I

“So then I turn around and the snake’s, like, right there, going RAAAWWRRR! Well, just his head, though, because before that Yellow Guy chopped it off with the girl’s knife. Oh yeah, I guess I told you that already. Well, but then his head came back to life! Just like that rattlesnake, remember Mom? Except, that didn’t really happen; I just thought it would, but this one really did! Hey, I’m thirsty! Let’s go down to the creek!” Wilburn stopped talking and looked at Ez expectantly. 

Ez realized her mouth was hanging open. She was… so… utterly… lost. The only solid conclusion she'd been able to draw from Wilburn’s narrative thus far was that she had radically overemphasized the role of math in his education. She ought to have focused more on verbal fluency. Trying to follow her son’s meandering account felt like a rebuke from On High, a custom-tailored punishment for her parental failures. 

“The creek…” Ez repeated, struggling for mental traction. “Um, what’s wrong with the rain barrel?” 

“Got smashed,” Wilburn said.

Ez nodded. Sure. That made sense. Rain barrel smashed. No water in the rain barrel. Wilburn thirsty. Go down to the creek. It was the most rational thing anyone had said all day. Come to think of it, Ez was awfully thirsty too. Ever since waking up in the wreckage of the cottage, she’d been tuning out her physical discomfort for the sake of tuning in to the ongoing conference of insanity. Had she drunk a solitary drop of anything today? All of a sudden, the creek seemed like an excellent idea.

“Help me up, please,” Ez said, holding out her hand. Wilburn took it. He wasn’t big enough to offer her much leverage, but Ez was in the habit of training him to be in the habit of being a gentleman, and helping a lady up was one of those gentlemanly—Ez found herself sitting on air, shaking hands with her very proud son. She looked down, and gingerly extended her boots to touch the grass, wincing as her battered skeleton absorbed her weight. “I keep forgetting you’re a wizard,” she said, ruefully. 

“That’s okay,” Wilburn said, “I’ll keep reminding you.”

I just bet you will… Ez thought. “Coming?” she asked, glancing at Gramma Fark. 

Gramma sat chewing on her pipe, its ember long since having died. She looked no less confused than Ez, but even more annoyed about it. “Oh, I reckon,” Gramma grumbled. She shooed away Wilburn’s offered hand and climbed to her feet without even the assistance of her cane. It wasn’t fair. Gramma was sixty-six and moving like a teenager, whereas Ez was twenty-seven and moving like a rheumatic centenarian. Those hongos. If only the tiny purple mushrooms worked on ordinary people… Ez assumed they didn’t, since Gramma hadn’t offered her any… She hoped she was right in crediting the older woman with that much human decency at least.

Thoralf caught up with the trio as they ambled down the steep hillside toward the creek. More hobbled in Ez’s case. She still hadn’t found time to assess her injuries from last night’s battle with the vexpids. None of her important bones were broken, as best she could tell… but damn was she sore. Everything hurt. It was hard to judge how much of the pain was due to injury, as opposed to good old-fashioned muscle strain. The frenzy of battle had given Ez a workout such as she hadn’t had in years… or maybe ever. 

Mostly, she figured, time and rest would be all the doctoring she needed. Her left knee, though… that was concerning. It had swollen hugely, to the point that her pant leg had grown tight, and every step she took felt like a nail was being driven through her kneecap. Ez was doubly grateful that the Astral bangle prevented Wilburn from overhearing her thoughts, as this allowed her to indulge in a silent rhapsody of the very most vicious profanity imaginable—which helped. A bigger help came in the form of Gramma hassling Wilburn to resume his story while they walked, forcing Ez to focus on the challenge of deciphering his syntax—a bit of a silver lining, she supposed. 

II

Wilburn stared down the tunnel of the serpent’s gaping throat—and out the ragged hole in the back. He could see stripe-clad chanters all the way across the temple through it. The snarling reptilian head rushed at him, seeming to reach for him like a hand with fangs as tall as him for fingers. It was a soil-your-britches sight if ever there was one, yet Wilburn felt perfectly relaxed. He perceived, with a mysterious clarity induced by the honey-rain, that the serpent posed no threat to him now, nor to the chanters, nor to the Girl in Gold. It was all part of the ritual. The ritual was in charge. So Wilburn’s dreamy smile didn’t waver as the head bore down on him—then flew right on past, missing him by inches.  

Just before it should’ve crashed down amidst the rubble of the altar, the head was captured by some unseen force and borne aloft. It floated up the column of light, its massive jaws stretching wide to make a funnel. The fizz of tiny droplets hitting Wilburn’s skin abruptly ceased. Hey! The darn snake was drinking all the honey-rain! In seconds, pink-tinged fluid came gushing out the severed hole in the bottom. Yuck! 

Wilburn and the Girl in Gold retreated from the splash-radius, each toward their own side of the temple. The temple was quaking worse than ever now, rumbling constantly, as if it had been built in the crater of a volcano that was getting ready to erupt. Very much as if that, in fact. But there was more. The endless chant resonated in the stone, in the air itself. It wasn’t natural. Wilburn could see the vibrations jiggling the blood-and-honey lake, rippling the surface in a hexagonal bullseye pattern.

Ink-hi-yah-ku-twa-vi…

Ink-hi-yah-ku-twa-vi… 

Ink-hi-yah-ku-twa-vi… 

The kneeling chalice-bearers rose, their striped garments dripping blood and honey, their cups brimming over with the fifty-fifty potion. The swirling liquid cast a pink glow up into their hoods, illuminating the faces of—just people—unremarkable grown-ups… but their expressions… Even through the intoxication of the honey-rain, Wilburn was disturbed. The people’s expressions were no expression. Blankness. Like the blankness he’d noticed earlier on Yellow Guy; except, at a distance, he’d mistaken it for indifference, a zoned-out kind of blankness, whereas, up close, Wilburn saw it was the very opposite: a deadly, deliberate hyperfocus. Not absent-mindedness. Single-mindedness. Unnatural, inhuman single-mindedness. 

Then darkness once more veiled the bearers’ faces the potion in their chalices turned black—as black as the knife that had slain the serpent, so black it looked like someone had taken scissors and snipped out those parts of the picture. Were they seriously gonna drink that stuff? 

Yep. 

As one, the six chalice-bearers lifted the golden cups to the shadows of their hoods, and tipped them. Eww! Wilburn was grossed out and impressed. No way would he drink snake blood, even mixed with magic honey. Granted, those sickos had only taken a little sip. But still… snake blood. 

The chalice-bearers glided away toward the pillars of the temple to deliver the black potion to the crowd. The libations were conducted with the same eerie choreography: six chanters on opposite sides of the temple drinking in unison, then passing the cups along. It took awhile, and in the while it took, the scattered macaroni-noodles of great serpent came back to life as the honey spread to each in turn. There was none of the previous chaotic flopping: once reanimated, the noodles slithered purposefully to the altar, where the same unseen force hoisted them aloft and guided them into position beneath the glutting head. The fragmented serpent hung vertically, a good hundred feet long, honey spilling between its disconnected segments. 

Wilburn watched the girl watching the reptile’s reassembly. Her bold eyebrows were quirked in a puzzled frown. Wilburn wanted to go ask her what her name was… but… The more he sobered, the more his fear was creeping back. What if the girl’s icy rage returned as well? What if she became the Girl in Black again, whose eyes had promised death? Drops of honey still sparkled throughout the wild thicket of her curls, but the rapture had departed from her face, and her hand had drifted to the hilt of the knife sheathed at her belt. What if she decided to chop Wilburn into pieces the way Red Guy had chopped—

Wilburn did a double take—her hand. The girl had a tattoo! Wilburn hadn’t noticed it earlier in the moonlight, but now, under the intensifying brightness of the Category-Q, the contrast between the black ink and the girl’s brown skin was stark. Some kind of complicated symbol—but it didn’t matter what it was—the fact that the girl had any tattoo at all was… epic. Wilburn was seriously jealous. He couldn’t believe the girl’s mom had let her get it. He guessed her mom must be really cool.

“Hey Mom, you don’t think maybe I could get a tattoo… do you?” Wilburn asked, hopefully.

“Sure you can,” Ez told him, “when you turn thirty.” 

III

The creek flowed through the narrow valley at the base of the hill on which the cottage sat. Ez cupped her hands and slurped a scoop of the clear water. It was like liquid ice. Or—well, it was liquid ice. Once she started drinking, she found it difficult to stop, and the same proved true for washing. 

Ez tugged her boots off with considerable difficulty and waded out into the frigid stream. She wasn’t about to disrobe in front of Gramma Fark and Wilburn, but after she’d scrubbed the exposed parts of her body, the rest of her felt even filthier by contrast. To hell with it. Ez pinched her nose and plunged beneath the current, fully clothed. 

Her nerves screamed as her blood vessels contracted. It was agony. Yet somehow, this agony came as a relief. It was a cold, clarifying pain in place of the hot, befuddled, swollen pain she’d been experiencing all day. A better pain. Ez stayed under as long as her lungs could bear, listening to the dull thunder of the water flowing all around her. 

“You’re crazy,” Wilburn said, when her head finally broke the surface. He was squatting on a boulder in the middle of the stream, perfectly dry. Ez splashed him. “Hey!” Wilburn laughed. He jumped into the air and swooped away to go pester Thoralf. Gramma Fark leaned on a cottonwood, painstakingly refilling her pipe. It was an idyllic moment. A more vivid counterpoint to the grisly ritual could hardly be imagined—which made Wilburn’s tale that much harder to believe. 

It wasn’t his honesty that Ez doubted; the question was: how real was his experience? If it was really real—if strangers had actually abducted her son, taken him far away from home, and exposed him to the dangers of a live volcano, a giant serpent, and a mob of lunatic occultists—then, naturally, Ez would feel eleven-out-of-ten furious. On the other hand, if it had only been a dream… well then, no point getting herself bent out of shape. The problem was, the truth seemed to lie somewhere in the middle: it had been a dream, but one whose consequences were entirely too real. So, should Ez feel only five-out-ten furious? Not knowing left her in a state of emotional limbo.

Ez floated in the icy water until her teeth were chattering and her toes were going numb. As she sloshed ashore, her gaze slid up the hill to the ruins of the cottage, which stood in semi-silhouette against the blue-orange sky. With a pang, she realized that she had no idea where she and Wilburn were going to sleep tonight. The thought of all those twisted vexpid corpses lying in their own congealing fluids in the darkness made her ill. For a moment, Ez wished she had let the cottage burn down, memories and all. But no—no, all she really wanted was to get back to the campfire. 

“T-t-tell us the rest of the d-darn story, W-W-Wilburn,” Ez said, as she shivered into her boots. “Did th-th-that volcano ever eru-ru-rupt? ” She was hoping to hear about molten lava, about smoldering, boiling magma…

“Well, yeah,” Wilburn said, “but don’t you want to hear what happened first first?”

“Darn tootin’ we do,” Gramma said sharply; only she could pack so much severity into a homespun phrase like darn tootin’. “We want every detail you can remember, Wilburn. That ritual sounds like necromancy. That’s the evilest kind of magic there is. The punishment for anyone caught practicing it in Argylon is death. I can’t believe Iddo stood by and let you—actually, of course I can believe that. He was willing to let those vexpids kill us, wasn’t he?”

“I think—” Wilburn began.

But Gramma stopped him with an upheld hand. “Pick up right where you left off,” she said. And so, as the four of them began the steep trek up the hill toward the waiting embers of the campfire, Wilburn did.

IV

Ink-hi-yah-ku-twa-vi…

Ink-hi-yah-ku-twa-vi… 

Ink-hi-yah-ku-twa-vi… 

Golden spirals blossomed in the black depths of the serpent’s eyes. The seams between its severed segments sealed. Honey no longer leaked out of it, yet it continued to guzzle the glowing rain, long past the point when it seemed it should have overflowed. 

The temple had become a furnace. Wilburn’s clothes clung to his skin. Steam coiled off the blood-and-honey lake as it absorbed the heat rising up through the searing stone. Wilburn was amazed that his bare feet could, well, bear it— until he glanced down and discovered them hovering a good three feet above the floor. Well… huh. He’d been under the impression that he couldn’t do magic within the invisible circle. Was someone else making him fly? A quick test revealed that no, Wilburn was doing it himself.

He swung around in the air to face where Iddo, Alfajean, and Buttrom also floated, watching him from beyond the ring of chanters. Wilburn pointed to his feet, then scratched his head, then shrugged. Iddo gave him two nods. Wilburn scratched his head again. Iddo turned and said something to Alfajean—probably something like, Hold up two fingers, will you?—because that was what the angel did. Iddo nodded twice again. Was he saying… two? Two what? Two different kinds of magic, kineturgy and psychovatry? Wilburn didn’t see why one should work if the other didn’t. Or… maybe he did. They’re all psychovates, he remembered Iddo saying. The entire group is manifesting a collective shield. That’s something only a handful of elite units in the Argylonian military are capable of, but never in such large numbers. That had been before the ritual had really gotten going, though. Now the crowd of psychovates surrounded the pavilion, and Wilburn was inside and Iddo wasn’t. Could it be that simple? 

No, it couldn’t. The girl complicated things. She was also inside the pavilion, yet Wilburn sensed no more from her than Iddo. She could shield him out, but he couldn’t shield her out, and he had a hunch the girl would make mental contact if the opportunity arose—whether or not she would use that opportunity to attack him was a separate question. The opportunity had not arisen, however, because psychovatry wasn’t working. It was as if whatever the chanters were doing was taking up all the Thoughtspace in the temple, leaving barely enough room for Wilburn to conduct his private thoughts. 

Spells within spells… The phrase popped into Wilburn head as if Iddo had thought it to him, except it was his own voice—call it wizard’s intuition. The atmosphere in the temple was changing, the pressure rising as it had right before the iron cage had opened. Right before the BANG. Spells within spells… Yes, that was how the ritual worked. Spells within spells… just like balloons within balloons: the popping of the first only the inflating of the next one. Cyclic repetition… Hadn’t Iddo said this was the structure of the enchantment? Dozens of rituals, performed thousands of times over… Wilburn sensed that it was so, a cycle of creation and destruction… a building cycle, because the energy was never lost; it was merely transferred into larger and larger containers. Balloons within balloons… And now the bigger balloon was stretching tight and tighter, and the bigger BANG was coming, and when it came… well, it was gonna be one heck of an explosion. 

CLATTER CLANG CRASH

The sound of the six chalices tumbling down the outer steps of the temple jarred Wilburn from his reverie. Every chanter in the congregation had now tasted the black potion, and the last to drink had then tossed the golden cups over their shoulders like apple cores. Before the clamor could die away, it was drowned out by a thunderous CRACK. Hot air buffeted Wilburn as the temple heaved and jagged fissures rent the floor, draining the lake of blood and honey in an instant. Overhead, the mandala of hexagons began to turn. It spun faster and faster, the pattern blurring, and a new pattern of impossible colors emerging from the blur: a spiral fractal like the center of a sunflower, but deep, a tunnel stretching up and up and up, and where it ended, if it ended, Wilburn couldn’t see, because the center of the spiral was awash with the blinding radiance of the Category-Q. 

The Q was like a miniature sun now, and the great serpent was swimming up toward it. Wilburn squinted, raising a hand to shade his eyes. For a moment, he was sure he saw two serpents, one black, one gleaming gold, their lithe bodies twining back and forth in an ascending double helix. Then he had to look away. It was too bright.

Wilburn blinked, trying to dispel the helical afterimages branded on his vision. He wasn’t looking when the two serpents disappeared into the light, nor when the first larva fell out of it—lucky for him—because the pale, squirming thing was the quintessence of repellence. It glistened slimily, its semi-translucent skin revealing the delicate, pulsing organs underneath. Nor did Wilburn see the larva metamorphose as it plummeted, maturing to a pupa, then to full adulthood in a heartbeat and a half. Wings sprouted from its thorax even as its thorax became a thorax, and they found their rhythm just in time to save it from a splattery demise. So the hornet was born flying. Wilburn saw none of it, but he heard—a harsh ZZZZZ from overhead, striking an otherwordly harmonic with the ever-droning chant.

V

Ink-hi-yah-ku-twa-vi…

Ink-hi-yah-ku-twa-vi… 

Ink-hi-yah-ku-twa-vi…

…ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ…

The hornet loomed over the wreckage of the altar, hovering on thrumming wings. It had a terrible beauty, like a well-wrought weapon. Every inch of it looked lethal. Not counting its wings, the insect was as big as Iddo, but slenderer and more elongated, poison yellow with black stripes.

Red Guy strode forth alone to meet it. He didn’t sprint this time, but glided, graceful as a dancer, stepping deftly across the fissures in the floor. As he approached the broken altar, he reached up, pointing with his index finger to the needle-tip of the hornet’s stinger, where a drop of violet venom welled. He pointed closer. He poked it. 

Wilburn gasped. But… nothing happened. Red Guy bowed to the hornet, then began to walk away. Wilburn’s shoulders sagged with relief. He’d been convinced that Red Guy was about to become Dead Guy. What kind of idiot intentionally got stung by a giant hornet? Wilburn knew he would never do such a foolish thing. But maybe Red Guy was invincible. Maybe he couldn’t be killed. No sooner had this theory crossed Wilburn’s mind than it was proven incorrect. A few steps from the altar, Red Guy staggered. His spine arched sickeningly. A shudder wracked him head to foot. Then he collapsed, jerking and spasming. 

No cry of pain escaped the fallen Red Guy; likely, he kept chanting to the end. Wilburn didn’t see, because his red hood hid his face—a small mercy. And yet, Wilburn had an awful feeling that he knew exactly what the dying man’s expression must have been: blank. 

Another chanter stepped into the circle, as another larva was born from the tunnel of light. Wilburn noticed neither, for his stricken gaze was riveted to the writhing figure on the floor. It didn’t occur to him that he should try to help Red Guy. Truth be told, the man was past the point of saving, but Wilburn had no way of knowing that. Zero points for heroism, Wilburn. 

Points instead to the Girl in Black, or Gold—whichever; there was really only one enigma of a girl, and it was she who approached the dying man, her tattooed hand clenching the hilt of her knife, though she didn’t draw it. When she peered down into Red Guy’s hood, the wariness went out of her expression. She made a sudden gesture, and said, in a calm, precise voice, “Zguabalibidadibalibalum.” A phosphorescent grid like a glowing fishing net scanned Red Guy up and down. After a few seconds, the spell faded away. The girl shook her head. Then she looked up sharply, catching Wilburn watching her. 

He was too disturbed to feel embarrassed. He held her gaze, searching for some sign of the kindred spirit he had sensed in the honey-rain. But the girl’s eyes were cold. They seemed to say, Harden your heart, little boy, the worst is yet to come. Wilburn’s Adam’s apple clunked as he swallowed dryly. He had feeling she was right.

Ink-hi-yah-ku-twa-vi…

Ink-hi-yah-ku-twa-vi… 

Ink-hi-yah-ku-twa-vi… 

…ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ…

VI

Long before Red Guy’s body stilled, the second larva metamorphosed into a second hornet, and the second chanter reached up to receive its sting. And even as that chanter stumbled and collapsed, a third came striding into the circle, and a third larva dropped down from the tunnel of light. And so it went. One by one, the crowd stepped forward to the altar to be stung. One by one, they bowed, they turned, they walked away—they died. Some made it twenty paces, others, only two; but all were stricken and fell, writhing, and all eventually went still. None screamed. None hesitated. Soon, the dead lay scattered in their hundreds. And still more waited to be stung. And all the while, the chant persisted, growing quieter and quieter as fewer and fewer voices remained to carry it. 

Ink-hi-yah-ku-twa-vi…

Ink-hi-yah-ku-twa-vi… 

Ink-hi-yah-ku-twa-vi… 

…ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ…

As the chant diminished, the buzzing of the swarm intensified. There was a ghastly symmetry to the scene: for each dead chanter on the floor, a hornet hovered overhead. As above, so below. Black and yellow stripes, black and yellow stripes. The light of the Category-Q filtered down in dappled rainbows through the lenses of the insects’ wings, lending an incongruous beauty to the scene. Time played one of its classic tricks, making every second drag, while the whole grim spectacle seemed to unfold in a single motion.

The last chanter—a woman, by the pitch by her voice—went to the altar, as the last larva was born from the tunnel of light. The larva pupated in free fall, shedding and reabsorbing itself, head, thorax, and abdomen emerging, compound eyes inflating like black soap bubbles. Wings sprouted from its solidifying exoskeleton and caught the air, adding their buzz to the pervasive din. The woman reached up. The hornet’s wicked javelin extended, a drop of venom glinting at the tip. 

Sting. 

Bow. 

The woman turned and wove her way back through the scattered corpses of her colleagues, carrying the chant alone. She moved as if really meant to go somewhere—like she expected to survive. Well, she didn’t. She made it farther than the average chanter had, nearly to the edge of the pavilion; then she pitched forward, as if an invisible buffalo had gored her from behind. 

Just die, Wilburn thought numbly. But no, of course the stupid woman must hang on, rolling on the floor, flailing and kicking, choking out those six stupid syllables over and over:

Ink-hi-yah-ku-twa-vi…

Ink-hi-yah-ku-twa-vi… 

Ink-hi-yah…

The chant perished with her final breath. Her heels drummed the floor… then stopped. Only Wilburn and the Girl in Black remained alive within the temple; they, and the hornet swarm, now many hundreds strong. The insects hovered in ascending ranks, like spectators in an amphitheater, motionless apart from their thrumming wings. No natural bugs ever behaved in such a fashion. It was the same spooky synchrony the chanters had exhibited, the same… single-mindedness… 

Wilburn was struck by an impression so forceful that he didn’t doubt it for a millisecond. Single-mindedness—a single mind—like, literally. Just as each compound eye consisted of a multitude of eyes, so each hornet functioned as a cell in a greater organism, a collective entity, not physical, but metaphysical: mental, a consciousness… a presence… a vast, alien intelligence… Her. 

Not the Girl in Black, certainly; the presence was distinctly feminine, and just as distinctly inhuman. This was a transcendent Her, a cosmic She—incredible, and terrible. And She wanted Wilburn, though he had no idea why. Wilburn could feel Her great eye upon him, an eye of many eyes… Eyes within eyes… His intuition raced ahead, leaving his rational faculties wheezing in the dust. Eyes within eyes… Minds within minds… Rituals within rituals… Balloons within balloons… Spells within spells… Hexagons within hexagons… Dreams within dreams… Cyclic repetition… 

VII

…ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ…

The buzz was an oppressive force in Wilburn’s eardrums, like when he’d swum down to touch the bottom of Lake Hambserg that summer. The sound resonated through his body, in his chest, in his stomach, in his sinuses—and in his mind, the same vibrations transposed in higher dimensions. The presence and the vibrations were one, just as the presence and the hornets were one—inseparable aspects of a singularity, the singularity of Her.

Wilburn glanced sidelong at the Girl in Black, wondering if she sensed the presence too. He thought she did. Her jaw was set, her posture ready and alert. She turned slowly on the toes of her boots, knees bent to absorb the shock waves rumbling up from the caldera. Wilburn wondered why she didn’t simply fly. She was a better wizard than him, clearly; yet she chose to stand on the unsteady stone rather than float, as he was doing. 

The seismic tremors were rapidly widening the fissures in the temple floor. Bodies were beginning to fall down into cracks. It was a sickening sight. Wilburn’s eyes drifted in search of a non-sickening sight—but there kind of wasn’t one, apart from the Girl in Black—and he couldn’t keep staring at her, or she would think he was a loser—he didn’t want her to think that. Wilburn’s gaze settled on the heap of blood-soaked fabric that was Red Guy. The way the temple’s quaking jostled the man’s body created an uncanny semblance of life. A most uncanny semblance of life…

What happened next shouldn’t have come as such a shock; after all, the serpent had already proven it was possible. Nevertheless, Wilburn was gobsmacked. What happened was that Red Guy got to his feet and casually dusted himself off, stretching as if he’d just awoken from a catnap. Then the freshly resurrected man threw back his hood, baring his bald head. He wasn’t chanting anymore; nor was his expression blank. Worse, he was smiling, a hungry, clever smile. Her smile. Red Guy was Her. Red Guy was the presence. The exterior remained that of the man who had slain the serpent, but inside there was no man—there was only Her, dressed up in the man’s meat suit, pulling the strings of his flesh marionette. 

“Who do you serve?” It was the Girl in Black who demanded this of Red Guy. She was closer than Wilburn to the man, and she didn’t back away. She had drawn her knife and looked ready to stab him with its blacker-than-black blade at a moment’s notice. Red Guy simply smiled that chilling, predatory smile at her. The girl didn’t smile back. But nor did her face reveal fear; it heartened Wilburn to see that—though, it would have heartened him a whole lot more to have his own magic knife, especially when Red Guy turned that awful smile on him. Wilburn instinctively recoiled. The presence gazed out from the man’s unblinking eyes, wanting Wilburn, claiming him. 

“Speak,” the Girl in Black said, with cold authority.

And Red Guy spoke. Or rather, the presence spoke through him, in a serene voice that was all the more unnerving for its unexpected sanity. What Red Guy said was… was um…

“Rats, how did that go? It was kind of like, one plus one equals two… but… different. Iddo said it came from an epic poem, but it didn’t seem that epic to me. Anyways, then Red Guy—”

VIII

“Oh no you don’t.” Gramma clamped a hand on Wilburn’s shoulder, halting him in his tracks. The four of them were nearly to the top of the hill, but still downslope of where the valley’s shadow met the ruddy light of the setting sun. “Think, boy. This could be important. Forget what Iddo told you for a minute. What were Red Guy’s words exactly? Was it arithmetic? A list of numbers?”

“Erm…” Wilburn rubbed his chin.

Ez bobbed on the balls of her feet, hugging herself and shivering. She didn’t know what to think—except that she was cold. She couldn’t believe her son had witnessed deaths. Suicides even… And hundreds of them? No, Ez wasn’t ready to believe that. There had to be some other explanation. It just… couldn’t have been real. Wilburn showed none of the symptoms of trauma that she would have expected. If it had been real, if her son had really witnessed… all that, then one of two things must be true: either Wilburn was so traumatized he was repressing his emotions, or… he genuinely wasn’t traumatized. Of course Ez didn’t want him to be traumatized—but what kind of little boy wouldn’t be? It was a deeply uncomfortable question. Thus, Ez didn’t know what to think—except that she was cold.

“I dunno, Gramma,” Wilburn said. “I guess if it’s important, I could check…” He stuck his tongue out and made a groping gesture in the air above his head. The first time Ez had seen him do this, she’d been baffled. Now that she understood the reason, however, her imagination was able to sketch in the technicolor rope he must be handling in a higher dimension. A rope of memories… well, why the heck not? It was, on the whole, one of the saner propositions she’d encountered in the past twenty-four hours. 

Ez shuffled closer to Thoralf, hoping to absorb some of his warmth. She had long since come to rue her clothed bath in the creek, for as the sun went down, the wind was picking up and slicing through her without mercy. Now Ez had hypothermia to deal with on top of all her injuries. Really intelligent maneuver, she thought vindictively to herself. Who could have predicted that evaporation causes cooling? She expected to reach the campfire before her condition grew dangerous, but in the meantime she felt absolutely wretched. 

“Found it!” Wilburn tried to snap his fingers, but he hadn’t quite mastered the technique yet. Ez took a few hopeful steps uphill, then stopped. The others weren’t moving. Being dry, they were in no rush to get back to the campfire; and even Thoralf appeared intent on Wilburn’s tale, too intent to notice Ez’s misery. A different woman might have interjected at this point, but Ez opted for the stoic path. She was frankly too cold to give a damn what Red Guy had or hadn’t said, but a small part of her—likely the last warm part of her—knew she ought to care, and the knowledge was sufficient to keep her shivering in place, even as the rising wind wafted the smell of woodsmoke to her nostrils. 

 “K,” Wilburn said, “so the girl, she was like, Speak, right? And I was like, No way, she really said that to a grown up? And then Red Guy—actually it was Her Majesty talking through Red Guy—but anyway, what his exact words were was…”

IX

In the beginning, there is one.

From the one, two and three come.

From two and three come many more.

From the many, one is born.

Having spoken thusly, Red Guy bowed, neither to Wilburn nor the Girl in Black, but seemingly to the universe at large. Next instant, he was gone, leaving the children squinting after him as he hurtled upward through the ranks of assembled hornets and vanished into the brightness of the Category-Q. The swarm followed close behind him in one immense formation. The temple darkened as the hornets poured back into the light from whence they had recently been born. There was a moment’s blurry transition during which Wilburn sensed the presence shrinking away into the distance, fading like an echo. Then everything went black. 

X

Wilburn found himself floating in total darkness, surrounded by splashing afterimages. He might have been a thousand miles in the air, or deep beneath the surface of the earth. His eardrums tingled. There was no buzz. The hornets were gone. Better yet, the the presence had gone with them. Unfortunately, the light of the Category-Q had also gone, but that was a small price to pay for the riddance of Her. Wilburn felt buoyant without Her scrutiny upon him, without the weight of Her insatiable desire. 

In the absence of buzzing and chanting, the darkness shivered with heavy bass frequencies, deep-belly grumblings from a monster made of stone and fire. There were other sounds: snaps and cracks as if someone was making popcorn, except that each percussive note was followed by a whistling hiss. Like a teakettle coming to a boil, Wilburn thought. 

Alas that tea and popcorn are not the order of the hour, my boy, but it would seem the acoustic ambiance is the result of ancient stones fracturing under the accumulative pressure of magmatic gasses.

Relief washed over Wilburn at the sound of Iddo’s thought-voice. He hadn’t realized how stressed-out he’d become, how anxious. Tears sprang unbidden to his eyes as tension melted from his body. It wasn’t Iddo’s words that moved him so—no, the words were only music, a decorative package around a deeper, emotional form of communication. Iddo’s true message was energy. It was a feeling of strength that was good in an uncomplicated way, and exactly what Wilburn needed. The effect was not to diminish the recent horrors of the ritual, but to recast them in the grander context of adventure. Yes, it had been scary; it had been terrible. Hundreds of ritual suicides-by-hornet was not an easy thing for a boy of seven to witness; yet witness it Wilburn had, and here he was, rattled, but unbroken. You’ve got this. 

I know. And it was true. In that moment, Wilburn saw the Path illuminated. Not a metaphor: an actual path stretching ahead of him through time and space, into the wildest reaches of the universe, and out the other end. His path. His alone. A path that no one else could walk—not even Iddo. He was seeing his own future. It was, admittedly, a pretty blurry picture, but Wilburn recognized its truth. His life was going to be bonkers. It was going to get much crazier than this, and a whole hell of a lot scarier. It was going to suck hard, deep, major donkey-balls. And it was going to be glorious—not in spite of the suckage, but in virtue of it. Glory through suckage! It made perfect sense to Wilburn in his moment of epiphany; later, however, he was unable explain why, even to himself. 

You mean, he thought to Iddo, smiling in the darkness, these noises are, like—rock farts? 

Precisely, my boy. 

And Wilburn understood that Iddo understood that they both understood that they weren’t really talking about rock farts. 

XI

Wilburn’s eyes were open in the darkness. Before him lay the Path: a straight and narrow line of golden light. It seemed to him to be the same light of which the Category-Q had been made, the very stuff of the honey-rain. As he studied it, the golden Path transformed into a golden person flying toward him from the darkness on aquamarine butterfly wings. It was Lieutenant Angel Alfajean, flanked by Iddo and the prophet Buttrom.  For some reason, the the angel’s golden light did not illuminate the temple, though it did illuminate the other two. Buttrom, still clutching his bowl, wore the expression of a man who has been kicked repeatedly in the you-know-whats.

Nay, Wilburn, Iddo thought, merely the expression of a man failing to harness the absurdity. A cautionary example for us all. 

“Well done, Wilburn,” Alfajean chorused. “On behalf of the PROVED, I’d like to thank you for your cooperation. You have performed a valuable service for the Department. If ever you should find yourself in Higher Astral Sector 7-F Bureauspace, sub-realm Languor, do not hesitate to visit me at my office in the Rictus Complex. Tell the desk troll you’re a friend.” 

“Thanks,” Wilburn said. “I didn’t really do anything, though…”

Alfajean smiled several golden smiles. “You did just super. Now it’s time to take you home. Buttrom and I have a few more stops to make before our work is finished, so—” 

Buttrom wimpered pitifully.

“—so we’ll drop you off at the Dream Road on our way,” Alfajean continued, ignoring the prophet. “Master Bungflower, it has been… um, an experience working with you, to be sure.”

“The experience was all mine,” Iddo said, fervently. “It’s not every day one gets to witness the creation of a god, is it? The implications… No, I mustn’t speak. My genius seethes with inspiration. I must write—boldly, and at ruthless length.”

“That’s an excellent idea, Master Bungflower. Buttrom, you should consider taking a few notes yourself while the details are still fresh. Just a suggestion. You’ll want to include plenty of accurate information in your prophecy to ensure that it can’t be misinterpreted.”

“I…” Buttrom whispered. He licked his lips. “I just make pots.”

“We’ve been over this,” Alfajean said, patiently. “You’re a potter and a prophet now. Do you need a pen?”

“I can’t write…” Buttrom’s eyes bugged. 

“What was that, Buttrom?”

“I can’t write,” the man repeated. “I’m illiterate.” 

“Whoops!” Iddo said, with unconcealed glee. “Missed that little factoid in the pre-op research did we? Well, that’s bureaucratic efficiency for you.”

“I’m sure something can be arranged,” Alfajean snapped. “Someone else can write down Buttrom’s prophecy; all he needs to do is speak it. How’s your memory, Buttrom? Razor keen?” 

“I just make…” 

“Oh, never mind,” Alfajean said, testily. “Have the others departed, Master Bungflower?”

“Still here,” Iddo said.

“Close?”

“Not particularly. I believe they’re over yonder at the edge of the pavilion.” Iddo gestured with his horns, although there was nothing to be seen but darkness. 

“You believe,” Alfajean said.

“Yes, to clarify: the demon is there and I believe the young lady is there too… Color me impressed, Lieutenant Angel; she is making herself almost undetectable in Thoughtspace and Moodspace. Yes, color me a ripe shade of impressed. She’ll be an automatic purple-hat in psychovatry, assuming I can recruit her to Frogswallow’s.”

“From what I know of her allegiances, Master Bungflower, you would do better to assume the opposite.” Alfajean appeared to regret these words as soon as they were out. 

“Go on,” Iddo said. “A Guild prodigy, is she?”

“How do you—” Too late, Alfajean realized that Iddo had been guessing. Now his guess had been confirmed. The angel sighed. “I take it you can find your own way home, Master Bungflower?”

“Indubitably.”

“Good. Then stay behind and cover us until you’re sure we can’t be followed. When our telefraction ripples have fully dissipated, you may consider your role in the operation complete. Thank you, on behalf of the PROVED, for your assistance.” 

 You’re not coming? Wilburn’s spirits took a sudden nosedive. 

Cheer up, my boy. It is the Path for me to write tonight, but soon we shall see much and more of one another. Here and now everywhere always, remember?  

Right… Wilburn thought. It was well and good to say that, but the truth was he was going to miss Iddo. They had only been friends for, like… well, he wasn’t sure how much time had passed exactly… which sort of went to proving Iddo’s point, he guessed. It felt like they’d been friends forever… But it also felt like they would never meet again. 

We’re hanging out right now in myriad moments all across the universe, Iddo thought, gently. This isn’t even see you later, my boy, not in the ultimate sense. 

Wilburn nodded and punched the hoof Iddo extended to him. Just then, an extra mighty rumble shook the darkness, followed by a scatter-shot of pops and snaps. 

“Time to go,” Alfajean said, whipping out their wizidex and giving it a few taps. “Buttrom, Wilburn, you two know the drill. We all need to be touching when we tele—”

The volcano erupted. 

XII

“KABLOOEY!” Wilburn shouted, jumping and up and down and flapping his arms wildly for Ez and Gramma’s benefit. “You guys, I bet you never saw anything like it! I mean, the whole temple just—BOOM! And I was like, Whoooaaaa! And then I was like, Man, I’m gonna die. But then I was like, Wait, no I’m not! And then I was like, Sweeeeeet! You know when you get the bath too hot and you stick your foot in and it almost feels kind of cold? That’s how getting blown up by a volcano feels, but even colder! I mean hotter! I mean—it was so hot, it felt like I was freezing! Hey Mom, are you freezing?” 

“Wh-who m-m-me?” Ez chattered, hugging her wet self as the wind sawed through her.  

“Yeah,” Wilburn said, innocently. “You look kind of cold.”

Ez wasn’t sure if her son was being serious or not. Wilburn wasn’t a slow child… but he could be astonishingly oblivious at times. And who do you suppose he inherited that from? Ez thought to herself; it didn’t get much more oblivious than missing the fact that your lover was a wizard. She tamped down her sarcastic impulse for what felt like the hundredth time that day, and said, “Y-y-you were r-r-right Wil-b-burn, I was c-c-crazy to go s-s-swimming.” 

“Yep,” Wilburn said. “So can we make the fire huge, or what?”

“D-d-definitely,” Ez agreed, backing away and beckoning the others to follow. This time, to her great relief, they did.  

XIII

For a sliver of a second, the scene within the temple was revealed by an apocalyptic orange glow: rubble and dead chanters appearing to fall upward on the forefront of the blast wave. Then the world became fire—a thundering, pummeling geyser of lava, a heat so hot it felt like ice, piercing Wilburn’s bones, as he flipped and tumbled in a blind panic, the voice of fire roaring in his ears. 

IDDO! IDDO! HELP!

Steady on, my boy. Iddo broadcast peace across the mental airwaves. 

IDDO! HELP ME, I’M—I’m… Oh. Wilburn righted himself in the current with a small kineturgic shove. 

That’s the ticket, Iddo thought. You were hoping to try lava-swimming… well, this is more like lava-flying, but it comes to nearly same thing, wouldn’t you say? 

I guess so. Wilburn felt a little sheepish. It was still hotter than all get-out, but he could now appreciate that the intense sensation was not a painful one, really; though to call it pleasant would have been a stretch. There was beauty in this churning, blazing world of orange—a wild purity in the unbridled tempest of destruction. 

“Grab on!” Alfajean cried, catching a glimpse of Wilburn through a gap in the spraying lava; their voices were barely discernible over the roar of the eruption. Wilburn swam-flew to the angel, whose hands were busy: one clutching the wizidex, the other towing the gibbering Buttrom by the scruff of his shirt. Wilburn seized a fistful of Alfajean’s uniform just as the three of them broke through the apex of the volcanic geyser. Suddenly, Iddo was there, standing on nothing, yet pacing them with ease. Alfajean pumped their wings, and the fountain of lava fell away below, as they continued to ascend through smothering black smoke. 

“Farewell, Master Bungflower!” the angel called.

“Ta ta,” Iddo said, waving a hoof. 

“Touching, Wilburn? Touching, Buttrom? Good!” 

Wilburn looked up, and straight through the back of the transparent wizidex, to see Alfajean’s golden thumb press down on the far side of the glass. A tingle crawled over his body. 

Remember to harness the absurdity, my boy.

I will, Wilburn thought, as everything disintegrated into swirling particles of color. As it happened, Wilburn would not remember to harness the absurdity, because within the minute, he would forget all that had transpired since his arrival at the crossroads—until the next day when Iddo helped him to untangle his memory rope, that is.

XIV

Wilburn, Alfajean, and Buttrom rematerialized in the middle of the Dream Road. The emptiness and stillness of the place came as a shock to Wilburn’s overstimulated system. No thunder in his ears. No stench of brimstone in his nostrils. No sun or clouds in the blue sky, and nothing underneath the sky but flat brown earth and road. The air was neither warm nor cool. And of course, there was no Iddo.

A melancholy feeling settled over Wilburn as the telefraction tingles faded. He guessed he’d have to go home now and get in massive trouble for having left without permission. He guessed Mom must be worried sick. He guessed there would be a lot of math in his near future. 

“… big fire… big hot… very big hot… very fire… ” Buttrom stared wide-eyed into the distance, babbling to himself. He seemed to have lost all grip on reality. His grip on the clay bowl, however, remained as tight as ever.  

“Very fire,” Alfajean agreed, focused on their wizidex. “I’m just punching in our next coordinates, Buttrom… dumpty dumpty dum… confirming destination… and… ready. Well, goodbye, Wilburn. Have fun fulfilling your destiny!”

“Mkay,” Wilburn said, glumly. “See you, guys.” 

Buttrom blinked at him. “I just make pots.”

Wilburn shook his head, grinning in spite of himself. The man was cracked. It was a little sad. But it was also kind of funny. That was how Wilburn felt as he watched them telefract away: half of him ready to laugh, the other half to cry. The angel and the prophet vanished in a POOF of swirling speckles, leaving him standing in the middle of the Dream Road, all alone… or so he thought. 

XV

The second Alfajean and Buttrom disappeared, Wilburn realized what an idiot he’d been—he should have asked Alfajean to point him toward the crossroads. Now he had a fifty-fifty chance picking the right direction, and a fifty-fifty chance of picking the exact opposite direction. If he went the wrong way, he’d end up in Open Dreamspace; he had no idea what that was, but even if it was amazing, it would mean staying away from home, and the longer Wilburn stayed away, the more math problems he expected to have to solve. 

This conundrum, however, was driven clean out of his mind by the abrupt and decidedly unexpected appearance of the Girl in Black. She didn’t materialize out of a cloud of swirling particles or anything. She was just there, without any kind of warning or transition, standing right in front of Wilburn in the road. Her clothes and hair were somehow clean, though she’d been drenched in blood and honey only minutes ago, and she was wearing her long coat again, the one that had dissolved into black mist. 

Wilburn might have screamed a tiny bit, but only because she startled him so badly. “GAAAAA! Oh,” he said, “it’s you. How did you…”  He looked into the girl’s brown eyes, and found that he couldn’t look away. Like, for real. He was paralyzed. 

The Girl in Black flipped open the lid of Wilburn’s mind and riffled through his marbles collection. He couldn’t sense her psychic touch at all, only the effects of it. The girl’s eyes held his, unblinking, while on the stage of Wilburn’s mind, his entire life replayed itself in reverse, starting from the present moment and rewinding at nauseating speed, back, back, back, into to the hazy memories of infancy. It was over in a matter of seconds. 

The two of them stood looking at each other. Wilburn didn’t understand what he was seeing in the girl’s face. Her expression was neutral, and yet… he could almost make out the shape of some profound emotion swimming deep below the surface. 

The girl looked down, breaking eye contact at last. “You don’t know how lucky you are,” she said quietly.

Wilburn swallowed. The paralysis had lifted. “Who are you?” he asked.

The faintest trace of a wistful smile touched the girl’s lips, as she answered, “Nobody.” 

Then nobody was gone because nobody had ever been there, at least as far as Wilburn was aware. He looked around. He was alone. And for the life of him, he couldn’t remember what had brought him all the way out here to the middle of gosh-knew-where the heck without shoes. 

XVI

Except… except this time, Wilburn did remember. His consciousness popped up a level, thanks to the untangling of his memory rope, and he became aware that he was reliving a memory. He could not alter the memory, so it unfolded exactly as before; but now his mind was in two places, two distinct layers of experience, overlapping seamlessly in the present moment. One layer of Wilburn understood this greater context, while the other layer simply stood in it, scratching his head, looking up and down the Dream Road, oblivious to the fact that he was dreaming, and ignorant of ever having met such people as the Girl in Black, Alfajean, Buttrom, and Iddo.

He was lost. But not too lost, because, hey, at least there was a road. It was the nicest road Wilburn had ever seen, perfectly level and paved with identical square bricks, pleasantly smooth beneath the soles of his bare feet. He began to walk. He didn’t consciously choose a direction; he just went for it, as if all along he’d known which way he meant to go. Dream logic. 

It took some time, or perhaps no time at all, for Wilburn to grow bored. Nothing changed. Nothing happened. The farther he walked, the more he seemed to be going nowhere. Gradually, a sense of uneasiness crept over him, and he began to glance back over his shoulder more and more, convinced someone was watching him. There was no one there. At least, there was no one he could see… 

His paranoia steadily intensified. Wilburn tried to tell himself that he was being silly; there wasn’t enough cover to hide a beetle in this wasteland, much less another person. But he didn’t believe himself. The watched feeling was too strong, and it was only getting stronger. Someone was coming. An invisible someone… a presence… feminine, but inhuman…

Wilburn broke into a run. From that point on, he did not look back. Because he didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to find out who or what the presence was. Completely forgetting that he could fly, Wilburn took the road at a dead sprint, his bare feet almost silent on the stone. The only sound was that of the wind rushing past his ears. 

A toothpick appeared on the horizon. As he approached, the toothpick grew into a signpost planted at the intersection of four roads. Somehow, Wilburn didn’t need to consult the signs to know that home lay straight ahead. He pelted through the crossroads with his head down and his stomach in his throat. The presence was close behind and gaining on him quickly. 

To all appearances, the Real Life Road stretched on for miles into the distance. Wilburn ran. He had no choice. He couldn’t let Her catch him. He ran the way a drowning person swims toward the surface. It was do or die. But Wilburn wasn’t going to make it. The presence was upon him, and there was no shelter in sight.

XVII

Thunk.

Wilburn jolted upright, a blanket sliding off him. This wasn’t his bed. He was downstairs, sitting on the guest cot in front of the fireplace. And the whole cottage was buzzing. 

Thunk. 

The sound had come from overhead. Mom was peering up into the rafters with concern.

Thunk.

The buzzing ceased, and in the relative silence, a cacophony of clicks and skitters filtered down, as if a squirrel-circus was performing on the roof. Wilburn didn’t understand. He had escaped. He had awoken from the nightmare. He was safe. Except he wasn’t. He could feel Her in the air around him, Her presence, Her measureless intelligence, Her power.

“She’s here,” Wilburn said, numbly.

“What?” Mom asked. “Who?” 

But before Wilburn could answer, there came an almighty crash. Debris rained down from the ceiling, as the vexpids tore their way into the cottage, into Ez and Wilburn’s lives.

XVIII

And then… he was back. Wilburn resurfaced from his memories into the stillness of the frozen autumn afternoon. He was back with Iddo under the boughs of the old sycamore, the orange leaves conspicuously unmoving in the non-time of this private closed-loop sub-dimension of Higher Astral Sector-1 Parallelaspace. 

Mom and Gramma sat at the base of the old tree, Mom’s lips shaping a silent aaaa… In the background stood the ruins of the cottage, and a short way down the sunny hillside stood the statue of the black stallion, a sprig of grass protruding from his muzzle. As for the weenies, they continued to be roasted over the motionless campfire by Wilburn’s equally motionless Real Life avatar. 

Nothing whatsoever had changed—except him. For now, Wilburn remembered all that had transpired on his first journey to the Astral Plane. He remembered Iddo. He remembered the ritual. And he remembered the Girl in Black, who was the reason he’d forgotten it all in the first place. Yes, Wilburn remembered. He remembered everything. And now that he remembered, Wilburn had a few questions to ask.