He hasn’t gotten fat, at least, but his face has changed: smoother somehow, the once-intriguing hint of ferret in his skull now emergent and distinctly unflattering. His hairline’s only just receding, but the color has dulled and it’s cut too close to bring out his curls.
He’s got a girlfriend who’s probably never even seen him the way she did back then, kicking hard toward the tape at the end of the 800. He never made it out of Flint. She supposes maybe he could yet.
Darya closes the Facebook tab carefully, as if he might hear the button click.
“We are yet no closer to Krakatuk,” the astronomer reminded Drosselmeier, as they crossed the border into the Date Kingdom.
“This may be so,” said Drosselmeier.
“The rats and mice hate us even more.”
“Indeed.”
“We have little more between us than a plug of hangman’s tobacco and an owl-shaped wreck of gears,” the astronomer observed.
“And yet we grin like wooden dolls.”
The astronomer chuckled. “Can you explain this disjunct to me, Herr Drosselmeier?”
“Sometimes it is enough to have fixed a clock and slipped the noose,” smiled Drosselmeier. “And to have the scent of dates beckoning you onward.”
There was no sound at first; some wings in the world are utterly silent. But the crowd looked up and found their jeers stifled by terror. The bell that rang out from above was deep and clear and strong–and just like the hooting of an enormous owl.
Longtail’s minions squealing and fled in desperation, and the spell was broken–the Pistachio People found themselves covered in clawing, biting, filthy RATS! The crowd was a hysterical riot, and the executioner too dumbstruck to pull his lever.
Drosselmeier swooped down in his clockwork glider, his eyes like two great and glaring gears.
Thursday, January 1, 2009