He shook his head ruefully. The whole world was outside! That was no help.
Maybe he simply had to try what he never would ordinarily, and bowl. That was certainly outside his box.
“Mind if I cut in?” he inquired, picking up the bowling ball before a regular cat could. The cat shrugged, not protesting.
Hapless heaved the ball down the alley. Sure enough, it veered off into the gutter with a splash. He had verified it: this was not the way.
Then he reconsidered. His concern was this particular scene. Suppose there were no legitimate way to escape it? Did that mean he needed to find an illegitimate way? To break the rules? He didn’t like cheating, but wasn’t sure that there was such a thing in a situation like this. Merely something that wasn’t any normal part of this scene.
He studied the cats, who ignored him. They were rough-hewn specimens with scratches and missing patches of fur from fights. He didn’t want to mess with them.
He considered the berry bowls. As he watched, a cat made a strike and berries flew all around, several of them striking Hapless before they rolled into the alley and on out of sight. One struck his belly, poking him; that would be a poke berry. Another bopped him on the head. He caught it and looked at it: a shad berry, smelling faintly of fish.
Fish. Didn’t cats like fish? Wouldn’t they prefer to eat those berries, rather than let them escape? But the cats were at the far end of the alley, so it seemed didn’t know what they were missing. Maybe the cleanup kittens didn’t tell them, preferring to eat the berries out of sight.
A berry-shaped bulb flashed over his head. Maybe that was the way out!
He stood near a setting of ten bowls. When the bowling ball rolled down to bash the collection, Hapless snatched up the one with shad berries and carried it to other end of the alley. “Get a whiff of this!” he said, and set the odoriferous bowl down before the cat.
The cat tried to ignore him, but the smell got to it, and in a moment it was delving into the berries. The other cats came, demanding their share. In half another moment all of them were fighting for the bowl, completely distracted.
Hapless walked down to the service nook where the kittens lurked. Sure enough, there was a small service door leading out. Hapless dived through it.
And he was in the next Challenge. Before him was a drab donkey. “Er, hello,” he said uncertainly.
“Hello yourself, idiot,” the donkey replied.
This set Hapless back a bit. He wasn’t used to hearing animals talk in human dialect, though he knew it happened on occasion. “Um, I’m Hapless. Who are you?”
“I am Alec, simpleton. I see that you are well named. You’re pathetic.”
The creature was obviously trying to get his goat, or something similar. Was this part of the Challenge? It seemed safest to refuse to be baited. “You are evidently very intelligent.”
“I’m way smarter than you, dumbbell,” Alec agreed.
Ah. Now he caught the pun: Smart Alec, a wise-ass burrow. There would be no help here. He would have to figure out how to move on by himself. Which surely was the point of the Challenge.
Still, there might be a hint. Maybe he could draw the donkey out. “Who knows,” Hapless said.
“Whose nose? Your nose is the scenter of your face.”
Or maybe not. Hapless looked around. They were in a glade surrounded by saplings. There was of course no path out. He was stuck here with the irritating creature.
“Are you setting out roots, or merely trying to think?” Alec asked.
Hapless ignored him. Then he noticed something odd. The young trees were healthy and uniform, except in one section, where there was only rubble. That ruined the continuity. Why should an otherwise ordinary glade have such a discontinuity?
He walked to that spot. Now he saw that in amidst the piled brick fragments was a small eggplant.
“You need to be egged on?” Alec asked derisively. “Going to eggsplore? Getting eggscited?”
He had walked into that one, literally. It seemed there was nothing here for him either.
A large colorful bird flew down to perch on a brick. It was a crow, but a remarkably fancy one. “Who are you?” Hapless asked, surprised.
“Izadora Dahlia Crow,” the bird replied, and flew away.
“Well, don’t crow about it,” Alec said.
Hapless shook his head, bemused. A colorful crow was a hint? Or merely another distraction? What was he missing?
He brought out the box and looked in it again, feeling foolish for doing so. It remained empty.
“Is that where you keep your brains?” Alec asked. “Only it’s empty, unsurprisingly?”
Think outside the box. This whole glade was the box. He needed to disengage from the spot distractions here and see the larger picture, whatever it was.
Yet this different section had to contain a hint of some kind. What was the point of it, otherwise? He peered more closely at it.
There was a patch of white pebbles with dark dots, looking like some kind of candy. He picked one up and looked closely at it.
It looked back at him. It was an eyeball! Yet it smelled of candy.
“You going to eat the eye candy?” Alec inquired in the tone of a sneer.
Hapless hastily put it back in the pile.
Several bees flew over to inspect the candy. Some eyes seemed to be honey flavored. The bees picked up the honey, then buzzed crazily, rubbing themselves off. It wasn’t enough; they fell to the ground, looking like little bee houses.
“Stupid bees,” Alec said. “They’re allergic to honey. It makes them break out in hives.”
This was getting him nowhere. But he looked once more—and spied a small tree growing in the center of the crazy area. It was as if anything close to the tree was changed. Why? What would cause a change from order to disorder?
Then he got it. Reverse wood! It was reversing whatever came near. Maybe the roots of other plants were touching its roots, underground. So a plant became a brick. And—
Hapless found a handkerchief and wrapped it around his hand. Then he reached down to pick a leaf from the tree. The white handkerchief became a black sock, reversed, but still protected his hand.
Hapless brought it to the donkey. “What do you think of this, Alec?”
“It’s nothing but a leaf,” the animal complained. He nipped it from Hapless’s hand and swallowed it. “Edible foliage, what else?”
“What is my best way through this Challenge?” Hapless asked him.
“Get on my back and ride on out.” Then Alec looked surprised. “Did I just say that?”
“You did,” Hapless agreed, getting on his back.
“Why?”
“Because you just ate a leaf of reverse wood. It changed you from obnoxious to helpful. Obviously you know the way out, because there’s not enough grazing here in the glade for you to remain here full time.”
“Oh, bleep.” But the donkey walked to the other side of the glade, nosed aside a curtain of hanging vines, and marched on out through the aisle revealed. Hapless had thought outside the box again and found the unexpected key to the Challenge.
Then he was in a hall with two doors. Beside each door stood a young man. The doors looked much the same, and so did the boys; they might be twins. One door was labeled NULL, the other VOID. The boys had name tags saying the same.
Hapless approached them cautiously. “Do you folk answer questions?”
“Some,” Null responded. “I can stop a Happening. My brother can reverse a prior Happening. We will gladly do so if asked.”
“What’s a Happening?”
Null shrugged. “Anything that happens. It’s different every time.”
“What’s behind the doors?”
“A Happening.”
“So I can go in there, and if I don’t like it I can ask you to stop it, and you will?”
“Exactly.”
“What’s the catch?”
“I will do it only once.”
&nbs
p; “So I’d better not make the same mistake twice.”
“Well, my brother might help you the second time.”
“And if I don’t go through one of those doors, I won’t make it past this Challenge?”
The boy smiled. “That’s it. So consider carefully.”
“What’s there to consider? I need to make it through.”
Null shrugged. “Your choice.”
Hapless shrugged back. He saw no real choice. “I’ll try your door.” He opened it and stepped through.
He was in darkness, and the footing was slippery. He fell on his rump and slid helplessly down somewhere. Then he came up against something and felt something else wrap around him. What was happening?
A glow developed, expanding into a light. Now he could see. He didn’t like it.
He was on a kind of pedestal in a deep pit, securely bound by a rope that wrapped several times around him. He felt like a living sacrifice on an altar. Above was something moving. It flashed in the light as it swung back and forth. It was a pendulum! With what looked like a razor sharp bottom edge. It was swinging lengthwise right above him. Worse, it was slowly descending.
He looked around, as at least his head was free. He saw the outlines of two doors back up above the slide. Both doors had led to the same place! His choice hadn’t made a difference. What did that mean? That the doors were a fake choice, and his real choices were of another nature? He wished he had realized that before he stepped through one.
He struggled to escape, but the rope held him tight. The deadly pendulum swung a bit lower each time. A few minutes more and it would slice into him lengthwise, slowly cutting him in half. What could he do?
What else could he do? “Null!” he called. “Stop this Happening!”
Null appeared in his door frame. “Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure! I don’t want to get sliced in half! “Stop it!”
“As you wish.” Null gestured, and the pendulum halted in place. It no longer swung and no longer descended. He had been saved.
“Thank you. Now get me out of here.”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t do that. You have used me up.”
“But I can’t untie these ropes myself! My arms are locked into my body.”
“I’m sorry. I am limited to my job.”
“You can’t just leave me here!”
“I can’t free you,” Null said, and turned away.
Hapless was fuming, but also afraid. This was real mischief! He realized too late that merely stopping the Happening was not enough. He needed to get out of it entirely, but that was not what he had requested. That was the catch, that he realized too late.
Well, at least he had time to ponder. He would have to appeal to the brother, Void, this time with a more carefully considered request.
“Void, please Unhappen my entry to this chamber,” he said.
“Are you sure ?” Void asked, exactly as his brother had.
That made Hapless pause again. What was the catch to avoiding the whole trap? That question gave him the answer: this was the Third Challenge, and if he avoided it, he wouldn’t get in to see the Good Magician. He would just have to give up and go home, a failure. As usual. After Humfrey had personally come to get him to come here, to undertake the Quest and save five people including two good girls and a bad girl. He didn’t want to do that. But if to get the Quest he had to make it through this Challenge, and he couldn’t do that, what then?
He could stay here, tied up, until he starved to death. That did not seem like much of an option. Was there other magic he could invoke? “Rope, untie me,” he said.
The rope did not respond. So much for that.
Now that he thought about it, he remembered a story from somewhere, about a pit and a pendulum, from which this Challenge was obviously borrowed. What had the person in the story done? Ah, now he remembered: he had somehow gotten rats to gnaw through the rope, freeing him just in time.
Were there any rats here? “Rats, come gnaw on the rope.”
If there were any rats, they did not respond. The borrowing did not go that far.
There had to be a way. But if there was, why was Void standing ready? Void was a prescription for failure. Was it supposed to be easy for him to fail rather than prevail? This did not make much sense to him.
Think outside the box. Well, this whole pit was a box, and he was hopelessly stuck in it. Unless he quit and went home. That was not a preferred solution.
Slowly the hint of a vague idea began to glimmer. No bulb flashed over him, but a bit of a tuber glowed. He was thinking either/or: either stay here and rot, or give up and go home. Those were box answers. He needed something else. Something outside. Something he had not considered before. What was that?
The glow increased. The tuber was trying to grow into a bulb.
Humfrey had come to ask him to come here, then made it impossible for him to get through. The Good Magician was not known as a person who liked to waste his own time. He had told Hapless to think outside the box, and even given him the box, not that it was doing him any good here. But the box wasn’t supposed to help him; he was supposed to think outside it. Did that mean he should reject this entire situation?
The glow finally brightened into a flash. He had it. He hoped.
“Yes, Void, I am sure,” he called.
Void gestured. Then Hapless was standing back in the hall, facing the brothers and their doors. Now he knew that it didn’t matter which door he chose; it was all part of the same box.
“Thank you, both,” he said shortly. Then he turned and walked back the way he had come.
There was Smart Alec, the wise-ass donkey. “What, you’re giving up?” the animal asked cynically. “I knew you didn’t have the gumption.”
“Not exactly.”
“Oh? Then what, exactly?”
“I am departing the box.”
“Isn’t that the same thing?”
“No.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Of course you don’t. You’re part of the box.” Hapless walked back to the service nook, and reentered the alley cat’s bowling alley.
The cats were surprised. They paused in their game. “What are you doing here?” one asked.
“Stepping out of the box.”
“The box?”
“Give me that ball.” Hapless took it from him, turned, and rolled it down the alley. It was another perfect gutter ball. “This is not my game.” He walked on, leaving the cats perplexed.
Now he was back in the forest surrounding the castle. He paused to take out the box. He opened it. It remained empty. He held it up like a magic mike and spoke into it. “Good Magician: are you there in the box?”
“Never,” Humfrey’s grumpy voice replied. “But I can hear you through it.”
“Well, neither am I in it. I’m done with this foolishness. This entire setup is a box, and I’m through with it. I am no longer playing by other folks’ rules. I am following my own rules. If you want me for your Quest, come and get me. I’ll tackle that Quest my way, or not at all. Otherwise I’m going home.”
There was a pause. Was the Good Magician going to let him go?
“Then come on in,” Humfrey’s voice came. The illusion lifted like dissipating mist, and the path to the drawbridge lay before him.
“Thank you.” So he had won. He had bluffed out the Magician. He was relieved, because he had really gotten curious about the Quest.
Hapless marched along the path, to the drawbridge, and across it. The castle portcullis was lifted, and he walked on in.
A woman was there. “Welcome, Hapless,” she said. “I am Wira, the Good Magician’s daughter in law, and this is my daughter Liz.” She indicated a three year old child.
“Hello,” Hapless said. He wasn’t good with children.
“Do you like lizards?” Liz asked brightly.
“I can take them or leave them,” Hapless said.
“My talent is to summon
and tame them.” Indeed, she had a lizard on her shoulder.
“It’s a good talent. I can summon musical instruments, but I can’t play them.”
“That must be very sad.”
“It is. It’s part of why I’m here.”
“This way, please,” Wira said, and led them on into the castle.
They came to an inner chamber where a severe looking older woman stood. “Uh, hello,” Hapless said awkwardly.
“Mother Sofia, this is Hapless,” Wira said. “Hapless, this is Sofia Socksortor, Designated Wife of the Month. She’s Mundane.”
“I keep himself’s socks in order,” Sofia said. “That’s why he married me.”
“That is surely a worthy chore,” Hapless agreed. He had heard of the Good Magician’s notorious socks.
“Let me say, we admire your decision,” Sofia said.
“To take a Quest?”
“To think outside the box. Hardly anyone does that today.”
“They sure don’t,” Liz said brightly. “I’m going to grow up outside the box.”
Oh. “Thank you.” Hapless still felt awkward.
“Last week there was someone here whose talent was deciphering gibberish,” Liz said. “He wanted to exchange it for another talent. His name was Xcjrqsntx, or Johnny for short.”
“We talked him out of it,” Sofia said. “It’s a perfectly good talent. Who knows what else he might have wound up with?”
And surely less frustrating than his own talent, Hapless thought.
“Have a cookie,” Liz said, proffering one.
“Stop that, you naughty child,” Sofia snapped.
“But she was just being sociable,” Hapless said.
“Sociable, my hind foot! That’s fast food.”
“Fast food?”
“Makes you go very fast. You don’t need that at the moment.”
“Aww,” Liz said, her joke spoiled.
“He will see you now,” Sofia said.
“I’ll take him!” Liz said. “This way.”
“Thank you,” Hapless repeated, still feeling awkward.
Liz led him up a narrow winding stairway to a dingy office where the Good Magician pored over a huge tome. “Hi Grandpa Humfrey!” Liz said even more brightly. In fact it raised the illumination of the chamber.