CHAPTER SIX

  The Weenie Roast

  III

  Hot, peach-pink sunshine filtered through Ez's eyelids. She lay still, and didn’t open them at first. It had been such a curious dream… Already the details were fading. Only the image of Jack’s beaming face remained, that and a sweet, wistful longing. Ez lay savoring this strange set of emotions, reluctant to confront, or even contemplate, reality. She wished she could fall back to sleep, dream on and on and on, never attending to her responsibilities again. Everything hurt. Her throat and sinuses were raw, and her mouth stickily dry. In fact, her whole body was sticky… sticky… with blood. Her eyes snapped open.

  Bars of sunlight fell between the rafters, which cut stripes across a clean blue sky. It must’ve been midafternoon. “Wilburn?” Ez’s voice came out as a croak. She tried to sit up and nearly fainted from the pain as muscles up and down her torso spasmed. Gritting her teeth, she wrenched herself up on one elbow and surveyed the room. It was a ghastly sight. The twisted corpses of the vexpids looked no prettier by day, nor had the butcher’s stew improved as it congealed; when fresh, the blood had been a vivid green; now it was the dark color of pond scum. But pond scum would have smelled like sweet perfume compared to this reek. There was no sign of Wilburn or Gramma Fark or Thoralf.

  Standing up was an ordeal. Every inch of her felt swollen, and so stiff, as if she’d rusted in her sleep. Her head was pounding. Her left leg wouldn’t bear weight. But it was not yet time to take stock of her injuries. First, she had to find out… A series of small hops took her across the room to the new door the hornets had smashed in the south wall. Picking her way over the loose bricks, she emerged into an autumn day, more beautiful than it had any right to be. She cocked an ear.

  “… a little lower, boy. I like a good char on my weenies.” That was Gramma’s voice! If it lacked it’s usual emphatic energy, Ez failed to notice. Her heart soared. Never had such inane words given such comfort. She knew instantly that her son was alive—and better than alive—for surely, even Gramma Fark would not talk weenies with a dying person. Limping as quickly as she could, Ez turned the corner to find Wilburn and Gramma seated in the shade of the old sycamore, a small campfire crackling between them, while Thoralf grazed a short distance down the hillside. Her relief was overwhelming. Ez had to lean against the cottage for support as her eyes feasted on the glorious tableau.

  Wilburn appeared perfectly healthy. He was glaring at a sausage link which floated in the air over the fire. The tip of his tongue poked from the corner of his mouth the way it often did when he was focused on a math problem. He sat crisscross in the grass with his left hand outstretched before him. The hand showed no mark of the sting, although Wilburn was making an odd gesture with it, as if twisting an invisible doorknob.

  He glanced up as Ez began to hobble over, and gasped. It belatedly occurred to her that she must look a wreck. In her haste to check on Wilburn, she hadn’t paused to consider that it might not be the best thing in the world for a boy of seven to see his mother caked in gore, half beaten to a pulp, her clothing ragged and her hair… she shuddered to imagine what her hair was doing.

  “Not that charred!” Gramma cried.

  Distracted by the sight of his mother, Wilburn had forgotten about the sausage. As soon as he had taken his mind off it, the sausage had reverted to obeying the laws of physics, and had dropped into the flames and disappeared. “Oops!” Wilburn shouted. He made a snatching gesture—the sync. There was a great woof of sparks. Gramma squawked and rolled out of the way as flaming bits of wood flew everywhere. “Sorry!” Wilburn bellowed. Sweeping his arms wide, he brought his hands together in a clap. There was a second explosion of sparks as the scattered embers crashed back together. When the sparks settled, it became clear that Wilburn had put a tad too much oomph behind the spell, for all that remained of the campfire was a dense fistful of coals. The sausage, meanwhile, was nowhere to be seen.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  A long pause followed in which the three of them all looked at one another. Then, Ez started laughing. She didn’t get very far into it before pain forced her to stop. But it was funny. Oh, it was funny. There seemed to be a straight line connecting this moment to yesterday afternoon, when she’d knelt laughing in the mud, having her epiphany about how everything she had ever believed was bunk, and how, at the root of it, she had no idea what was really going on. It was as true now as it had been then.

  “Are you okay?” Wilburn asked.

  “Yes, honey.” Ez smiled, but it turned into a wince. Even her face was sore. “I’m a little banged up,” she admitted, “but I’ll heal. How are you feeling?”

  Wilburn shrugged. “Pretty good.” There was a slight edge in his voice that told Ez this was not quite true. Of course, there were a dozen reasons why the boy might feel dysphoric, not least being the fact that he’d suffered a seizure and been stung by a magic hornet, only to discover, upon awakening, that his home had been demolished. And yet, Ez had a hunch that wasn’t it. “Did Gramma scold you?” she asked.

  Wilburn nodded. “She said I’m a gosh darned dunderhead.”

  “Oh?” It was an effort for Ez to keep the amusement out of her voice. “Why did she say that?”

  Wilburn shook his head. “She doesn’t get it,” he muttered. “She wasn’t there. I tried to tell her, but she wouldn’t listen.”

  Ez shot Gramma a glance, intending to exchange some of their usual silent dialogue. She was so taken aback by the older woman’s wan countenance, however, that she instead asked, “How are you feeling?”

  “Like a stepped-in turd,” Gramma said croakily. Her naturally tan skin was yellowish, and her eyes, behind her fractured spectacles, were bloodshot, and bore heavy purple bags. Well, a quart of strong cider on top of a few glasses of wine, plus not much sleep, and that on a hard floor would take the spring out of anybody’s step, Ez reasoned, and Gramma Fark was no youngster. And then you had to factor in the consequences of magical over-exertion… whatever they were exactly. Ez waited, in case Gramma wanted to defend her dunderhead remark, but she did not. So, after a moment’s consideration, Ez said carefully, “Wilburn, I’d like to hear what you remember from last night. Would you please tell me?”

  The boy’s countenance lit up at once. “I met God!” he said happily. “Did you know She’s a vexpid? And now I’m a vexpid too! But before that I met Toukie. He’s alive! At least, he’s some sort of alive… he talked too much. But then we flew around and ate a bunch of ice cream, because I turned all the snow into ice cream, and it was really good! Then we were gonna go tobogganing, but then Her Majesty turned up, and Toukie ran away. But I was stuck. But before that, Toukie showed me this gold stuff called igzalchurer, and he kept telling me I created him because I rubbed his wing so much. Then when I met Her Majesty, She sort of uncreated me and then un-uncreated me, and that was when I saw that golden stuff again, and I realized I was gonna be igzalchurered, and I got really happy!

  “Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you, I saw myself here too, in Real Life. I heard you calling, but I couldn’t do anything, because the Queen wouldn’t let me. She knew I would’ve tried to run away, because I was really scared, but that was because I didn’t understand yet, but then I did. And then I swore to serve Her and She let me go, and gave me back my power so I could do the ritual touch. And then I did it. And then… I got igzalchurered, I guess…” Wilburn’s brow furrowed in puzzlement. “I kind of… learned a bunch of stuff really fast… except… I don’t know any of it yet… It’s like there’s a big book in my head,” Wilburn tapped the center of his forehead, “but I can’t read it. Because it’s not a book. It’s not… words.” He shrugged. “Anyway, I can’t wait to go Astro projecting again. But Gramma says next time to just sit there at the crossroads and not do anything fun!” Wilburn gave Ez a beseeching look, as if requesting her permission to… to...

  “Hang out with Toukie in Open Dreamspace!” Wilburn said eagerly, as if reading her mind. This clarified not much, however. Ez still had no idea what to think. She studied Wilburn, who slowly gave her a mysterious smile. “You don’t understand either,” he said gently. “But you will. Someday.” This pronouncement unnerved Ez more than anything else he’d said. It was his certainty. That knowing twinkle in his eyes… Jack’s eyes, so brown as to look black.