“I tried to warn you,” Clover argued. “Some tiles look different. You fell through the floor.”
Geth stood up and growled with frustration.
“I’ve never seen you do that before,” Clover said sheepishly.
“Do you mind?” the other prisoner yelled, sitting in his cell two cells away with his back turned to them.
Geth looked over at the other prisoner and squinted.
“Who is that?” Geth asked.
“Shhhhh,” the other prisoner replied. “I finally got that other guy to shut up.”
“That was me,” Clover replied.
“Great,” the prisoner complained. “Now he’s talking again.”
“I know that voice,” Geth said softly. He moved closer to the bars. “Zale?” he asked hopefully.
“How do you know my name?” Zale replied.
Geth had never smiled wider. “It’s me, Geth.”
Zale turned and stared out of his cell. His long black hair and beard curled at the ends as his eyes tried to focus. He was thin and dressed in a short brown robe.
“Geth?” Zale asked quietly. “I don’t believe it.”
“Me neither,” Geth replied.
“What’s the deal?” Clover complained. “I thought lithens were supposed to be big-time believers.”
Geth and Zale rapidly hollered a bunch of enthusiastic lithen things back and forth. Well, Geth’s comments were enthusiastic, but Zale’s needed a little more work. Mostly he was crying.
“Don’t worry,” Geth said enthusiastically. “We’re here to rescue you.”
Zale cried even harder.
“We’re actually here because you didn’t watch where you were stepping,” Clover whispered. “And in case you haven’t noticed, we’re not really in a great spot to help.”
“We’re in the perfect spot,” Geth said, amped up on some strange new mix of hope and anger.
Zale stopped his crying.
“The sycophant’s right,” Zale insisted. “This is where you will end your days.”
Geth laughed as if his older brother had just told a really funny joke.
“Besides,” Zale said smugly, “I’m not right in the head any longer.”
“You just need to get out of here,” Geth said. “This realm needs us.”
“There’s no way out,” Zale snapped.
“There has to be,” Geth said excitedly, pushing at the sides of the cage.
“Even if you got out, you wouldn’t succeed,” Zale insisted.
“Keep telling me that,” Geth replied. “It only makes me stronger.”
“You’ll fail,” Zale tried to cooperate. “Your fate is sealed in here.”
“Listen, I’m going to punch fate in the throat,” Geth cheered. “There’s no way I’m not getting out, taking care of that kid, and getting back to Foo. If I have to choke the life out of every bit of evil in this realm to make it happen, I will.”
“Seriously,” Clover blushed, “are you okay?”
“Better than okay,” Geth assured him. “Something about Payt’s voice has woken me up.”
“It made me softer,” Zale said, sighing.
“We’ll change that,” Geth promised. He then just stood there looking up.
After a few moments Clover cleared his throat and spoke. “Um, are you trying to fly?”
“No,” Geth said. “I thought I heard something.”
Now it was Clover’s turn to laugh. “I’m sort of the one with good ears. And—”
A round gourd dropped from the chute and hit Geth in the face as he looked up. It bounced off his head and fell to the hard ground with a smack.
Zale glanced over and shivered. “Well, there go your plans,” he said.
“What is it?” Clover asked.
Geth picked up the melon and studied it.
“Don’t open that,” Zale warned.
“Is it food?” Clover asked. “Remember that red stuff with seeds we had in Reality, Geth?”
“Watermelon,” Geth answered. “I’ll never forget it.”
“Reality?” Zale asked in awe. “You saw Reality?”
Geth looked at his brother and smiled. “A lot’s happened since you left.”
“I didn’t leave,” Zale barked. “I was stolen by Sabine.”
“Sabine’s dead,” Geth said solemnly, “along with every last shadow and soul that supported him.”
Zale hung his head. “That’s a pity.”
“Why?” Geth asked, bothered. “Certainly you didn’t support him.”
“Of course not,” Zale answered. “It’s a pity because it makes me want to see Foo again.”
“You will,” Geth insisted.
Another gourd dropped into Geth’s and Clover’s prison cell.
“No, I won’t,” Zale insisted harder.
Two more gourds dropped into their cage.
“Those are nobleberries,” Zale informed them.
“They sound important,” Clover said, stepping out of the way of another falling one.
“What they are is the cause of your death,” Zale said sadly. “This is the problem with hope. It sneaks up on you and then strangles you further.”
“You don’t sound like the brother I fought with,” Geth said harshly.
“I’m not,” Zale replied. “The voice of Payt has left me changed in ways different from you. And the last twenty years alone have taught me that hope is a thief.”
Three nobleberries hit Geth in the head.
“How can you say that?” Geth growled.
“Those berries are whole now,” Zale said flatly. “But in a few days they will begin to rot, or maybe you’ll accidentally step on one or one will crack while falling in.”
Four more dropped in.
“Regardless of how it happens, they will eventually split open,” Zale continued. “That will release their smell, and the smell will bring on the whelps.”
“I’m guessing that’s a bad thing, right?” Clover said nervously.
A dozen more soccer-ball-sized berries dropped in.
“The insides of those berries smell so horrendous that they will most likely knock you out,” Zale said. “But if you do stay conscious, then the whelps will finish you. The scent will bring them from all over the castle and change their normally kind personalities into killers.”
The nobleberries were flowing in now and piling up on the floor of Geth’s and Clover’s cell. Clover climbed up to the top of the cage and held on.
“How can they harm us?” Geth asked. “We’re locked, in which means they’re locked out.”
Zale laughed.
“Nothing will stop them,” Zale insisted. “They will sacrifice themselves to tear out the wire covering or they will dig under and crack the stone floor. Maybe they’ll find a way down the chute. They won’t stop; the smell makes them insane. Even your sycophant friend will be found. Invisibility won’t hide the stench that will get on you.”
The nobleberries stopped falling but they had filled up the cell to Geth’s knees. Geth stood still, his blue eyes opening and closing slowly. He looked at Zale and then up at Clover.
“I’ve seen this happen before,” Zale lamented while pointing toward a cell down the line.
The lighting in the dungeon wasn’t optimal, but Geth could see what his brother was pointing at. The cell was halfway collapsed, with piles of dirt and crooked bars jutting out from it. It looked more like a scrap heap than a cell.
“Whelps did that?” Clover gulped.
“Their teeth are like steel,” Zale said sadly, sitting down on the floor of his cell with his back turned to them “It will be horrible, but at least it will be quiet afterwards—smelly and quiet.”
> “How long before the fruit rots and cracks open?” Clover asked.
“Three days, maybe,” Zale answered mournfully.
“No way,” Geth said adamantly. “I can’t wait that long.”
Geth picked up a large nobleberry and slammed it hard against the bars, being careful not to get any of it on him. It cracked open, and a smell like that of a dump, an outhouse, and a closet full of dirty diapers instantly filled the cell.
“What . . . are . . . you . . . doing?” Clover gagged, falling from the top of the cell as he tried to plug his nose.
“I’m . . . not . . . waiting,” Geth choked. “Let’s . . . see what happens now. Oh . . . that’s awful.”
Zale began to cough and holler. “Why?”
“I . . . didn’t . . .” Geth couldn’t even finish his sentence. The smell was so strong his throat began to contract. His head started to sweat, making it feel as if his face were melting. He tried to push the two halves of the berry back together, but it was no use.
Clover began to dry heave.
Geth threw the two halves into the back corner of the cell and as far away from himself as he could. It didn’t help in the least. Sticky waves drifted up off of the fruit, smearing a filthy layer of putrid smell over everything.
Clover pulled some more marshmallows from his void and crammed them up his nostrils. He handed two to Geth and then began to rub some on his hands. Geth shoved the marshmallows into his nose.
“It barely helps!” Geth yelled.
“You did this,” Clover yelled back, leaping up and into the bottom of the chute. “Sometimes it’s best not to rush fate. Great, now I sound more like you than you do.”
Clover began to make his way up the tube as quickly as he could. Unfortunately, the stench rose like heat vapors and made the smell in the tube so concentrated that it melted the marshmallow and did a number on Clover’s small body.
“Too . . . stinky.”
Clover passed out and dropped back down into the cell and onto the berry-covered floor.
“Clover!” Geth yelled, picking his small friend up off the ground.
The sound of something like a tornado revving its wind began to build in the dungeon.
“Clover,” Geth urged. “Wake up!”
Clover was out. He hung in Geth’s arm like a doll that had lost all its stuffing. Geth moved him to his left arm and held him like a football while trying to kick open the cell door with his right foot. He wanted to be free, but more than anything he just wanted to be away from the smell.
The far dungeon door began to rattle and pulsate as something pounded up against the opposite side of it. Three seconds later the door burst from its hinges, flying across the dark room and cracking against the side of an empty cell.
The whelps had arrived.
The doglike creatures were as fat as pigs, with short, muscular legs and stubby tails. Their heads were the size and shape of pumpkins and looked like they were made from stone. The whelps charged across the floor and began to tear at Geth’s and Clover’s cell with their steel-colored teeth and claws. Some dug at the floor around the cell and near the corner where the cracked berry was. The animals climbed on top of each other, their teeth creating bite marks in the iron bars. Geth backed up against the cell door, staring at the whelps in wonder.
A large orange whelp climbed on the backs of two others and leapt onto the outside of the cell, digging its claws into part of the wire mesh while slamming its teeth into another section. The animal growled and shook its head, pulling back a torn section of wire. Spittle flew everywhere as other whelps jumped up by the orange one and began to bite and tear also. A smaller brown one started to wriggle into one of the jagged holes.
Geth looked at the brown whelp’s head as it shook and twisted its way into the cage. He pulled back and punched the out-of-control beast in the forehead. The strike did nothing but damage Geth’s hand and make the whelp angrier.
Geth looked down at Clover’s unconscious body in his arm. His own body shook and his soul felt as confused and as spastic as the entire group of whelps that were about to end his life.
“Phoebe,” Geth said, whispering the one name that caused him remorse. “Sorry.”
The whelps tore and frothed and screeched. Geth closed his eyes, and as he did so, he felt himself falling backwards. He stumbled through the now-open door of his cell and was quickly pulled out and away. As Zale yanked him out of the way, whelps shot from around the other side of the cell and began to devour and tear at the newly accessible fruits.
“Come on,” Zale yelled. “Hurry!”
“How?” Geth asked as Zale pulled him through the dungeon and up a narrow climb of stone stairs.
“Quiet,” Zale insisted.
Geth’s body surged as hope washed into it and filled every cell of his blood. He was out of the dungeon. He was with the brother he had thought was dead. He was away from the smell. Geth breathed in deeply.
“This way,” Zale said, still pulling Geth’s left arm.
Clover began to stir. “Lilly?” he asked in a daze.
“No,” Geth smiled. “It’s me.”
“Are you dead?”
“No way,” Geth said as they ran. “We’re very much alive.”
Zale led them down a narrow, dark hall and up to a large stone archway with a wooden door in it. Zale unlatched the door and pushed it open. Outside was nothing but darkness.
“This is the west end of the castle,” Zale said, breathing hard and pointing out into the pitch black. “Go that way, and if you don’t meet up with the Tangle you will get to the wall eventually. You might have a chance because nobody will be waiting for you, seeing how everyone thinks you’re dead.”
“How did you get out?” Geth asked.
“I’ve been here twenty years,” Zale said. “You don’t spend that much time here without making a few friends. Let’s just say the rats gave me this a while back.” Zale held up a key. “I use it to make my existence a little more bearable.”
“So you could have escaped before?” Geth whispered angrily. “Why didn’t you let us out in the first place?”
“Why?” Zale asked defiantly. “You can believe what you wish, Geth, but there is no way you will survive. You will die. I just couldn’t bear to have it be in front of me. Now go—I’ve got to get back.”
“What?” Geth asked in disbelief. “You’re not coming?”
Zale shook his head. “Once the smell and commotion leave the dungeon, my cell will be fine,” Zale insisted. “It’s dry, and quiet, and safe.”
Geth felt sicker than he had ever felt. His brother’s words were more offensive than the smell of the berries had been.
“You’re no different from the rest here,” Geth argued.
“You mean the ones who are alive,” Zale said coldly.
“I don’t understand,” Geth growled. “We can beat this. They told me the prophecy began with you.”
“I was wrong to believe,” Zale scoffed. “This realm is dead.”
“There are thousands here who can challenge Payt,” Geth said excitedly. “We’ll gather them all. Let’s make fate right.”
“I don’t see where that’s my concern,” Zale said. “You speak as if there were hope. Guess what, young brother? Hope is a liar.”
Geth swung as hard as he could, hitting Zale squarely under the chin. Zale’s knees folded and his body fell backwards against the ground.
“Wow,” Clover whispered, slowly climbing to the top of Geth’s head to look down. “What’s with you—first an old lady and now your brother?”
Geth didn’t answer. Instead he bent down and picked up Zale. He threw him over his right shoulder, barely missing Clover.
“So, I guess he’s coming with us,” Clover sighed.
Geth nodded. “We need him.”
“The return of the lithens,” Clover said lightly. “One conscious, one un.”
Geth laughed and looked out into the dark.
“You know, it’s pretty black,” Clover observed.
“It’s always dark before discovery,” Geth whispered, sounding much too happy for the situation at hand. “That’s why I’ve always thought there was something thrilling about stepping into the dark.”
“Seriously,” Clover complained. “You need professional help.”
Geth reached up and scratched Clover behind the ears.
“Are we ever going to get back to Foo?” Clover asked.
“I don’t know,” Geth answered. “But it’s going to be fun finding out.”
“Hey, Toothpick,” Clover said softly.
“What?” Geth asked.
“I’m not bored at all.”
“Me neither,” Geth said, smiling.
With Zale over his right shoulder, Clover on his head, and the fate of Zendor in his hands, Geth took a deep breath and stepped into the dark.
Obert Skye, Geth and the Return of the Lithens
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