The forest pulses with light, points of it teasing her behind trunks and fronds: uncountable, and always receding. Shea scrambles over logs ripe with moss and stony creek beds. Her jar is slick with the sweat of her palm.
A reach, a scoop, and the fluting thump of her hand on the neck. There! Shea holds the jar up to peer through the lens on the bottom.
But the only thing inside is an impostor, an insect, its thorax glowing with false promise.
No matter. Shea discards it and scrambles off again. She’ll catch one of the real ones soon enough.
“It was a grift to begin with, on you and your ma,” says Buchanan, spitting seeds off the stern.
“I know,” says Proserpina.
“But you turned it right about on me.”
Proserpina waits.
“I don’t think you respect me; I know you don’t trust me. That’s good. Don’t start. But you’re what I need, gel. I think you and I can do things that my son’s too gentle to learn.”
Proserpina keeps her eyes on the wake, leading back to the world she knew.
“Let me teach you,” says Ganymede Buchanan, “to be dangerous,” and holds out a strange red fruit.
It’s hot in the apartment, so Mission works shirtless all afternoon, and forgets about lunch. For reasons that cannot possibly be determined, around five o’clock, he becomes hungry.
BEGIN MISSION: SANDWICH
Mission goes to the kitchen. In the process of spreading mayonnaise on bread, he notices his reflection in the microwave door. He makes a muscle in the reflection.
Yes.
He’s almost finished his preparations when he comes upon the pickle jar, which has been sticking. Mission picks it up.
He flexes his muscle.
The pickle jar opens!
Yes.
Mission puts it away and eats a delicious sandwich.
MISSION STATUS: AWESOME
The laser/dinosaur-based phone tree proves unreliable.
“Look, just fire your dorsal blasters at the styracosaur and the edmontonia,” Hawthorne says. “Then they bounce lasers off the pteranodons! A very simple relay!” The diplodocus gronks in wild panic. Senji has to drag him out from under its feet.
“Walnut-brain!” Hawthorne shouts.
“Have you considered that maybe–” Senji begins.
“Yes, yes, they’re anachronistic. The pachy’s firing at a dimetrodon, for heaven’s sake! That’s what I get for going through a third party.”
“–you should just use phones?”
“Less awesomeness per dollar,” sniffs Hawthorne, as the diplodocus takes out a bus.
Having a second, younger minotaur around is a distinct embarrassment for Minos.
So the old maze-builder upgrades the basement: its walls shift now, its floors sink and elevate, and it’s largely impervious to yarn-based attacks. The guards prod its new inhabitant in and lock the gate.
He gets to the center eventually (put your shoulder to the wall and walk). He and his brother stare at each other in the dimness.
“Hey,” says the junior minotaur.
“Hey,” says the senior.
“I’ve got a plan,” says the junior, and lifts his smock to reveal the labyrinth tattooed on his back.
Membership in the Differently Voiced used to just get you snickered at, until three different members at three different hospitals predicted the Buenos Aires crash and people got spooked. There’s less snickering now. More suspicion.
“Do you think the voting public is ready for an openly schizophrenic candidate?”
“That’s pejorative,” says Duncan, “and shouldn’t you be asking the voting public that?”
“He has laid traps for you,” warns Temperance in his head.
“I know,” says Duncan.
“Let him burn,” hisses the Queen of Swords.
“What?” says the reporter.
The rest of his chorus, as usual, just laughs and laughs and laughs.
Two trunks from school, full of socks and Greek tragedy. Proserpina owns very little. Train to the station, carriage to the dock. Tension at the gate, checking tickets; Madeleine Havisham is, after all, a wanted woman.
But no. Above the ramp, clouds are gathering. Proserpina catches an upside-down headline under someone’s arm: EXCLUSIVE! ABDUCTION, ABUSE AT ST SEBASTIAN SANITARIUM. Iala told her father after all.
The great ship casts off with a bellow. Proserpina stands at the rail, watching her mother dwindle. People begin to murmur and gasp around her as, from the darkening May sky, snow begins to fall.
Valencia’s trying to hold to the present but Annalee’s blood sat just keeps dropping. “Sixteen,” says the EMT, “fifteen five, fourteen,” and the world jerks like film reversing.
“Shit,” says Valencia, six years in the future.
“What?” asks Annalee. They’re in their cubicle at the Center, results scrolling down the screen like every day.
“This doesn’t mean anything.” Valencia’s shaking. “Just because you’re alive here doesn’t mean you survived back then.”
Annalee’s eyes widen. “So it was already happening to you!”
“I promise to admit it,” says Valencia, “if you wake up,” and counts down to the kickback, fourteen, thirteen, twelve.
Grumpy Tim Coe pulls the magnet off the vacuum jar, and within, the hammer and the feather hit the floor together.
“Clearly,” explains a scientist, “the absence of air makes the feather want to fall.”
Another scientist frowns. “What if it’s an aetheric issue? If we should replace the feather with a hollow sphere–”
“Not possible,” clucks the third scientist. “You clearly have no background in animistic suicides.”
“But–”
“No need to be ashamed!” chuckles the fourth scientist. “Some people are smarter than others.”
Grumpy Tim Coe puts the magnet on the jar again, but the feather won’t come back up.