Chapter 25

  Jimothy Whyte

  Elizabeth had explained it all to Jimothy, about how they had done this before. Isaac had done something bad, probably, although Jimothy had doubts about that. Isaac took God very seriously. So if he had done something so important, like wishing away his whole moon, he must have been really sure that God had told him to do it. And if that was the case, how could it have been a bad thing?

  Elizabeth was acting strange when she talked to him in the ALL-Rover. AJ had a very serious conversation with Mike. Jimothy didn’t see the conversation, but he saw them come back from it, and the first thing they did was to look at him, worried. None of them said anything, not yet, but Jimothy figured they must know about the brain tumor. He wondered if he should tell them that he already knew, that Fiora the Bleeding God could see it in his brain “like a bad egg.” She had a plan to help him. And he was nervous about that, sure, because she hadn’t really told him what the plan was, but he was far more nervous about the tumor. Who wouldn’t be nervous about having a festering piece of death growing in their brain?

  He tried to distract himself from these thoughts. In the ALL-Rover, this was easy. There were lots of new people to meet, such as Rebecca Carter, who scared him a little, and Dwayne Hartman, who strangely enough scared him not at all. Dwayne had a big beard and a big laugh, and big, big hands just like Isaac had said. He had this idea of singing, now that Jimothy and Elizabeth had joined them. Elizabeth made it clear that she would be going back to sleep before that happened.

  Alan Sheppard was just like Jimothy had imagined. He didn’t really look at all like Heidi, but he gave the same sense of knowing what was going on and being fully prepared and capable of dealing with it. Which, true or not, was something that definitely made Jimothy feel better.

  There were Elmer and Amelia, of course. Jim had met them already in the Narrative, though these ones were different. It didn’t matter; they were pretty much the same. Elmer laughed and jumped around and overreacted to everything like a colorful bouncy ball trapped in a small space. Amelia, who as far as Jimothy could tell had powers pretty much like his, was the opposite of Elmer. But Jimothy liked Amelia. She was secretly funny.

  Then there was Michael. Jimothy tried to tell him all about the things that had happened in the Narrative, and Michael tried to listen without asking too many questions, though that was hard for him. Michael had taken care of Jimothy’s unconscious body for days. They talked about all kinds of things, including Jimothy’s birthday.

  “Eric figures it’s in about two days,” said Jimothy.

  Michael put on his thinking face. “That can’t be right, Jim. It must be only April…uh. Eighth? Ninth?” He asked around and discovered that almost everyone had a different estimation of the date. Mr. Carter, the authority, said it didn’t matter. The time that mattered was Relative Museum Time, which had nothing to do with Earth Time.

  Jimothy was happy to see that Michael and AJ looked like they’d become friends. They gravitated toward each other within the cramped confines of the ALL-Rover, and Jimothy more often than not saw them together, talking and laughing. Michael smiled a lot at AJ, and Jim thought it was a really cool smile.

  “What do you think?” asked Elizabeth one time while Jimothy watched his brother and AJ. She had a smile in her voice, which meant that she definitely wasn’t asking about the brain tumor.

  Jimothy calmed down and replied. “About what? There’s a lot of things.” This was certainly true. He understood less than half of what Elizabeth and Mr. Carter had told him about wishes and the past and the future and October Industries.

  “Our siblings,” she said. She looked like she was trying and failing to hold back a grin.

  Jimothy looked from her to Michael and AJ. Then he understood. “Oh! Um. I think…” What did he think? Mainly, he just wanted Michael to be happy. And if that meant having AJ as a girlfriend, and if she also wanted that, then… “It makes me happy to think about,” he said. “I’m glad they’re friends.”

  Elizabeth put an arm around his shoulder to give him a quick side-hug. “Me too,” she said.

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  “You make me happy, too,” he said, not wanting to leave her out. “That we’re friends.”

  “Jimothy,” said Leah, who was hunched over a drawing in front of them and who hadn’t appeared to be listening. “Elizabeth is very pretty.” She said it matter-of-factly, as though it were a careful observation she had spent a long time making sure was absolutely correct.

  Jimothy didn’t know why she had said that, but he never really knew why Leah said or did anything. So he agreed with her. “Uh, yeah.”

  “You,” she said, still without looking up, “are good at drawing.” There was a satisfaction in how she said it, as though she had now got them both figured out.

  Several of Jimothy’s latest sketches, done in colored pencil and crayon with Leah, lay on the low table. Leah had not hesitated to pull Jimothy’s pictures over to her side and make editorial additions. She returned Jimothy’s depiction of Eric’s moon with colorful butterflies drawn over the dark buildings. On his sketch of the planetary system of Ardia with its five moons, Leah had scribbled something like a maroon and cerulean plant whose leafy vines spread out over the whole thing. When Jimothy had finished drawing the train with Christmas lights that he and Elizabeth had ridden in the Museum, Leah took it and sketched some colorful new figures into the seats, one much larger than the other two.

  Now, while Jimothy and Elizabeth sat there with her, Leah was working on something else, something of her own, scribbling furiously with a purple crayon.

  Elizabeth said, “Mr. Carter says our destination is the OI Labs. ‘Formerly, er, located in Canada.’” She imitated Mr. Carter’s odd way of speaking.

  Jimothy had heard. It made him uneasy. Going to October Industries? “I don’t—”

  Elizabeth gasped, a sharp intake of breath that metamorphosed into a tiny shriek of alarm. She fell up and away from the table. Jimothy could not tell what had frightened her until he noticed the violet light.

  Leah was staring in shock at the paper in front of her. A purple glow lit her face as the picture she had been drawing burned with a violet flame. Crayons melted. Weird symbols writhed and crawled on the paper as though trying to pry themselves loose. They spread in burning filaments, crawling toward Leah’s hand –

  The paper dissolved into a million glittering sparks. Many of the sparks were purple, and they tried to form into words in the air, but they were all sucked together into a tiny point of bright light before vanishing with a popping sound like an electrical socket being blown.

  Commotion erupted in the ALL-Rover. It had all happened too fast for most of them to even react, but everyone had heard Elizabeth’s cry of fear. Alan was back in a flash from the front cabin, gun in hand. Dwayne looked ready to lay about on any threat with his two canes, carried in one huge hand like oversized chopsticks.

  Amelia sniffed, getting Leah’s attention with a bony hand on the shoulder. “Don’t draw those words anymore, dear,” she said. “They are rather nasty.”

  Both Leah and Elizabeth were all right once it had all calmed down. Amelia had destroyed the Script before it could do more than singe Leah’s sleeves. Elizabeth, eyes wide, had a hand on her stomach as though she was going to be sick. “It was me,” she whispered to Jimothy later with an unsteady voice. “It was looking for me.”

  And this is how everyone in the ALL-Rover learned, in a few sentences from Elizabeth and Mr. Carter, about the Chirographic Script. Basically, burning purple words were alive and evil. Avoid or destroy at all costs. Do not draw or photograph them. Do not ever try to read them. And for god’s sake, don’t get any on you. (That was Mr. Carter’s advice.)

  And they were getting close, Mr. Carter said. Soon, they would be at the OI Labs, formerly in Canada.