this! Small sir, I am beginning to think that I am hallucinating you!"
That got a chuckle out of Toby. He walked over to pat L'roon on the arm. "Sorry if I overwhelmed you."
An immediate handwave. "Never apologize for bringing good news! It was merely a shock. My reaction was that of a merchant who has finally received inventory he ordered years ago, and had long since given up on."
L'roon sat back down in the soap-sand, deliberately this time. He replaced his crinkled visor and reached into his cart for an ivory fan. He flickered it to give himself a breeze. "How did you know? About myself, I mean. I could tell by the way you asked it wasn't a mere guess based on my pretty face. You knew somehow."
Toby nodded. "For one, you remind me of George in funny ways. For two, it was your legs."
A questioning eyebrow.
"So my friend Piffle's got eyes almost like yours so I know a furson can get used to that. But I saw something on TV once, I forget where, that said a furson's brain couldn't keep up with having more limbs than we already have. Like, the mental strain would be too much. Definitely not as many as yours."
The merchant huffed. "Curses. Exposed by trivia."
Toby laughed.
L'roon leaned back against the cart, sighing in resignation. He shut his eyes with a sound like two plastic cups clinking together. "I am going to tell you something now. First though, I would like your word of honor: this is not to be shared amongst any other living soul. It would destroy my business, and my business is my life."
Toby nodded solemnly. "I understand. And I promise. I've always been good at keeping my mouth shut." He felt a painful twinge from his past at that.
L'roon nodded, as if he knew it already just from Toby's face. He reached up to the cart again for a medium-size wooden box covered in bear fur. He tossed it in the sand at the mouse's feet and bade him sit.
Toby sat.
L'roon leaned in close, as if gossipy ears might be listening (even though they were sitting by themselves a hundred miles from the nearest life form). "I am, as you say, an ascended parasomnic construct. I have gone to tremendous lengths to conceal this fact from others. I have told them, 'Do not fear! I am under the spell of a wizard's transformation!' There was a lot of that going around in those days, so people believed me. Over time I have established myself as a harmless old nomad. 'Oh, there is L'roon!' they say. 'Hello, L'roon!' Their belief that I am the same as them is important. Without it, would they ever trust me to honor a sale?"
Toby nodded. "People sure flipped their lids wherever we went with George."
L'roon looked flabbergasted by this, particularly at the idea that an ascended nightmare had actually walked amongst living souls and had not been destroyed. "You must tell me all you can about your friend George. I must know. But later." He willed his impatience to ease. "As for myself, I came into existence like any other construct; nought but the desire to spread tremors and suffering. I have never encountered another with my face. Some constructs are numerous enough to be given 'species', but I seem to be the only one of me."
Toby looked a bit sad at that.
L'roon laughed bitterly. "Don't pity me. It has been a blessing! If I looked like a common cactusyote, could I ever get away with my masquerade?"
"Good point," Toby said.
L'roon continued. "Even as a mindless nightmare, I was smart. While others of my kind relied on strength and teeth and venom, I relied on craft. I sent innumerable icicles up spines. I fed triumphantly on many victims who I had driven to madness before pouncing upon." L'roon cocked his head at Toby's lack of reaction. "You are not frightened by this? By me?"
Toby shook his head. "Nope. Sounds pretty much like the kinda stuff George told me he used to do."
L'roon put his many hands on his hips and just marveled at the mouse. While he had taken a risk that this stranger would not flee in fear at the truth of his hidden nature, even then he had not expected a response of simple acceptance. As if his centuries-old charade was no big whoop.
Toby waited for him to continue the story.
L'roon fumbled for a second, trying to remember where he'd been. "As time passed, I became cleverer. My tricks became art. I felt the first pricklings of pride in my own cunning. I began to enjoy the tricks themselves more than the fear and pain they caused. For a nightmare, this ought to have been impossible. Any behavior that contravenes our instincts ought to be impossible." He held up a finger. "Red is an exception. He is so large that, I suppose, he has simply become bored. Trampling victims was too easy. His mind wandered. I have had long talks with him, as he is the only other creature I can be honest with. But he is too simple to understand most of what I say. Not stupid, just... basic. Are you beginning to understand my interest in your George?"
A nod. "Absolutely. You could have a real conversation with him. Just being alone in this desert for a few hours was driving me nuts. I can't imagine how lonely it must feel to spend your whole life hiding who you are."
A sigh. "That is... very true. I am already beginning to be glad I have chosen to tell you. An untold secret is a wiggly thing, after all. I am grateful to you for your understanding," he said softly.
Toby felt good about that.
"Anyway, one cannot feel pride in one's self without some dawning awareness of 'self'. I do not know when, but I began to realize what I was, what living souls were, and how we diverged. My true life began the day my rudimentary mind thought to ask: 'Why am I bothering with this bullshit anyway?'"
Toby hid a guffaw behind his hand.
L'roon smiled too. "Why was I scaring people? Eating them at least made some sense. But I didn't feel any genuine hunger. What I felt was an instinct to cause misery. I did not understand it though. But by then my tricks had grown so elaborate, I had begun to experiment with them. To see if they could cause other reactions. To see if I could feed myself on something other than suffering. I spent many years observing. Starving myself. Just watching these souls do the things they did. Learning from them. I became particularly interested in their transactions. The exchange of money. I realized, it was possible to trick a man in more ways than just popping out of a bush with a 'boo' and gobbling him up."
L'roon stood up and placed a hand over his heart. "I became..." he announced, "a devout capitalist."
Toby hid another chuckle. He'd said it in exactly the way some people declared their religion. Though when he thought about it, it certainly had changed L'roon's life like one. Saved him, even.
The fat abdomen plopped back down and L'roon grinned widely. "I watched. I practiced. Finally, I attempted. It did not go well. I practiced more. I failed more. Eventually it broke through my stupid head that I needed to learn their language. I watched them speak. I practiced that too. I tried again. This time, success. I will not ever forget it. I traded a lost traveler his pistol for six worthless glass gems. Then I shot him in the back with it and reacquired the gems."
Toby looked a tad horrified.
"Well, it took some time for me to develop any kind of a conscience," L'roon admitted.
"I'm glad you eventually did," Toby said uneasily.
L'roon reminisced fondly on his first sale for another moment. "And so I began to hunt new prey. Objects of value. Anything and everything, so long as someone, somewhere, wanted it. I even became a specialist in transformation potions, to sell the lie that I was the victim of one and trying to find a cure. The more I bartered, the more skill I attained.
"What I discovered first was that I gained the same degree of satisfaction from fooling souls with trade as I did from pouncing and preying. It was the thrill of proving my own cleverness. It didn't matter what form it took. Avarice was just as delicious as viciousness." He smirked proudly at the rhyme.
"What I discovered secondly was that, if word of mouth gets around that you are a rotten, backstabbing cheat, no one will trade with you. So you see, my conscience grew out of necessity. My reputation was giving away the game. I needed to change my reputation. So, I became legitimate. By now, I have learned the true secret of commerce." Dramatic pause.
Toby leaned forward a little. "...Which is?"
L'roon extended a finger. "Any fool can make a small profit off of dirty deals. But if you are smarter, you will deal cleanly, build trust, and leave your customers itching to return. The best deal is the one where the buyer believes they have gotten the better bargain, yet the seller knows the opposite is true." He crossed his arms over his chest and smiled widely.
"So... you're basically admitting that, any deal I make with you, you're gonna pull one over on me," Toby replied, smiling as well.
"Oh, not at all, my friend." That last part was said with such transparently false pleasantness that they both knew it was a tease. "Any deal we make, you will gain. But I will gain more. Either now or in the long run. My existence, after all, is profit. I have traded a life of ruthless brutality for one of ruthless shrewdness. One where my victims line up before me and don't even believe they are victims, because they aren't." His grin was immense. "It is a far better outcome for all, don't you agree?"
"Sounds like it," Toby said. He stood up and cricked his back. The little box was soft, but had put him at a weird sitting angle. "I'm glad for you, honestly. It sounds like you put a lot of work into changing yourself. That's admirable."
L'roon turned his face away. "If my scales could blush, that's what they would be doing."
Toby wiped the soap powder from his leg fur. "Allright. So. I get the feeling you might like to sell me something now."
L'roon's eyes sparkled. "Oh, very much so! I am glad to see you're getting right down to it. Let us lay our cards upon the table then." He made a gesture miming exactly that. "You desire to reunite with your friends. I have an item which may prove useful to that end. So then, what I desire is threefold. If I cannot have your hammer, I would like to know where to acquire my own. And I would like to speak at length with your friend George. And I would like one other thing. A very minor tidbit. Easily replaceable, I'm sure you'll agree."
Toby felt like L'roon was sugarcoating something rather nasty. Cringing, he asked, "...What is it?"
The peddler steepled his fingertips. "You see, over the years, I have developed quite the taste for... living eyes."
"Ewww!" Toby yelped. "No way!"
"I'm only asking for one!" L'roon said sweetly, as if that made the request perfectly harmless. "You'll still be able to see. And regaining it will only be a death away. Perhaps not even that if you concentrate. And I am offering something worth far more to you."
Toby narrowed his eyes. "What, exactly?"
"You've been sitting on it."
Toby turned around. He picked up the furry box. It was incredibly heavy and sounded like it was full of jewelry. "The whole thing?"
"No, no, no!" L'roon said quickly. "That would be a lopsided deal indeed," he muttered to himself. He snatched the box away from the mouse and, with a nervous laugh, sat it back inside his cart. He lifted the lid.
Inside, Toby saw a king's ransom of bracelets, rings, pendants and other glimmering baubles.
L'roon sifted through the contents until locating a particular item. He lifted it up on a single hooked finger.
It was a necklace. A simple metal chain with a tarnished silver emblem dangling from its center. The symbol had once been painted green, but now only a few traces of its color remained. It was in the shape of a circular spiral, with two waves extending from the center like bird's wings.
Toby gazed at it. It seemed somehow to be more real than everything else around it. As if it were the only three-dimensional object in a 2D world.
"What is it?" he asked reverently.
L'roon smiled, but it was a solemn, cautious smile. He licked his lips. "I cannot give you any details until after you have used it. And when I say 'cannot', I mean it. You will understand soon. But this talisman will grant its bearer exactly two wishes. They can be anything."
Toby raised an eyebrow. "Two? Why two?"
L'roon shrugged. "Why not?"
"Huh. In fairy tales it's always three."
A sigh. "Well, if you're not interested..." He began to put the necklace away.
"I'm interested!" Toby yelped. He stared at the faded silver enigma. "I gotta ask though, how do I know it'll work? How do I know you haven't been buttering me up with a sob story just to sell me something you got out of some old lady's junk drawer?"
L'roon brayed with laughter. "You're a lot more brazen than you look, small sir!"
"Thanks?" said Toby.
L'roon wiped a tear from his eye, still jiggling with mirth. "You have every right to be wary. But as I said, my deals are on the level. You can use the talisman first. If it works to your satisfaction, then you deliver your half of the bargain."
Toby bit his lip. "How exactly were you planning on taking my eyeball out?" He could not believe those words had just left his mouth.
L'roon smiled. Seven inches of batlike tongue flicked out of the end of his muzzle. "I am very quick. You'll hardly feel it."
A low groan came out of Toby. He thought about his friends. He fixed them all in his mind. He asked himself, was it worth giving up an eye for them?
The answer was obvious.
"Gimme the necklace-thingy." He held out his hand.
L'roon licked his lips. "Sterling!" He cheerfully draped the chain over Toby's palm and settled the talisman in the center of it. "Just place it around your throat, put your hand upon it if you so choose, and say your wish aloud." He backed up a bit, then glanced for just an instant at the trinket as if it were a bomb about to go off.
Toby looked down at the heavy little lump of metal in his hand. 'I have no idea if I'm making the biggest mistake of my life,' he thought. He gulped. Then he reached behind his head to brush his fur away and clasp it on. The weight against his breastbone felt like a pointing finger.
He looked at L'roon. The peddler's expression told him to go right ahead.
Toby turned around, sighing. He gazed out across the vast, empty desert. He scanned the sky. He reached up to wrap his paw around the silver charm and thought about what words to choose.
"I wish my friends would appear in front of me right now."
There was a thundercrack, high up in the clouds.
Toby looked up to see a comet streak across the sky. It left a smoky white trail. He backed up by pure reflex when he realized it was heading straight at him.
SSSSSSSSSKKKRRRTHCHOOOM!!!
The impact bowled Toby over. He instinctively covered his face with his bracers and landed on his tush. L'roon had reacted quickly enough to get his cart closed up. He and the cart and Toby were all practically entombed in a tidal wave of soap.
When Toby sat up, spitting powder out of his mouth, a horrific sight met his eyes.
His friends were all dead. The ground was blackened in a crater around where they had crashed. Chunks of flesh smoldered everywhere. Zinc's face was gone. One of his wrenches stuck up out of the charred ground with Piffle hanging in halves by her intestines from it. A femur from George was rammed deep into Doll's head. The rest of him lay in shrapnel all around. Junella was a smear of ink, her blank eyes staring up at the cloudless sky.
Toby screamed.
He scrambled to his feet. He grabbed at the pendant, thought at lightning speed, and shouted, "I wish all my friends, and all their gear, and the car, were all right in front of me again, but this time completely physically unharmed, and that there were no bad consequences to this wish!!!"
L'roon made a face: 'That's cheating'.
But the talisman listened. There was another clap of thunder, smaller this time, and in a flash, all of Toby's wishes came true. His companions were whole. They were spread around in essentially the same positions they'd been in after the firefall, but the streaks of burnt soap vanished and so did their injuries. The Fearsleigher, scuffed but whole, rose up out of the soap behind them like a shaftless elevator.
Zinc blinked his tin eyelids. Piffle's antennae told her she was lying flat on the roof of the car. George looked around to realize that he'd somehow been kicked free from the Fearsleigher again, that he was back to normal size, and that he was also stepping on Doll's face. "Oh good heavens, my sincerest apologies!"
Junella had been lying on her back. She suddenly sat up with a jolt. "GRAN'MA'S ASS!!" she swore.
Toby cried out in exuberant joy.
Zinc was the closest, so he was quite suddenly surprised to find Toby actually hoisting him to his feet and crushing his ribs in a humongous hug.
"I'm so glad to see you!!" the mouse exploded.
"Hey!! What!? Toby!?" The poor canine had no idea where he was, how he'd gotten here, why it was so hard to breathe, or why everything smelled so obnoxiously clean.
Toby left all the canine's questions unanswered and went to go divebomb George.
"Sire Toby! I'm-OOF!"
The mouse nearly knocked him off his feet. When George was sufficiently squeezed, Toby picked up Doll, rearranged her slightly-flattened head, then planted a massive kiss on it. He plopped her down on George's neck then ran full-tilt at Junella.
"Toby, where in God's nutsack-!?" This question was cut short with a record scratch as Toby tackled her to the ground with an abundance of love.
"There'll be no hugging around here without me!" Piffle proclaimed, and leaped in to add her own cuddles to the pile.
"Aaarrrgh!" Junella screamed.
Piffle rolled back and forth, squeezing the breath out of skunk and mouse both. "Gee whiz, Toby! Wheredja go? We waited hours for you!"
"I..." He tried to speak, but was too overjoyed for words. He didn't even register that she was once again a hamsterfly. Instead he squeezed harder, barely able to believe he was really holding his beloved friends in his arms. He peppered them both with kisses.
"Zinc! Help! Murder!"
The canine wandered over, flexed his wrenches, and lifted all three of them to their feet. He looked straight in Toby's eyes. "The way I see it, I owe you a debt, pardner."
Toby was perplexed.
Then Zinc hugged the living daylights out of him.
Piffle swept her arms around the pair of them, and made sure Junella couldn't escape either. George came over to nuzzle the bunch, while Doll leaned in to hug whoever's legs she could reach.
Junella tried to scream again but her arms were trapped at her sides.
Tears poured like rain down Toby's cheeks. "I was all alone! It felt like forever! I think I went crazy out here! Oh WOW, I can't tell you how happy I am to see all of you!! I was terrified! I was worried it might take days or weeks to find you! I was even-" He stopped abruptly and stared down at his chest.
Everyone let go of him and stared too.
The talisman. Without any glow or fanfare, it was simply sinking into Toby's fur like quicksand. Absorbing itself into the flesh of his chest, then vanishing away.
"Is that what brought us here?" Zinc asked.
"Does it hurt?" Piffle asked.
"Yes, and no," Toby answered in order. He looked over to L'roon, his expression asking, 'Is this normal?'
Before the peddler could answer, everyone else took note of the bizarrely-shaped reptile/insect in their midst.
Junella leapt towards him and drew her sword, fast as lightning. She positioned herself protectively in front of Toby and the others, a sneer on her lips.
Then abruptly it softened. "...Weren't you that guy we bought some produce from once?"
"That was it!" L'roon exclaimed. "I'd been trying to remember the specifics since your friend Toby mentioned you. Fresh dundles and strawberries, was it not?"
"Yeah." A bit befuddled, Junella sheathed her blade. "What're you doing all the way out here with our mouse?"
He put a hand to his chest. "I was on my way from Rhinolith to Drapetomania. I had been told that a frequent client would like to sell me some very old wine. I met your friend while he was wandering aimlessly and losing his mind."
Toby nodded. "That's accurate."
L'roon continued. "We agreed on a transaction. In exchange for information and one body part, I delivered him a wishing talisman, equal in power to twenty Zulamang Drops."
Zinc's eyeballs damn near shot out of his head at that.
"By the time I came into possession of it, it had already been used by someone else," L'roon went on. "So it was entirely possible that in another's hands, it would be no more than a hunk of ugly metal."
"ExCUSE me!?" Toby bellowed.
L'roon was amused by the mouse's outrage. He held up a hand, asking him to calm down just long enough to hear him out. "That, my friend, is why I couldn't tell you anything about it. I had a hunch, based on your appearance, that if you had absolutely no idea it was useless, it would no longer be useless. And I was right."
Toby was gobsmacked. He wanted to explode in anger, but couldn't. Everything had worked out just as promised (although, with a bit of a fiery, deathy hiccup in the middle there). Toby suddenly thought back to throwing his hammer at the moon back in Trapforest Path. Did he simply have the kind of face that said, 'this mouse is really good at making things happen because he's completely ignorant that they can't'?
"You are the talisman's owner now," L'roon said to Toby. He walked over on his many shuffling legs and put his hands on the mouse's shoulders. "You are reunited with your companions. A happy ending for all. Now, if your word is honorable..."
"Oh, right." Toby winced with his entire body. He looked up towards the peddler's hungry mouth.
The gold nose ring bobbed up and down as L'roon licked his lips.
Toby squared his shoulders and prepared to take it like a man. He shut one eye and held the other open. "Go on and do it," he whimpered.
"Yum yum in my tum tum," said L'roon. His tongue darted out in a red flash, cupping the succulent little bonbon. The forked tip snipped through the optic nerve like a pair of sewing scissors. He'd had a lot of practice at this.
"EWWWW!!!" screamed everyone else.
L'roon chewed and slurped happily with a great big smile on his toothy face.
Toby blinked. That actually hadn't hurt. He reached up and felt his empty socket. Definitely gross, but the anticipation had been far worse than the event.
He turned around to see his friends all looking different shades of revolted. A wry grin appeared on his face. "Hey, you guys all got your hearts taken out by Lady Xenoiko. What's the big deal?"
George guffawed at that.
"Toby, why do you have gummi worms stuffed in your nose?" Piffle asked.
-***-