Here it is. I finished it in 30 days. THANK IT'S OVER.

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David's hair was sticking up. That wasn't altogether unusual, but the wind was making it even worse. His next door neighbor and sometimes-friend Paige Allen was watching him and giggling, poking his hair with a twig she'd pulled off a dead bush. "It looks like a dead beaver in a hurricane," she commented.

He slapped the twig out of her hand, sending it on a week-long journey to what some might argue was not the ground. David didn't understand those arguments, so he tended not to think about either side of them. What was concerning him now was how his supposed friend had insulted his hair. "It does not! Beavers are brown, my hair is black…"

"Fine then, a wet dead beaver in a hurricane. Hurricanes make things wet, don't they?"

"I don't remember."

"Oh."

Sulking at Paige never did anything useful, so David turned his attention back to the city. It usually held his attention, except when someone came up and spooked him into almost falling. There was something endlessly fascinating about the Vertical City, but he could never tell what it was. The buildings were everywhere, tight enough that bridges between them were almost unnecessary. Safety was still a worry, though, so the bridges were in many places that they weren't actually needed at all. Some of them, like the one that David and Paige were sitting on, were unfinished, but still sturdy.

Something wet touched his cheek. He touched it and brought his fingers back to look at. They felt funny…he rubbed them together. They were slightly soapy. "Did you bring the bubbles today?"

Paige answered by blowing a barrage of them into his face. He had almost been prepared for it, so he didn't get any in his eyes, but it still took a moment before he could see again. When he could, he had to smile. Paige was twirling the bubble wand between her fingers and whistling through her teeth. "I always bring the bubbles."

"That's probably true."

"It's definitely true." Another sheet of oncoming bubbles. "I want to go see the Auntie."

Unlike the bubbles, David could not have predicted her saying that. The Auntie was what Paige had named the scary old witch lady who lived below everyone else's apartments. David didn't like her, or the location of her home. It was too close to the infinity beneath where they slept. Even worse, it smelled funny and the one time he'd been to the Auntie's apartment, everything had seemed to watch him. Just thinking about that place made him nervous. But there was no way he'd tell Paige about that. He flicked a piece of lint off his shoulder and half-pouted at it. "But there are all those stairs… It'd take forever just to get down there." He knew he was being ridiculous, but that was against his point.

She blew some more bubbles at him, then put the wand back in the bottle and twisted the cap on. Her short tangerine-colored pigtails had been doing much better in the wind than David's hair, but if they came loose, he could have his turn to tease. She hated it when he called her Rag Doll, especially since she knew she looked like one. "It takes forever to get you to do anything fun," she pouted at him, "you always want to sit here and stare at the city. Like it ever changes."

"It might." To make both of their points, he looked back to the exact spot where he had been looking, at one of the red and green flags flapping in the wind above someone's window. There were more windows than walls, some places. They'd have to be filled in soon. Too many windows made the building they were in sway and look a little nervous.

Another twig—where had she found a bush that sharp?—stabbed him in the side, but when he looked up, Paige had run off into the nearest stair apartment. David let out a little laugh of triumph, but then he started to feel bored. Paige was right, the city never changed, and he'd been watching it for five years. Mostly what fascinated him about the city was that it was. Where he and his family had lived before, the buildings had been tall, but even at the top, you could see the ground. Here, there was just more down, without any bottom in sight.

Unless you actually went to the bottom.

He remembered when they'd moved here, not why, but when. They'd started at the bottom then, only to take an elevator up very very high, and now they'd lived there for almost as long as they'd lived in their old home. It was getting harder to remember real grass and soccer, but he did. Paige had never played soccer outside, and all of the grass in the vertical city was deliberately planted in rooms the grownups called 'parks'. Playing soccer there wasn't the same as it used to be.

They tried to replace things that were down there, but it wasn't the same. David wasn't old enough to know how the city planners had failed or come up short, but he still knew they had. "So come back and fix it, people," he muttered at the wood in the bridge.

Sitting out there was getting boring without Paige to bother him. He pulled a leg up to his chest to lean his chin on, and let the other one just swing over the edge of the bridge. Maybe it would rain. The rain was always right, it was fresher and cleaner up here. It had probably been his parents' reason for moving to this place. Everything was cleaner than it had been in their other city.

Still boring. He scooted back so he could stand up, slowly, so he wouldn't get dizzy and fall. People fell sometimes. Others jumped. Neither was a good idea, in David's opinion, but no one ever listened to his advice. And it wasn't because he was short. Paige was short, David was much taller, even taller than the other boys his age, which was more impressive than just being taller than Paige.

She would probably be halfway to the witch's apartment by now, skipping steps and humming to herself. David hoped she wouldn't be careless and trip. Falling down the stairs could be almost as dangerous as falling off the edge. He shook his head. Paige had grown up here, she didn't need to be constantly reminded of all the things she couldn't do. Lots of them, she didn't know she could do them if she were somewhere else.

There were other kids he could play with, he didn't need to go down the stairs to gawk at an old lady he wanted to stay away from. In Delta 17-B, there was a boy his age, a stocky kid with a face that looked like it needed a beard. His name was Jacob Markus. He was kind of bossy and sometimes it was apparently hard for him to not be mean or nosy, but he was fun to play soccer with.

David sauntered towards the elevators. Sauntering was something the he'd picked up from his older brother Loren. Loren was the very definition of cool. He had two bookcases, and they were full.

The elevator doors were stuck. That happened a lot, something to do with the moisture, Dad had said. David didn't care what it had to do with, it made his hands hurt to push them open. They were automatic, he shouldn't have had to open them himself.

"Ow." Once inside, he leaned on the wall and looked at his hands. They were red, and still cold from being out in the wind. He could feel the skin on the tip of his index finger change color when he pushed the button for Delta 17, but then it was red again. Soon he'd just forget, and then remember in a few hours only to see that everything was the same color it was supposed to be.

Ding. The doors opened, this time without any of his help, and David sulked his way out into the hallway. He turned around to glare at the elevator, but it had already shut the second set of doors and schloop'ed off to whoever else needed it. As irritating as the elevators' behavior was, they were the single-most important invention in this place. Without elevators, no one would want to live in the vertical city. Unless they were stupid. Or if they liked stairs the way Paige did.

17-B wasn't very far from the elevator, so David went on sauntering down the hall, trying to be as awesome as Loren. It was too bad he didn't have an allergy bracelet, then it would be much easier to look that cool. It was also too bad that there was no one walking past to see him. He kept it up though, the practice would come in handy for when he got older.

He reached Jacob's apartment and wiped his hands on his shorts before knocking. It wasn't very close to actually washing his hands, but it was all he was going to do. As long as no one pointed out how much dirt and things were on him, he had no intention of doing anything about it.

The door creaked open a tiny bit, and someone's eye tried to appear. Unfortunately, something was keeping any of them from showing at all. "Whadda you want?"

"Hi, Jacob."

"Oh, it's you. Wanna come in and play cards?"

David shook his head and stepped back a little, so Jacob would have room to step out into the hall. It took the other boy a few minutes of grunting and struggling with the door, but he managed it. When he was free of the apartment and had closed the door behind him, the reason for his trouble was suddenly clear.

Jacob was wearing a football helmet that was too big for his head. He was also holding a soccer ball, a combination that only made sense to someone who knew Jacob. It made sense because Jacob never made sense. He bounced the ball a few times, which didn't turn out too well, since soccer balls weren't supposed to bounce, then tucked it under his arm. "Where's the pest?"

David frowned and raised a fist. "She's not a pest." She could be a pest sometimes, but she was his friend, and only he could call her names.

"Yeah she is, or you wouldn't know who I was talkin' about."

It was a good thing that Paige wasn't there, she would have either stepped on Jacob's bare feet or emptied her bubble bottle into his pants. Although that would have been funny to see, David didn't really want to know what would happen afterward. He decided to change the subject before they started fighting. "Let's go play soccer. You've already got the ball."

For a second it looked like Jacob was going to argue or put up some other kind of resistance, but then he shrugged, dropping the ball in the process. "I'll go get my shoes on." He opened the door, kicked the ball inside, and then disappeared himself into the apartment.

That left David to lounge uncomfortably against the wall, tapping his fingers to keep it from being too quiet. If only someone would—and then someone did. One of the doors went through all the sounds and motions of unlocking and opening. The person who came out of the apartment was a large woman with a sunhat covering the top of her long blonde hair. Her hat was secured to her head with a ribbon tied under her chin, the bow set fashionably to the side.

She didn't seem to notice David at first, but when she did, she looked startled. "Oh, hello, little boy…"

He sighed and tried not to roll his eyes. He wasn't a little boy, and he'd be even less of one in a few days when he had his birthday. "Good afternoon, ma'am." Politeness was always important, and this lady probably knew his mother. If he was rude, she'd tell on him.

Her hat bobbed a little as she looked around. "Are you playing a game?"

"No."

"Then what are you doing here?"

"Waiting."

She smiled, it was one of those grownup smiles that meant, 'Oh, you dear cute thing, it's such a pity you're so stupid.' It was a smile that David saw very often, and it had gotten old the first time. "What are you waiting for?"

He was getting tired of standing there and letting her ask him questions that he didn't think he had to answer, but he still couldn't be rude. But he could lie. …Well, make something up, anyway. "My imaginary friend is painting a picture of me. I have to stand very still, or he'll mess up." That should fit with her perception of him as a dumb little kid.

Sure enough, her smile slipped into the all-too-familiar 'aww, what an absolute darling!' one that David liked much better than the other. "Isn't that sweet," she cooed. "I suppose you wouldn't want a bit of candy then, would you?"

His ears perked up and sent a danger sign through him. His first reaction was to be offended at this new jab at his age, he was not young enough to get excited about cheap Smarties and shiny pennies. But as nice as candy outside of Halloween could be, even if Sunhat Lady knew his mother, he didn't know Sunhat lady. And he had never been allowed to accept gifts from people he didn't know, especially candy. Apparently she didn't know that, which was silly—it was a basic Rule of Mom. Maybe she didn't have kids. Or a mom. "No thank you, I don't want my imaginary friend to mess up his painting."

Sunhat Lady looked like she was going to offer again, but then she adjusted her purse strap over her shoulder and smiled. This time, David couldn't tell what the smile meant. "Alright then. I hope you like how your painting comes out, you're being very good standing so still. Goodbye...what is your name?"

David didn't want to tell her his name. "Clarence," he said, giving the name of his pet goldfish. It was named after his grandfather, so he knew it was a real name for a boy.

"Such a nice name. Goodbye, Clarence."

David watched her until she had disappeared into the elevator and the schloop had faded away. The hall felt bigger now that she had left, and he didn't think it had anything to do with the fact that she was kind of fat.

"Is she gone?"

He jumped, then glared at Jacob, who'd popped his head out the door. "Is who gone?"

"You know, the big lady with the hat."

It didn't look like Jacob was going to leave the apartment all the way until he knew the Sunhat Lady had really left. "Stop being such a baby, I'm the only one out here."

The football helmet was nowhere to be seen, leaving Jacob free to show off his newly balded head. David had heard that his friend had been planning to shave his hair off for some time now, but he hadn't thought Mrs. Markus would actually let him do it. That was more of a shock than the sight of Jacob's sort of bumpy egghead. It did look kind of funny though, especially since he was wearing an uneasy frown. "That lady creeps me out…" He even shuddered a little.

"For serious?" David hadn't particularly liked her, but she'd been the kind of annoying adult that didn't seem to know what kids were. It was hard to like people like that. "What's wrong with her?"

"You didn't see it? She's got all those rings and stuff. Like a walking jewelry store." Jacob shuddered again. "It makes my braces vibrate just being around her!" As the only kid in the Delta building with braces, Jacob commanded a strange sort of status, and he liked to flaunt it whenever he could. But David wasn't sure that was what his friend was doing. It seemed more like he was being literal than just taking a random chance to brag about his dental work.

He pushed himself away from the wall and started towards the elevator, going slower than he would have if the Sunhat Lady had take a different route. "There's nothing wrong with wearing lots of jewelry…" There wasn't, but it was kind of tacky, according to David's parents. Both of them usually just wore wedding rings, and the only thing that his mom ever added was a pair of elephant earrings for parties and special times.

Jacob ran back to pick up the ball that both of them had forgotten, then rushed back before the elevator could close and shut him out. He leaned on the rail for a second to catch his breath, then said, "Maybe not, but it's something in the metal, I guess. It really does mess with my braces, I'm not kidding."

It was the truth then, David wasn't being gullible. That was good to know, he didn't like the thought of being gullible. Paige was like that sometimes, where she would believe anything someone told her, depending on the person. It was fun to be the someone she was believing, but it wasn't fun when that was someone else and he was the one she was dragging along on some wild goose chase.

The Sunhat Lady was almost completely forgotten by the time they reached the park, just a weird shadow neither of them wanted to bother about. A big fat shadow. Even though she wasn't around, David couldn't help being at least a little mad about how she'd treated him. Little boy. Hmph.

There were a couple of younger kids playing in the sandbox, but other than that, the park was virtually empty. That was good, they would only have to be careful to keep the ball away from the sandbox area.

David got a box of the chalk from the public domain shelves along the south wall. It was the special kind of orange chalk they could use to write on the grass. He gave one to Jacob and they each drew a goal line. "Be careful not to hit the little kids," David warned him. It was a sad thing, but Jacob was the type of boy who needed to be reminded of that sort of thing. He just shrugged and dropped the ball. David decided that he'd just pound Jacob's egg baldy head if one of the little kids got hurt.

Before Jacob could even pull his leg back to aim a kick at the ball, a blur of orange and white rushed into David, whooshing his lungs flat.

Paige was hugging his midsection and…her face was wet. Either she was crying, or she'd run so much that her face was sweating. "It's after me it's big big TEETH!"

Completely at a loss and trying to avoid the nonplussed glare coming from Jacob, David patted her head and tried to figure out what he was supposed to do. It sounded like Paige had had a nightmare, but it was the middle of the day, and she hadn't said anything about taking a nap. She was too old for those.

"Um…what's after you?" He wanted to ask about the teeth, but he didn't think that it would be a good thing to bring up. She was shaking, which probably meant that she was really scared and not just playing a dumb little kid game.

She wasn't crying as much now, but her face was still wet and probably getting itchy. David's mom made him carry around a handkerchief—he didn't know why—so he took it out of his pocket and gave it to Paige.

Sniffling big enough to make her shoulders jerk, Paige took the handkerchief and wiped her eyes and cheeks. "The big man with a hairy face. He has teeth like this," she opened her mouth wide and held her hands to her cheeks with her fingers poised like claws. "And he told me he eats little girls like me!"

A snort made David look up from his distressed little friend. Jacob was bouncing the soccer ball on his head, which was apparently easy enough to do that he could talk at the same time. "She's just making it up. Send her to her mommy so we can get back to the game."

Just because Jacob wanted him to do something was not a good motivation for David to do anything, so he just ignored his sometimes-but-not-right-now friend. And if he didn't ignore him, he would have to pound the crap out of him for even mentioning Paige's mom. David picked Paige up and settled her around his waist, then set her head on his shoulder. She was heavy, and almost too tall for him to do all that, but he would worry about that when she was all done crying.

"Don't let him get me…" She sniffled, he could feel his shirt getting wet and kind of icky from her running nose. Ew.

"David!"

His fist started to clench, but then Paige started to slip, and he had to get a better grip on her. He also had to fix her dress. Why couldn't she have been wearing shorts that day? "Shut up, Jacob. If you can't wait, go play by yourself. I'm taking Paige home." That wasn't what he'd wanted to do, he didn't like taking Paige back to her apartment. Her father always looked so sad, and he never shaved, even though he didn't quite have a beard. It was like a grizzly shadow on his face.

Something hard hit him in the back of the legs and he almost fell. He turned around to see Jacob standing in the classic pose of throwing what David's mom called 'a big fat hissy fit'. "She can go home by herself, you don't have to go!"

David bent to put Paige down to stand by herself, but she hung onto his neck so tight that he choked loudly. The sound must have scared her, because she let go and backed away, closer to the other little kids. They were all quiet now, just sitting in the stand and watching, their mouths hanging open and their toys forgotten. David felt his ears start warming up, so he turned on Jacob to poke him in the chest with a not-nice finger. "Stop telling me what to do, Bossy Mcmeany Pants!"

"I'll do what I want!"

"Fine! I will too. I'm taking Paige to her dad, and then I'm going home."

"No!"

There was a loud sound and then David realized that his fist was shaking and Jacob was curled up on the grass, holding his hands over his nose. "You jerg! I'b bleedig!"

The first word that wanted to come out of David's mouth was 'oops', but he didn't think would work out very well. Instead, he said, "Sorry. But you shouldn't act like that."

"Oh yeah?"

If someone had asked him out of context, he would have thought that a kid as chunky as Jacob could not have gotten up from the ground very fast. But the time it took for him to stand up and swing a fist at David was remarkable.

Remarkable enough that David did not see it coming, not soon enough to dodge or duck. Fatty knuckles slammed into his face and he stumbled backwards, not in control of anything. It was not a good feeling. It was an even worse feeling when he bumped into Paige and knocked her down.

She let out a shriek and hit the ground with a little thump. David caught his balance enough so that he wouldn't fall and squish her, but the damage was already done. Even though she wasn't crying, she was scrunching up her face and curling her toes inside her sandals. The grass must not have been much softer than other types of ground.

David didn't have a chance to stop and help her, though, Jacob was still mad, and he was not going to stop the fight just because somebody outside of it had gotten hurt. His head was bright pink, and he wasn't really bleeding from his nose, but it had probably been pretty painful. David hoped it still hurt.

If it did, then it wasn't enough to slow Jacob down. His chubbiness wasn't either. He kicked David in the shin, hard, drawing a shout. David countered with a hard right hook to the ribs, gaining exactly the result that he wanted—Jacob staggered sort of to the side and hugged himself. He didn't look so eager about exchanging blows anymore.

That was good, because David wasn't in a hurry to hit or get hit. Especially get hit. That wasn't any fun at all. He didn't understand why boxers and wrestlers on TV liked it so darn much.

"What is going on here?!"

Uh-oh. He knew that voice. Not very well, but it was definitely familiar. Cold and drippy in a way he couldn't really describe, and also pretty, but not in a way that he liked. "N-nothing…"

Sunhat Lady had sent all the sandbox kids packing, and she was kneeling on the ground next to Paige, handing her a fresh handkerchief. The one that David had given her before was laying a ways away, dirty and trampled. There was a very clear imprint of a shoe on it. It looked like it belonged to David. He wondered if there would have been a similar footprint on Paige's dress if she'd been wearing a longer one. The thought made him feel almost as guilty as he would have if he'd actually stepped on her. Which he almost had.

"Well? If one of you doesn't hurry up and explain himself, I shall have to bring this up with your mothers." The Sunhat Lady was alternation between a menacing glaring for David and Jacob and a look of affectionate pity for Paige.

The glare was working, because Jacob was hiding behind David now. Apparently his fear of the Sunhat Lady was bigger than his desire to go on with the fight. A lot bigger, if he was sacrificing his pride so easily. That made it catching. David could feel himself beginning to grow apprehensive.

He cleared his throat loudly, dimly aware of the fact that his face hurt. "We were just fighting, Miss S—" Oops. He'd almost called her 'Sunhat Lady' to her face. But he'd stopped soon enough that it just sounded like he'd stretched out the word 'miss'.

At any rate, she didn't seem to notice his almost-slip. "My name is Miss Cowslip. And if you must engage in fisticuffs with your barbarous little friend, it would serve you well to leave innocents out of your squabbles."

She started to pick Paige up, but the little girl screamed and kicked, forcing Miss Cowslip to move away hastily. She looked very surprised, shocked, even. As if she had expected Paige to just go with her, a stranger. David look over his shoulder at Jacob and shared a frown of mutual and grudging apology. Then he went over to help Paige to her feet.

It was obvious that she wanted him to pick her up again. She gripped his hands persistently and kept her legs slack. David blushed and tried not to look at Jacob or Miss Cowslip. Of all times for Paige to misbehave, when he was the only one who could get her to behave even this well. He must have looked very stupid, letting her dangle from his hands like the obstinate rag doll she resembled. "Come on, Paige, you have to walk by yourself."

"Nuh-uh. Uppie!"

"Stop talking like a baby, you're a big girl!"

"Am not." She planted her feet long enough to pull on him then, and he almost fell. But Miss Cowslip surprised him by grabbing his shoulders to keep him upright. She wasn't rough, but her hands were strangely warm. Even so, he shuddered at the contact on his bare shoulders. What a day to have worn a shirt without any sleeves.

He moved away from her as quickly as he could, dragging Paige with him. Before, when he'd first met Miss Cowslip in the hallway, she'd seemed like any old regular lady, but now he wasn't so sure. There was only one explanation that he could think of, even though it seemed a little too easy. "Have you been to the bottom?" he asked, certain that he already knew the answer.

"No," she said, righting her hat and straightening her dress so that she didn't look as much like a frazzled fat woman. "And I have no desire to. It sounds like such a ghastly place."

The urge to defend his former home rose up in David's chest like the mercury in a August-exposed thermometer, but he swallowed it back down. When he thought about it, he did remember that it had been quite dirty. There was more crime there, and a lot more people. The vertical city was a much nicer place to live.

More importantly, he'd been wrong about Miss Cowslip. How could she be so different if she'd never been to the bottom? She wasn't different the way that David and his family and others who'd been to the bottom were, but still…

Paige wasn't tugging on him anymore. Instead, she'd opted to clutch his arm and start acting her own age. She still looked scared, and he knew that as long as Miss Cowslip was around, Jacob would be scared too. David wiggled his arm free and then slipped his hand into Paige's. "We have to go home," he said, quiet, but firm.

Miss Cowslip got one of her weird smiles then—David wondered how many she had. This one didn't seem to really say anything. Nothing he could interpret, anyway. It was just mysterious in an annoying way. He decided that it was creepy. …That word was starting to describe Miss Cowslip very well. She should get a T-shirt with 'Creepy Lady' printed on it, to warn people who hadn't met her yet. That would be helpful. After all, not everyone had braces like Jacob, or some kind of weird extra sense like Paige.

"I can take the little girl back to her daddy," Miss Cowslip said, her high voice like honey. Sticky and not easy to walk through. " He must be worried about her."

A few more scary points attached themselves to her. How had she known that Paige only had a father? Paige lived in Alpha-16, and her dad didn't let her wander around past Charlie-14, she was too little to go to the Delta tower. So how could Miss Cowslip know anything about Paige? Most people would just assume that her mommy would be worried and say that. Wouldn't they?

At any rate, David wasn't so stupid that he would just let a random creepy woman take Paige anywhere. He gripped her hand tighter and shook his head, biting his lip. "No. I have to take her." A thousand excuses flitted around his head, but then he decided that he didn't need them.

For a second it looked like Miss Cowslip was going to argue with him, but then she rolled her eyes smoothly away to one side, then tilted her head back to them. "Be careful walking back," she said. "It would be horrible if one of you tripped out of carelessness."

David shuddered. That had sounded like a threat… maybe he'd just gotten used to thinking badly of her, and now he was just being paranoid. No matter what it was, he was in a hurry to get away. More than that, he was in an even bigger hurry to get Paige away. Something was not right, Miss Cowslip was too interested in Paige. It made David uneasy.

And the way that Jacob was afraid of the lady didn't help. David used his free hand to push Jacob along in front of them, walking briskly out of the park. He didn't meet with any resistance, which was good. Even when they were out in the hall and he didn't have to push Jacob anymore, no one did anything to slow them down. They didn't even talk, they just tried not to run.

Finally they reached an elevator and escaped inside. It felt safe in there, but David didn't let go of Paige's hand. He looked down to give her a reassuring smile, and noticed that Jacob had taken hold of her other hand.

"I didn't know that she could be that creepy…" he said softly. "Do you think she followed us?"

"I hope not…" Somehow, his words felt hollow, as if he had only said that to make his friends feel better.

Paige patted his arm lightly. "Your mouth is bleeding," she said matter-of-factly. David touched his bottom lip and realized that she was right. His lip stung where he'd touched it, reminding him that his fingers were still dirty. He'd have to clean them and the wound when he got home, the thought of having an infected lip was not a nice one.

The elevator came to a stop, but the doors didn't slide open. Jacob walked over and gave them a kick, which worked sometimes. This time it didn't work. He laughed nervously and went back to leaning on the wall where he'd been before. "Don't worry, the doors stick all the time."

"Yeah," David chipped in. "All we have to do is call Kimberly and wait for her to fix it." It was Tuesday, and Kimberly was the engineer who took care of the elevators in towers Alpha and Beta that day.

But even though they were successful in comforting Paige and keeping her from panicking, it was not doing much for David. He couldn't help thinking of what Miss Cowslip had said. If this had been a movie about the mafia, he would have been expecting an armed hitman to burst through to small door in the roof of the elevator. Then he'd shoot David and Jacob, and drag Paige back to the Godfather.

Except that that was stupid.

Miss Cowslip may have been fat, but that didn't make her Jabba the Hutt. …David gave himself a jab in the ribs. Stop mixing metaphors. Neither of them makes sense in the first place.

Now that he was out of his mental hamster maze of strange thoughts, David realized that Jacob had opened the little phone cabinet underneath the elevator buttons. He was holding the red telephone to his ear, but he wasn't saying anything. Maybe he was waiting for Kimberly to answer the phone.

"Hey, uh… David, could you come over here for a second?" His voice was dry and a bit raspy.

Apprehension was spreading through all of David's nerves, so that he couldn't feel his toes and his fingers were starting to cramp. "What is it?"

"Just get over here and I'll tell you." Now Jacob was gritting his teeth while he talked. That made the message much clearer. Something was wrong and it would be very bad if Paige figured that out.

David did as Jacob asked, making sure that Paige stayed where she was. "Isn't Kimberly answering the phone?"

"No, man, I don't think it's working…"

"You mean it's broken?!"

Jacob looked like he would have liked to hit David with the telephone. "Yes. Shut up." He put the phone back and closed the door. "If that big baby finds out, she'll cry and we won't be able to make her be quiet."

His bad attitude wasn't exactly helpful to their situation, but he did have valid point. As much as David would have liked to deny it and defend his much nicer friend, she'd been acting very excitable. It had to have something to do with whatever it was she had said was after her. He'd never seen her act up to such an extent before, even when she was really mad.

Finding out what was going on with her would be a lot easier than trying to fix the elevator doors, and it would also get him away from Jacob's snappishness. David turned around and went back to where Paige had sat on the floor, her legs stretched out in front of her. She was knocking her feet together, intent on the noise this made.

He sat down beside her and pointed to her scraped knees. "Is that from when I bumped into you?"

She shook her head.

"Then what happened?"

"I fell on them when the hairy man was chasing me," she said, still staring at her noisy feet. "It hurt." Then she looked up at David and shoved her hands in his face, fingers spread. "These got scraped too."

David knew from experience that scraped hands hurt more than scraped knees. No wonder she'd been so upset. He gave her a sympathetic look and gently moved her hands away. "We'll have your dad take care of those for you." Then he coughed into his own hand and went on to ask the important question. "What is the hairy man?"

An eerie quiet settled around all of them, and it set David down a small anxious spiral. Paige fisted her hands in her the skirt-like part of her dress, looking for all the world like a rabbit staring down the barrel of a gun. "He's too big to go through the doorway like regular people," she said, almost in a whisper. "and he has big ol' sharp teeth, an' he drools lots and lots."

Already this hairy man sounded nothing like any kind of man and completely like a made up monster. At least, David hoped he was made up.

"He sounds like a dog."

Jacob had sat down a ways away from them, propping his elbows up on his knees. He was trying to look casual, but was not meeting with much success. It was hard to tell, but David knew that his friend was starting to really worry. The bare skin on the top of his head had begun to get goosebumps. And he was moving his mouth a little, as if he wanted to open it and work his jaw, but he was refusing to do so.

That prompted David to ask him a question. "Are your braces okay?" They vibrated when Miss Cowslip was around, if they were vibrating now, then she might have had something to do with the elevator malfunctioning.

For a second it didn't appear that Jacob was going to answer at all, but then he shook his head. "They're making my mouth itch…"

Paige frowned at him. "Why does your mouth itch? David didn't hit you there." David put his face in his hand. Leave it to her to mention the fight right after they'd seemed to put it behind them.

But it didn't look like that had any effect on Jacob. He looked down at the floor between his feet and said, "That lady makes my braces go all funny on me. It's pretty bad right now."

"How bad?" David put a protective arm around Paige's shoulders, just thinking about all this was making him worry about her. He tried to reassure himself that they were perfectly safe, but it was hard. They were stuck in the elevator, and if the doors wouldn't open from the inside, then they wouldn't open from the outside either. Besides, they might not even be in a place where the doors could open. The elevator might have stopped right in the middle of the shaft.

Jacob hadn't answered his question. Instead, he'd asked Paige one, David hadn't been listening, so her answer didn't make sense to him. "I do not! Just don't say that."

"I'll say what I wanna say," Jacob grumbled.

Looking from one of them to the other and back a few times, David tried to figure out what was going on. It had to have been Jacob's fault, though, Paige wasn't as prone to starting fights as he was. She was also better at controlling them. "What are you guys bickering about now?"

"He said that Miss Scary wanted to take me home because I cry all the time!"

"Well, you do. And no one likes you."

David growled out a sigh. "Be quiet, you two. It's not helping."

"Nothing is helping! We're just stuck here and we can't get out."

For all that Jacob had been the one most adamant about keeping Paige in the dark about their situation, it was oddly predictable that he'd been the one to forget and say something. Paige's eyes widened and she snapped her head around to look at David. "We really are stuck? But what about Kimberly?"

Glad that she'd turned to him, he nodded solemnly and said, "She didn't answer when Jacob called her. The phone might be broken." Back when he and his family had lived in one of the cities on the bottom, he'd remembered lots of people having phones they could carry everywhere, but that wasn't possible in the vertical city. His dad had explained it to him once, but it had been too hard to understand. He wished it was possible. Then they could have used one to call for help.

Paige sighed and got to her feet. "I'm gonna fix it."

"Huh?"

"Move, Bighead Jacob." She didn't wait for him to obey her, she just walked past him, shoving his shoulder on her way. That probably would have made him take a swing at her knees, but she'd pushed him hard enough to knock him to the floor. David tried not to laugh.

Then he watched as she strode up to the doors and kicked. The doors didn't do anything, but she kicked it again. David jumped to his feet to stop her, she was wearing sandals. Kicking metal elevator doors would hurt her toes if she didn't cut it out soon.

He reached for her to pull her back, but then the doors gave way… In the wrong way.

Paige's foot ripped through them, literally. She was as surprised as the others, and only David's reflexive grab at the ribbon tied at the back of her waist kept her from falling face-first. She cried out and leaned back so she would fall in the right direction. David readjusted himself so he could catch her.

While he steadied her, he heard Jacob whistle through his teeth. "That's crazy… They just—like paper or something!"

It was crazy. David held Paige's hand and stepped away from the doors. They looked very wrong, out of place and warped. Like in a cartoon when some silly character had somehow gotten their face pushed through a painting, and the canvas was poked out around their neck. The metal of the doors where Paige had put her foot through was hanging out in the same way.

Looking at it was apparently a bad idea, so he turned around and looked at Jacob instead. His mouth was hanging open, and he was scratching his bare head. The goosebumps were on his arms now, and his jaw was still twitching. "Guys, I think we should just rip the doors all the way and get out of here."

"That's a good idea…"

The fact that Paige was agreeing him made it that much clearer that they were all too scared to argue with one another. David nodded and handed Paige over to Jacob's care. He couldn't ask Jacob to go first, and he couldn't take Paige with him if he did it. "I'll go and see if it's safe."

Jacob pulled Paige a little closer and gave David a grim look. "Be careful."

David didn't answer, he didn't know how. He approached the doors and stretched his arms out to poke at the doors. They felt like thick paper. The scraps of cardstock and paper samples his mother sold in her scrapbooking store were like that. Thinking of it that way made him feel a little better, and he gathered up the courage to tear his way through.

The sight of the Beta terrace greeted him. Nothing looked any different from how it usually was, but after the way things had been happening, he couldn't just accept the assumption that everything was all back to normal. He looked back at his friends. "Stay here, I'm gonna check it out."

He stepped out onto the terrace and nearly cried out. The wooden deck felt the same as the elevator doors, except a bit more solid, like graphite. The more tentative steps he took, the thinner the ground felt, until he couldn't move for fear of ripping what was under him.

"David?"

"Stay in there!" he called back. "Something's wrong…" If only he knew what it was.

Something whizzed by his ear, buzzing loudly. A bee. He stayed perfectly still. As if he hadn't had enough to be concerned about, now he had to worry about getting stung. He wasn't allergic, but a bee sting would still hurt like crazy.

He was doing okay until the bee charged at his face. With a gasp, he raised his arms up to protect himself, but in the process he took a subconscious step backwards. The heel of his sneaker dipped through the floor, and then suddenly the rest of him did the same.

He shouted as he fell, and kept on shouting and falling until he didn't have the breath to do the latter. Each time he neared the terrace of another floor in the Beta tower, his hopes rose up to his throat. But then they choked him as he continued to fall through the paper floors, one after another until he didn't see another coming up beneath him.

It wouldn't be much longer before he had an extremely violent meeting with the ground. Reunited with the bottom he hadn't seen in years… He closed his eyes and prayed that his friends and his family would be safe, that they wouldn't fall through the paper city the way he had.

Something whacked across his shoulderblades and he winced, surprised more by the lack of mortality in the pain rather than the pain itself. He slid forward and came to a stop, his eyes still shut tight. The falling had stopped completely, but there was no ground touching him. Just something sharp pressing into his back and scraping his neck. He opened his eyes.

And nearly threw up. He was hanging from a tree in a clearing ringed by other trees. That wasn't what was making his stomach turn. There was an enormous furry animal on the ground a few feet away from him, smelling terribly and covered in blackish gore. Spears and other long things that didn't look like spears were sticking out of its body like a porcupine's spines. David wanted to shut his eyes again, but he couldn't look away.

Where was this place? This couldn't possibly be the bottom, the bottom was more of a city than the vertical city was. He tried not to sniff away tears. Even more so now that the vertical city had become some kind of pop-up children's book.

A tearing sound made his ears twitch and his heart speed up. It was different from when the paper terrace had given way, this was fabric tearing. He started to fall again, in jerking motions. "Oh, that's just great," he mumbled to himself. "My lip is bleeding, my family is probably in mortal danger, and now my snotty shirt is going to rip and let me fall and break something on the ground. Thanks a lot, God!"

God must have been listening, because after David said that, his collar ripped off of his shirt completely and he dropped to the ground rather quickly. He laid there, flat on his back with his arms and legs out, as if he was going to make a snow angel in the grass. His back hurt too much for him to even enjoy the feeling of cool damp grass tickling his neck.

The smell of the dead animal was getting stronger as well, and his stomach was reacting to everything. He rolled over and pushed himself up just in time to empty his guts. As soon as he could get up without having to bend down again to throw up more, he staggered as far away from the corpse as he could. Then he found a tree to lean against and tried to piece himself back together, mentally and physically.

"This isn't the bottom, is it?" He looked around, half amazed and half frightened out of his skull. There were plants everywhere, mostly trees, but also lots of wildflowers and a few things he recognized. Herbs that his mother cultivated in the Alpha conservatory, the ones he could never remember the names of, and some that he couldn't even identify by sight. Except for the dead animal, there didn't seem to be any others. They were probably hiding from him, scared away by all the noise he'd been making. It had been a long time since David had been camping—and even then, the campgrounds he'd seen didn't look anything like this—but he remembered enough to know that something wasn't right about this forest. Or whatever it was supposed to be called.

He pushed himself away from the tree and started walking. Wherever he was, he needed to find some place that he could clean up and get clothes that hadn't been cried on by a particularly juicy kid. His lip was starting to really hurt, and his head was throbbing from when he'd banged it on the ground, but he kept walking.

It became difficult when his eyes started losing focus at irregular intervals and he saw a few spots dancing in front of him. But stopping didn't seem to be an option, so he didn't. Feeling more than a little stubborn, he decided that nothing short of a wall would stop him.

Having made that decision, he realized that God must have still been a little peeved over his early comment, because he hit something solid only a few moments later.

"What the devil?!"

The voice was healthy and belonged to an adult, two things that David definitely wasn't at the moment. Mostly he was hurting, feeling like a lost two-year-old, and not far from flat-out crying. He blinked at his knees for a moment to clear his vision, then looked up.

The wall that God had sent his way was a person, which explained the voice. It was a tall man wearing a tunic, pants, and padded leather armor strapped around his entire body. Like some kind of unconfident skater going to a renaissance fair. He also had a green headband half-obscured by his dirt-brown hair trying to fall into his eyes. The tails of the headband were long and kind of ridiculous, reminding David of video games with ninjas and stealthy snake spies. There was also something about the man that made David wonder if he was annoyed. It probably had something to do with the fact that a dirty little kid had crashed into him with all the grace of a hammer.

"I'm sorry…" he said, but he couldn't say anything else, his lip hurt too much. More than ever now, the man had some kind of metal thing strapped to his back. That had been rather painful to walk into.

He cracked a smile that was both reassuring and amiable. "Poor guy. It's nothing for me, but you look like someone really did a number on you."

David just nodded. More than one someone had done just that. He thought of Jacob and wondered how everyone was, whether the city had somehow gone back to normal after he'd fallen. That would make it worth it, even if he never made it back home.

"Kid? Somethin' wrong?" The man crouched next to him. "You look like you've gone off somewhere without walking."

"I'm fine." David didn't know why he was saying that, but it wasn't too hard to figure out. The vertical city had somehow turned to paper and he'd fallen all the way through it into a place he would have never even dreamed about. "Except…I need to clean up…"

"No problem." With an almost silent whoosh, the man stood up and helped David to his feet. "My name is Derek, by the way."

"I'm-I'm David…"

"Alright then, David. We're too far away from town to really get you what you need, but there's still the blessings of nature." It was evident that Derek was joking about nature having blessings, because he laughed after he said that, and ruffled David's hair. "We'll go over by the stream and I'll make a fire."

David ducked away from the hair-ruffling. "Why?"

"Oh, so we can boil water to clean your face with."

He nodded silently and concentrated on keeping up with Derek and his comparatively long legs. They stopped at the stream and Derek said to sit down. Then he started whistling while he set his pack on the ground and took out a box and a bundle of sticks.

David watched him for a while, then asked, "…how bad is it?"

"What, your face?" Derrek untied the stick bundle and dumped them on the ground, then arranged them carefully. "It's not that bad. Just a little fussed around." He pointed to the stream. "Take a look, judge it yourself. It's highly likely that I'm more used to that type of thing than you are, so I'm pretty sure I'm not a good person to ask."

As much as he would have liked to ask what Derek meant by that, David figured that sizing up the damage he'd sustained from the fight was a little more important than curiosity. He turned around and crawled over to look at his reflection in the clear water of the stream.

It was even worse than he'd thought. His lip had already begun to scab, which he knew was a good thing, but it wasn't that far into the process, and the blood had crusted on his chin. As if that wasn't bad enough, the parts of his face around his eye were swelling and growing up into a black eye. If his mother ever saw him look like that, she'd haul him into the bathroom and make him take a bath with meat over his eye while she covered him with antiseptic.

It wasn't very likely that Derek was the type to do anything like that. At least he hadn't said something about gathering herbs. That popped up in fantasy books all the time and had never really made sense to David. He believed in aloe and all other plants could go hang in somebody's garden.

"Right, now we've got us a fire." Derek wiped his hands on his pants and took a small pot out of his pack. It looked like it was made of the same metal as the flat frying pan David's mother kept for making tortillas and grilled cheese. "Lemme just get the rest of this set up."

David moved to one side so that Derek could get to the stream and fill the pot with water. It was interesting to see this odd person who resembled Robin Hood in the strangest way. The padding and the headband ruined the image, as did the lack of bow and the shield with a big crack in the middle. He pointed to it and asked in a surprisingly roughed-up voice, "Why do you have that? The shield."

At first he thought he had treaded onto an uneasy subject, but then Derek brought back the water and smiled. "It's my ticket to adventure. An old soldier gave it to me and asked me to take it to a blacksmith in Torrance."

That sounded like the name of a city in California. David scratched his slightly aching head and tried to make that fit in his mindset. It didn't really work much as well as imagining Derek as a younger, not British Robin Hood. Thinking of which, he also didn't have a beard, or a funny hat with a merry feather. And Will Scarlet was nowhere to be found. David couldn't decide if that was a good thing or not, but it probably was, since his mind was battling itself plenty already.

Something wet prodded him in the shoulder and he nearly jumped out of his skin. "What?!"

"The water's good an' hot. Go ahead and clean your face up." Derek took David's wrist and put a damp rag in his hand, then moved back to tend the fire. It didn't put up much of an impression in the midday sunlight and noise of daytime, but it was apparently trying its best. While David set to wiping off the dried blood and dirt, Derek poked the fire with a stick. He got bored with that rather quickly, and started fussing with the (probably) leather strap crossing his chest from his right shoulder to his hip. After a moment of what David was certain were muttered curses, Derek managed to loose the shield from his back. It hit the grass with a heavy thud.

He twisted around to pick it up, then righted himself. "So… I don't know what you'll do if I ask, but—my curiosity'll get the better of me sooner or later, so I might as well get it over with now. Why were you wandering about like a lost pup?" He crossed his legs and propped the shield up against his knees.

David wasn't sure if he could even begin to answer. It wasn't very likely that… that just about anybody would believe how he'd gotten to the forest. He didn't believe it himself. He also didn't want to think about it. Thinking about it made him go back to worrying about everyone he'd left behind, no matter how much of an accident it was. He hung his head and sniffed. Water must have gotten up his nose, it was irritating his eyes, too.

"I take it I should not have brought it up…" Derek pulled the shield up closer to himself and focused his eyes on it. "Never mind me, I'm as much a busybody as a bored housewife."

David was starting to like the way this person talked. It was interesting. "That's okay." He crawled closer to the fire so he wouldn't feel so far away from everything. Closer also meant that he could see the shield better.

It was bigger than what he would have expected, but he was used to cartoons and book illustrations. There wasn't a picture of anything on it, no lions or griffons with vicious sharp bits and fire drawn randomly around them. Just a lot of dents and the big crack down the middle. He wondered what could have caused all of that damage to such a tough-looking hunk of metal.

Derek pulled another rag from somewhere and started shining the shield with a fond look of affection on his face. "It's ridiculously dinged up, but I like it anyway."

"Looks like it." David put his arms back and made himself comfortable. "It's kind of plain, though."

"That's why I like it so much."

"…That doesn't make any sense."

"Nonsense. It makes perfect sense."

As far as David was concerned, the only thing making any sense was his own rumbling stomach. It had been a few hours since lunch, and there was no telling how much time had passed since he'd fallen down here.

Falling, things making sense, a shield that put him in mind of an enormous and abused toaster… They felt like puzzle pieces. He didn't know if he wanted to put them together, but it seemed worth a shot. Puzzles were so hard to finish without knowing what the picture was beforehand, though. It was a funny thought, comparing all of this to something he did on rainy days.

Unfortunately, he'd always been incredibly bad at putting puzzles together. None of the pieces ever seemed to fit where he thought they should. Loren always had to help him.

But Loren wasn't there. Neither was their dad, who was best with puzzles. But there were times that pieces went missing, under the table or 'fallen' into Loren's pocket. Those were the times when David was the best person to have around. "Derek, is there magic here?"

Derek looked up from the shield and stared blankly at him. "Magic?"

Apparently that had been the wrong piece to look for. David would have liked to just drop it, but that would be rude. "So that's a no."

Setting the shield aside, Derek shook his head. "Hold on, I never said that. I just wasn't sure I heard you right."

Hope renewed, but it was just a spark, nothing like the fire that Derek was getting ready to douse with the rest of the water in the pot. David watched the flames go out. "I wanted to know if there's such a thing as magic in this—I mean, here."

"Well…"

This stringing along was something that, in David's experience with adults, meant that a ready lie wasn't coming to mind with enough ease. He frowned. "If there isn't, just say so. I'm kind of in a hurry." There. He could lie just as well as any old grownup.

Derek rolled his eyes. "For some reason, I find that hard to believe."

"Believe it, buster."

"…Buster?"

That was not the first puzzle piece that pointed to the possibility that David had fallen into a fantasy comic book, but it was a pretty weak one. "Never mind. Just hurry up and tell me if there's magic or not."

He still had to wait through an uncomfortable sigh and the classic scratching of the head, but then he finally got an answer. Sort of. "I… That is to say… You might—well, you see, I don't actually know. For certain."

David glared. "It does or it doesn't. Which one." This was a fairly vital thing to know, he'd decided. For one thing, it would probably help him to figure out what direction he should go in next. It didn't look like Derek was going to be much help if all he did was talk and worry about the stupid shield.

"As I said, I don't know."

"How can you not know? You live here!"

Derek held up a pointing finger, directed at the sky. "That isn't the case, pup."

"I'm not a dog!"

"Then stop acting like one."

"Argh. You can't help me." David clambered to his feet… and fell back onto his rear, but then he got up again, more carefully this time. Once he was sure he wouldn't hit the ground again, he headed off in a direction that looked to be relatively clear of trees. They weren't too bad during the day, but when night hit him, they'd be too scary to deal with on top of everything else.

Unfortunately for him, he didn't even get that far. Derek must have been pretty fast, because he managed to chase David down and grab his arm. "This is a dangerous place to run around in by yourself. And I doubt you know your way through to safer places." He let go. "…If it'll keep you from sprintin' off, I promise I'll help you in whatever way I can."

David mulled that over, wishing he had some gum to chew and help him think. That was a big promise, and when grownups made big promises, sometimes things happened to force them to break those promises. David understood that kind of thing, it had happened to him, but understanding it didn't mean he didn't mind being disappointed when it happened.

But if nothing else, Derek deserved a chance. Even if he didn't, David couldn't see that he had many other options left open for him. There weren't any other people around, and he could see that the sun was already disappearing. "What if you can't keep your promise?"

"Look, do you want me to swear on my daughter's head that I'll help you?" Derek pushed his hair out of his face and tightened the knot keeping the bandana on his head.

"No… Wait, swear on—you have a daughter?" If he was a father, then it was very irresponsible of him to be out here in a place that was probably very dangerous. David thought of the dead animal he'd seen when he'd first… arrived in the forest.

Derek got a goony smile on his face. It was recognizable as the one that belonged to a brand new dad. He wasn't any good at it yet, in David's opinion, putting himself at risk. "Not yet, but soon. That's why I'm taking the shield to a blacksmith. He'll only deal in trade, but there's an arms dealer back home what's lookin' for a black iron sword."

"Oh." Swords to go along with the shields, that had to mean something. Magic was still an open question, but David could worry about that later. These were something to work with, although they weren't really much. He started walking back to where Derek had left all of his things, by the charred sticks. Thinking of the what Derek had said about danger, and the obvious effect it had had on the animal, he wanted to know just what he'd stepped in. And if he would ever be able to scrape it off of his shoe. "I saw an animal back there," he pointed, "somebody with a lot of spears killed it."

"Did you now? I wouldn't worry about that too much," Derek said, nonchalant as a cat. "There are hunting parties around here fairly regular. They keep to their own, you won't even see them. "

But they did leave a kill to rot in the sun… They hadn't even stopped to skin the thing or cut off any meat. That was not something that hunters did, even David knew that. The animal had just been lying there, dead as a crunchy leaf. He decided to try another line of questioning, to see if he could approach it from a different side. "If I told you what it looked like, could you tell me what it was?"

Derek paused in the middle of strapping the shield to his back. He pulled his bottom lip into his mouth and bit it, looking completely ridiculous. "Possibly. I don't see why we can't have a go at it, at least."

Although that wasn't the encouraging reply David might have hoped for, it was good enough for the time being. He closed his eyes and drew up the mental image out of his memory, like taking a folder out of a filing cabinet. "It was really big, like a—" He'd been about to say 'baby elephant', but he wasn't sure that there were any elephants here. Probably not, if there was only forest for more than miles. And he didn't think that they'd have animal picture books here, either. "Like a… It was laying on its side and it was still taller than me . And as wide as…" Using himself as a measurement must have been acceptable and sufficient, Derek was paying attention in a respectful way that made David want to be nice to him. "As wide as four of me."

"There are a few things here like that…" Derek rubbed his chin and frowning off into space. "Was it furred, or scaly like a lizard?"

"Furry."

"Did it have tusks?"

David thought about that. There had been quite a few pointy things sticking out of the animal's body, he hadn't stopped to see if any of them were natural. "I don't know… Maybe."

"Maybe?" Derek laughed. "That's sounds a bit like an answer I had for you a few moments ago."

I'd just fallen out of the sky, smarty pants. I wasn't exactly ready to make a National Geographic exploration tour! David took in a shallow breath and let it go just as quickly. "It's hard to pay close attention when you're covered in blood, snot, and vomit." The last was a bit of an exaggeration, he hadn't gotten any vomit on him, but that was against the point.

Derek's amused expression turned sympathetic, pitying even. "I'm sorry, pup—I mean, David." He was quiet for a second, then he reached into his pack and took out a square of folded brown cloth. "Here, you can change into this. Your shirt is rather… in disrepair."

David took that to mean that he needed to change as soon as possible. He accepted the offered clothing, flashing a very grateful and polite smile, to keep his mother in mind, then quickly exchanged it with the poor battered shirt he would never want to wear again.

The thing he was wearing now was a tunic like Derek's, probably a spare, and it was more than a little oversized. But that actually made it more comfortable, he liked it. Sort of like wearing a nightshirt in the middle of the day, or getting to stay in his pajamas even when he had to go to school. His breathing got a little shaky then. Mom had let him do that a lot, she thought it was fun to see the looks on his teachers faces every time he did it, so she walked to school with him. They always had good long talks on the way, too.

"You've gone off again… Would it bring you back here if I tell you what I think your dead animal is?" Derek was holding his pack in his lap and looking worried. "It could be a boar," he said, sounding hopeful, as if he really wanted his answer to be the right one.

But… a boar. David knew what boars were, those had been in his animal picture books just like the elephants. Boars weren't supposed to be that big, not even in video games. Unless they were monsters in a video game, but if that was the case, they'd be called something else.

When David didn't answer, Derek kept talking. "That's the best hunting to be found here, a full grown boar, it must have been scary for you to see a picked-at corpse like that. It's no wonder you threw up."

David shook his head. He'd thrown up because of a wild combination of things, the most of which had to do with his fall. And Derek had made the wrong assumption. "It wasn't picked at," he said, "it was just dead, with spears sticking out."

Derek snapped to attention, as if he had turned into one of those slap-on bracelets Paige liked to wear. "What color was its blood?" His voice was like a razor, thin and sharp, but calm.

It was scarier than that thought of a half-eaten giant boar. David frowned. "It was dark, almost black…"

"The color of ink?"

That sounded more like a song title than something that blood might look like, but he was pretty sure that it was an accurate description. Or close enough. He nodded.

"Where did you find this thing?" Now that Derek's attitude had changed, he resembled Robin Hood much more closely, even though his lack of beard still got in the way. He tied his pack to his back, over the shield, and stood in a defensive stance that was just short of being a pose, to David's eyes.

David looked around, trying to figure out where he'd been. Maybe it hadn't been such a good idea to wander around while he'd been dizzy… There really wasn't any way to tell where he'd actually come from, except to say that he'd never woken up that day. He pinched his neck, and sure enough, he winced. If cultural literacy was worth anything, that meant he wasn't dreaming all of this. "I was kind of out of it when I was walking away…" It sounded lame, especially to his own ears. "Is it important?" The only thing he could think of that might make the area around the dead thing significant was the fact that he'd fallen there. It was possible that it worked backwards.

But that thought didn't last long, Derek just snuffed it out with a handful of words. "If you can't find your way back, then we'll just worry about that later." He scowled around the forest, then turned back to David. "As long as you didn't eat anything from there—did you?"

"Of course not! I threw up," David said indignantly. The mention of eating reminded him how long it had been since he'd had lunch, but he was too proud to ask for something. Besides, this didn't seem to be the right time.

"Good. Look, I know I'm a complete stranger and you've every right to refuse outright…" Derek sighed. "That boar was poisoned somehow. Black blood, hunters abandoning their spears in it—there's no other explanation."

"Poisoned?" That did explain the inky blood, but David couldn't see why Derek had gotten so worked up about it. Or why he'd started worrying about the water and something David might have eaten. Water wasn't poisonous, and most animals were smart enough to stay away from food that was poisonous, that was how Dad had taught him to stay away from things. If the birds wouldn't eat something, it was something to avoid.

Derek nodded distractedly, bouncing on the balls of his feet and generally looking nervous. "Yes. That's why I must ask you to come with me to see my wife. She…deals with this sort of thing."

The first thing that David considered doing was to ask what exactly 'this sort of thing' was, and how Derek's wife dealt with it. The second thing he considered was just spilling out everything that had happened to him so he could get it out and ask for help. Instead of doing any of that, he scratched a bug bite on his wrist and pretended he'd been thinking about what Derek had requested. "Is she far away?"

Some of the anxiety faded from Derek's face, replaced by something sad. "A day's journey, at least, unless you know of something faster than walking."

It was hard to repress the urge to make a joke about bicycles. David shook his head. Then he smiled inwardly, here was an opportunity to finally get his question answered. "What about magic?"

"Sneak of a pup," Derek said, through a rueful smile. "You win. There… there is a kind of magic available to me, but you can't be a party to it."

David's new surge of victory ebbed immediately. "Why not?"

All he got was the classic response: "Because I said so."

He turned around and grumped at the stream, feeling more than a little aggravated. "Fine." At least he was getting help, and he had gotten his puzzle piece. It wasn't the right color, but the shape fit. The analogy was starting to be stretched and nothing but an unfunny joke. Sighing, David looked over his shoulder enough to see that Derek was too far away to hear, and was standing in such a way that nothing he did was really visible, even if David had turned around completely.

Bored with being annoyed, David stepped over to the stream, until he was close enough to sit down and watch the water moving with itself. He wondered if it was warmer than the air above it, or cooler. Even when he'd lived on the bottom, he'd never seen…well, wild water. The campgrounds his dad had taken him to were landlocked.

Something small and dark swam around in it, not quite the shape of a fish. And fish were one of the things this place couldn't beat the vertical city in. In the Echo building, there were three floors dedicated to aquariums. Whatever type this one was, it had to be either too tame to make it into an aquarium, or it was something that didn't exist in the world David had come from.

A childish desire to stick his hands in the water almost made its way into his fingers, but he caught himself before he jumped up and fell in. Derek had seemed to think something was wrong with the water.

A wave of it splashed out at him, knocking him onto his backside. A girl with dripping, knotted hair the color of pickled seaweed, had shot out of the water, so fast that he hadn't seen the little fish swim away. This girl was definitely enough to scare away anything, especially a little defenseless fish. Her face looked like someone had take a perfectly round sphere and pinched and pulled the bottom down to form a chin, then scratched in the eyes and rest with a very angry X-acto knife. It must have been particularly angry with her eyes, they looked so deepset in her head…

She folded her arms on the bank, then waved one long-fingered hand at him, sending another spray of water to slap his cheek. "Don't gawk at me, bleeder, I might become upset with you."

David stared long and hard, more to annoy her than for any other reason. Her face and general body shape—from what he could see of it, anyway—were the only things that could make her seem human. The rest made him believe more than ever that he'd died in the fall and had just missed the memo telling him so. The girl, or whatever she was really called, was too skinny and too thin, and even a little green… more like a plant than a person.

"Are you deaf, pretty young bleeder?" She pushed herself up from the bank stayed that way, just holding herself up with her arms. In the process, some of her wet hair moved out of her face. David realized that her eyes weren't set that far back, she just had very deep bags under them. As if she'd never slept, ever.

Everything after the fall had seemed completely unreal, so he made up his mind to treat it as such. "I'm not deaf," he said calmly, silently adding and I'm not pretty either. Most of what he'd seen could be explained away as being related to things he'd read about or seen in movies, but not her. He was going to ask her what she was, but then she relaxed her arms a fraction—and pushed herself right back into the water.

There was no splash, it was as if the water had been in a hurry to cover up the fact that she'd appeared. If she had been there at all. David was beginning to wonder. This place didn't seem to have any rules, beyond a few of the basics. At least his head wasn't hurting as much, and it looked like he'd heal up alright. He still wondered about that plantwaterwhatever girl, though.

He shrugged and turned around to see if Derek was done, and nearly whack the man in the stomach. Armed with his new approach at this world, David felt confident enough to just laugh. "Sorry. I didn't hear you come up behind me."

Derek raised and dropped his eyebrows in quick succession. "Apparently so. What were you doing?" He indicated David's wet tunic-front.

For a second, he almost decided not to tell, but then he remembered that Derek had promised to help him. And the boar he'd seen had been an important thing to share, so maybe the water girl's appearance was important information too. "There was a little dark thing in the water, but then this girl came out and splashed me."

Derek raised his eyebrows again. "A girl?"

"Yeah, but she wasn't really like a girl, her fingers were too long and creepy, sort of like a shredded rubber band—"

"Whoa, whoa, hold on a moment…" Derek held his hands up and waved them a little, shaking his head slightly. "You saw a girl come out of the stream? It isn't near deep enough for anyone to—" He let his arms drop and closed his eyes, then made the kind of face that David's mom made when David did something he really wasn't supposed to do. Derek's eyes were shut tight enough to make tiny little wrinkles show up around his eyes, and he was almost-but-not-quite pressing his lips together while his eyebrows tilted to try and meet each other.

"Am I in trouble?"

Derek dropped out of his 'perturbed mom' expression and looked surprised. "What?" Then he forced a laugh and shook his head. "No, of course you aren't in trouble." He mumbled something, but before David could call him on it, he started talking at a normal volume again. "You just found a water spider, that's all."

"A water spider?!" David squeaked. Unreal or not, that was just… more than ridiculous, it was just plain stupid. "Weren't you listening, I said it was a girl—!"

But he might as well have smiled and nodded like a good little mommy's boy. Derek smiled at him as if David was the one mixing things up. "No, she was a water spider. Don't worry, they're mostly harmless."

"Mostly?"

"Come along, we still have the better part of the day to spend walking."

About an hour after the sun had gone down, David was still mad. He'd gotten past the stomping and glaring phase pretty quickly, and then become very bored with the sulking silent treatment. He was still mad, but he was actually talking to Derek, asking questions and getting something sort of like answers. This imaginary quasi-Robin-Hood man was clever. Maybe too clever.

For one thing, David had noticed that when he got brave enough to try to sneak in a question that would explain the 'water spider' incident, Derek evaded it without even seeming to notice. "Are we gonna have to sleep out here?"

"Of course not." In all the time they'd been walking, everything had seemed to be the same. The stream to their left continued on without getting wider or narrower, and the forest never cut in front of them. It was like almost like… walking through a hallway.

A hallway with wind that was blowing colder now that the sun was gone. David forgot what the answer to his question had been, but it didn't matter too much. Even if they did have to sleep out in the open, or under a tree, or in a tent if Derek had one—there wasn't anything that David could do about it. He wanted his bed and a thick blanket. His borrowed tunic was warm, but it left his arms free to deal with the cold on their own. And board shorts were for the beach, not nighttime strolls through a forest.

He looked over at the water again. So far Derek had dodged tricky questions, but what about a painfully direct one? Like the kind Paige often asked. "Hey, before…" No, he was doing this wrong. He had to think like Paige… What he wanted to know was simple and more important than anything else, he would repeat it until it got answered, and the more he had to ask, the whinier his voice would get.

Maybe he would leave that last part to Paige's expertise. He could do simple and repetitive, though. "What is a water spider?"

Derek let out a sigh and stopped walking. The only other sign that he had heard David was an uncomfortable hitch in his breathing. It sounded like a series of half words. Then he cut that off with a real sentence, "They are not malicious creatures…"

A promising beginning. David hoped it wouldn't be like his dad's stories that always started with, 'there was this one time when I was in the army' and ended with David just falling asleep. He figured that unlike his dad's stories, if he said something before Derek was done, Derek would find some way to drop the subject completely.

Apparently Derek was aware of that as well, he even had the courtesy to look annoyed at himself for it. "Water spiders are what their names say they are, spiders that live in the water."

"And turn into girls."

Oops. David nearly covered his mouth with both hands, but he reminded himself that he was not a little kid. It was hard to remember when he had just messed up like that. After all those lectures about not interrupting people.

The sound of Derek laughing nearly made David forget the lectures about not leaving his mouth hanging open. "Too true, pup—er, David. They take the form of young girls." He stuffed his hands into slits in his tunic that must have been pockets. "More for their own amusement than any other reason, it seems."

Taking that into account, water spiders sounded more like something out of a fairy tale. That made the green girl fit with the other things better. David wondered if he was supposed to be comforted by that. …it was probably better not to dwell on that too much. "Are they dangerous? I mean for serious."

"What?"

Another blatant reminder that he was very far away from Loren and Jacob, and everyone else. David forced himself to hold his head up so he wouldn't treat himself to another viewing session with the ground. "I just want to know if water spiders are dangerous or not. Sometimes it's hard to believe you, and I'm not…" He swallowed. "I'm not from around here."

"Ah. Of course." Derek took his hands out of his pockets and smiled, looking tired and almost as if he understood. "Unfortunately, I am the second best person to ask about Tilcaty fauna as well as flora." Then he took on a jokingly stern look and wagged a finger at David. "My wife is the absolute best person to go to, and she'll tell me off proper when she finds out that I didn't just knock you out and dragged you to the nearest grandmother."

"Why would you do that?"

"It's what we do with lost children in Tilcaty."

That was the second time he'd said that word, and David was pretty sure he was referring to a place larger than the forest. Maybe it included the forest as part of that place. The wind grew stronger, reminding him of just how what poor protection from the cold there was to be had from shorts. He started walking again, wondering for the umpteenth time if they would have to sleep outside.

"Hold," Derek called after him. "This is as good a place as any to wait." And then he just sat down on the grass, as if he were waiting for a bus.

David wondered if that was what he was doing. Not exactly, but in a way that worked in Tilcaty. "Okay." If that was how it was, then he would just have to go along with it. He sat down and pulled his knees up to his chest so he could rest his head without laying down. "Will it take long?"

"It might, I'm not sure how fast the midwife'll let her go."

That was too long a string of new hard-to-understand things for David to take in without a problem. He looked up.

The shield was lying on the ground next to Derek as if he'd forgotten it… or wanted to forget it. His pack was lying on top of it, covering some of its hard-bitten surface, but it was way too big to cover with a the predecessor of a school backpack. "She isn't supposed to leave the village, but I know she will." He closed his eyes and made the Mad Mom Face again. David was more than a little relieved that this face was not intended for him. "Senna's too pigheaded for her own good."

If the Senna that Derek was talking about was his wife, then David could understand why he was so upset. At least he thought he could. It was too dark and cold and late at night to be sure. He yawned. "I bet you like that about her, though."

He'd caught Derek by surprise. "Uh! Yes, but that's no reason for her to—!" Derek sputtered at the grass hugging his boots until he finally stopped trying to talk. Then he just looked very sad and frustrated.

There was a long period of silence, so long that David almost fell asleep. Oddly enough, he was the one who ended the silence. "My mom is like that sometimes. You shouldn't have a fight with her about it, she'll just win and make you feel stupid." All moms were good at doing that. It was like a law of physics. That law applied where David had come from, and he felt that it would be safe to assume it was just as true in Tilcaty.

It must have been, because Derek didn't answer it. He went on and made up his own conversation. "That water spider of yours was a young one. She must have been lookin' for a friend."

David rolled his eyes. If he heard any cracks about young love, he'd jump in the stream and catch a nasty cold. "Why? Do they do that?" Sounded like the Roo-soaky, that undead lady water spirit that killed guys that had the nerve to think she was pretty. Or however that worked. David hadn't been paying attention to whoever had told him whenever they'd told him.

"They might. You should ask her."

Just considering bringing back the water spider for any reason made David want to stick his head in a tree. Being called 'pretty' by anyone was not on his list of good things. "I could ask Senna."

Derek sent him a cautious glare. "You'd best watch your tongue. My wife is the most skilled hedgewitch in the territory, and she'll have your fingers for sausages if you toe off the line with her." He reached into the pack and took out a sleeping roll.

That pack must have been the pack of ages or something—David could just imagine finding out that he was right—because every time something came out of it, it didn't seem to get any smaller or flatter. It just looked the same. There shouldn't have been more than some food, a change of clothes, and some random odds and ends. The sleeping roll was bigger than the pack.

It got even bigger when Derek set it out on the grass. "Looks like we are going to have to sleep outside," he said, before moving back to a place for himself. "But it won't be long." In spite of the tired look on the rest of his face, he grinned cheerfully. Maybe he'd resigned himself to the fact that moms could do anything they wanted, especially when the dads said they shouldn't. Even future moms.

Resigned himself to, not made himself be about. Derek laid down on his side without even taking the shield off his back. He even grumped at his arms while he tossed and turned seventeen times. David tried not to laugh.

When the tossing and turning had stopped, there wasn't anything left to laugh at, so he had to try to make things up. If he wasn't laughing or trying not to, then he'd have to pay attention to the darkness and the cold, and the suddenly frightening sound of what he thought were crickets. It didn't help that those were all completely foreign in the vertical city. He flopped onto the sleeping roll, flat on his back so he could focus on the sky.

Then he smiled. All of the stars were the same. The constellations weren't in the same places he was used to them being, but he still recognized every one that he saw. "Thank you, Dad…" he whispered. David's annual early birthday present had been a new telescope to replace the one that Loren had knocked over the edge of the deck. To make up for it, Loren had wrangled Dad into spending an entire night up showing them both things in the sky, and they'd even made up some of their own constellations.

David pointed them out to himself, so he could tell the stories to the crickets and maybe get them to sleep so they'd stop scaring him. "That's the Dancer. A famous female astronomer named Artemis Leroy discovered it when there were only the Alpha, Beta, and Charlie towers in the vertical cities." In addition to being famous, Miss Leroy had been in the possession of a very peculiar sense of humor. When Dad had drawn out a kiddie star chart to explain the name of the constellation, it had looked like a breakdancer in the middle of a performance.

'See, boys?' Dad had said. 'Our Miss Leroy came from a city on the bottom, just like us. Can you imagine anyone up here knowing how to breakdance?"

The next morning, Loren immediately set to teaching himself how to do just that. He didn't like things to be missing, not one bit. Sometimes he even complained about the vertical city, something David could never bring himself to do. It was home.

He reached up to pinch his left shoulder with his right hand. No crying, David! "And over there is Point-the-Way. It's my favorite, because it doesn't really point anywhere as far as anyone knows." That had been his plan. To grow up, get some friends together, and follow Point-the-Way until they found something. It didn't really matter what they found, he just wanted to go.

"Well, you got what you wanted, jerkface," he told himself bitterly. He'd gone. And if he was reading the sky right, which he knew he was, then they'd been traveling in the right direction the entire day. Old Point-the-Way was doing just that. One of the smaller hitches was that David had been planning on considering to maybe think about letting Paige tag along. And she was stuck back in the vertical city, wherever it was now.

If it was anywhere. David sat up and looked over at Derek. The grownup was facing away from David, hunched up with his shoulders still angry, even though he was definitely asleep. Secure in the knowledge that no one was looking, David hugged his knees to his chest and cried into his knees.

Something dripped onto his neck and he snapped his head back up. "Wghuh?!"

"How articulate you are, little bleeder." Her voice was a soft and rather scratchy whisper, but David recognized it anyway. Even if he hadn't, the water spider's face was a sight he wouldn't be able to erase from his memory with a rum jug full of acid.

The question of whether she had a mermaid tail or legs was answered, although he would have preferred the tail. It would have prevented her from kneeling next to him and tilting her head to an extreme degree, so she could poke him with her gaze.

"Go away," he growled. Being caught crying was bad enough, but when the person who'd caught him was somebody who'd already made it onto his 'I really don't like you' list… Double ouch.

Oddly enough, she didn't mention the fact that his cheeks were wet. And itchy. He wiped his face and scratched a little. The water spirit sat up straight and held her head up properly. "You're rather a far way from the one who sent you here," she said, still rasping. She sounded out of breath.

David hugged himself tighter. If he ignored her, maybe she would go away. Or maybe she'd keep talking and give him a puzzle piece. From what she'd just said, it was possible that she was giving up a pretty big one.

She stretched herself out to lounge on her side, barely bending the grass around her. The wind had died down so much that her hair was barely getting blown about. Being a soaking wet mess of knots did a lot to try and keep it perfectly motionless. "I know who she is, but it seems you don't, or you wouldn't be going that way." She pointed. "That way lies danger for you, little bleeder."

Ignoring her was not working out the way he wanted. Time for a different approach. He looked her right in her… completely black eyes… then shuddered and lost his nerve. It was like looking at black glass, but with only half as much light being bounced back. The only thing he could manage to say was, "Stop calling me that."

Her laugh was actually not as scary as he would have thought. It was a little too human, but that shouldn't have been creepy. It just didn't match. At all. "Then I'll call you Beloved, if you like."

He stuck his tongue out and gagged. "My name is David—"

"That is a long enough name," she pressed down on the grass next to her elbow with her other hand. "If I allow you to continue with your self introduction, it will take me as long to address you as it will take you to address me."

The only part of that that David managed to do anything with was the part about addressing her. It was obvious that she was planning on sticking around, and he didn't know her name. He decided to play along with the way she was talking, just for fun. "As long as we're on the subject, miss, how shall I address you?"

"I am Ehhulad G—"

Suddenly the wind picked up, and the water spider let out a shrill cry. Without stopping to think, David shot forward and grabbed her by the wrist. She twisted her hand so she could hold onto his wrist in turn; her fingers wrapped so tight around it that he could feel spindly bruises forming.

The wind wasn't strong, but it pulled her right off the ground, into the air like a piece of… paper. David felt his heart squeeze itself into a little niche between his neck and his shoulder. He nearly fell on his face as he snatched at Ehhulad's other wrist, but he kept his hold and managed to make it more secure. Both of her wrists were safe in his hands, and he was keeping them that way, even though he was using his elbows to push himself up, which was awkward and hard.

"Don't let go!" It was a squeak, like the soles of sneakers sliding on a tile floor. A desperately scared pair of sneakers. The sharp pain in David's chest got more distinct when he realized that he was the one who had squeaked.

Weather had never ever made sense to him, and there would probably never be anything in Tilcaty that made sense to anyone—if they would only admit it—but even though it didn't make sense, he was glad that the wind changed and let Ehhulad fall back to the ground. Actually, she fell on David, but that was perfectly fine.

Her face wasn't as scary close up, but it was still disturbing and harshly supernatural. As was the fact that even though she was laying on top of him, he felt very little pressure. She weighed hardly anything. "No wonder the wind almost took you away…"

The only response she offered was a haughty look that still managed to contain some kind of apology. "Thank you, bl—David," she whispered.

"See, pup, I told you she only wanted to be your friend."

David nearly dropped out of his own skin. It occurred to him, now that Derek was standing and grinning down at them both, that this was one of the moments in David's life that would stand out as being utterly embarrassing. His face set fire and it was all he could do to keep himself from pushing Ehhulad away. There was still plenty of wind, and he'd rather be embarrassed for the rest of forever than let someone else fall, whether she would fall up or down.

He couldn't even let go when Derek pulled them both up and wrapped a heavy-looking blanket around her shoulders. It took a nod from Ehhulad, as well as what she said afterward. "I will be fine. Your concern is noted and—"

A loud cough from Derek cut her off. "Our ride is here," he said lightly.

"What are you…?" David started to ask, but then Derek's normal person hand pointed out a dark shape a few feet away. Part of it moved. David nearly shouted in surprise—whatever he'd been expecting, it had not been a ride of any kind.

It made noise, too. "Horses?" he croaked.

Derek had put a careful arm around Ehhulad's shoulders and was holding her carefully still against the wind. She radiated annoyance, which, combined with her natural appearance, made her look like an evil ghost bent on revenge. David shivered, but he couldn't bring himself to be truly afraid. He'd saved her, after all, and he was a good person. Good people didn't save evil spirits. Besides, she was alive, a spider, not a spirit. Otherwise she wouldn't have needed him to save her at all.

"Yes, David," she said, some of the rasp had gone from her voice now that she had abandoned the whispering for an everyday tone of voice. "Horses. The fastest way to travel in Tilcaty."

He wasn't sure if he really believed that, but he had to. He nodded and hurried to take her from Derek. It made him feel better to do that, it meant that he and Ehhulad could shield each other from the furious-looking pregnant lady making her way over to them.

But the one who really needed a shield was Derek, and unfortunately for him, he'd left his on the ground where he had been sleeping. The pregnant lady—Senna, David assumed—had short black hair, darker than David's, that was so short it looked like feathers blowing around as the wind picked up again. "Derek Grupenski, you village idiot!" She paused to leap-frog her gaze from David to Ehhulad and back to her husband. "A little boy and a water spider."

The hair on the back of David's neck went up at being called a 'little boy' again, but he kept his mouth shut. To tell the truth, he was thinking about what Derek had said about Senna cooking his fingers, except that now he believed it. "H-hello, ma'am," he chirped, not meaning to be half as squeaky and nervous as he sounded. …Forget half, he hadn't meant to sound like that at all.

If Ehhulad's black eyes had caught him off guard, then Senna's did the opposite. They were the exact shade of soft green he would have expected. Her eyes had to be soft, or Derek would have been too scared to even date her. Not because Senna was really all that frightening, but because Derek was obviously a big old wimp. He wasn't doing much to help change that opinion of himself while he was standing there stuttering at his wife and rubbing the back of his neck.

"Swear on the land Senna, it was just the one when I called you!"

She put her hands on her hips, with a bit of trouble, and rolled her eyes, even though it was barely visible. The only light other than the moon and stars was the orange glow of a lantern hanging from a pole fixed to the wagon. "Even so," she said, her voice softer and less harsh. "Send them both home."

David took a few steps closer to the back of the wagon, pulling Ehhulad with him. The back of the wagon seemed the closest safe place he could reach then. The horses didn't seem very friendly, and Derek and Senna were already fighting about him, so he wasn't in a hurry to be in the physical middle as well.

"You know his situation as well as I do," Derek was saying now, so agitated that his bandana had started to slip over his eyes. He pushed it back up, only to let it slide down to dangle around his neck like a scarf.

Senna glanced hurriedly at David, then turned back on Derek and launched into a flurry of words and sounds that David couldn't begin to put together. They weren't English, but they weren't some kind of fantasy language either. He'd heard it before, on some language tapes that Loren had to listen to for one of his classes. David just couldn't remember what it was.

He put up a little mental victory flag in his head. If this unfamiliar thing wasn't completely off the wall, then maybe he wasn't as far away from home as he had been thinking he was. Warmed by that, he felt comfortable and charitable enough to turn his attention to Ehhulad and ask how she was, while the grownups argued on.

"I am well, and you have my gratitude," she said, not grudging, but proud. As if she was doing him a favor by saying thank you. "Doubtless you wish me to explain myself."

He blinked. Explain… Well, he wanted everything explained, but that probably wasn't what she was talking about. It had to be something specific. What had she been talking about before the wind had started to blow her away? That was probably what she meant. He went the safe route and nodded.

If she knew that he had forgotten, she didn't say anything about it. She just freed an arm from the blanket to poke him. "You're one of hers. Her mark is on you."

David felt goosebumps start to rise on his arms. "What are you talking about? I'm not anybody's anything!"

Ehhulad shrugged her arm back under the blanket and leaned on him casually. "It is etched on your very face. That flower is her mark. A cowslip."

Of all the familiar things David wanted to be handed back to him, that had not even been on the list. His breathing caught in his stomach and he had to cough to get it out. "Cowslip?!"

"Yes. It is a flower."

…He'd thought that it was just a stupid name. But that calmed some of the panic in his chest, enough that he didn't have to worry about embarrassing himself. "Oh. " He cleared his throat, just in case his voice was going to try to squeak again. "Then what do you mean about me being somebody's something?"

Her eyes were closed and her hair was soaking his borrowed tunic, but he was just glad that she was on the ground. He'd never liked it when people killed spiders, and she was one, wasn't she? Spiders were good. "I'm not sure I should tell you about her. She might send another wind."

"The wind wasn't—it's just wind!"

"Nothing is ever 'just' what it is," she said, her voice dropping off. Like Paige's did when she was starting to fall asleep in the middle of a movie. "You aren't. I'm not. They aren't either." She waved at Senna and Derek who seemed to have finished arguing and were coming over.

"Our sincerest apologies, children," Senna said, with a tiny dip, as opposed to a bow. "My husband and I have certain duties and rules that bind us." She gave Derek a dirty look. "Those rules make matters difficult at times."

The scent of peppermint and some kind of tea made David sneeze. It must have come from Senna, maybe something to do with her job as a hedgewitch. He smiled at the stern worried frown she sent his way. "It's kinda cold," he said sheepishly. It would have been more than a little dumb to tell her that the way she smelled had made him sneeze. It wasn't even that he was allergic, the smells had just been too strong and too sudden.

Her face softened and she lead him away from the wagon so she could loosen and pull down the back plank, sort of like a door. Whatever the argument's content, it looked like even though Senna had won—because mom's always won—no one was being sent home. David sighed. He hadn't expected to go home anyway, but this was better wasn't it? If they'd told him to go home, he wouldn't have been able to do anything but leave and figure out what to do next by himself.

Ehhulad wasn't too happy when instead of being allowed to get in the wagon on her own, Derek took her from David and swooped her up like a baby. "Know your place, cook," she sniffed, "or I shall have to bite you."

"Understood, Miss Spider," Derek chuckled. "Now, you've a choice. I can set you back in your stream or—"

"Or you can save yourself many days of trouble by not demanding information of me."

David had to laugh, and he could see Senna biting her lip and trying not to grin at the dismayed shock on her husband's face. Her hair still looked like wild feathers, but it was the soft kind that baby birds had. After she had her baby—and it looked she really only had a few days left—he wondered if her hair would grow out long enough for the baby to be able to pull on it by the time she could try.

He didn't know why he had assumed that the baby was going to be a girl, but it didn't seem too important at that time. Had Derek told that it would be? He didn't remember. Maybe he would be around to find out if they were both right. He'd never seen a baby be born.

"Huh what hey!?"

Derek had set Ehhulad in the back of the wagon and was now giving David the same treatment, although his was more like the 'sack of potatoes' treatment. "All aboard!"

He wasn't very steady where he'd been set down, so he almost fell on Ehhulad. That wasn't good, he might squish her if he was very very careful. At least he hadn't bothered her. She was sitting with her back pressed up against the wood and canvas that made up a wall for the wagon. Derek had been nice to her, she didn't even look jostled.

Inversely, David was all ruffled feathers and he even had a scraped elbow. He would have to get back at Derek for that later, somehow. One of David's greatest advantages in life was that he liked vegetables that even grownups wouldn't eat. He chuckled evilly to himself. Derek looked like the kind of person who couldn't even chew a mouthful of eggplant. It probably wouldn't be too difficult for David to gain Senna as an ally and then he could—

A thin pointy finger dug lightly into his side, jerking him out of his visions of pointless revenge. Apparently Ehhulad hadn't fallen asleep like he'd thought she had. She caught his gaze and held it; her black eyes still ate up the available light like matte lines, but they also had their own kind of light. David glanced subconsciously at the wall, but he didn't see any bouncing light coming from her eyes. "Are you brave?" she whispered.

That would require some careful thought to answer. "Why do you ask?" he'd have to stall. After all, in fantasy worlds, bravery and honor were two very important virtues. If he didn't have one, the other, or either, he would have to be honest about it. Lying about important things was never a smart course of action.

"There are many things about what might happen to you that I know, but you yourself are my mystery." She held her hand out a bit in front of her and flexed her fingers out a few times. The fifth time, a black comb just appeared in her palm, as if the flexing had been an animation with a few completely undrawn frames.

It wasn't like the black pocket combs that David was forever 'losing', it was curved, for one thing, and also much more ornate and girly. There was even a ribbon dangling from one end of it. Given Ehhulad's trend of black and drippy, it was no small surprise that the ribbon was a very bright blue and didn't look the least bit wet.

"As safe as I know I am with you," she gave him a sincere smile, making him blush, "this form gives me no comfort in such weather." The ribbon danced sleepily as she reached up to start combing her hair. "Have you a jar?"

"Uh… No."

She sighed. "Pity. I'll have to be a dog, then."

Before David could ask her what she was playing at, the comb hit the wooden planks of the wagon floor and he was alone.

Alone except for a small black terrier. David bit his tongue and tried to find Ehhulad's blanket so he could hide under it. But that wasn't an option, the dog had the blanket.

It looked like a regular old terrier with curly wiry fur, except for the fact that it should not have looked like anything because it shouldn't have been there. It sniffed David's bare arm and he nearly shrieked. Its nose was even cold and wet.

The curtain of canvas separating the back of the wagon from the driver's bench moved, and then Derek popped his head in. "Still awake back th—oh."

David swallowed a whimper. He wasn't insane, there really was a dog here. He hoped it hadn't eaten Ehhulad, he'd been on the verge of wanting to be her friend. That would be a painful death, to be eaten by a tiny little lap dog. With tiny little sharp teeth. Another whimper rolled up his throat, but this one got out.

"Poor guy. Hey, kid, that's your friend the spider. I told you she can change forms, didn't I?"

"Oh, Derek, you're so hopeless."

His head disappeared and then the canvas really started moving. There was another fast argument in the same language from before, and then they slowed down so much that they almost stopped. Senna pushed the curtain back so she could crawl over to David. She was too tall to walk in there, and it reminded him of what a small space they were in. With the scary black dog from no place.

"What's the matter, David?" she asked, sounding for all the world like David's mom. He sniffed. Being scared and missing Mom were always the right combination to make him cry and he wasn't going to. He also wasn't going to be a big baby like Paige and point at the dog with a trembling finger. …Darnit. Yes, he was, that was his finger.

Senna looked at the terrier and then back at him. "You poor thing, honey, that's just the water spider." She started to call it over, but then caught the look on David's face and got up to pet the dog instead. "See?" It didn't do any of the normal dog things, like wag its tail or loll its tongue. While Senna scratched its ears, it acted like a little kid getting attention, sitting mostly still so that the attention wouldn't go away. "This form is smaller than her human form. Her weight doesn't have to spread out as much, so this way she's heavy enough that the wind won't be a concern."

That didn't make it any less frightening, it just made it more confusing. David nodded anyway, keeping his back pressed as hard against the wall as he could. He could feel the canvas rubbing roughly into his neck, but he just let it.

"Are you afraid of dogs?"

Denial was as automatic as it always was. He shook his head violently, scraping his cheek on the wagon canvas. But it wasn't likely that Senna would believe him, what with the way that he was whimpering. Again.

She picked up the dog and put it in her lap. She wasn't petting it anymore, but she was holding it firmly, so David let himself have a few deep breaths. As long as it didn't jump up and try to lick his face, he would probably be okay. "Is it really Ehhulad i-in there?" He was still positive that the dog had eaten her.

Senna nodded. "Here, why don't you hand me that comb of hers, and I'll ask her to change again." She waited very patiently until David kicked the comb in her direction. He was so glad that she was getting rid of the dog that he didn't care when she rolled her eyes at him. "You're just like Derek and mice. Silly man can't stay in a room with even one of the things for more than three seconds." Chuckling quietly to herself, Senna ran the comb through a few patches of the dog's fur.

There should have been a poof. If there had been a poof, David would have been able to forgive this stupid world—Tilcaty—for the dog incident. But Ehhulad's reappearance was as abrupt as blinking. One second, dog, and then blink—Ehhulad. At least she looked sorry for what she'd done.

Her hair wasn't as messy as he had gotten used to it being, probably because of the comb, but her face was still striking. And the bags under her eyes looked just as permanent as ever. He wondered if they would go away if she slept for a whole year, but he doubted it. "You should have told me you were—"

"I'm not," he huffed. It had been bad enough when Paige had made fun of him for the time he'd ran away from the Auntie's Pomeranian. He'd been lucky that it had only taken her six months to forget about it, and even more lucky that he'd managed to convince her that he had a million other reasons to want to avoid the Auntie's apartment. …which he did, but the one reason was enough to make those completely unimportant. "Just stop changing like that, it's freaky."

He was almost sorry for being so harsh when Ehhulad frowned and hung her head. But then he thought of when the dog had gotten him with its nose and he shivered. No one said anything until Senna set the comb on the floor and patted a place on her other side. "David, come here. I need you to tell me some things about yourself."

"Okay…" Avoiding Ehhulad's sad hopeful look, he dragged himself to the indicated place. Then he crossed his legs and held his shoe-covered toes, putting himself on his favorite level of comfort. "What kind of things?" He doubted she wanted to know his favorite color or what grade he was in.

Sure enough, she didn't waste time with the usual dumb things grownups asked when they first met him. "Do you know how you came here?"

He bit his lip and stared at his hands, clutching his toes tighter. It hadn't seemed like a good idea to tell Derek, but Senna was different. She didn't seem as flaky, and she was also a mom. Fixing things was what moms did, so maybe she would be able to help him get home. "Not really… But I know what happened before I got here." He looked at Ehhulad. "Do you know, too?"

Before Ehhulad could do more than shake her head, Senna lifted her up and onto her own place on the floor. "I'm very sorry, Miss Ehhulad, but this is a very private discussion. Unless you want to be sent back to your stream, I'm going to have to ask you to become very interested in a good night's sleep right now."

The only answer was less than the headshake Ehhulad had given David. She wrapped the blanket tighter around herself and laid down on her side, then made a big show of going to sleep. David snickered into his hand. "Are all water spiders like her?"

Senna was smiling too. "In many ways, yes. It's a pity they don't leave their streams more often." Her smile turned a little bit sad. "But you've seen for yourself how dangerous that can be. They generally visit small villages during the summer."

So that was why the weather felt so severe. It had been the beginning of summer in the vertical city. "What season is it now?"

"You've come in time for the onset of winter." Senna put a comforting arm around his shoulders and gave him a little hug. "What happened before you found yourself here? Was it very frightening?"

He sniffed. "…yes…" It was hard just thinking about it, but he knew he'd have to tell her out loud. Even if someone had brought some paper and a pencil, his handwriting was terrible, and his spelling was almost as bad. He just hoped he wouldn't cry too much. "I fell. All the way down."

"From where?"

"The vertical city. Everything turned into paper," his shoulders shook and he had to stop and take deep breaths. "Jacob and I thought we were just stuck in the elevator, but then Paige ripped the door down." Their worried faces flashed in his memory, but he refused to hang onto them. He'd think about them when he had some time to be by himself. "I walked out to see if it was safe, and then I fell. Right through the floor, and then the next one and the next one and the next one…"

Senna started stroking his hair and it got even harder to keep the tears in. He leaned his head on her shoulder anyway. "The floors were made of paper?"

His cheeks felt wet, but with two arms holding him in place, he didn't mind anymore. "Everything was." It had even started to turn brown the longer he had fallen. "I was careful, but I fell anyway. The bee flew right in my face!" Of course, this whole thing was the bee's fault, David just had to figure out how that worked.

"It did?" The hand in his hair stopped moving, he looked up. Senna was perfectly still, staring ahead at—nothing. She was just looking intently into space. "Are there many bees in your vertical city?" The words sounded strange coming from someone who wasn't David. He liked it. It made the city sound closer to him. He smiled and relaxed in Senna's arms, pretending he was with his mom.

Oh, yeah, she'd asked about bees. "Not really, only in the parts with lots of flowers outside." That pretty much meant the Echo tower exclusively. Most of the tenants with green thumbs seemed to live there.

"Strange…"

David had to agree with that. He'd been in the wrong place to run into a bee. But that hadn't been the strangest thing that had happened to him that day—excluding everything that had happened since he'd arrived in Tilcaty. He glanced at Ehhulad. She was really sleeping now, little bubbly-sounding snores escaped her occasionally. Before the wind had threatened her life, she'd said something about a mark. On his face.

He wriggled around a little so he could touch his face. The mark that Ehhulad had said was there, a cowslip… he couldn't feel anything. "Senna?"

"Yes?"

How to say it? Or ask. He didn't know if it was information or a question. "Ehhulad said that someone put her mark on my face. What does that mean?"

Senna pushed him gently away so that he would sit up by himself and let her get a good look at him. She looked like his mom did when she was making sure he'd washed his face thoroughly enough before dinner. "It could mean any number of things. Your eye does need some ice—we'll get you some when we reach the village—but…"

Then she fell silent. It was an odd silence, not the kind that meant she'd lost track of what she'd been saying, but the kind that meant she'd shut herself up on purpose. David started to get anxious again. "What's wrong?" he asked, almost keeping the squeak out of his voice.

She shook her head slightly. "Nothing. I just…" Then she was quiet again, but only for a moment. "David, I'm going to need you to be a brave boy, can you do that?"

"I… I can try…" There was the bravery thing again, he didn't like where this was going.

"Did you talk to anyone peculiar before you fell through the paper city?"

It was impossible to turn his head away with her holding his chin like that, so he didn't try. He just looked awkwardly back at her, and the war against crying began to swirl in the pit of his stomach all over again. "The Sunhat Lady. She… um, it was… She said her name was Miss Cowslip, and she was big and wide and scary!" His voice wavered and he had to sniff. "It's her fault isn't it? What happened to everyone else?!"

Suddenly the war got easier, Senna had let his chin go and was hugging him again. He would never ever doubt the power of moms as long as he lived. "Shhh… It's alright. I'll help you get home, David, I promise."

He nodded without meaning anything by it. He'd lost the war, he could feel his shoulders shaking and his throat hurt while he tried to keep his sobs quiet. As long as Senna and her unborn baby were the only ones who ever knew that David had cried, he would be able to salvage his pride in the morning.

Bump.

Roll to one side, then roll back…

Bump, bump.

…Roll over a few times, then stop…

Bump!

"OW!" David scrambled onto all fours and moved away from the wall. He laid back down and rubbed his head. "That hurt…"

All of him hurt. His legs were covered in scrapes, his head was throbbing, and his face felt like a soggy piece of defrosted steak that someone had gone after with an ice pick. And putting it that way made it hurt even more, what a good idea. He turned off his imagination muscles and tried to go back to sleep.

That wasn't going to happen as long as the bumping and rolling continued, though. They hit another big bump and he finally just grumbled and sat up, determined to spend the rest of the day grumpy. There weren't even any windows to look out of, the wagon canvas didn't have any openings at all. Ehhulad was still asleep, and she was being jostled even more than David had been putting up with.

Watching her made him feel guilty, both because he wasn't really that bothered by the jerky ride, and because he was fairly certain that he was the reason she had to deal with it. His brain was still feeling fuzzy, so he didn't dwell on what he couldn't completely remember, but he did sit down next to her so he could hold her relatively still.

He yawned until his jaw nearly popped, then glared blearily at his sneakers. They had kept his feet warm all through the night, but they weren't a blanket, the rest of him was still cold. He looked around, he was sure that Senna had tucked him in somehow last night after he'd…

Never mind that, he just wanted a blanket. There it was. He stepped on Ehhulad's blanket to hold it in place while he stretched himself out to grab the other one. "Gotcha." In a quick series of movements that he slurred into one, as well as he could, he rolled back over and wrapped the blanket tightly around himself.

It didn't get warm right away, but at least he wasn't as cold now. He smiled to himself and inched closer to Ehhulad so she wouldn't start rolling around. She was moving a little, which probably meant that she was waking up, he didn't have to worry about squishing her. He yawned again. Whatever time it was, it was way too early to get up and acknowledge the daytime.

"David."

He groaned. "David isn't here right now. Please leave a message and he'll get back to you as soon as he can." Then he promptly pulled his head into his bundle of blanket.

The cold came back when someone pulled the blanket off of him and he had to bite back a whine. It was not time to get up, it was time to hit the alarm clock and go back to sleep. He looked around blearily, trying to find the alarm clock so he could give it a good whack. "Where are you?" he mumbled.

"I'm right here, now get up. We've arrived."

His eyes snapped open, clearing away most of the bleariness. "Whuh?"

Derek was standing at the end of the wagonback, holding the back curtain of canvas to one side. The bottom plank was down and he was leaning on it. "If you want to sleep longer, you'll have to do it inside. I have to take the wagon back to the tanner."

Reluctantly, David crawled over. While he was climbing out of the wagon, he saw Ehhulad going through the motions of waking up. She was much better at it than he was. Showoff. He wanted to lean against something, but the only thing readily available was Derek and David wasn't about to lean on him.

"Where's Senna?"

Derek was busy helping Ehhulad get her own footing; he answered without looking back at David. "She went into the house to get breakfast started. You can go in and help her if you like."

Cooking was not something that David excelled at or even liked. But it didn't seem likely that he'd be able to go inside and search for a bed or a couch without getting roped into helping with breakfast, so he didn't bother arguing. "Bweh." He didn't realize that he was leading Ehhulad by her hand until they were in the house and Senna asked him where Derek was.

All David did to answer was drop Ehhulad's hand and point and mumble, Senna could figure that out. He needed to go back to sleep, his eyes weren't staying open.

"Why don't you two find somewhere to sit while the tea cools?" Senna hustled them each into surprisingly cushy armchairs. Her hands were wet, but they were still warm, and kind of soapy. She must have been doing the dishes. David wondered if she had to boil water to do that.

He curled up into a little ball, resting his head on the chair's armrest. Of course she had to boil the water, there couldn't be running water here. It was a fantasy world, it even had a ridiculous name to go with everything, and if they had running water, then they'd probably have things like antiseptic and bug spray. And that would ruin the effect for anyone who traveled there by accident on purpose. He hugged himself and snoozed, thinking of all the other things that shouldn't be in Tilcaty. Toasters, for one. Enormous boars and transforming spiders that lived in water were perfectly normal, of course, but if anyone stopped to pay attention to his sneakers, they'd have widespread panic on their hands.

Wait. Why hadn't anyone noticed his shoes? They obviously weren't part of Tilcaty norm, both Derek and Senna wore boots, and Ehhulad went around barefoot as a daisy. David covered his face with his hands and tried to go back to sleep. It was almost impossible now that he was curious about something. His shoes were still on his feet, the laws of reality—or unreality—hadn't disappeared them, and no one had taken them off to examine them. No one had even said anything.

Sighing, he got up and wandered towards the kitchen sounds, naturally assuming that an actual kitchen was the source of those sounds. Fortunately for his state of mind, he was right. Senna was putting plates and mugs on the table, all of them the same rough size and shape, except for one plate that was a little too big. That was probably Derek's plate, he was pretty chubby, now that David thought about it.

Senna smiled at him and tucked her hair behind her ears. It might have stayed if it was longer, but it wasn't, so it just went right back into her face. "You can't have gotten enough sleep yet," she said, looking worried. "Only a few hours worth, at the most."

That was easy to agree with, but David needed to ask her questions, lots of them, and he'd never get to sleep if he didn't get at least one of them answered. "How did I get here? Do you know? I told you about Miss Cowslip, who is she? What is she?"

He hadn't expected to get any answers right away, and he didn't, so he sat down in one of the worn wooden chairs and leaned his elbows on the table. Instead of trying to distract him or stall, Senna sat down across from him and tapped her fingers lightly on a plate, obviously thinking seriously about at least one of his questions.

It had been too dark last night to really look at her, but now that he could see her with regular light, he realized the Senna was very young. Much younger than his parents, maybe even younger than Derek. She was still older than Loren, she had to be. People Loren's age weren't nearly old enough to get married and have babies. Even her nose looked young, kind of pointy and too short.

"Come here, David, you need to get cleaned up before breakfast." She pushed the chair back and stood up, with some difficulty. David hurried to his feet, more to help her than to do what she'd told him. "I'll answer your questions while you wash your face."

That didn't sound like a good arrangement to him, but this was her house, so she got to call the shots. Plus, she was the one who'd made breakfast, he had to be grateful that all she was asking him to do was wash up. She could have made him set the table or wash the dishes. He followed her into a room with a basin on stand, a tub, and a water pump.

There were dozens of shelves on the wall with bottles and containers, and the whole room smelled like a botanicals shop. He sat down on a bench next to the basin stand and looked at Senna, silently asking what he was supposed to do now.

She didn't answer, apparently she thought he was big enough to figure it out for himself. He grinned, proud of giving such an impression, and took off his tunic so he wouldn't get it wet. The water was too cold, but he didn't want to look like a wimp. So he bit the insides of his cheeks and ignored it.

"I suppose it'd be best if I start by telling you what I can about this Miss Cowslip…"

He dropped the soap. It bounced off his toes and skidded away, too far to just reach for and pick up. He stared at it, willing it to become the color and shape of a brand that he recognized, not that obviously homemade brownish lump. "You know what she is?" He didn't care that his voice was too high, this was the kind of puzzle piece he really needed.

Senna walked over to the bar of soap and kicked it gently back to David. "If only I did…" While he tried to become an oozy puddle on the floor, she walked back and patted his shoulder. "I can only speculate that she would like to take credit for your… arrival here in Tilcaty. But she didn't send you here." She got a chair that was near the door and dragged it over, making loud scraping sounds. "But I think I might know how you got here."

This time there was no soap-dropping. He was in the middle of washing behind his ears—a complicated task at the best of times—and he'd used up his drama already. Feeling discouraged, he soaped up the rest of his face and then dunked his entire head in the basin.

When he came up sputtering and gasping a second later, he heard Senna laughing. He started to shake his head like a puppy, but caught himself before he could make a mess. "Towel…" he said, water dripping down his forehead and into his mouth.

One made its way into his hands and he dried his hair while Senna began talking again. "That bee you told me about… You're certain that it was in an unusual place?" She sounded all business. David wondered if he'd have to remind her about breakfast. All this washing was making him hungry.

"Yeah," he said out loud. It would be hard to do so much as describe the layout of one of the towers, let alone the setup of the entire vertical city, so he didn't try. "In that part of the city… Well, there's mostly businesses and stores and things there." And the school. What if he missed school while he was here? It had already let out before he'd left, but he didn't know quickly time passed in Tilcaty. Maybe the days were shorter. Or the weeks, or months.

A hand on his shoulder popped him out of his musings. Senna was taking the soap from him; he hadn't realized he hadn't put it down yet. "Did you hear me?"

He shook his head slowly, 'oops'ing to himself.

"That bee sent you here."

He couldn't help it, he started laughing. "How?"

She rinsed the lather off his hands and then took hold of the towel so she could start drying his hair for him, rougher than he would have done it himself. He grumbled and bounced along with the drying motions. She gave him a light whack on the back of the neck. "Sit still and I'll tell you."

What else could he do? He sat still.

"Last night I asked if you could be brave." A few more seconds of towel-rubbing, and then it stopped. "Personally, I think you're old enough to learn, if you haven't already. But more important than bravery, is discretion."

That was a word that David didn't know. It made him wish that he'd paid more attention in class. Maybe if he had, then he wouldn't feel so lost in this place. He hoped Senna wouldn't ask about his grades, he didn't want her to think he was dumb. "Okay…" he said, hoping that would pass for the right response.

The towel was handed back to him, probably so he could dry his hands and arms. By now, the legs of his shorts were pretty wet, but not so much that he would have to change. Senna made a pained noise and relaxed back in her chair. "What I mean is that I need to know you can keep secrets."

"Oh." So that was what it meant. He finished drying his arms and set the towel down next to him. "I can keep a secret. I'm good at that." He was, too. Mom and Dad still didn't know that it had been Jacob's fault that the rose vase in the living room got broken.

Senna smiled, still looking like she was hurting. "Wonderful." She winced. "Now, I—"

"Are you okay?" He got up and looked at her face very closely. The pain on her face made her look older. He didn't like it.

She closed her eyes and looked down at her belly. "No, but… it will pass. It's not time yet."

By 'time', he assumed she was talking about the baby, that was a comfort. For a moment he'd started thinking that something was really wrong, something unexpected. He'd had more than enough of that sort of thing. "What secret were you going to give me?"

It took a little more than that small verbal push to move the conversation along. First he had to help Senna up and out of the washing room, then he found her a more comfortable chair. It didn't help that she half-fought him the whole time. "I'm fine, get your hands to yourself, little man," she grumbled. Her hands were cold, so cold that when Ehhulad came to help him, the water spider's skin was warm in comparison. David sent her a quick, commiserating smile and together they managed to get the stubborn pregnant lady into the biggest armchair.

Senna glared at them from her place in the chair, looking tiny and evil. David tried not to giggle. "I hope you're happy now," she said, her glare not giving in an inch, "the speech I had prepared has leapt straight out my head."

He wasn't sure what she meant by that, but he didn't care if what she had to say was pretty, he just wanted to hear it. "Make up something new then. What's the secret?"

When she stopped to glance suspiciously at Ehhulad, he thought he was going to scream. But before he could do anything that extreme, Senna set her hands on her belly and sighed. "You're a big boy, I don't think I'll have to press the importance of this on you like a tattoo. It concerns Derek and myself."

"Is there something wrong with him?" That was terribly likely. David had been considering the possibility of Derek's not being all there since… for a while.

Senna just laughed. "Not technically, although I do understand what you mean. Unfortunately, that's one of the reasons I love him." She looked over at Ehhulad and her smile hardened. "He is not from here, you know this."

"Neither of you are." Ehhulad hugged the blanket around herself and lounged in her own chair. "And I understand that better than other creatures."

While they had a charged staring contest, David scratched his shoulder and wondered if he should remind everyone of the fact that he wasn't wearing a shirt. Maybe later. "Where are you from, then?" Not from the vertical city, he would have remembered someone who acted like Derek. The misplaced action hero of Sherwood Forest, accessories not included.

"Entirely different worlds…" Some of the pain returned to Senna's face, but this time it didn't look like physical pain. "Derek is from a place very much like Tilcaty, while I was born only a few days drive away from Tilcaty."

"Drive? Like… like in a car?" In the vertical city, cars weren't necessary, but they weren't unknown, either. People remembered them, children played with toy cars, and they were in movies. It didn't seem right to think that anyone in Tilcaty knew what a car was. David almost couldn't bring himself to say the word out loud. Ehhulad looked at him, blank-faced and confused, confirming his theory, and making him uncomfortable into the bargain.

But Senna didn't look confused, or even very surprised. "Yes, in a car. You see, Tilcaty is…" She sat up. "Ehhulad, I need you to go into the kitchen and set the food at our places. Derek will be home any moment, and I am not quite up to moving around just yet." For effect, she dug herself deeper into the chair.

The water spider rolled her dark eyes and grunted an incoherent reply, but she did get up and stomp off to the kitchen. David couldn't help noticing that she didn't succeed in making much noise, and she nearly tripped herself on the blanket trailing behind her.

After she was gone and the sounds of dishes clanking together drifted in, Senna turned back to David. "Tilcaty is a hole. Things and people fall into it regularly, and I am one of the scientists who help them to adjust to their new home."

If there had been a bar of soap to drop, or a glass, or even just something soft, David would have dropped it. Instead, he just let his mouth hang open. He stared at Senna until he couldn't anymore, and then he looked around the room, trying to find something that made sense.

There was a mixture of what he knew he was supposed to see and what he didn't think he should have. No pictures, there should always be family pictures in living rooms, flowers and clay knick-knacks—there was a basket of embroidery and knitting, baby things like bonnets and booties. He got up to sit next to the basket and pick through it. The small part of him that had grown up without permission left him to play with the yarn and needles, and talked for him. "So this is a big fat fake world then, isn't it?"

He didn't turn around to look at Senna, to see whatever she was doing. "Not fake," she sounded indignant, "just… on purpose. In technical terms, it is a bio-dome. The phenomenon of the hole was discovered decades ago, but—"

"But there was nothing here then."

"Correct."

None of the knitting needles were very sharp. They were made of wood, and had a nice smooth feel that was like its own kind of cloth. David had never understood why they were called 'needles' when they were so big. There was no danger of thumb-pricking with these things. "So scientists built a home."

"Yes, and then creatures just continued to fall here." Senna was hurting again, he could hear it in her voice. He hoped Derek would come home and take care of her soon. Or a doctor…

He unraveled a ball of yarn while winding the tail of it around his wrist. "Why is everything like fairy tales, then? Did Snow White fall in?"

Senna actually stopped being serious long enough to laugh then, and he felt some of his cloud go away. "In a way. For years, all of the creatures and plants that appeared were like Ehhulad, right out of various medieval mockery fantasies that didn't make any sense to us. We were shocked that they didn't die days after arrival. The water spiders adapted especially well, but you can certainly guess how they were able to do that." He looked up, she had gotten out of the chair to kneel on the floor beside him. "But then people started falling in, Derek is only one of many. He came from another world, not too unlike Tilcaty, and so did others like him. It became imperative to set down rules and physical laws to define the world." She tucked her hair behind her ears, then did it again when the hair escaped. "You're the first new arrival in three years. We'd thought that the hole had somehow stopped itself up, or even moved…"

"But here I am." He looked down at his yarn-wrapped hands and smiled, then giggled. So he wasn't in a fantasy world that he could escape by clicking his heels together or finding the right wizard with the right magic spell. Instead, there was science mumbo-jumbo and needles that weren't needles. "Can I go home now?"

Senna was hugging him again, and he didn't want to admit that he needed it. "Oh, David, I wish I could just say yes and send you back right this moment! But…"

"No one ever goes home, do they?" He sniffed, then decided he didn't care about crying and just let himself be held.

The arms around him tightened, "That isn't completely true. Not the ones like Derek, the ones who belong in worlds like this, but there was one other like you…" She pulled back to smile and tweak his nose. "A teenage girl with piercings and a top hat. She found a way back to where she came from."

He pushed his face into her shoulder. "But you don't know how."

At first, Senna didn't answer, which told him he was right. Then she rocked him back and forth a bit, humming softly. "…Remember the bee that you told me about? That was what we have dubbed a 'particle rip', more to make it sound trendy than any applicable reason. The younger scientists named it. Basically, when a number of coincidences all string together into a long enough chain, the one common factor they share becomes an anomaly in the time-space continuum. It got too close to you, and then you got pulled in."

When he didn't say anything for a while, she coughed into her hand and went on talking, like a university professor giving a lecture to an inattentive class. "Particle rips are virtually impossible to predict. We can't even lay down a rule of size. Even the nature of being brought to Tilcaty varies a great deal from one case to another."

It wasn't any easier to take in than when Derek had reacted to being questioned about magic. Which raised the question again... David took a very deep breath, then pushed it out slowly. "I asked Derek if there was magic here. And he started acting weird."

"That doesn't surprise me at all." Senna let him go and started to push herself back to her feet. It was obvious that she couldn't, so David helped her. "Poor Derek doesn't understand the technology that my position allows me, and neither do the regular Tilcaty citizens, so the laws we have call it magic. The cellular phone makes him extremely uncomfortable, and is a carefully guarded secret." When she was upright and standing on her own again, she smoothed out her clothes and even fluffed her hair. "The laws are one of the reasons they call me a hedgewitch. I'm a trained nurse, but only in battlefield medicine."

"You were in a war?" He tried to picture her in a GI Joe outfit, and found it surprisingly easy. With those black stripes on her cheeks and everything. The pregnant belly fit into the mental image, maybe that was an indication that her daughter was going to be strong-willed and make her presence known no matter what. Like Paige.

Senna didn't answer, but retaliated with a question of her own. "How did you get by without a shirt for so long? Heavens, I've lost my head since you've arrived." She took his wrist and dragged him over to a closet. He watched as she went through a few piles of folded things until she found a tunic. It was like the one that Derek had lent him, but nicer, and not quite as big. "Derek tried to make his own clothes once." She giggled while David put the tunic on. "As you can see, he was skilled with everything but taking measurements."

David had to laugh with her, the tunic fit really well, and he was nowhere near Derek's size. "Thank you."

"I wish I could do more for you…" She pulled on the shoulders of the tunic to fit it better, and somehow found microscopic pieces of lint to pick off. "That's why I wanted to know if you can be brave. No coward can remake their life."

He nodded, everything swimming rapidly through his brain. He'd never see his parents again. Whatever had happened in the vertical city, whatever was happening now, he wouldn't know. If the city had turned into a wadded up piece of paper, he wouldn't have any way of finding out. "Can we bring people here?"

Senna blinked and took a step back. "No, David, don't start thinking like that."

"Why not? I came here, so other people can too!"

"You're the first in three years, and besides, there's no way—"

"Breakfast is getting cold."

A small avalanche of clothes tumbled out of the closet, piling at Senna's feet. Ehhulad was holding a mug with steam climbing out of the top and staring for all her coal-black eyes were worth. She looked at Senna, one eyebrow higher than the other, then turned a worried smile on David. Her spindly fingers tightened around the mug, and then she walked carefully around the mess of clothes, so she could stand closer to David and Senna.

He let his hands hang limply at his sides and resisted the urge to look away. "Coming."

"No you aren't." She took one of his hands and put the mug in it. "Both of you, stop all this sobriety and eat before you grow ill." While David sipped the reassuringly warm contents of the mug, Ehhulad took Senna's arm and lead her away from the mess and towards the kitchen. For a moment, he wondered if he should set the mug down on the floor and put everything back in the closet, and then he just went ahead and did it. Even though he wouldn't see his mother again, he felt better showing himself that he had learned good habits from her.

After the last pair of pants was folded and put away, he picked up the mug and made his way to the kitchen, downing the rest of his drink. Everyone was sitting at the table, even Derek. How long had it taken to put everything away? He hadn't paid much attention to anything. "Good morning…"

Derek got up and helped David sit down, chattering to him about something that might have sounded interesting if David could have really listened. He just nodded and started eating the food that someone put in front of him. What was going to happen now? Was there some kind of foster home system in Tilcaty? He'd read a lot about foster care back home, and it had scared and depressed him. But things were different here, maybe he wouldn't get lost in the system. Maybe he would even get to stay with Senna and Derek.

He smiled. That would be interesting. He'd get to be a big brother to the baby, and maybe he could convince Ehhulad to stay. They could dig a pond for her if there wasn't a body of water close enough to the house.

The eggs caught in his throat and he almost choked. He couldn't just say, okay, that's fine, and pretend that letting go of his old life was okay! Even though the vertical city had turned into paper, the people hadn't, he'd seen Paige and Jacob when he'd started to fall. They'd been alive and moving, not paper at all. "I want to go home." There had to be someone to blame, some evil witch—someone painfully obvious, like the Auntie or Miss Cowslip—who'd sent him away. Maybe he was a hero and he was the only one who could save his home. How could he save his home if he was pretending to be someone else in Tilcaty?

Ehhulad's cold hand closed over his and he snapped his head up. "Calm yourself."

She was right, he needed to stop getting upset. All that did was make him tired. But what were they going to do? Tell him more things he didn't want to know and then just shrug and say they were sorry and couldn't do anything? Forget that, those weren't puzzle pieces that helped him, they were just… nothing that fit into his personal analogies. Nothing helpful.

"What's wrong with the pup?" Derek raised an eyebrow at Senna, who sighed and bit her lip.

"Leave him, Derek," she said quietly. "You remember when we met, you were fairly upset yourself then…" She went on eating, not as if nothing was wrong, but as if she wanted everything to be alright.

A knock at the door shattered the tension and nearly gave David a heart attack. His body went rigid and he started breathing funny, but he managed to calm himself down while Derek got up to answer the door. Ehhulad smiled anxiously at him, and pushed another mug of tea in his direction, while Senna did her best to convince him that he would be fine.

Then Derek came back in the room, followed by a tall wide woman wearing—a wide-brimmed hat made to keep off the sun.

David nearly fell backwards in his chair. She'd followed him. He didn't know how and he doubted Senna could explain it, but Miss Cowslip had gotten to Tilcaty. His first instinct was to jump to his feet and run as fast as he could, but the only way out of the kitchen was the doorway that Miss Cowslip was blocking. He buried his face in his mug and pretended to suddenly become very hungry. Maybe food would give his brain the boost it would need to get him out of this safely.

Even though her clothes were appropriate to the world they were in now, it was impossible not to know that it was the same Miss Cowslip who made Jacob's braces vibrate and scared Paige. She sat down in a chair that Derek pulled out for her, and then greetings were passed around.

Before anyone could introduce David, he looked up and swallowed down his fear. "Hello," he said, proud and very glad that his voice sounded normal.

"Good morning," Miss Cowslip oozed in that honey voice she had used at the playground. It felt like years had passed since then. "I didn't think I'd see you again, Clarence."

…Clarence. He almost blinked at her in utter confusion, but then a series of images flashed through his mind. Soccer ball. Painting. Goldfish. Clarence. When he'd met her, she'd asked for his name and he'd given her the name of his pet. He didn't know why that made him feel better, but it did. He actually managed a smile. "Neither did I. Sorry, I forgot your name. What was it, again?"

He knew that everyone was staring at him and wondering about the Clarence thing, but he was certain that they would play along for his sake. Senna was smart enough to pick up on it on some intuitive level, Ehhulad probably was too—and Derek might not have been, but he obviously picked up and followed cues from his wife, which was a way of being smart.

Miss Cowslip didn't seem to realize anything was going on. "I'm surprised, I thought you would remember me for my daughter if for no other reason. I am Eugenia Cowslip."

The name was almost exactly the same, even with the added and very stupid-sounding first name, but that thing about a daughter didn't seem right at all. David wasn't sure if he should try to go after it, but then Ehhulad did it for him. "You have a daughter, Miss Cowslip?"

"Of course," her smiled was like honey, too, and David disliked it even more. "She's waiting outside with the carriage. Shall I send for her?" She didn't wait for an answer, she just started to rise to her feet.

Derek stopped her with a gentlemanly cough and offered to get her daughter, then left without waiting for an answer. While he was gone, silence might have settled over the table, but Senna was too clever to let that happen. She put on a sunny smile. "I feel the baby will come soon," she said, and David could have sworn that she was the best actress he'd ever seen. He couldn't even tell that she was worried about anything. "I'm so glad you're here."

"But of course, dearest," Miss Cowslip said, clutching her mug with fat sausage fingers. "There's no help for miles, I wouldn't leave you to birth your first child alone."

And there it was. Her leverage. That was why Senna hadn't seen David's discomfort and sent Miss Cowslip packing immediately—this lady was the midwife that Derek had mentioned before. David gripped his fork so that he could feel it making imprints in his palm. At least she didn't know his real name, that was still safe. But she knew his face, and she knew where he was staying. His knees shook.

The only one not following along with the cheerful conversation was Ehhulad. She was tracing an invisible pattern on the tablecloth, occasionally looking at David. Then, while Miss Cowslip was flattering Senna's cooking, Ehhulad blurted out, "Where is your husband?"

The whole room went quiet, and even the colors seemed to dull. Miss Cowslip's facial muscles twitched, but she didn't fall into a negative expression. It just made her smile look creepy. "Why do you ask, little spider?"

Before Ehhulad could explain herself, or even wheedle an answer from Miss Cowslip without giving up any of her own information, the door opened and Derek came back into the house. Right behind him was—

This time David really did knock his chair back, but he wasn't in it. Paige was standing there, next to Derek, wearing a tunic and short pants, and looking like she belonged in them. She smiled at him, looking confused and… She didn't recognize him.

A loud series of excited barking grabbed his attention and he nearly shrieked. All of this and now the little black dog was back! He was going to black out soon, he knew it. The dog stopped barking for a second to pant, then went back to it. It scurried towards him, barking and panting and just getting far too close. "Senna…!" he tried, but then he gave up and just walked past Derek and Paige, out to the safety of outside.

He hadn't realized that he'd started running until he came to a stop near the bank of a shallow stream, leaning on his knees and breathing hard. The house was still in view, but it was far away, mocking him. He'd left Paige in there. Last time he'd had no one but Jacob to help him, but this time he'd had Senna and Derek, and Ehhulad—they were plenty of help against any scary thing.

Even a dog. He plunked himself down onto the slightly damp ground and gazed disgustedly at his reflection in the water, half-expecting Ehhulad to pop up and call him a 'pretty little bleeder' again. Why had she done that? Things had already been too much for him to handle, and then she'd gone and turned into that black terrier. She had to have done it on purpose, he didn't think she could change accidentally.

"I'm very sorry, but I had to."

"Why?" He didn't bother to look up, she probably knew he wouldn't.

"Because you aren't ready to face her yet."

The water seemed to get more… excited, with Ehhulad nearby. It lapped at the air in a way that made him want to take off his shoes and dip his toes in. He untied his shoelaces and pulled his shoes off, but he left his socks on and kept them out of the water. "I was facing her."

Ehhulad sat beside him and slipped her legs into the water, almost all the way up to her knees. "With great caution, Clarence." She kicked up a few waves, then looked back at him. "Why did she call you that?"

He picked at his dirty socks, pulling at the fabric and then just letting it go. "When I met her in the—where I came from… she asked me what my name was. I didn't trust her, so I told her my name was Clarence." Then, because he couldn't help it, he chuckled. "It's my goldfish's name."

They both laughed for a while. It wasn't really that funny, but he was glad, they both needed to laugh. He knew that he did. Then she looked back at the house. "If you go back now, she'll have sent her 'daughter' away."

His insides boiled. "Paige is not her daughter." It was his fault. If he'd just stayed in the elevator, then Paige would still be safe with him and Jacob. …Jacob. What had happened to him? He didn't like Paige much, that was true, but he would never leave anyone to just be taken by someone creepy like Miss Cowslip. "She's the one you said put a mark on me, isn't she?"

Ehhulad nodded. "A powerful one, she is. Not a hedgewitch, the others would know her as one of theirs, and trust me, she is not." She shivered, then took her legs out of the stream. "Whatever she wants you and your friend for, it can't be good." Sighing loudly, she stood up and shook the water off of herself. "I am sorry for frightening you again, though. Do you forgive me?"

"…I guess so." After all, she had done it to help him, and if he got mad at her now, he'd risk losing an friend that he was apparently going to need. From the start, Ehhulad had known more than him, just like Senna and even Derek. Knowing things was an important part of everything, and David had decided that it was time he started learning them. "What do you think I should do?"

She looked surprised by his question, but then she smiled, wide and open. "You are asking me?"

"Yes."

"Then I advise you to hurry back with me and convince Senna to let us help birth her baby. She is a frightened mother-to-be, and her husband is no better, but if we offer our assistance, she might send the cow away."

David laughed, too hard, it hurt his chest, but he couldn't help it. "The cow. I like that."

"Thank you, I was rather proud of it. Are you coming with me."

"Do you even need to ask?"

When they reached the house, the carriage was gone. David hoped that meant that both Miss Cowslip and Paige were gone, but he doubted it. Ehhulad was right, Paige was gone when they walked back into the house. She'd only been there so that Miss Cowslip could taunt him with the fact that she had won.

For now. He was going to get Paige back, and he was going to find out what the evil sunhat lady did to Jacob. "Senna?" he called out, keeping the anger and fear out of his voice. Even if Miss Cowslip had gone, he didn't want to scare his new friends.

"In here, you two."

They followed Senna's voice into the back of the house, a bedroom. It was a bit like the living room, there was some sewing and a rocking chair in the corner, and lots of books. Even a stuffed bear on a toy chest. David would have smiled if Miss Cowslip hadn't been standing in the room with Derek and Senna.

She was holding a tiny scarf and chattering away, but she stopped to turn a greasy smile his way. "Why, Clarence, we were worried about you."

I just bet you were. It took a great deal of effort not to grunt and make a rude face, but he managed. They had to get rid of her somehow, but how? He doubted she would leave for any reason now that she knew he was here, and she had her claws in Senna… A desperate and probably ridiculously poor idea poked his brain, and he decided to give it a chance. "I ran into a messenger for you."

Miss Cowslip's eyes widened and her jaw went slack for a fraction of a second. "A messenger? What was the message?"

Ehhulad stepped in and rescued him from having to make up something believable on his own. "You are needed in the next town. Their hedgewizard took ill and they are afraid there is something wrong with the water." She grasped David's arm and trembled, her hair tickling his neck. Derek gave them both a questioning look, but then he focused all of his attention on Senna as she sat on the bed and gave in to a cuddly mood.

While David tried not to do something that would mess things up, Miss Cowslip was standing there and chewing on her bottom lip. "That does sound serious indeed… But surely there is someone closer to them, someone more qualified than I?"

"Oh no," David piped up, "there isn't anybody. They were afraid you wouldn't go, but—" He couldn't think of any compliments and he didn't want to, but he didn't think that anything even resembling an insult would help here.

Once again, Ehhulad knew what to do and did it. "They are in need, Madam, how can you stand and question while they suffer?"

That did the trick at last. Miss Cowslip nodded curtly and set the scarf down on the bed. "Madam Grupenski, I must take my leave of you." And then she whisked herself out, before anyone could even offer to walk her to the door.

Derek kissed Senna's head and chuckled. "I'm not sure what's going on, but the three of you have some explaining to do." He looked up at Ehhulad. "You're quite the actor, Miss Spider."

She bowed. "And you are a wonderful audience, cook. Perhaps we shall all form a dinner theater troupe one day, and feast on success."

"Alright, stop the silliness, both of you." Senna didn't get up from her snuggling position, but she did fix David and Ehhulad both with somber looks. "What was that all about?"

"You said you didn't know who Miss Cowslip is!!" David thought about everything they'd talked about before breakfast.

Senna shook her head, then rested it on Derek's shoulder. "No, I said I wish I knew what she is. And that she would probably like to take credit for your being here."

She was twisting the words so that she was right, could she do that? That had to be against somebody's rules, his, if no one else's. "But still…" he muttered, completely aware of how incredibly lame that sounded. "You could have told me."

"Yes, I should have." When she looked back up at him, there were tears in her eyes. "I'm so sorry, I have no excuse."

Derek set her head back on his shoulder and stroked her hair, shushing and making other soothing noises. He sent David a quick look full of worry, confusion, and something else. "Never mind that, she's gone now. What was wrong with her? It was just the midwife. Certainly, she gives me the willies, and she isn't the type of woman you'd ask round for tea regularly, but…" He sighed. "Would someone please just tell me what's going on?"

While the others tried to explain everything to Derek, David went into the living room to play with the yarn again. Maybe by rolling the yarn back into a ball, he could roll his thoughts back together. They were too frayed to do anything without him.

Paige was here, in Tilcaty. Maybe Jacob was, too. Or even Loren, or their parents, or the auntie. Anyone. At this point, David was sorry that he had ever wished for someone he knew to be here with him. He should have been content to be alive and not smooshed somewhere at the bottom.

But who was to say that this wasn't the bottom? A part of it, anyway. Senna knew what cars were, and what she'd said about her science didn't sound too far from some of the science he knew from borrowing Loren's high school textbooks. It would explain how Miss Cowslip and Paige could be there when he had only gotten there by getting attacked by a particle rip. Or whatever the bee had been.

He picked up one of the knitting needles and made some slipknots to loop around it. This was getting to be too much like a game, or a daydream. Except that if it were one of those, he'd be better prepared. But some games started you out unprepared… Then they sent you on a journey so you'd prepare yourself. He thought of Derek's banged-up shield and grinned to himself. Maybe he could take it to the blacksmith. Derek had no business going on any adventure, not with the baby so close.

Feeling a little more infused with purpose—even though he knew he wasn't—David jumped to his feet… and tripped on the yarn that had somehow wrapped itself around his ankles. "Heh. Let go." He kicked himself free, then got up more carefully, and walked back into the kitchen.

Ehhulad was nowhere to be seen, but Senna and Derek were still sitting at the table, looking worried. "Are you feeling better now, David?" Senna asked, an anxious smile on her face. She looked pale.

He nodded absentmindedly, then pulled up a chair to sit across from them. "The shield that Derek was taking to a blacksmith… Was that just so you could have some extra money?" Part of him hoped that they would spill the beans about some sort of special magic/technology that was involved somehow, but that was his imagination running off and trying to have its way with things. "And what about that animal in the forest, the one Derek said was poisoned?" He felt rushed, as if he needed to know all of the answers now, and he couldn't wait any longer. Paige needed his help, and if Tilcaty was as much like a fairy tale game as he was starting to think it was, then he needed what every swords and sorcery video game hero needed: experience.

Taking the shield and finding out what had caused the poison may have seemed completely unrelated, but it was the perfect mixture of where he'd been and where he hadn't. If he could figure out how this world worked—to some extent—then Miss Cowslip wouldn't have that advantage over him anymore. And maybe then Ehhulad wouldn't stop him from 'facing' her again… He tapped his feet on the floor and waited for an answer to one or both of his questions.

It wasn't long in coming. Derek set his hand over Senna's on the table and tried to smile. "Money has gotten a bit… hard to come by in the past few months," he said, looking troubled. "But we couldn't ask you to take the shield."

"That's okay, I'm asking you if I can take it." David grinned, he was going to win if there was an argument. "I need an adventure." He also needed to get away from a place that Miss Cowslip knew she could find him at.

"Now hold on, David, you can't just—"

"Adventure?" Senna sat up straighter in her chair and sent a murderous frown at her husband. "Did he get that word from you, dearest?" Her hand tightened around his, and he winced.

"Well… Maybe, but it's not… That is, I don't think he's just running of for the sake of some silly adventure." He wasn't really sweating, but he was glancing around nervously. Looking for an escape, probably, David's dad got that look on his face when he was on the wrong side of a fight.

Uh-oh. Derek was in trouble. David dropped his smile and cheerfulness to wave his hands around and try to set things straight. "No, it's not his fault! I just thought that since I made you come back here, you should stay with Senna and the baby. I can take the shield for you."

Senna's glare melted into a look of surprised and slightly guilty happiness. "David, that's a sweet idea, but you're so young, and you don't know your way around." She shook her head and pushed away Derek's idly poking finger. "Stop that."

He chuckled and kept poking her head and twirling her short black hair around his finger. "Come now, he can take Ehhulad with him. I'll find someone else to help with the baby, you know I can." He made a face. "I never liked that cow-woman much anyway."

"Derek!" Senna gasped and slapped his shoulder playfully. "Do no speak ill of someone like that. She wouldn't hesitate to turn you into a honeyed tangerine if she caught you." Then she stopped. "Not that she… could turn you into anything but a thoroughly unhappy person…" She let out a sigh and turned her attention back to David. "It would be a great help if you let me keep Ehhulad here while you go, but I do know someone who will be able to take you all the way to Torrance and back. A couple of someones."

His grin came back, this was really starting to sound like a game. And the more it sounded like a game, the more he could pretend that it wasn't dangerous. "And I have to pick whose gonna go with me?"

"Yes." It didn't look like she understood why he was so excited, but she was probably used to Derek getting excited over things she didn't understand. "You seem to get along very well with Ehhulad, so another creature who knows the forests might be a good guide, but there is a boy about your age in the village who knows the way as well. He also knows a bit about medicine." She raised an eyebrow at Derek, then looked back at David. "I'm not sure what my husband led you to believe, but travel between towns is still dangerous here."

The mental image of the boar corpse flitted through his mind and he had to repress a shudder that had nothing to do with excitement. He still hadn't figured out what was scariest about it, the poison or the fact that there were animals that big running around as if it was completely normal. He nodded slowly. "I understand." But who should go with him? He would have liked Ehhulad to go, but she was the best person to stay and help with the baby, after all, she'd been the one who'd known how to get rid of Miss Cowslip. David wouldn't feel alright if he didn't leave Senna and Derek with Ehhulad. But it was a tough decision.

He tried to put himself back into the game perspective. A journey with a guy his age would be fun if Tilcaty were more like home, but it wasn't, and he would probably just get frustrated with trying not to seem out-of-place—which he was anyway. Ehhulad hadn't really had a problem with his being from another world, so maybe another forest creature would at least share her attitude. Even if that creature wasn't as good and fast a friend. "What kind of creature are you thinking of?" he asked.

Senna smiled, maybe that was the companion she'd hoped he'd choose. Another indication that it was the right decision. Senna was smart, and she knew a lot. "He's not a water spider, but perhaps something a bit more advantageous." She stood up and walked across the kitchen to open a window. "You might be interested to know that he can fly."

Derek seemed to know who or what she was talking about, and he didn't look happy about it. "No, Senna, that boy is a nuisance!"

"That boy is an unfortunate who deserves a chance on occasion!"

Apparently David had stumbled across an old argument. He wondered if he should have just risked frustration and accepted the village person guide. "Um… You guys?"

No one paid any attention to his pathetic attempt. Senna reached into a flower pot and took out a metal something, while Derek continued to whine about what she was doing. "The last time you gave him a task—a simple task that anyone could have done, mind you—he had the entire city in an uproar. We still haven't calmed down some of those old ladies."

"None of them died, Derek, stop being such a nervous old hen." Senna pointed the metal thing out the window and waved it around a bit before dropping it back into the flower pot. "Ticarus is a perfectly nice boy, and those old ladies needed a bit of excitement, if you ask me."

Derek humphed and brushed past her to shut the window and bolt it. "Fine. Damage done. You've had your way, so don't come crying to me when that boy gets David into trouble."

"Hush. He can take care of himself." She smiled at David. "Your guide's name is Ticarus Backlash. Don't stare at his wings, and don't tease him. His temper is a bit on the short side." Derek was about to add his own remark to that, but Senna silenced him with a look. "Ticarus is outside waiting for you."

David hugged her, then Derek, and made them promise to tell Ehhulad goodbye for him. The shield was leaning against the wall next to the door. It was so heavy he nearly dropped it. For a small moment full of despair, he tried to figure out what he was going to do with it, but then Derek came and brought the shoulder strap and belt that he'd been wearing.

While he tied the shield to David's back, he muttered under his breath, "Don't take any lip from that winged idiot, he's no older nor wiser than you. And you are in charge. He's just the one that knows the way. If you don't want to do something he tells you to, then don't do it."

These disparate views of his guide were starting to make David more than a little nervous. Normally he would have immediately accepted Senna's side of things, but Derek did sound like he knew what he was talking about. "Is he mean?"

Derek laughed. "Oh no, not mean, just a right selfish little whelp. He'll do anything for a giggle, even if it'll get someone hurt." His green eyes clouded over. "Even if that someone is himself." He blinked the clouds away and patted David's shoulder. "Now go on, the sooner you go off with that rapscallion, the sooner you can come back and tell Senna that I'm right about him being an unrepentant scamp."

With that kind of introduction, David was surprised when he finally stepped out of the door and saw this Ticarus for himself. The parts of him that were recognizably human were a little on the scrawny side, but he obviously got enough to eat at regular mealtimes. His hands were mostly like David's but the fingers were long and spindly like Ehhulad's.

If Senna had not told David not to stare, then most of his initial impression of Ticarus would have been taken up by the wings. But he only glanced at them long enough to see that they were growing out of shoulders somehow, and they were a soft gray color. Ticarus scratched his head, then smoothed back his hair. It was brown, but it looked like it was starting to turn the same color as his feathers in places. "Hi," he said, waving shyly. "Senna called me here… What did she want?"

David thought of the metal thing that Senna had taken out of the flower pot, and wondered if it was part of the magic/technology that she was allowed to have. He decided not to worry about it. "I need to take this shield to Torrance. Senna said that you would show me the way."

"Sure." Ticarus pointed. "That way." Then he flexed his wings and started to rise up in the air. "If that's all, then tell her that next time I won't come. Silly to go all that way just to—"

"Stop!" Either he took things too literally, or Ticarus was already starting to prove Derek right. "I meant that you have to go with me…"

"Then you should have said so, fluffhead." Ticarus settled back onto the grass and folded his arms over his chest. "You're not too bright, are you?"

Maybe David should have gone with the village guide after all. He swallowed a groan and just said, "My name is David. How long will it take to get to Torrance?"

"On foot? Couple of days. If you'd let me fly you, though, it'd probably be… well, less than that." Ticarus blushed and dug a taloned heel into the ground. "I'm not that good with figures 'n formulas."

"That's okay." David wasn't sure how to act around this person, a winged boy with two clashing reputations. But even though he was fairly certain that this errand was going to take long enough that he wouldn't be back in time to see the baby's birth, he wanted to return as soon as he could. If he stood there trying to be polite, it would take them forever just to leave.

Ticarus didn't seem to care. He thumbed his nose—presumably at David, there wasn't anyone else around—and cracked a toothy grin. "How long has it been since I was here last? Must have been forever, you're all growed up!"

"Huh?"

"Did your mom tell you about me? My name is Ticarus Earned Himself A Good Backlash, but people usually just call me Ticarus. When they talk to me without bein' insulting." He scratched his head and fluttered his wings, sending little flecks of dust and dandruff floating to the ground. "Bet your dad was happy you turned out to be a boy instead. They all thought you'd be a girl."

Irritation made David's fingers curl. He couldn't tell if Ticarus had honestly mixed him up with Senna's baby, or if the giant bird boy was just trying to be a pain in the neck. Whatever he was doing, the more he talked, the more distracted his expression became. He also rose slowly into the air until he was hovering a good handful of inches off the grass.

Finally David decided to just explain himself outright. "Look, Ticarus, I'm not from around here. I'm just running an errand for Senna," it was probably best not to mention Derek's name, "and I need you to come and make sure I don't get lost."

"Or eaten." Ticarus stuck his finger in his ear and made a face. It looked worse than if he'd picked his nose. "I'm better at keeping people from getting eaten."

David wasn't sure how he was supposed to take that, or even if he believed it. But he was very tired of standing in front of the Grupenski's house, so he forced a smile. "Let's just get going, and you can tell me on the way."

"Will you really listen to me?" Ticarus flapped up a small gust of dirt, then jumped back to the ground and started half-hopping, half-walking alongside David. "You'll have to pay attention to me. Bad things happen when people ignore me. And when I get bored."

Whatever that meant, it probably wasn't a threat. There was no malice in his voice, he was probably just chattering idly again. "What kinds of things?"

"You wanna see?"

"No."

There didn't seem to be anybody walking around, not nearby anyway. David wondered if it was because they were afraid Ticarus would get bored. But Senna wouldn't have called a dangerous person to be anyone's guide, so David wasn't too worried. In fact, he was having fun just watching his guide flit around, sometimes picking up speed to kick a pebble, or slowing down so he wouldn't bump into something. Ticarus whistled to himself for a while, then said, "You're really slow. Can I just carry you?"

"Wouldn't I be heavy?"

"Probably, you look kind of chunky. Maybe that's why you're so slow."

David glared at him, then started running. Slow, huh? I'll show you 'slow.' His feet pounded the grass at a loud steady rhythm, but Ticarus kept up as if it were nothing at all. He even yawned. David ran faster, only sparing enough breath to ask which way to turn when they passed the last building Ticarus pointed him left, but said nothing. They went on that way for a while, until David's sides were hurting too much for him to even slow to a walk.

He skidded to a halt, then hobbled forward enough to escape his own cloud of dust. It didn't help that Ticarus's wing-flapping was making the cloud bigger, whether he meant to or not. "Torrance is still far away, even if you run. You sure I can't just fly you? You'd like flying, it's fun." He settled onto the ground and held his wings still. "Unless being up high makes you nervous."

"It doesn't." That was the understatement of the year. But David didn't have the breath to elaborate. Maybe it would be better if he just asked for a ride, if only for a little while. But Ticarus didn't seem terribly reliable. What if he got bored and decided that it would be interesting to just let go of David and see what happened? David knew what would happen, and he didn't want to think about it. Falling had always been a mortal fear of his, especially after he and his family had moved to the vertical city. His fall into Tilcaty had not helped.

Surprisingly, when he was ready to start walking again, Ticarus walked as well. It wasn't the ridiculous whimsical tromping that David had seen before, but a sort of ungainly limp. His taloned feet were too big and awkward for walking to even be comfortable. Ticarus didn't even seen to notice it. "Just as well, I guess. That shield would probably hit me a lot while I carried you, and girls only like to say that they think scars are manly. All the ones I've met think they're ugly and disgusting. But they probably just mean mine." He grinned. "Wanna see?"

David shrugged, making the shield clank against him. "Sure." He stopped walking and turned around.

"Hooray." Ticarus spun himself around so quickly he nearly tripped on his own feet, then stretched his wings out to a truly impressive span. "See back there, by my shoulder blades. Ugly ol' things aren't they?"

The skin at the base of his wings was a massive collection of scar tissue, and it looked like someone had tried to cut some of it off recently. David felt his stomach turn. "What happened?" He'd thought that Ticarus was an out-of-place creature, like Ehhulad. But if his wings weren't natural—which the scar tissue was suggesting—then why were they there?

"That's a long story. Let's keep going, chubby, and I'll tell you some of it."

David didn't like the way this path to a nickname was going, but he didn't say anything about it. If he had, it probably would have just encouraged Ticarus to come up with the worst fat nickname that would pop into his head. "So go on then."

Still walking in that awkward limp of his, Ticarus made a sharpish turn to the right and looked up at the sky. "I'm one of a kind, but not really."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean—" Ticarus gave the air an angry flap and left the ground for a moment, "that I'm not the only person to be mixed up like this. Don't look so shocked, I know you were wondering."

It was true, so David held his tongue.

"There was a dog man a while back, he was before me. Before they really figured out what they were doing." The anger faded and Ticarus looked anxiously around him, slowing down so much that he nearly tripped. "I'm a miserable failure too, but that guy took it personal. He actually wanted this 'procedure', and he wasn't happy when they told him it hadn't worked right."

A bit irked at this new information, David grappled with the toppling view of Tilcaty that he thought he'd had all leveled out. Now this new element was spinning him around all the way back to square one—no matter how he'd been pretending, he still didn't know what to do with himself in this place. Even worse, this was also a link to the vertical city. The man that had been chasing Paige… "What do you mean, there was a dog man?"

Ticarus perked up. "Oh, so you were listening! Yeah, there was a man who wanted to be a wolf or something. He read too many books, I think." He stuck his finger in his ear again, and wiggled it around. "Reading just gets you into trouble."

David couldn't help laughing. "From what I can tell about you, I'd say that anything would get you into trouble."

"You just might have something with that," Ticarus said thoughtfully, before taking his finger out of his ear and wiping it on his pants. "Last time they tossed me into confinement, I was just standing around mindin' my own business."

"Right after you did what?"

"…stole some chickens."

"Why would you steal chickens?"

Ticarus chuckled, shrugging his wings into a strange bounce that lasted a few seconds. "Y'know, I don't actually remember. It was a good four days ago." He hopped along an invisible path for a bit, then zigzagged off supposedly in his own direction. Then, just as suddenly, he stopped. "Things just happen. Things I don't remember."

Looking at him made David uncomfortable. It also made him wonder, a lot of things. His wonder muscles were starting to get too tired to do anything. He followed Ticarus quietly for a while, then spoke up. "Why did you tell me about all of that?"

"Well you're Senna's boy, aren't you? She knows, so it's okay that you know too." Ticarus looked surprised to be asked. "Don't tell anyone else though. Say a word like 'procedure' to anyone but a hedgewitch or -wizard, and you'll find yourself on the wrong end of a bad hunt."

David walked faster, suddenly very eager to have the closest village not nearly as close. "What's a bad hunt?"

"That's when they decide you know too much magic for your own good, and they want to make it so that you don't know any at all." An unlucky bush fell victim to Ticarus's overlarge feet. "I'm lucky they think that I'm supposed to be like this, or they'd have hunted me out years ago."

"How long have you—" But Senna had said specifically not to ask about his wings. Even though he'd already said some things about them, it was probably still a subject to avoid. David tried to think of something else that he could ask. "When I first got here, there was a big dead boar. Derek said it was probably poisoned. We were going to talk to Senna about it, but then…" But then too many other things had happened and no one seemed to remember the poor dead corpse. He couldn't blame them, he wasn't exactly in a hurry to dwell on it.

For the first time, Ticarus lost the half-distracted almost vacant look of a two-year-old who'd missed nap time. "There's nothing to worry about. The details of that kind of thing are way boring. Senna tried to explain it to me once and I think I fell asleep. It all has to do with big words like 'environment' and the like." He smiled, showing off entirely human teeth that needed to be brushed.

It seemed like they'd been walking forever, but David had no way of knowing how long it had really been. On his last birthday, his dad had given him a watch, but that had been almost a whole year ago, and the watch had had plenty of time to get lost. He'd asked for a new one for this upcoming birthday, but that was still a few days away. Unless the time in Tilcaty was so different that he'd missed it. "How much longer before we actually get anywhere?"

Ticarus chuckled as he flew up higher and pulled his knees up to his chest, turning himself into a little ball with wings. He dipped a few times, then stretched out again. "I already told you, it'll take a few days to get to Torrance. With that shield, even if I carried you, it might still take just as long."

A stray gust of wind tugged at him, but he managed to stay relatively on course. David sighed and slumped a bit. "Too bad we couldn't get the wagon. That was a lot faster than walking."

"Also dern dangerous."

He looked over at Ticarus. "How is it dangerous?"

"The horses. They're all ornery at the best of times, but wagon horses are just plain out of their puny minds." Even though he was twirling slowly, and generally looking ridiculous, Ticarus managed to continue traveling in something like a straight line. "It can cost a man his life to train one not to kill someone. Why'd you bring it up?"

"Senna came and got us in a wagon…" All of that bunk about horses being crazy just sounded stupid, but David couldn't be 100 percent sure about it either way. "So that would be a no, then."

"A no to what?"

While he'd been thinking about alternate forms of travel, he'd lost sight of his guide. A sudden rush of feeling lost made his legs feel heavy and he had to stop walking. "Ticarus?" He spun around as well as he could without actually moving, then spun back the other way. "Where did you go?" It was the first time since he'd arrived that he'd really been all by himself. Even when he'd run away from his encounter with Miss Cowslip, the house had still been in sight. Now he couldn't even see Senna and Derek's neighbors' houses. "Ticarus?"

The whoosh of a man-made gust of wind brushed his hair out of his face. "I think you've said my name more in one day than most people ever have in a longer than that." For the first time since he'd shown up, Ticarus looked serious. "Listen, you seem to be in an awful hurry…"

David waited for him to finish the sentence, but he didn't. While David was waiting, a thin pair of arms hooked under his arms and then slowly, he felt his feet leave the ground. Only a few seconds after he could really let his toes dangle, he dipped back down and dragged for a couple of feet. That was a bigger reason to giggle than the pure fun of going into the air. But then Ticarus adjusted his grip, let out a small grunt of effort and—

They were flying. It was by no means effortless, on either side, David had to do his part to keep himself from slipping out of Ticarus's grasp. But it was worth it to see the everything under him go past, so quickly that the colors blurred a bit. Either Ticarus was stronger than he looked, or David had overestimated how much he and the shield weighed together. "This is great!"

"Glad you—ernf—think so…!"

It didn't sound like Ticarus was quite up to conversation, so David did it by himself. "My home is even higher than this." Looking down at things from this much more familiar vantage point made him feel friendlier with his surroundings. The itch for adventure that had he'd thought he'd lost was coming back to him. "I wish Paige was here."

He fell back into silence, until he realized that he was somehow making himself heavier. Ticarus jerked them both up, then tightened his grip. "Don't get sad on me," he said, his voice strained, "this is easier when you're happy."

Obligingly, David pushed away thoughts of the vertical city and tried to concentrate on how wonderful it was to be dangling his feet over nothing.

"So…. tell me about… this friend of yours. Is she… pretty?"

David glanced over his shoulder—and then up a bit—and glared at Ticarus. "Don't get any idea. Even if she was here, she's too young to be pretty. The way you mean it."

"Calm down. What are you, her dad?"

Sometimes I have to be. David shifted his weight very carefully. "Something like that, yeah. Actually."

He nearly cried out when he slid out of Ticarus' grip and there was nothing but the chilling sensation of Down enveloping his body. It had come so quickly that David didn't even have time to decide how much he wanted to throw up before it was over.

His arms were sore, all the way from his shoulders to his fingertips. Ticarus was grasping his hands so tightly that is was hard not to whimper. Ticarus's face looked like he'd just spent an hour chewing on a lemon, and his ears were starting to turn red. "Hang on," he squeaked, and then, so gradually that David wasn't sure of it at first, they started heading for the ground.

Even when he could feel the tall prickly grass reaching up his pants legs to poke through his socks, David didn't let go. Ticarus pulled his own hands free and then started stretching his arms and wiggling his wrists around. That all looked like a good idea, but David's knees just weren't up to it. He sat down on the grass where he was decided to name the shield Trouble. "Warn me next time, will you?"

Ticarus stopped stretching long enough to roll his eyes and give David a nasty look. "I already told you I can't keep you up for long. Even without the shield, you're still heavy."

"You should still say something before you just go and drop me," David said, settling into a sulk. His heart was just beginning to calm down, but his legs still felt like soup noodles. If he had any say in the future, than there would be no more falling. Of any kind.

"Stop whining. I got you back down okay, didn't I?"

"Barely!"

Something whizzed past David's nose. His head automatically turned to see what it was, and then he gasped. Wherever they were it was somewhere completely alien to him. It was even more jarring when he realized that he had been getting comfortable with where he'd been so far. Ticarus didn't seem to notice any of it. He just sat cross-legged on the grass and hunched his wings around himself. "It's cold," he whined.

David shifted the shield on his back. His shoulders were very sore, but he didn't know how hard it would be to tie the shield back on if he took it off, so he didn't bother with it. "You'd be fine if you just wore a shirt."

"You think I could even get one over my head with these stupid things?" The wings flapped, seemingly due to their own prerogative, then were still again. Ticarus blew at a shock of hair that had fallen into his face, which did nothing but make him look like an oversized brat. "Could we get going now?"

David was about to just say yes and steer away from an argument, but then he realized with a very small, subtle jolt that he was bleeding. Somehow he must have split his lip back open. He ran his tongue over it, then made a face at the tang of blood. "Yeah, we shouldn't waste any time." The sooner they got the shield to Torrance, the sooner he would get the sword Derek had said they were trading it for. And having any kind of weapon sounded like a comforting prospect, even if he was going to have to sell it when he got back.

A mournful howl broke out somewhere in the distance. The fact that it wasn't even late afternoon yet made it sound eerier than it would have at night. Ticarus bunched himself up like a nervous cat and hugged his wings closer around himself, but that could have just been the cold. "Can you run really fast?"

Wary, David tried not to mirror his guide's anxiety. "Not while I have to carry this thing. It's like giving a fat kid a piggyback ride." Not that he'd ever really done that, but it was the closest real-life comparison that would come to mind.

"Give it to me, then."

He complied without really thinking about it at length. After all, Ticarus had carried him and the shield, and they'd obviously traveled fairly quickly, if David couldn't recognize anything at all. They'd even passed the strange long stretch of forest and stream that had seemed to last forever when he'd been walking with Derek. "What's wrong?"

"Maybe nothing, probably something." Ticarus cursed and muttered angrily while he tried to figure out what to do with the shield. "Urgh, I'm gonna have to just carry it, aren't I?"

David tried to help Ticarus tie the shield to his back, but had to give up after only a few tries. "Sorry… Your wings are too big. There's no room for the shield to go anywhere." For a while he just stood there, holding the shoulder strap and glaring at it. "We could tie it to your front, though."

It didn't look like Ticarus was too keen on that idea, but there wasn't exactly a plethora of alternative choices for him to pick through. He sighed heavily, then let David twist his arms around and out of the way and in the way until they finally managed to get the shield strapped to his chest. "I feel like a village idiot who just got conscripted into a half-witted army," he said dryly, glaring down at himself.

David couldn't help laughing a little, but he managed to bite his tongue before a fight could break out. "At least you won't be cold now."

"Are you kidding?! This thing is freezing!" To prove his point, Ticarus's held up goosebump-covered arms. He started to say something else, but then another eerie howl rang out and he shut his mouth. This time whatever was howling sounded close by. If it was coming towards them, it was moving fast, maybe faster than Ticarus could fly.

And even without considering how much things from the vertical city seemed to be connected to Tilcaty, David was pretty sure to completely certain that he knew what was howling. He was also convinced that it was after him specifically. But he wished that he knew if the dog man was with Miss Cowslip, or if he was an entirely separate danger.

Either way, Ticarus had known about a dog man, if not that exact one, so he know something about it, and David could ask later. Now was the time for running, as fast as his poor legs would go, in spite of still being a bit noodly. Ticarus had already taken to the air, high enough that his knees were level with David's shoulders. As David picked up speed, he realized that the other boy was also at a height that would allow him to reach down and snatch David up if it came to that. He wondered how familiar Ticarus was with danger and running away. The mischief that Derek had accused him of must have led him through a lot of desperate chases.

But an angry farmer trying to get his chickens back couldn't be nearly as dangerous as a blood-hungry dog man. David almost wished that he had run into the dog man before, or at least seen him when Paige had. He glanced over his shoulder, half out of curiosity.

What he saw made him gasp and turn back around so he could run faster. Whatever he'd expected, that had not been it. He squeezed his eyes shut, but the image stayed in his mind. The darkness of nighttime would have been better suited to the sight of an unnaturally tall man covered in thick dark brown fur, but in the noon sun, it looked bizarre. He was running like a dog, using all four of his limbs and somehow not tripping, but going even faster.

"He's gonna catch up!" David practically gasped the words, his lungs felt like he'd been whacked in the chest with a metal board. How long had he been running? He spared half a second to look up at Ticarus. The other boy wasn't doing much better. His wings weren't beating the air with quite as much power as before, and the rest of him was starting to droop. David waited for a witty remark or even a half-hearted insult, but Ticarus didn't say anything at all.

A line of blue stretched out in front of them, growing larger as they got closer, until David realized that it was a stream. His legs screamed for him to stop, just rest for a second, but he gritted his teeth and kept running. "Not yet," he told himself. There had to be some kind of refuge nearby, something, somebody, the dog man couldn't catch them. He needed to get the sword and bring it back to save Paige. How the whole situation had managed to boil down into such a simple cliché quest, he didn't know, but it was blaring in his mind anyway.

Then, for a split second, everything stopped, and the only thought in his mind was how much he hurt as the dog man collided with him. Hitting the ground hurt more than getting tackled, but it passed into a dull second thought as he stared up at the madly grinning dog man.

"Caught you," he said, gruff and rumbling.

But then his self-satisfied smirk gave way to a shocked look of pain. He crumpled to the ground slowly, jerking one way, then the other, until he was still. David pushed himself up onto his elbows and tried to breathe normally.

The shield just stayed where it was, like a strange sort of rock, as if Ticarus was attached to it instead of the other way around. The fact that Ticarus wasn't any more mobile than the dog man didn't help that. David got to his feet and staggered over to help his friend. "That was…"

"Really stupid. You'd think I could at least look heroic, but no, I had to fall on his head." Ticarus closed his eyes. "Oy."

"Come on." Trying to stop the shaking in his hands, David pulled Ticarus to his feet. "We should—we should tie him up or something, shouldn't we?"

"With what?"

The only thing they had that might work was the shoulder strap, which was already busy keeping the shield on Ticarus's chest. David considered taking the laces out of his shoes, but he wasn't in a hurry to run around the forest barefoot. He'd read that cockroaches lived under the ground there. The last thing he needed was to step on one without any shoes on. And if he ran with his shoes just untied, they'd come off and trip him in no time.

Ticarus put a hand on his shoulder. "You may be right, but… Maybe it'd be easier to just off him. A dead enemy is no enemy, after all."

David's stomach twisted so violently that he coughed. "No." He shrugged the hand away and took a few steps back. Then he took a few more. "Just leave him, we'll get out of here while we can."

"And go through all of that again later? Come on, we have to do something with him. He's dangerous."

"So are you." David surprised himself by lurching forward and untying the shoulder strap so he could take the shield. He clutched it to himself, then turned on his heel and started walking. It was awkward and heavy, and he couldn't really see where he was putting his feet, but all he cared about was getting as far away as he could, from Ticarus and the dog man both.

He nearly fell backwards when Ticarus swooshed in front of him, arms held up in a gesture of entreaty, or surrender, it was unclear which. "Calm down, you'd think that I'd actually pulled out a dagger." Ticarus frowned anxiously, his eyebrows knit together. "David…"

David bit his lip and tried to piece himself back together. He wasn't thinking about any of this the right way. He couldn't just run off by himself, then he would just be lost forever, and what would happen to Paige? And what about Jacob? He had them to worry about, not just himself. He couldn't be selfish and run off without thinking, just because Ticarus suddenly turned scary. "You wouldn't really kill him, would you?"

Ticarus shook his head fiercely, his hair whapping his face. "Of course not, I don't know what I'm talking about half the time!" He held out his hands, palms up, his elbows bent rigidly. "Look, I don't even have any kind of weapon. No one's gonna get hurt, so let's just get out of here, okay?"

"I don't believe you."

"Why not?!" Ticarus let his hands fall to his sides and spun on his heel—then stumbled backwards. The talon on his heel had dug a small hole into the ground and caught in it. He cursed at his foot, then looked back up at David. "What do I have to say?"

David stared blankly at him for a while, scaring himself more by realizing that Ticarus wasn't scary at all. He just looked like a frazzled kid who wanted to go home. Like David. "Nothing… I believe you…" David looked down at the dog man and couldn't help inching away from him. "He's going to come after us again, though."

"I know." Ticarus reached out and started pushing David away. "Just start walking this way, and then later I can fly you again for a while. It'll only take us a day or two if we travel like that."

"Then we'll reach Torrance?"

"Yes." He pinched David in between the shoulders; it hurt, but David just got back at him by stepping on his foot. "Ow! Watch where you put those clunky—what kind of boots are those, anyway?"

David shrugged. He wasn't in the mood to explain non-fantasy items. "Just boots." He moved away so he could walk without getting pushed or pinched, then took a quick look back at the dog man. "You know something about that guy, don't you?"

"What makes you think that?"

"…You told me you did. Earlier."

"Oh."

He waited, but Ticarus seemed content to leave it at that. David was not. "So? Why is he after me?"

"You?" Ticarus scoffed. "Why do you think he's after you? Big ego you've got."

A little irked, David scowled at him. "Before I came here, he was chasing my friend Paige. Now an evil—somebody has her, and this guy shows up again! What am I supposed to think? That he wanted to get revenge on you for shaving dirty words on the back of his head?"

Ticarus jerked to a halt and his face curved into a wicked grin as he started rubbing his hands together. "I have to go do that now." He probably would have actually done it if David hadn't dashed off in a random direction. "Hey! That's the wrong way—get back here!!"

Under other circumstances, David might have listened, but he hadn't just run off to get Ticarus's attention. He'd seen something, and he wanted to find out what it was. If he was right, then he had to move as quickly as possible. There might not be much time left. "Help me." It was supposed to be a level-headed shout of urgency, but it came out as a calm request. Either way.

He reached the tree and jumped up a few times, until he gave himself a mental slap and forced the realization that he was too short. When he spun back to look for Ticarus, he stumbled. Ticarus was standing right next to the tree, unsurprisingly keeping himself an inch or two off the grass. "What's climbed up your undergarments?" he asked, leaning casually against the tree. He jumped back up again—probably because the bark scratched him—but he didn't let on, whatever it was. "I thought you wanted to hurry up and get to Torrance. It's that way." He pointed.

David shook his head. "I know, but look." He set the shield down to lean against his leg, then took Ticarus's pointing finger and pushed it upwards. "There's someone in the tree." He felt smaller, staring up at the canopy, but what really made his self image shrink was the surreal image of an arm dangling from a tree branch. His heart had stopped beating so he could torture himself with the question of whether or not there was a body attached. And if there was, was the body still alive?

Apparently these questions didn't bother Ticarus, either that, or they didn't enter his mind at all. He just pulled his arm away and narrowed his eyes at David. "Someone in the tree," he muttered. "I'll show you someone in the dadblamin' tree…" Twitching his wings more than flapping them, he rose up high enough that he could give the arm a good hard poke.

It swung a little, but nothing happened.

That might have answered David's torturous question, except that the arm started swinging again. He turned his head sharply to look at Ticarus, but the winged boy looked stunned. His eyes and mouth were both wide open, the former wider than the latter, and even his nostrils looked like they were trying to express surprise. "It's not—! Holy fishmonger's daughter…" He flew up higher, so swiftly that he almost hit his head, until he disappeared into the foliage.

David looked around nervously, from the tree where Ticarus had disappeared to investigate the arm, then to where they'd left the dog man, and back. His leg quivered for fraction of a second, and the shield banged against it, making him wince. "Owie…" He picked up the shield and strapped it to his back again, so it couldn't live up to its name as well as it had been so far. "No wonder some knights just go with a buckler. That'd be so much easier." A buckler for someone David's size probably could have fit in the Beetleboy & Crush lunchbox his dad still had from third grade.

The sound of leaves rustling made him jerk his head up. Ticarus's foot came out first, but then there was a tumble of too much to tell what was what. Especially since David was under it. He wheezed and clawed at the body of whoever was directly on top of him until something freed him. "Gvawsh!" he panted. It wasn't a word, but it was the last thing a colony of ants heard before he rolled over onto it. "AGH!!"

Before he could lose it and start slapping all over himself, David was once again rescued by Ticarus's timely decision to lift him up in the air. Not quite as high this time, but high enough that he was able to calm down and brush himself free of ants. He gave Ticarus a sheepish smile. "No need to thank me, oh might David. Just never let me fall on that shield again." Ticarus set him back down and then set to wincing and trying to hide a large bruise. "I saved that poor wretch over there, now tend to him for a bit so I can nurse what's left of my pride."

While Ticarus went off to do whatever he meant by 'nursing his pride', David took the opportunity to get a good look at the owner of the arm he'd seen. Unfortunately, the first thing he saw was the fist at the end of the other arm. He staggered back, just a few steps, then before he could stop himself, he retaliated with at hard right to his unexpected opponent's gut.

Then he grinned and let out a surprised laugh. That was a familiar gut! "Jacob! It's you!"

Jacob was bent double and coughing, and it took him a moment to stand up semi-straight and start glowering. "How long did it take you to figure that out?"

"It would have been easier if you'd let me see your head before your knuckles," David pointed out.

"Don't you start. I'm still trying to be glad to see you."

Even though his lip was bleeding again—and he was starting to wonder if it would ever have a proper chance to heal—he couldn't help smiling. It hurt, but not enough to keep him from doing it anyway. "I'm glad you're okay." Then, inevitably, the smile left him, emotionally and physically. "What happened after I fell?"

The sour look on Jacob's face uncrinkled into a lost sort of frown. He let out a shallow sigh, then leaned against the tree. "First off, Paige ran after you. She just about jumped! Crazy little—" Then he bit his lips together and fell silent for a few moments. David was about to ask him to go on, but then he didn't need to. "Anyway, I went after her, I even grabbed her hand and held on. It felt like forever. After she slipped… I couldn't even uncurl my fingers." Jacob looked down at his hands. "I'm really sorry."

"What happened after that?"

"Everything was paper—you saw. And it kept getting thinner." A shudder pushed Jacob away from the tree and he didn't lean back again. "But I didn't see anyone else fall. It was like it just happened to you and Paige." Then he shook his head and looked up at David. "And then me too. Where are we? I thought I was gonna die." He glared. "I thought you'd died."

David forced a laugh. "You say that like you're sorry you were wrong."

But Jacob didn't even crack a smile. "Maybe I'm not wrong. Tell me where we are, David."

"All three of us are in the middle of nowhere, and that's where we'll stay if you two don't stop flapping your mouths and get your feet moving!" Ticarus sang out as he came blustering back from wherever he'd gone. "Come on then, march, ladies!"

It was impossible to even attempt conversation after that, as Ticarus, apparently completely uninterested in finding out what was going on, just kept them walking at a brisk pace. Whether it was to shut up the others outright, whistle, or just chatter about a string of seemingly random topics, he didn't stop making noise. From anyone else, that would have been annoying in the extreme, but David found that he was able to tune him out as white noise very easily. He wondered if Ticarus knew he could be so easily ignored.

Unfortunately for everyone, Jacob was not content to let Ticarus be white noise for long. His first sign of irritation was to shove Ticarus with his shoulder. With one of the kids in the Delta building, that would have won Jacob some silence, or made him deal with a bit of crying if he did it to the wrong kid. But Ticarus just laughed and bellowed something that sounded like a battle cry, then shoved Jacob right back.

At first David was horrified, but then he got a grip on himself from the inside out. "Bumper cars!" he shouted. It was an old game, stupid, and it often ended up with someone a little too knocked around and sniffling over it, but it was great fun until that point. Just in case, he launched himself at Ticarus first, careful that the shield would not get to be part of the game.

He wasn't ready for the collision, but he was glad to discover that Ticarus was not painfully skinny and bony. Jacob, still looking grumpy, but not as much as before, rammed his shoulder into David's chest, pushing him back so that he almost tripped over his own feet. "Ha! Beat that."

"Gladly." Ticarus hopped up, then stayed suspended in the air where he'd put himself, and readied himself to dive straight at Jacob—but then he did something at the last second that sent him crashing into David.

David lost his balance and landed on his behind. There wasn't as much padding there has he'd had a year or two ago, and he kind of wished he hadn't lost it. It was still funny, though, and he laughed so hard that his mouth felt dry. "Hey!" he finally managed to gasp out.

"What? Just a little friendly competition." Ticarus winked at him, then turned to Jacob, who let him have a wide grin in turn. "I win. Neener!" Then he was laughing too much to say anything else. He wasn't even in the air anymore, just standing on the grass with the other boys, holding his sides and trying to catch his breath.

Then he was face-down on the grass, his wings quavering slightly. The dog man tossed a rock up in the air and caught it, then threw it at David. It barely missed his head. "You…" the dog man growled. There was a grin on his face, an unfriendly one. "I take it you're the reason this little scut didn't kill me back there." He made a rasping guttural cough that sounded like he was trying to clear his throat in spurts. It took David a moment to realize that the dog man was laughing. Evilly.

Jacob looked completely lost and just as frightened as David, but he had to be making the same connections that David had. This was definitely the man that had chased Paige back at the vertical city. There was knotted and gnarled hair all over him, especially his head, and bits of it was wet and flecked with spitty foam where his drool had traveled. And there were no doorways in sight, but judging by the way he towered over them, he would definitely have had to duck if there had been a doorway.

Trying his best to keep his knees from shaking, David moved closer to Jacob. The dog man was still standing right over Ticarus, so it would be too dangerous to just run up and grab the guide. …Without help. David glanced at Jacob and tried to come up with a plan and share it without saying anything. It wasn't easy, and he didn't think he accomplished anything.

"What's wrong, meat pockets? Cat got your tongue?" The dog man must have had a poor sense of humor, because he started laughing again.

David swallowed and tried to talk. Not because the dog man seemed to want him to, but because there wasn't really anything else that he could do. Unfortunately when he did manage to say something, what he said was, "Get away from him."

To make matters worse, Jacob threw himself in. "Or you'll be sorry." David thought it especially stupid of his friend to start tossing threats when the only weapon they had between them was a shield that caused nothing but trouble.

A very slow smile tugged at David's mouth. He had to growl and put on a tough, resolute face before it could really show. He turned around so that he was facing Jacob with his back to the dog man. "Bumper cars," he whispered.

He didn't even have to wait for the same slow smile to take hold of Jacob. The other boy just lowered his shouldered and charged.

The dog man didn't even see it coming. Of all the weapons previous opponents might have used against him, David doubted the dog man had ever had to face a shield-tipped kid missile. He staggered backwards, then fell, with David on top of him.

"Dude that was so awesome!!" Jacob squeaked.

David grinned proudly as he watched his friend jump around and sputter. "Thanks, now help me up."

Once he was on his feet again, Jacob slapped their hands together and continued grinning like a maniac monkey. But even the rush of victory couldn't take away the rubbery feeling going through David's entire body. He couldn't believe he'd just done that. He couldn't even believe he'd thought of doing it. Loren would have been proud of him.

He hurried over to Ticarus, ignoring the way the shield clanked against his shoulderblades. "Hey… Are you alive?" That was not the right question, but he couldn't take it back. He pinched himself in the arm and kneeled down so he could start pushing Ticarus up. "Dang it, he's too heavy! Jacob, get over here and help me."

Between the two of them, they managed to get the taller boy close enough to standing that Jacob could drag him around in a strange form of a piggyback ride. He walked a few steps, then stopped and shook his head. "This is too weird."

David chuckled to himself. He felt like he'd just aged a year in the seconds it had taken to take out the dog man. "And us beating up a werewolf isn't weird?"

"Well, yeah but… You know what I mean."

"Yeah, I know." He looked back at their fallen foe and thought of what Jacob had said the first time they'd knocked out the dog man. But even acting in the spirit of his friend, David knew he couldn't even consider killing someone. Not like that. Yes, if and when the dog man woke up, he'd go right back to chasing them, and maybe next time he wouldn't stop at hitting someone in the head with a rock. But they would have to cross that bridge when they came to it. Then, he would be a danger. Now, he was just an unconscious man who happened to be tall, hairy, and drooling a bit more than regular people.

"David?" Even burdened the way he was, Jacob had gotten a fair way ahead. He was standing still now, half-turned-around and giving David a curious look.

David jerked himself out of his thoughts and jogged to catch up. "Sorry…"

Rather than risk of going the wrong way and losing time, they dragged Ticarus to what Jacob decided was a safe distance, then just stopped. After an intense argument that David won, they laid Ticarus out on the ground on his side. He didn't look very good. Even his feathers had lost the bounce and luster that David had gotten used to; he hadn't realized how bright Ticarus had been. But now he looked almost gray.

"Who is he anyway?" Jacob had found a large flat rock to sit on and was wringing his hands quietly. "Did he save you from falling?"

David shook his head and sat down cross-legged beside Ticarus to shake him by the shoulder. "No one saved me. I got caught in a tree, like you. That's probably why they planted them."

"What do you mean?"

"I met a lady here, her name is Senna Grupenski. She told me that we're not the first people to end up here from someplace else, and a bunch of scientists fixed it up so it could be like its own world." He hoped that Senna and the others were still doing okay. It hadn't even been a whole day, but he definitely felt as if it had been forever since he and Ticarus had set off for Torrance. The ruse that Ehhulad had come up with to get rid of Miss Cowslip wouldn't last for long. As soon as she reached the other town, she'd realize they'd tricked her and probably rush back to get revenge.

He tightened his fist, then hurriedly slackened his hand again when he realized that he'd just given Ticarus's arm a hard squeeze. The skin under his fingers was white for a second or two, but then the color quickly filled in. David sighed. "There's so much going on here, I don't know what to do anymore. I tried to make it simple, but then the dog man showed up. It's not simple."

Jacob slid off the rock and crawled over. "Well, duh. But you keep forgetting, I just got here! Tell me at least some of what's going on." He rubbed his bald head, then used the same hand to free Ticarus's face from the curtain of hair that was covering it. "Who is this guy? He's weird, but not really in a bad way. And what is he?"

"His name is Ticarus—" David tried to remember the ridiculously long name that Ticarus had used to introduce himself, but it was no use. "Ticarus Backlash."

"That's a weird name."

"Most things about him are weird, I think."

"Cool."

"Yeah." He poked Ticarus in the ribs and smiled when the unconscious boy jerked away from the contact. "He's still alive, that's good."

Jacob nodded, moving his head a little too much. That might have meant that he was irritated. "Uh-uh. Now tell me some more. You're really bad at explaining things."

It was true, and David knew it. He was too easily distracted by his own thoughts, lots of grownups had told him so. "Okay. Anyway. I'll go back farther, I only met Ticarus today."

"Today?"

He looked up at the sky, it was starting to get dark. "Yup, this is my second day here. I met a guy who's not Robin Hood, and he took me back to Senna—she's his wife—and she told me about Tilcaty and all that stuff. About people just landing here."

"Do they ever get to go home?" The hope in Jacob's voice gave it a higher pitch, but David didn't point it out or make fun.

Instead, he found a few pebbles in the grass and started arranging them in a pattern. "Only one person ever did… But I think Senna made that up."

"Oh."

Neither of them said anything for a while, but then Ticarus grunted and curled up, kicking David's knee in the process. David rubbed his knee, watching Ticarus closely for any other signs that he might wake up soon. There weren't any. He didn't even stick his finger in his ear. "There's some weird creatures too—"

"Duh, we're looking at one. I've played role-playing games too." Jacob rolled his eyes and started naming some of the games. Most of them were ones David recognized, and both of them had to laugh as they realized that one was a lot like Tilcaty. It also happened to be the gooniest one. Nobody they knew liked it. It was way too cheesy.

But he had to keep them on the right topics or they would just waste time while they waited for Ticarus to get up. "I didn't mean him, though. There was a different one, I saw her in a stream yesterday." He wrinkled his nose at the memory. It would be a while before he could really forgive Ehhulad for calling him pretty. "Her name is Ehhulad, and she's a water spider!"

"You mean those long-leggedy ones that can walk on water?" Jacob blinked a few times, his brow furrowed in obvious confusion. "A spider talked to you. That's like a bad cartoon movie about magical princesses."

Thinking about it the way Jacob put it, David had to admit that it did sound a little like that. He was glad that Ehhulad only talked when she looked like a human girl. That was way more normal. "No, she can change her shape. Like a chameleon on steroids!"

Steroids weren't actually something either of them understood, but it was fun to say, and they did both know what a chameleon was. Jacob nodded sagely and steepled his fingers, as if he were going to reveal a master plan, or just think very deeply. "Are we getting to the part that has you questing with Kid Ticarus here?"

David snickered into his hand and aimed a weak punch at Jacob's arm. "Shut up, dude. I have to take this shield to a town so we can trade it for a sword."

"Alright! Then you get to fight a dragon or something? Oh wait, you need a sword and a shield to fight any monsters…" Jacob nested his chin in his hand. "Are there slimes here?"

"Jacob, stop being dumb, there aren't monsters here!" David pushed away thoughts of the giant boar by repeating his own words back in his head. "After I get the sword, we're going back and I'm gonna sell it. Senna and Derek need the money because they're gonna have a new baby to take care of."

"That's a boring quest."

"This isn't a video game, Jacob," David said, a warning in his voice. He'd almost tricked himself into that hole. If he didn't continue to treat this as reality, he might forget the consequences of reality, even something as simple as pain, and end up getting really hurt. Or, a million times worse, he might get someone else hurt. "And Paige is here too. I'm just doing this to help the people who helped me—and to figure out how things work in Tilcaty." That had been the idea, but he was getting more 'experience' than he'd bargained for. He glanced over his shoulder nervously, half-expecting to see the dog man wield another, bigger rock.

Something sharp sliced at the skin right below his knee and he cried out, pushing himself backwards automatically. Ticarus had scrambled up on all fours, accidentally cutting David with one of his talons in the process. David trembled as he examined the wound, but it wasn't deep. It was too big for a conventional band-aid, though… And it stung.

Jacob hurried over and pulled off his sweater, they used it to stop the bleeding. Why his friend had been wearing a sweater on a day that had started out as summer, David didn't know, but he was glad. It helped that when he looked down, instead of a bloody gash, he saw a badly-designed logo for a sports team. "Hold that there," Jacob said, "I'll get a long stick and give Kid Ticarus a whack. He's slept long enough, and now he owes you a ride."

While he bounded off, most likely a hundred percent serious about that stick, David stayed where he was. He held the sweater pressed firmly to his knee, gritting his teeth and muttering angrily. This was all wrong. The dog man shouldn't have shown up here, he shouldn't have been real! Ticarus had said that he was a failed something, that someone had forced him to have wings, and that the dog man was sort of the same thing, but Ticarus was from Tilcaty. Everyone that had come to Tilcaty from the vertical city were connected to each other, but none of them had a previous connection to Tilcaty itself.

"So why the dog man?" David bit his lip and looked over at Ticarus. He was still crouched on his elbows and knees, but he wasn't moving much. Not really expecting a reaction, David called out, "Ticarus! Get up! You cut me, you jerk."

To his great surprise—as well as that of Jacob, who had just returned with his stick—Ticarus growled something in the language Derek and Senna shared and pushed himself to his feet. And then farther; he rose up to his customary place an inch or two off the ground. "Gaaow!!" he roared. "What did that-that antwerp hit me with?!"

"A rock. Calm down," Jacob chided, leaning on his stick. "You know, while you were playing Sleeping Ugly, we had to take out the hairy guy, and then you had to go and get David hurt." He fixed Ticarus with a piercing glower. "Klutz."

Ticarus's brightness was back, as if just being awake restored it to him, but his feathers were… ruffled, for lack of a better word. It made him look like the bird boy version of an upset cat. "I did what?" He swung himself around to look at David, actually completing a full circle or two before he managed to line himself up properly. "Let me see."

David gingerly moved the sweater away. The bleeding had stopped, at least, but it still looked gross. Why did he always have to be the one who got hurt? Maybe God was still miffed about that comment of his… He'd have to be more careful in the future. What a vindictive higher power God could be. "It's not that deep."

"Brave idiot," Ticarus muttered. He looked concerned, though. "How far back did you leave the hairball?" His feathers were still sticking up in places, but it looked like he was making a conscious effort to smooth them down without actually touching them. It didn't help that his hair was sticking up as well.

"Way back there." Jacob pointed with his stick, then lowered it. It was long enough to be used as a walking stick or a staff, but it didn't look smooth enough to be a good one of either of those. "But you were out for a while. Wherever we're going, we should hurry up."

The best way to hurry was, of course, to run, but David knew that no one would suggest it. He was starting to feel slightly embarrassed about the way he'd received his latest injury, and he hoped that he wouldn't have to be the one to suggest that Ticarus fly him.

Thankfully, Ticarus didn't wait for anyone to suggest it. "Looks like you won't be much for travel on foot. Not for a while, anyway." He let out a grinding sigh, then took David's wrists and pulled him up. "Forget wrapping that up, it'll get infected for sure if you cover it with anything but clean bandages. And then that tunic could get stuck to your skin. I don't think you want me to have to cut it off you."

David shook his head vehemently. Unwelcome mental images of the sweater fusing with his skin flowed into his brain, and they wouldn't leave. He'd be branded a football fan for life. "What do we do with it?"

"Bury it." Jacob used his staff to poke at the ground until he had a good hole started, then kneeled down and made it bigger. He took the sweater and stuffed it in the hole, then pushed the dirt back over it. The result was messy, but it covered up all of the bloody fabric. He looked up at Ticarus. "Can you smell any blood?"

The taller boy glowered, then let go of David to fly up and away a bit. He looked like more like a bird than he had so far, his feathers prickling out like spines. "Not right now, no. I'll give you a howl if I do." He took a deep breath, then let it out through clenched teeth. "Alright David, how do you want to do this? If we didn't have your fat friend to worry about, then I'd just rush you to Torrance—"

"I am not fat!" Jacob raised his stick menacingly. "And you have to carry him, it's your fault he can't just go on foot."

David felt like he was caught in between two squabbling babies. He rolled his eyes and carefully set the majority of his weight on his good leg. Regardless of the danger they all knew was behind them, he had a feeling that just being aware of it wouldn't stop a petty argument. But he could certainly try to do it himself. "Hey, let's just go, okay? Ticarus, you can just fly me slowly for a while, so Jacob can still keep up, and—"

"So now I'm fat and slow? Thanks a lot," Jacob said, putting a hand on his hip. "I thought you'd be on my side."

"Oh no, David's my close and personal friend," Ticarus interrupted with a rather characteristic boom. "I know his mum and dad."

David groaned loudly. "Look, I'm not on anybody's side!" He gave Ticarus a very serious frown. "And I already told you, Derek and Senna aren't my parents. The baby hasn't even been born yet." He tested how much weight his hurt leg could take, then winced when he discovered that the answer was 'not much'. The cut was too close to his knee, and he was too aware of it. Maybe he could walk later, once he got his mind off of it. "You guys can fight on the way, but only if we just get going already."

They both stared at him for a few seconds, ten Ticarus laughed and flew around to pick him up from behind. "A thousand apologies, O mighty one," he said with a chuckle, "I'd forgotten how heavy that shield of yours is. No wonder you're in such a hurry to be off your feet." He didn't seem to be having as much trouble staying airborne as he had the first time he'd carried David and the shield. Nevertheless, David made a mental note to remember to pass the shield on to Jacob for a while. As soon as he stopped holding his breath and waiting for the dog man to reappear.

He rolled his shoulders a little, it helped make him a little more comfortable, although they were still a little sore from the last time he'd flown with Ticarus. "I just don't want the dog man to catch us—again."

Jacob looked up at them, but then quickly returned his gaze to the path in front of him. "How many times has that guy attacked you, anyway?"

Before David could answer, Ticarus clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. "He's the sort who'll take out his anger on anybody. Trust me, he wasn't an altogether savory sort even before he grew the full body beard."

"How do you know?"

"Well, chubbo—"

"Jacob."

"Right. Well, chubbo, he used to be something like my roommate." Ticarus nudged David's back with a bony knee. "You recall the procedures I spoke of before. The big men in charge of them were cheap misers, and they made me room with the rather malodorous fellow. Not only did I have to put up with Mr. Wonderful's fascinating smell, I had to listen to him babble on for hours…"

"What kinds of things did he babble about?" They were moving faster now, but Jacob was keeping up. When David looked down to check on him, he had to cover his mouth to keep from laughing. Either they were traveling at a ridiculous speed, or Jacob had another way to justify the way he was running. He was using the staff as a sort of vaulting pole, leaping every two or three feet.

Surprisingly, Ticarus didn't make so much as a mocking observation. All of his current teasing was apparently reserved for the dog man. "Oh, he liked to go on about how he was going to be so powerful that he'd finally break free of his mistress. That kind of boring tripe."

"Did he say who his mistress was?"

"Is, David. As far as I know, the corpulent biddy is still around."

Rather than reach back to kick Ticarus, David opted to pinch his friend's arm. "Who is she?" He remembered the word 'corpulent' from the days of Loren's vocabulary exercises, and it gave him a pretty good idea of what the answer would be beforehand.

"It was one of those foofy names that pretentious ladies have. Euphe—no, Eugenia. Eugenia Cowslip."

Even though he'd been expecting it, the chill that ran through David's body still made him shudder. He looked down at Jacob, trying to remember if he'd told him about the creepy lady's existence in Tilcaty.

Apparently he hadn't. Jacob tripped in the middle of a leap, and fell behind several yards. "What?!"

Obviously unaware of what he'd just revealed, Ticarus doubled back and waited for Jason to get up and start moving again. When he didn't do it right away, Ticarus clicked his tongue impatiently. "I s'pose you won't need to ask me anything if you want to ask old Reginald himself," he said, "but I'd advise against waiting for him."

"I'm not… Did you say 'Cowslip'?" Finally, Jacob started walking again, but he was too distracted to continue his trend of leaping. David hoped that there wouldn't be another fight.

"Yes, that's the name," Ticarus said, slight confusion in his voice. "Why?"

Jacob reached up with the staff and gave David a swift poke. "If he's working for her, then…"

"Then I wanna know why." David patted Ticarus lightly on the forearm. "What do you know about Miss Cowslip?"

"Oh, so it's 'miss', is it? That's polite of you, if a little on the erroneous side." Ticarus dipped close to the ground as they turned in to a forest. "Never saw her myself, but according to Reginald, she's a powerful sorceress of impressive girth." He narrowly missed flying straight into an old oak tree, but the near collision didn't seem to register onto his train of thought. "She'd have to be powerful to have any kind of hold over tall, furry, and covered in drool back there."

He glanced behind them, then nearly crashed into an even bigger tree. David covered his face with his hands. "How did they end up in Tilcaty?" His voice only trembled a little, he was proud of himself. Soon he'd have to insist that they stop and let Jacob carry the shield for a while.

Ticarus came to a sudden stop; it was such a jerking change in motion that David actually dangled for a few moments after. "You know, I'm not really sure how those two came to be here…"

"I'd be more than happy to tell you the story, if you'll just hand over that boy."

David felt another jerk, this time it was the all too familiar one of almost being dropped. Before Ticarus could even swing around, Jacob had let out a bellow. Horrified, David watched his friend leap at the dog man with the staff. The distracted thought that Jacob looked unexpectedly comfortable with that type of weapon flitted across David's mind as he watched.

The dog man—Reginald, Ticarus had called him—caught the staff in one hairy hand, then used it to yank Jacob around. He actually waggled poor Jacob around like a gummy worm. But even when he jerked the staff harder, Jacob held on tight, and didn't cry out.

They may have had a shallow relationship based on bickering and one-upmanship, but Ticarus didn't just leave Jacob to his own. David shelved his relief to appreciate later, and tucked himself into a sort of lopsided David ball, preparing to be used as a missile again.

But the dog man was ready for them. All those knocks on the head must have taught him to be careful. He pulled hard on Jacob's staff, exerting so much force and effort that he sent himself out of David and Ticarus's trajectory, and pulled Jacob right into it. David squeezed his eyes shut and held his breath, as if that would help him prevent himself from landing on his friend.

Whether it helped or not, he would never know. But when several seconds had gone by without an impact, he opened one eye. Then he let himself go slack as he looked around; Jacob and the dog man seemed to have shrunk significantly. So had everything else.

It took him half a moment of blinking and mental catch-up to realize that nothing had changed size. Ticarus had just risen up high and out to avoid blows from the staff. Jacob had finally let go of it, and now he was lying frighteningly still a few feet away. Without a young man's body at the end of the staff, the dog man was free to swing and twirl it with the gusto of a true showoff. Unfortunately for them, unlike many showoffs, the dog man clearly knew what he was doing. With the extra reach that the staff afforded him, he was easily able to keep Ticarus from attempting any kind of attack.

"Put me down somewhere!" David ordered him. If Ticarus only had to worry about himself, he would have a much better chance of successfully defeating the dog man. Even if it was only another temporary victory. This guy was more persistent than a cockroach. "I'm just getting in your way, put me down!"

Ticarus must have seen David's point, it wasn't a complicated conclusion to arrive at, but he didn't comply. Instead, he continued to let the dog man drive him back, clutching David carefully. "Told you we should have killed this idiot."

"No one's gonna kill anybody!"

"He'd probably like to argue about that eventuality." Ticarus flew around and over the dog man's head in a complicated swooshing maneuver that made David feel sick to his stomach. "Jacob, get your pudgy lard self off the ground!"

At first Jacob didn't respond. David nearly took his last remaining option—kick Ticarus so the older boy would let go, never mind that it was the mean path to get his way. But before he could, Jacob pushed himself slowly off the ground and into a crawling position. "I'm not fat," David heard him say.

But even though Jacob was more or less up and on his feet, he had only fallen right back into danger. He stood up and looked down at his empty hands, clearly dazed, then at the dog man.

The rain of showoff-y strikes had been called off, and now the dog man was watched them all warily. The look on his face also implied that he was confident he was going to be the one walking cleanly away from the fight this time. "It seems you should have let them pick a bird for you that was less of a pansy, Ticarus," he said, chuckling. "Pigeons aren't exactly known for their carrying capacity."

David could hear Ticarus growling; it wasn't a nice sound. It might have been helpful to pretend to be much younger and say something innocently inspiring… But that was something Paige would have done, and Paige wasn't around to do it. Fortunately, Ticarus didn't seem to expect it from David, he just snapped at the dog man, "Better a pigeon than a lap dog."

"I see you haven't grown up at all."

"Look in the mirror and say that. Nyeeahhh!!"

Feeling a little bit forgotten, David tugged on Ticarus's hold as well as he could without bringing any attention to himself, but it was no use. Ticarus's arms tightened around his chest and filled him with a familiar feeling of frustration. "Let me down, I have to help Jacob!"

Ticarus sighed, belying the situation and suddenly seeming too old to be himself. "And let Reginald Von Fondlesbottoms take you back to his fat cow of a lady?"

The stick flew at them then, and Ticarus nearly missed dodging it. On the ground, the dog man was almost literally hopping mad. "You never change, do you, you childish waste of matter!" He was so worked up that he didn't seem to notice Jacob dragging himself to a greater distance away. Unfortunately, there weren't any trees really close enough for him to hide behind, and the dog man's fit of anger didn't last long enough for Jacob to reach and kind of real safety. "I thought I'd be relieved just to bring the boy back to Eugenia, but I think I might actually enjoy seeing this one die," the dog man snarled and leapt after Jacob like a dog.

"Wh—?!" David cut off the cry as Ticarus tucked him under his arm like a big teddy bear, then held in the growing cry while they dove. His eyes started watering and his legs didn't even have the chance to try to kick without his permission, if he'd ever needed an indication of how fast Ticarus could go, this was more than enough.

To his dismay, Ticarus didn't use the shield as their weapon. He used his own head. They collided with the dog man, unaccompanied by any kind of comic book sound effect, which left the air feeling empty. As David lay on the grass, trying to get his breath back and remember what bearings were, he heard a series of whacks that he didn't like at all.

When he was able to get a good enough look around to figure out what the sounds had been, he nearly laughed in relief. Demonstrating a superb knack for finding sticks, Jacob had retrieved another and sought immediate revenge. The result of that revenge would have been comical if the dog man hadn't looked so pathetic. His fur got in the way of any bruises showing, but he still looked the worse for wear, and he was on the ground again, warding off Jacob's less brutal follow-up attacks with something less than the ostentatious flair he'd had before.

David was about to yell at Jacob to cut it out, but then Ticarus did it for him. "Leave the poor beast be a moment, Jacob," he said, still sounding older than he was supposed to. Uncomfortably like Derek, but without that glimmer of 'no really, I'm just kidding; let's go out and play'. "He has questions to answer."

A light seemed to go on in David's head as he realized that Ticarus was right. As scary as it was when he acted the grownup, at least David didn't have to do it anymore, and someone did have to do it, after all. Lots of things pointed to the dog man being Miss Cowslip's underling or servant, whatever word fit, and he had to know some of the things she knew. Which meant that if she knew why the vertical city had changed, then he might know too. "You didn't hit him in the head, did you?"

"I dunno," Jacob said, panting. "I kinda hit him everywhere, it's not like I was aiming…" He was leaning heavily on his new staff, a thicker one that looked like a dead branch that had broken off of a tree. Other than a few nasty bruises and plenty of scuff and dirt marks, he looked okay; but David knew that if they ever got home, Mrs. Markus would give them both the lecture of ages.

David pinched his own arm and chided himself. Not if we ever, it'll be when we do. She can lecture us for five hours, as long as we're home to hear it. He automatically reached into his pocket to get the handkerchief for Jacob, but halfway there, he remembered that he'd given it to Paige back at the playground. She'd been crying about the dog man chasing her. "Why were you after our friend? She's just a little girl."

The dog man looked up at him, peering through a wince and an impressive black eye. "Kill me, for I'll tell you nothing."

There was an almost soft thwack as Ticarus reached out and thumped him with a wing. By the deep sound of the contact, the wings were either more solid or heavier than they looked. "Our David is a paladin. He doesn't kill."

David stumbled. He almost squeaked, 'I'm a what?!', but he bit his tongue and kept it in. Either Ticarus was working mischief, or he had a real plan… whatever he was doing, it was certain that he wouldn't like it questioned or hindered. David chewed on his bottom lip and wished he knew what was going on. Paladin? That word was not in the cheesy role-playing game that reminded him and Jacob of Tilcaty. Paladins were selfless, justice-seeking warriors that walked 'the higher path' and showed up in a collection of really classic old games that Loren had given David a year ago. He wasn't a paladin. They had to give up their lives to do good, honorable things to help people. He wasn't old enough to give up his life to do anything.

"He looks like a lost little boy with a filthy face," the dog man said dryly. "And that is what my lady told me he was."

Ticarus scoffed—it made him sound so much more like himself that David felt an ocean of tension ooze out of his muscles. He hadn't even realized that Jacob had walked over to stand next to him. Ticarus took a step back to stand closer to them, but he stayed in front, holding the staff pointed at the dog man's chest. That probably would have had more effect if he'd had a sword instead. "See, this is one of the reasons I called the boy a paladin—he's genuinely polite. You just used a pretty word to refer to someone you hate. Lap dog."

"My name is Sir Reginald Alderbaan of Aberdeen, as you well know," the dog man growled. His drooling seemed to pause now that he was—sort of—talking to them. It mad him look less like a vicious monster and more like an out-of-work theme park attraction. "And hate is a rather… light word to use."

The staff point lowered a bit as Ticarus slackened his position and rose off the ground. "Stop blaming the world for your mistakes, Reg, it isn't the boy's fault that you married a witch."

Jacob burst out laughing. "Wait, wait, hold up. He's Mister Cowslip?!" David jabbed him in the ribs, then gave him a warning look. But he just continued snickering through his braces. "Geez, you poor sucker."

"At least I still have hair!" It was quite possibly the lamest comeback the dog man could have offered up, and he didn't even try to recover and say something wittier. He just held his hands up as if he wished he had claws to threaten them with.

This was going nowhere. David pulled on the shoulder strap to adjust it, then looked over at his friends. Other than the obvious bruises and perhaps near poisonous adrenaline rush, Jacob would be fine, and Ticarus already looked like the sobriety was leaving him. Now he might as well have just dropped the stick, judging by the way he was holding it and the return his slightly vacant expression, he had probably forgotten all about the staff in his hand. None of them knew what to do with a prisoner, they weren't even asking him the right questions. David allowed a small part of himself to have a fit in the back of his head, then cleared his throat and followed through with a plan that he hadn't actually made yet. "Er… Reginald. You work for Miss Cowslip because she's your wife?"

The dog man gave him a nasty look, then eyed the staves and opted to roll his eyes instead. "Put simply, yes."

"Why don't you just get a divorce?"

There was an uncomfortable silence, and then Reginald looked down at a furred hand and picked at the back of his wrist. "What is that?" Then his entire attitude changed, and he gave David a look of hopeful wonder. "Would it free me? Where can I find one?!"

Jacob started to snicker again, but David just stepped on his foot to make him be quiet. Ticarus seemed just as mystified by the word as Reginald, although David wasn't sure if it was feigned mystification or real. He still didn't know how much Ticarus knew about Tilcaty's brand of 'magic' and those sorts of things. He also wasn't sure if he should say something about lawyers and divorce court, or if he would have to make comparisons to local government. Falling into run-of-the-mill daydream fantasy world would have been complicated enough, but in David's opinion, Tilcaty was even worse. "Um, it's not a thing you can find, it's—"

"An agreement, right?" Jacob piped up helpfully. He was still leaning on the staff, but now it was almost casual. "You have to get her to sign a paper that says she doesn't wanna be married either." He scratched his head. "I think there's other stuff involved too, like who gets to keep the living room couch, and alley money."

It was hard to tell with all that hair, but it looked like that explanation wasn't what Reginald would have liked to hear. The hope was gone, but at least he didn't look murderous anymore. …Just defeated.

Which was completely ridiculous. David frowned at him, this didn't seem right at all. The dog man was fast, and he was bigger and stronger than all three of them, individually, anyway. Why had he let them back him down into just talking? "Maybe Miss Cowslip wants a divorce too, I mean, she told us to call her 'miss'." And back at the Grupenski's home, when Ehhulad had mentioned a husband, Miss Cowslip had gotten upset.

"Oh it's no secret neither of us wants this marriage," Reginald said with a wave of his hand. "Ever since I… changed… she wants no part of me other than to order me about. I'm useful, and that's all. First to steal little girls, now a boy… It's all very distressing." He pinched the bridge of his nose and lowered his head. "Truthfully, I'd rather just leave, find somewhere, anywhere, outside of Tilcaty, on my own. Without her accursed help."

David felt a tiny spark of kinship for the dog man, and almost sneezed. "So why don't you?"

"Because he can't," Ticarus answered for him. "Where Reg and the cow came from, marriage constitutes the kind of binding contract you have to die to escape from."

"If I left, she'd just find me and then I'd have to put up with a day's worth of browbeating."

"And leaving Tilcaty is next to impossible, even for Senna. Most people don't even know there's anything outside of it."

Frustrated, David abandoned the idea of trying to help the dog man—half out of spite, he had to admit to himself—and took the staff from Ticarus. He strode purposefully up to Reginald, then poked him hard in the stomach. …not too hard. Being called a paladin had done a great deal to make David want to behave well. He felt like things were expected of him now. "Come on, we have to get to Torrance. You still have to answer my questions, so you're coming with us." Then, because he couldn't resist being theatrical, he added, "March!"

Reginald pushed the staff away from himself and grumbled loudly, but he did start walking. "Let me guess, you want to know why my—why Eugenia is after you."

There was another snicker from Jacob, but he apologized for this one. "I couldn't help it, that's a funny name…"

Although he did have a point, David wasn't really in the mood to laugh at their enemy's name. Especially since he had apparently given her such a serious label. "That's one of the things I wanna know, Mr. Reginald," he said, keeping in mind what Ticarus had said about being polite, "but first I want to know why she wants Paige." The protest that she was just a little girl who'd never hurt anyone was hanging around in his mouth, but he didn't let it out. For all he knew, Mr. Reginald was going to tell him that Paige was part of a prophecy or something—and that was exactly the kind of thing that David didn't want to hear.

At first it looked like his only answer was going to be a listless shrug, but fortunately Ticarus was on hand to administer another solid wing-thwap. Mr. Reginald snarled at him and almost pounced, but David hurriedly poked him and set him marching again. "For years, we've been trying to find a way to go home, or at least leave Tilcaty for a more… tolerant clime. But the only place we could get to was that ridiculous city of towers you came from. Useless place." He ran his hands through the matted fur on the top of his head. His fingers encountered plenty of difficulty doing so, but it didn't distract him too much from the rest of what he was saying. "Eugenia finally found something in one of her books, but it requires the sacrifice of a girl who understands sacrifice before her time. She saw your friend and decided she was the one."

Jacob snorted. "That's stupid. What does Paige know about sacrifice?"

"More than you, chrome dome," David snapped. It figured that if anyone was going to ask that, it would be Jacob, and of course he had to be caustic about it. David could have easily elaborated on the subject, but it was Paige's business, and he wasn't going to cheapen any of it by saying something just to make Jacob shut up and stop being a pig head. "So she's going to kill her?" It hurt his throat to say it, but he didn't let that show.

Mr. Reginald shook his head. "I don't know. All she told me was that I had to get that girl, and when I did, she sent me right back out again to find you." He raised a very thick eyebrow at David. "What could you be that she'd want you? No offense, but Ticarus's paladin nonsense isn't even a good story. Like so many of the ridiculous things that come out of his misshapen mouth."

"Oy, I resent that remark."

"And I resent you."

"Too bad you don't resemble me. How did you manage to catch a little girl with a face like that? She must have run screaming for miles."

"Go to bed and get back up again!"

Ticarus made a switch to the language that David had first heard from Senna and Derek, and Mr. Reginald followed his example, leaving the boys to walk along with them in uncomfortable silence. Jacob coughed into his hand and huddled a tiny bit closer to David. "What are they saying?"

"I dunno." David shrugged. "I think they're speaking Polish. Or something Scandi-somethingan." He actually wasn't even slightly sure of that, but it sounded good, so he didn't take it back. "I think it's the local language."

"Why do they speak English too, though?"

"…Because it's convenient?"

They must have gotten farther than even Ticarus had realized, because David could see buildings in the distance. He hoped it was Torrance, but he didn't remember if anyone had said that there was another town they had to pass through first. Hopefully not, the shield was already way past being a nuisance, and with this last run-in with the dog man, David was more than in a hurry to get back to rescue Paige. Being ready to face Miss Cowslip wasn't important anymore, it was enough that he had met Ticarus and found Jacob. If he still wasn't ready, then he would just have to pretend that he was and hope it fooled everyone.

It sounded like Ticarus had won the argument, because they weren't saying as much now. Then he just said something in a smug voice, folded his arms over his chest, and stopped talking. Mr. Reginald glowered at him, then turned his angry expression on the ground in front of them. "Do you have any other questions, o mighty paladin of the dirt-caked cheeks? Or might I ask one of my own?"

Other than to give him another poke, David let the insult slide without incident. "Yeah, in a second. How did we even get here? And why did everything in the vertical city turn to paper?" He still had Senna's explanation about the bee particle rip thing, but Senna wasn't directly connected to the person who might have been responsible for the vertical city's transformation.

"You mean you haven't figured it out? I thought you'd seen the hedgewitch. She must have told you."

"She didn't know," David half-lied.

Apparently he didn't too good a job of it, because Mr. Reginald sneered at him. Or maybe the dog man just looked like that most of the time. Considering his position—held captive by three boys, all definitely under the age of eighteen—no one could really blame him for a sour expression or two. "Then she must have kept it from you on purpose. All of the hedgewitches know about Tilcaty's bottom-of-the-whole properties."

David felt his spirits drop. He didn't like the idea that their falling into Tilcaty was thanks to a bee becoming a particle rip thanks to an infinite string of coincidences. Even if it was more dangerous for any or all of them, he would have preferred it if their arrival in this ever-stranger place was on purpose in someone's mind. "So you're saying that she should know how the city—"

"That? No, not unless she's had access to my wife's library." Mr. Reginald coughed, then kept on coughing until he had to stop walking and just smother the noise.

They all stared as he finally managed to get a hold on himself, and then Ticarus flew over to hover near his head. "What's the matter, Reg? Hairball?"

The remark earned him a glare and a sharp word that was probably a curse. "No" Mr. Reginald turned to look at David. "You might want to think seriously about what your silly friend the pigeon thinks you are—or should be," he said. "It would take a paladin to rescue your city."

"How come?" Jacob asked. "Stop being all cryptic and just tell us what she did to it!!"

Mr. Reginald started coughing again, but he made it worse by trying to talk through it. Then he nearly choked when Ticarus tried to help by giving him a sound slap between the shoulder blades. David wished his mother had made him adopt the habit of carrying a water bottle as opposed to a handkerchief. As it was, all they could do was wait until Mr. Reginald could speak again. "Your city. It's become a book in Eugenia's library. All of the buildings and people reduced to ink and paper." He laughed then. It was a harsh sound that made David's eardrum's rattle. Then it got worse when Mr. Reginald started coughing again; this time it was a dry hacking cough that would have made David's mom rush him off to the doctor.

David gripped the staff so tightly that the skin on his hand felt over-stretched. "What's wrong with you?" he asked, forgetting all about manners.

But there was no response to his question, not from the dog man. Ticarus flitted over and pulled both of the boys by their shoulders, away from Mr. Reginald and off in the direction of the town. "Come on, we've just about reached Torrance," he said. "Leave him be. There's nothing more he'll tell you."

"But what's wrong with him?"

Ticarus didn't answer. He just continued pushing them on their way.

By the time they were close enough to be noticed by the townspeople, there weren't very many townspeople around to notice them. The sun had set, leaving them with only the weak light of the moon and the occasional candle-powered street lamp. "We made good time," Ticarus commented.

"I don't know about you," Jacob said, fighting back a yawn and mostly failing, "but all I want right now is a bed and some milk."

Milk made David think of cookies. That made him think of his mother and how not even Loren had grown out of having cookies and milk before bed. David shook his head. "Maybe later. Let's find the blacksmith first."

Ticarus gave him a funny look. "Sorry, David, but I'm afraid we'll all have to bed down for the night. Almost everything but the inn will be closed up now." He pointed to a tall, homey-looking building a few feet away. "We can get rooms there."

There was a sign in front of the building, but David couldn't read the writing, either it was too far away, or it was more of the Tilcaty language. He grinned to himself. Scandi-somethingan. He'd have to remember that so he could tell Paige, she'd laugh her head off.

Thinking of her inevitably brought a change in mood. What was happening to her right now? What had been happening while he'd been running around on this silly quest, being chased by the dog man? It seemed strange that the dog man had given up the chase when they'd cornered him, instead of fighting madly. David didn't know much about fighting, but he knew that he wouldn't have given up like that, and he was just a kid. Mr. Reginald must have really hated doing what Miss Cowslip told him to, if he would just abandon doing something he'd been doing all day or longer, especially after he'd already disregarded two major blows to the head to go after them again. And the coughing… Why had he been coughing? He'd seemed fine before.

"Are you coming?"

David jerked his head back up, unaware that he had let his gaze slide to rest on the cobblestones under his feet. "Huh?"

"Come on, my feet hurt." Jacob was bouncing on the balls of his feet, making squeaking noises with his shoes, and tapping the staff on the street. "Ticarus is way ahead of us already."

"Sorry…" Enlisting the aid of the staff he was holding, David ran to catch up, surprised to find that his feet hurt as well. So did his legs and his back, and most of the rest of him. The idea of some milk and a bed was starting to sound very appealing.

When they stepped into the front room of the inn, he was glad to see that it didn't look so much like a make-believe inn that it would be uncomfortable. There weren't kegs of ale stacked behind the counter, and the patrons were not lain out drunk on sticky tables. Everything was very clean, and there wasn't even a lot of dust on the floor.

The reason for this must have been the plump lady bustling around attacking the floor with a sturdy broom. Her reddish-brown hair was twisted in a knot at the back of her head, not too far above her neck, and she had a businesslike smile on her face. She brushed past David and Jacob with a brisk 'excuse me, young sirs,' and continued dueling with the already spotless room. She reminded David of someone, but he couldn't think of who that was.

Ticarus came up to them, holding a key in one hand and looking almost depressed. There were cloths wrapped around his feet, which made his usual limp even worse, and discomfort was written all over his face. His wings were folded close to him as well. "I hate being inside," he muttered. "Here, David, take this." He handed the key to Jacob, who was quicker to move. David was still trying to figure out who the cleaning lady reminded him of.

"How come… What's up with that stuff on your feet?" Jacob pointed.

Ticarus looked down at them and grimaced. "They don't want me rippin' up the flooring with my talons. These things itch though…" He tried to scratch one foot with the other, but then he almost fell. His wings began stretching out automatically, to check his balance, but there wasn't enough room. One of them knocked over a vase.

David hurried to catch it, but he wasn't quite fast enough. The vase just missed his fingers and broke into several largish pieces. One of them didn't obey gravity as well as the others and cut his finger. He bit his tongue before he could say a dirty word. It wasn't a deep cut, and it didn't hurt too much, but it did remind him that he still had an open wound on his leg and that did hurt a lot. Leaping to catch the vase hadn't been good for it.

The sound of someone tsking made him look up. "Get that bird man out of my inn," the cleaning lady said, holding the broom as if she were brandishing a weapon. "I'll not stand for this sort of vandalism, intentional or accidental."

Ticarus murmured a few despondent apologies, then skulked out the door. Scowling, David started to follow his friend—if Ticarus wasn't welcome there, then David didn't want to stay. But the lady stopped him by sticking the broom handle out in front of him. "Huh?"

"You, I'll not have you bleed all over the place. Come with me, I'll get you bandaged up."

"But—"

Jacob gently took the staff away from him. "Go ahead, I'll hang out with Ticarus so he doesn't have to be by himself."

It didn't look as if that David had a choice anyway, the lady already had a firm grip on his wrist and was leading him away. But he did send Jacob a quick grateful smile before the lady had whisked him into another, quieter room.

She wasn't much taller than him, but she was unexpectedly strong. Maybe there was more muscle power needed for sweeping than David had ever considered. Or she did a lot more than sweep, that was much more likely. Her hair was coming out of the knot, he noticed, she must have had a long day. That happened to his mother's braid on days when she spent hours fixing up the house, for company, or just because she wanted everything to be clean and tidied up. "Sit down over there. What on earth have you been up to, young man?"

It was so strange to be sitting still, not walking or running or hurrying. He felt dazed. He had slept last night, hadn't he? He couldn't remember now. Maybe that was a sign that he'd lost too much blood. He should have been running around and fighting and overexerting himself. So much had happened that somewhere in the middle of it, he'd forgotten that he still had that big cut.

All of this swam around inside him, but his only reply was a noncommittal shrug. There was too much to say, and he didn't want to say anything at all. He looked down at his knee. It looked really gross now, and he was pretty sure it was infected. What he wouldn't give to be back home with a bathroom cabinet full of antiseptic and band-aids…

"That shield may impress a lovestruck maiden, but I doubt you're any kind of real warrior." The lady gestured to the shoulder strap. "We can put that in safe room, if you like."

David glanced down at his chest, where the strap crossed over him so casually, as if it had always done that. "No, thank you." After all the trouble the thing had cause, the only person he was handing it over to would be the blacksmith. "Did you boil that water?"

She paused with the wet rag in midair, dripping into her other hand. "Of course I did. This inn is one of the cleanest places in Torrance, young man." She tucked a stray bit of hair behind her ear. Unlike when Senna had done that so many times before, the cleaning lady's hair stayed where she put it. "But you'll have to see a hedgewitch about medicine. That cut'll make you sick if you don't."

He nodded. "Okay. …What's your name?"

"Zara. And you're David." She laughed and got to work cleaning up his knee. "Your friend the bird has a way of making himself heard."

Up close like this, Zara looked more familiar. Something about the way her nose was just a tiny bit crooked… She didn't look young the way that Senna did, it was easy to see that Zara was old enough to be someone's mom, even if she didn't already act like it. There were slight wrinkles around her eyes, she'd probably made the mad mom face a few times. He wondered if she had a son or a daughter, or more than one. As clean as the inn was, she probably just had a daughter. "Thank you," he said, barely wincing as she wrapped a bandage around his leg.

Then his throat closed up as she gave him the scariest look he'd ever seen. It was like she'd seen a ghost, but there was a smile behind the fear, trying to get out. Mixed together, it made him want to move back a bit. "You're wearing sneakers," she whispered.

His heart jumped, banging into his ribs and then carefully sliding back into place. "How did you know that?"

She smiled at him. It was a tired, frightened, hopeful smile. "I haven't seen a pair of sneakers since…" Then she laughed. "My husband bought our daughter a pair of Keds. Have you ever seen those little baby sneakers? They looked like they belonged to a tiny basketball player." This time, while she wrapped the bandage around his hand, it wasn't as tight, or as quick. She was taking her time now.

David nodded eagerly, mirroring her smile. Finding Jacob had been one thing, but—"What's your husband's name?"

It was a while before she answered. She spent a few moments just looking at him, his shoes, and his face, as if she were trying to convince herself that he was really there. "Hunter. Hunter Allen."

He moved forward before he could stop himself, and then he was hugging her. "Paige is here, Mrs. Allen!"

Five years was a long time, and even though he'd never known her, he knew that she needed to be hugged by someone, someone who knew her family. It was no wonder Mr. Allen hadn't ever gotten over losing her—she'd disappeared. As completely as if she'd died. It had been a month or two after David and his family had moved to the vertical city, to the apartment next to the Allens'. Maybe she remembered him.

She was crying, getting his shirt wet in the same place that Paige had cried on before. It seemed like that had been a lifetime ago. But she was here, and seeing her somehow strengthened the hope that they would all get home. For one thing, no one could mess with a mom trying to save her daughter. Whatever Miss Cowslip was going to try to do with Paige, Mrs. Allen wouldn't let it happen.

"Mrs. Allen, I have to tell you something," he said. "A lot of somethings—but you have to believe me right away or we won't have time."

Never mind the shield now. He wouldn't make her wait to see Paige. They could all go back to Torrance and bring Paige with them. The shield was a hunk of metal named trouble. It got to be important for a good long time, it could stand taking a backseat for… for as long as it took to rescue Paige.

A few hours later, they were going at what passed for breakneck speed in a wagon, and David had definitely decided to believe what Ticarus had said about Tilcaty horses being insane. It must have been a credit to both Senna and Derek, that they had managed to keep that from him before. Either that, or the driver they'd hired was not really that sure of what he was doing.

At least they were going fast. Jacob had fallen asleep in the back, but no one else could follow his example. David knew he should have tried to sleep, but he was too excited. And anxious. He looked across the wagon at Mrs. Allen.

She was wringing her hands a little, but other than that, she wasn't letting herself look nervous. When he'd told her about Miss Cowslip, the first thing Mrs. Allen had done was punch a wall. Then she'd calmly asked him all about the whole thing, and he'd found himself spilling it out like water from a pitcher.

After all of that, he felt a bit empty. He also felt like he was going to throw up. Before they'd left, Mrs. Allen had taken him to the hedgewitch in Torrance so they could use the cell phone to call Senna. Derek had been the one who answered, and he'd sounded all jumbled up. The baby was coming, he'd said, and on David's insistence, they'd barred the doors to keep Miss Cowslip out. They knew from the dog man why she'd wanted Paige, but they didn't know her interest in the Grupenskis. No sense risking Senna and the baby, or even Derek.

"I should be sitting here drowning in guilt and self pity," Mrs. Allen muttered, interrupting the long speech of the wagon wheels hating the road they were on. "But all I want to do is punch out that—that woman."

"My mom says that anger is more healthy than guilt."

"Healthier."

"Yeah."

"She may be right…" Mrs. Allen chuckled.

"Moms are always right." He popped his head out the front, only half to check on the driver. Maybe the guy was dead. "Hey, how much further do we have to go?"

The mousey-looking man was visibly struggling with the horses, but he was cheerful about it. "Not much, young sir."

Not far to the side of the wagon, Ticarus was flying. David suspected that his friend was doing something to help with the horses, but he had no way of knowing for certain. He pulled himself out of the wagon so he could sit next to the driver. "Do you think they're still okay, Ticarus?"

"It depends… If we count on Derek, which we can't, then no. But if we count on Senna, which we can, then they're just fine."

David gripped the edge of the driver's bench until his knuckles hurt. He looked around at the landscape, a little uneasy at how familiar it had become. They'd spent so much time here, it was a little like something Loren had been writing an essay about. Like he did with most essays, Loren had used David as a sounding board, and David still remembered some of it. It had been about something called Stockholm Syndrome. He'd had Jacob around for a while now, so they were probably safe from that, but Paige had been all alone with a creepy lady.

He tuned out everything except the passing trees and sky until they were close enough to the house that he could jump off. It was a little too soon and he ended up almost tripping on his own feet, but he stayed upright. Part of him wanted to shout out a call to arms, but he reminded himself that they weren't going to be fighting anyone—hopefully. He'd left the shield in the wagon, and he hadn't slept for a day and a half. If it came to some kind of duel, he'd have to hope Ticarus or Derek would step in.

Ticarus didn't look half as tired as David felt, but that might not mean that he wasn't just hiding it. He helped Mrs. Allen out of the wagon, then woke up Jacob by poking him with his own staff. "Up and at 'em, chubbo," he called out. "We need to let Mr. Meng take his wagon back."

Of course, that launched into a bout of bickering with most of it incomprehensible grunts from Jacob. Sighing and wondering how they could go on being such big babies when something so important was going on right next to them, David gripped his own staff and found himself offering an arm to Mrs. Allen. "Come on, they're waiting for us. Senna said that Miss Cowslip was seen heading out here when we called."

"Does she know about me?"

He shook his head. "Derek had a friend ask around, and Paige is definitely with her. If she knew you were coming here, she probably would have locked Paige up somewhere." Maybe in a glass hill or something.

As they approached the door, it swung open and Ehhulad rushed out. Her hair was even wilder than David remembered it, and her eyes were wide. "Clarence!" She launched herself at him, hugging him close, as if he'd been gone for much longer than a day. "The cow is here," she whispered.

Jarred, he immediately started to walk into the house, but then he had to stop and laugh at himself. He'd forgotten how light Ehhulad was, and she hadn't let go of him yet. He'd just dragged her a couple of feet, almost like carrying her, but not that dignified. "Sorry," he waited for her to let go and move away, then reached back for Mrs. Allen.

Her face was pale, and she looked like she was having some trouble breathing. "where is my—friend?"

Ehhulad reached out and took her hand, as if she were comforting a sick person. "They're all in the nursery. Come with me."

David was so tense that he could feel his muscles trying to eat each other. …He wasn't sure why he had chose to describe it to himself that way, but it was graphic enough to make him wrinkle his nose and take Mrs. Allen's hand in his. Her grip was so tight that it made his fingers ache, but he didn't blame her. His grip was just as tight, he knew.

It was strange to have the noisy bustle of Ticarus and Jacob bickering behind them, when the room Ehhulad was leading them to was so quiet. Something was clearly not right. Ehhulad had said that Miss Cowslip was there, but her wagon hadn't been outside. The weird thought that she might be playing a twisted game of hide and seek with them crossed David's mind, but he didn't dwell on it.

"The baby was born this morning," Ehhulad said, unable to keep a smile off her face, in spite of the tension that was making the room hard to walk through. "She's so lovely, D—Clarence, I can't wait for you to see her…"

As cheesy as it probably was, David couldn't hold onto his fear enough to keep back a smile. He walked faster, dragging Mrs. Allen with him. It may have been faster than she wanted to go, but she let him pull her along without any resistance. "What's her name?"

"They haven't given her one yet." There was a warning tone in her voice that told him that he should leave the subject alone.

They all came to a screech-less halt in front of the nursery door. It was slightly ajar, but only the sound of a rocking chair creaking passed through the opening. "Is she sleeping?"

Ehhulad nodded somberly. "But I do not think she will be for much longer."

David's breath caught in his throat, and he barely managed not to choke. Miss Cowslip was in the nursery, she had to be. He let go of Mrs. Allen's hand and rushed into the room. "I'm back!" he said, a little too loudly.

All of them were there, the Grupenskies awing over their new arrival, Miss Cowslip, and Paige. Miss Cowslip was standing by the nursery window, holding a book and looking smug. "Just in time… David."

Someone behind him swore and David's blood went cold. "How did you—?"

"That wild goose chase that you and your pet spider sent me on was the perfect opportunity to catch up on my reading," she said, her smile growing in size and creepiness. "Did you really think that you could keep your name from me when I have this?" She held up the book, showing off the illustration on the cover. It was the vertical city, a bit stylized, but still recognizable.

David made a grab for the book, but someone stopped him mid-leap. The arm that had suddenly flew out in front of him threw him off balance, so that he had to stumble over to where Senna and the baby were, just to keep from falling to the floor.

Mrs. Allen sent him an apologetic look, then turned to face down Miss Cowslip. "I remember you." Her voice was hard and cold, like iron. "You're the one who sent me here."

A gasp ripped through the air and Paige spoke, for the first time since David had discovered her in Tilcaty. "Mommy!" Her eyes were wide and bright, and it nearly killed David to grab her and hold her back. She glared at him, obviously torn between wanting to hit him and hug him. He hugged her and kept his eyes on her mom and Miss Cowslip. "I want my mommy…" she whimpered, but she didn't try to pull away.

The others had stayed clustered in the doorway, but then Jacob broke past Ticarus and took a couple clumsy bounds to get his staff to Mrs. Allen. Then he practically ran to hide behind David, holding his no doubt aching jaw.

Mrs. Allen looked so strange standing there, holding the staff in both hands and not moving. "You are going to send all of us home."

But Miss Cowslip just laughed. "You presume to give orders to me? An old cleaning woman with a stick. How quaint." She let the book fall to the floor, and laughed even more when the bang made everyone else in the room jump. "Even if you had a small amount of significant power, you're too late."

An orange flame swirled into existence with a roaring sound, engulfing the book. David let go of Paige and leapt forward to grab it, but she was faster. He fell short, then watched in horror as Paige grabbed the book in both hands and—

She started hitting Miss Cowslip with it.

Her mother screamed and the baby started crying, but then those sounds were dwarfed by the howls of Miss Cowslip as the swirling flame let go of the book to cling to her dress. Mrs. Allen yanked Paige away from the danger and scooped her up, then moved quickly aside as Ticarus pushed his way into the room.

As soon as the fire had caught Miss Cowslip, it had grown just as big and fat as she was. Derek was the first to reach her, but he couldn't get close enough to do anything. "Don't, Ticarus you—"

But either Ticarus wasn't listening, or he was too freaked out to understand anyone. The fire was catching onto the walls now, and Ticarus had a crazy look in his eyes that reminded David of the wagon horses. He flapped his wings once at Miss Cowslip, hard enough to send small embers flying in several directions; the force of it also knocked the enflamed woman into the curtains.

While everyone else ran around putting out the small fires that Ticarus had caused, cursing him and mostly panicking, he dove forward and wrapped the curtains around Miss Cowslip, then started beating the curtains with his wings. The smell of singed skin and feathers hung heavy in the air, and it felt like an eternity before the fires were all out.

Everyone slumped where they stood, one at a time, almost like dominoes. Even Senna had held her own against the fire, stomping on whatever flame approached her and the baby. She leaned against Derek, crying a little. He was acting more upset than she was, but no one would ever tell him that. Ehhulad was holding onto David so that he could barely breathe. Part of her arm had caught fire and it taken a lot of frantic work to put it out. Now it was all David could do to get her to stay in her human form. The last thing he needed was to deal with the little black dog.

But Paige was the one they were all concerned about. Her mother had cradled her hands to her chest and wouldn't let anyone come near. They had both collapsed in the middle of the room, not too far from where Ticarus was pushing himself away from Miss Cowslip's still form.

Unwilling to let go of Ehhulad, David gently lead her over to Ticarus so he could check on his other friend. "Now who's the paladin?" he asked, trying to keep his tone light, but not really succeeding at all.

Ticarus looked up and gave him a weak smile. "I didn't save her…" He glanced at Miss Cowslip. "That must have been a painful way to go, but… Honestly can't say that she didn't deserve it." His smile turned sour. "I'm no paladin, David."

"How are we gonna get home now?" Jacob walked over and picked up the book. Its edges were scorched, but other than that, it didn't seem to have sustained much damage. "Click our heels and wish?"

Paige whimpered, and everyone turned to look at her. "I'm sorry…" she said, clinging to her mother. "It's all my fault."

"Oh no, don't talk like that…" Senna kneeled next to her and freed an arm to smooth her hair back. "It's no one's fault."

"I know it's no comfort," Derek said softly, "but you'll all have a place with us as long as you need it." There was a cloud of pain in his face, and David remembered what Senna had said about Derek, that he had fallen into Tilcaty just like they did. But Derek hadn't had someone to blame. No one had pulled him from his home on purpose.

It was a nice offer, it would mean that he wouldn't have to say goodbye to Ehhulad, and he'd get to see the baby grow up. Maybe he could learn more about water spiders, or even ask Senna about the boar and poison, even though Ticarus had warned him that it would be boring. But there were so many people they'd left behind. His parents, Loren, the Markuses, Paige's dad… David shook his head and got up to take the book from Jacob. "Thank you, but we have to go home." Mrs. Allen had said that it was Miss Cowslip who'd taken her from the vertical city, that had to mean that she'd taken David, Paige, and Jacob as well. He looked at the curtain-wrapped body and almost threw up. No use hoping to ask her, or the dog man for the matter. If he was as closely connected to her as Ticarus had said, then he must have known somehow that Miss Cowslip was dead, and there was nothing to stop him from just running as far and fast as he could take himself.

All they had to figure out a way home was the book. He flipped through it, smiling occasionally as he passed an illustration or an interesting passage. At the back, it detailed how he and the others had fallen through the terraces, but… Something wasn't right about it.

He read it out loud to himself, hoping that would lend it some more sense. "The bee, confused by the changes in its environment, flew into Clarence's face and startled him. Two steps, and then the floor gave way beneath him, opening the way to a world he would never leave. Poor Clarence, such a pity."

"Don't read that, it's creepy and depressing," Jacob whined.

David ignored him and kept reading. "The way was open, and the girl, the one who would sacrifice the key, followed him, as she should. It closed behind her, leaving the rest to wait in the paper city, sleeping for eternity in the written word—"

"I said shut up!"

He spun away from the wild punch and held up the book. "Stop being stupid and look at this! She got things wrong, my name isn't Clarence and Paige wasn't the last one to fall!"

Senna handed the baby to Derek and walked over to David, holding out her hand. After a moment's hesitation, he handed her the book. She read the pages he had it opened to, turned back one or two, then flipped forward. "The bee wasn't the particle rip," she whispered. "It was the fall itself…"

"But why doesn't it tell the truth?"

"Because that woman is the one who wrote it," Ticarus spoke up, his voice raspy, but clear. "Your real name must be in there somewhere, there are people who knew it, but she didn't, and she wrote the ending herself."

"What does that mean then? Can it help us get home?"

Ticarus chewed on his bottom lip for a second, then got up, careful not to knock anything over with his wings. His talons tore into the carpet, but no one said anything. There were already lots of burned patches on it, he couldn't do much more damage. "Maybe. Did she write how Paige was going to help get her and Reg out of here?"

Senna flipped through the book. "There's something here about the girl and sacrifice, but… it isn't very clear. See for yourself."

The room seemed to have shrunk, and David realized that he was being hugged from behind, while Ticarus puzzled over the book. He looked over his should and was confronted by Ehhulad's big dark eyes. "Do you really have to leave?"

"Yes… You know how we can go home, don't you?"

Her chin brushed his back, she was nodding. "But you're such a friendly little bleeder… I don't want to give you up."

He sighed. No one had ever seemed to like him that much before, not someone he'd only known for a couple of days, anyway. Then an idea struck him. "Come with me." Clarence's goldfish bowl was big enough for two, and he could give her a heavy coat for windy days, so she wouldn't blow away. Or she could always hold onto him.

She hugged him tighter, and he knew that she was going to say yes. …Well, maybe not say it, exactly, but she meant it. "It doesn't have to be a specific sacrifice," she said, loud enough for everyone else to hear. "She's already made a sufficient one."

Ticarus closed the book and hugged it to his chest, bringing attention to the fact that he had several burns there. David winced and had to bite his tongue to keep himself from insisting they all stop and get to a doctor. "That's a good point, but they're all still here."

"That's because someone has to write the rest of the book." Ehhulad let go of David and strode up to take the book from Ticarus. She put a hand on his chest and yanked one of his feathers out. While he glared at her, flexing his fingers as if he would have liked to do something violent, she took an inkwell from a desk in the farthest corner of the room and sat down.

Everything seemed to stay still while she wrote, no one said anything, except for the occasional whimper or sniffle from Paige, and her mother's soothing. Derek had gotten the baby to go back to sleep, and he had also managed to settle Senna into the rocking chair again. Next to him, Jacob was rubbing his bald head and distracting himself with drawing circles in the ash on the floor.

David yawned. It felt like he hadn't slept in a year. If this didn't work, then it would be even longer; he made a promise to himself that the next place he would sleep would be his own bed at home.

He wiped the sleep out of his eyes and realized that Ehhulad had gotten up and shoved the book into his hands, and was holding the inkwell and feather. "Just two more words from you, and we'll be off."

He looked down at what she'd written.

Then, having saved the day in many respects, David and his friends, all of them homesick and yearning for their loved ones, huddled around each other and said their goodbyes. It would not be a permanent farewell, thanks to his dear friend the water spider, he would be able to visit Tilcaty again—whenever he was brave enough to fall. But that would be a deep concern for him another day. Now, all that remained was for him to end his tale.

As soon as he and his friends became part of the vertical city again, they would find things as they had left them, without the anomaly of the cow woman and her poor husband. No one would believe such a fantastic tale, no matter how Jacob tried to convince them, but Paige's father would not care what kept his wife from them, only that she had returned.

Most importantly, David would always take care of Ehhulad.

David couldn't help laughing. "You're not a very good writer," he observed.

"Selfish people rarely are," she said lightly.

He shook his head and took the feather, dipped it in the inkwell and wrote, very carefully and in his best handwriting—

The end.