“Animals?” Leven asked.
“They’re not your soft, fluffy kinds of animals. The animals here are mostly dream mangled.”
“What does that mean?”
“They’re escaped bits and pieces of odd dreams. Have you ever dreamed you had a pony and then in that same dream your pony turned out to be a pig?” Clover looked to Leven as if for an answer.
“No,” Leven said.
“Oh,” Clover said, sounding a bit hurt. “Well, if you had, and if you had woken up before you should have, that pig-pony might very well have escaped your dream and been driven into the Swollen Forest.”
Leven was silent.
“By driven, I don’t mean that someone actually rode it here,” Clover tried to clarify and fill the dead air simultaneously. “It was more figurative. Like the people of Cork chased it here because they didn’t—”
“I understand the concept of driven.”
“Good,” Clover replied, as if he were a parent who had just escaped explaining something embarrassing to a child.
“So we are in a forest that is getting ready to burst, sitting on top of buried secrets, surrounded by mangled pigs?”
“And outlaws, and the sarus, and at least one siid,” Clover added.
“Of course.”
“This is one of the best places for them all to hide.”
“So, can we get out of here?” Leven asked.
“If you want to,” Clover said, looking around.
“Are all sycophants as helpful as you?” Leven asked sarcastically.
“I told you before, I’m not the best sycophant.” Clover cleared his throat. “In fact, I’m probably one of the worst.” The candy had completely worn off.
“I don’t believe that for a second,” Leven said honestly. “When I saw your face digging me out I was so relieved. Now, we need to do as Geth said and get to the turrets as fast as possible.”
“Be careful,” Clover warned, holding his finger in front of his mouth.
“About what?” Leven asked.
“Speaking a plan out loud can bring about thousands of difficulties,” Clover whispered. “There are many in Foo who fight only to destroy the plans of any who dare to dream in ways contrary to their own. If they hear of yours, you could be in for it.”
“Who would hear it out here?” Leven asked. “There’s nothing but trees and dirt—”
Leven’s thoughts were cut short as he tripped over a wriggling tree root that was slithering across the ground in front of him. Leven flew forward, sprawling with his right shoulder into a decaying, fallen tree trunk.
“Are you okay?” Clover asked.
“Fine,” Leven said, embarrassed. He leaned against the tree as he tried to right himself, and the rotten tree moved. As it did so, a soft hissing sound came from the loose ground around its base.
“Can you hear that?” Leven asked.
“Yes,” Clover said.
Leven pushed against the fallen tree a little harder, and the hissing grew louder.
“We should probably walk away,” Clover cautioned.
Curious, Leven ignored Clover and leaned on the rotting tree even harder. It toppled over, exposing a large, flat, dirt-covered stone beneath its roots. Leven knelt down and brushed some of the dirt away. As he did so, the hissing increased.
Leven brushed some more dirt away, uncovering a row of large purple rings running across the top of the stone. The surface of the rock was warm, like the outside of an electric clothes dryer after it has been running for a while. Leven looked closely at the rock. Something was pulling him toward it.
When he touched one of the purple rings with his finger, the rock hummed.
“Leave it alone,” Clover whispered. “It’s probably hiding a secret.”
“How do you know? What if it’s someone? We can’t just leave someone buried,” Leven argued, remembering the fear and suffocation he had experienced when trapped underground.
“It’s probably not a someone, it’s a something. Now leave it alone,” Clover said, beginning to panic and tugging on Leven’s leg.
Leven ran his finger over the top of the boulder. His fingers snagged one of the purple rings. When he pulled on it, the boulder shifted slightly and the ground below it released a small, silvery wisp of steam. Leven pulled harder on the ring. The stone groaned and shook and then popped out from where it was lodged. Steam hissed up from where the stone had rested. Leven studied the indentation.
The dirt was packed, and there were tree roots running through it. And in the center of the depression was what looked like a round cap to some container.
“Just great,” Clover moaned. “We need to get out of here.”
Leven didn’t listen. Instead, he leaned down and touched the cap with his fingers. It was solid and had a raised ridge across the top of it. He gripped it. He couldn’t pull it out, but it turned easily.
“Don’t!” Clover pleaded.
All Leven could think about was the suffocation he had felt. He couldn’t let that happen to someone else. He turned the cap twice more and then lifted it from the ground. A burst of steam escaped from the wooden jar it covered. Leven peered into the jar and shivered, his brown eyes darkening.
“We should go,” Clover begged.
The uneasiness was so strong Leven would have obeyed, but he was distracted by a golden glow he could see at the bottom of the jar. Leven reached for it and wrapped his hand around it. It was a metal handle of some sort. Leven turned it, and there was a loud clicking noise. When he tugged on it, the handle came loose, and he pulled it out of the jar. It wasn’t gold, but it was a metal key, about the size of a pocketknife. The teeth of the key were ornate and the bottom of it was shaped in a swirling circular pattern. It was heavy and tarnished, but something inside Leven sensed that it was more important than it looked.
“What is that?” Clover asked.
“Nothing,” Leven answered, closing his right hand around it.
“So, you’re hiding nothing in your hand?” Clover asked.
“I think it’s a key, but we should—”
Leven would have said more, but he was distracted by a reddish glow coming from the small hole the key’s absence had created.
“Don’t look at it,” Clover commanded.
It was too late. Leven stared at the glow, hypnotized by its color. As he did so, the glow began to take shape and ooze up out of the lock.
Two fiery arms pushed out, squeezed from the lock like glowing putty. The arms were followed by a brilliant swatch of fire. Leven leaned back and then in. Around the edges of the flame were dozens of tiny sparks. As Leven watched, the sparks snapped and danced, morphing into a dozen glowing beings that cavorted around the edges of the larger body of fire continuing to rise out of the ground. It came up with a swoosh and towered over Leven, crackling and spitting tongues of flame.
“Get out of here!” Clover screamed. “Move!”
“What is—”
“Run!” Clover insisted. “You’ve released a secret and a bunch of decoys.”
“What?”
“Run before any of them recognize you!” Clover screamed. “If they discover who you are, they will follow you the rest of your life.”
“But shouldn’t I—”
“Run!” Clover demanded. “I told you not to touch the dirt.”
Leven shook his head, trying to pull himself out of the trance the fiery specter had cast.
“Run!” Clover ordered again.
Leven felt something on his face. He looked, cross-eyed, and there sitting on the bridge of his nose was a small, burning silhouette. The tiny being looked into Leven’s eyes and glowed bright.
“I ate the last of the dub-rubble pie and blamed it on the neighbor boy,” the small secret whispered. It smiled, looking greatly relieved, and then jumped from Leven’s nose and dashed off into the forest.
“What was—?”
“Oh, you must have unearthed one huge secret,” Clover moaned, his voic
e quavering. “When big secrets get buried, they generate a bunch of decoys in case someone unearths them one day. The little ones are trying to make you think it’s no big deal to listen. We have got to get out of here!”
A wave of fear suddenly washed over Leven, so strong he felt as though he might throw up.
“Run!” Clover insisted.
Leven stood there, frozen in the light of the fiery secret. Clover grabbed a sharp stick from the ground and jabbed it as hard as he could into Leven’s right thigh.
That did the trick.
“Ouch!” Leven blurted, grabbing his leg.
“Run!”
Leven took off running just as the liberated secret pulled itself erect, tilted back its head, and screamed.
Chapter Thirteen
Look Both Ways Before You Cross the Street
Dennis looked at his trembling hands. As hard as he tried, he could not get them to stop shaking. He ran one through his thin hair and then sat on both of them, hoping that would keep them from twitching.
It didn’t—now his whole body was shaking.
There was a faint banging coming from the inside of his filing cabinet, where Dennis’s briefcase, wrapped in pillows and duct tape, was holding one very angry toothpick. Dennis’s small, sad, dreamless life was being turned upside down, and he didn’t know if he should scream for help or hide somewhere until it all went away.
Like a trained seal, Dennis had returned to the only place he knew—his work. Here in his closet he was safe for a moment. Sure, he had run out the day before, but nobody here had even given that a second thought. They figured it was just the way of the janitor. Now he was back, locked in his closet, and trying to understand what was happening and what to do next.
The muffled banging from inside the metal drawer continued.
Dennis took a quick assessment of his life. He had no family. No wife. No children. He had an apartment, but the window leaked, and the people upstairs were world-famous cloggers who would dance in their wooden shoes all night long. Once, Dennis had worked up the nerve to go and ask them if they could dance without their shoes. It had been a bad idea. The father had brought one of his wood-covered feet down onto Dennis’s big right toe while yelling something about Dennis being a tyrant and trying to suppress art.
After that, the dancing intensified.
Dennis did have a little savings—a few hard-earned dollars he had put away. But he had no friends or future to spend it on. In fact, all Dennis had was a pillow-wrapped briefcase with a maniacal toothpick in it. He knew if he asked for help or understanding from his coworkers, they would simply have him locked up for mental instability and then go on about their business.
Dennis felt doomed. He glanced up at the single, small window in his “office” and could see only one solution. He climbed onto a folding chair and pushed open the base of the window. Noise from the city drifted up from the street and burst into the closet—the sounds of taxis honking and traffic flowing. It was twenty stories down to the street, but the sound of someone yelling at someone else could clearly be heard. Dennis stuck his head out the window. He was afraid of heights, and it made him dizzy just to look down. He quickly pulled his head back in and went to his filing cabinet, opened the drawer, and took out the pillow-wrapped briefcase.
For the moment, Ezra was quiet inside, and Dennis wondered if the toothpick knew what was coming. He ripped off the duct tape, unwrapped the pillow, and stared at the briefcase. He thought back to when he had purchased it. It had been his five-year anniversary at Snooker and Woe. He had heard and seen all the other associates there having parties and giving gifts to each other as each celebrated his or her fifth year of service.
But there had been nothing for Dennis.
So he had taken some money from his savings and walked down to the luggage store. There he had bought the third-least-expensive briefcase as a gift to himself. He had imagined someone asking him where he had gotten it, and him answering, “It was a gift for my fifth year.”
But in all the years since, not a single person had shown even the slightest interest in Dennis or in the briefcase he always carried. The closest he had gotten to anyone saying anything was once in an overcrowded elevator when a woman told him to move his stupid briefcase because it was digging into her backside.
Dennis stared at the leather case one last time. He rubbed the smooth outside and sighed. Then he climbed back onto the chair and flung the briefcase out the window as hard as he could.
He watched it sail through the air and eventually come crashing down on the edge of a vacant lot, twenty floors below. The briefcase burst under the impact, sending bits and pieces flying everywhere over the empty block.
Dennis didn’t know whether to sob or cheer. Fortunately for him, that was one more decision he didn’t have to make, seeing how his thoughts were interrupted by a voice on his shoulder.
“Wow,” Ezra growled appreciatively. “I didn’t know you had that in you.”
Startled, Dennis jumped, and as he came back down his right foot slipped off the folding chair and he toppled to the floor, slamming into his desk and banging his right cheek against the metal lamp. Blood shot out of his cheek like ketchup squeezed from a bottle. Dennis put his hand over the wound and struggled to his feet. Ezra hopped from his shoulder, where he had been standing, but Dennis couldn’t see him.
“How’d you get out?” Dennis asked, scanning the room for the insolent toothpick.
“I worked my way through the latch,” Ezra said, his voice coming from the direction of the highest shelf. “From there, pushing through the pillow was no problem. Looks like I got out just in time.”
Dennis glanced toward the window.
“I . . . I didn’t . . .” Dennis tried to explain.
“Don’t explain yourself,” Ezra commanded. “I’m proud of you, and for the first time.”
Dennis was shocked. “Proud? I tried to kill you.”
“You showed some backbone,” Ezra growled again. “Sit down.”
Dennis did as he was told.
Ezra jumped from the shelf onto the desk. He walked as close to Dennis as he could and looked him in the eyes.
“Listen,” he whispered fiercely. “I might have been wrong. I mean, the way I’ve gone about this, but I need your help.”
“My help?” Dennis questioned.
“There’s someone I must find,” Ezra spat. “I need you to take me there.”
“Where? Who? Foo?” Dennis asked, still shaking and thinking back to what Ezra had told him earlier.
“Does it matter?” Ezra laughed scornfully. “What will you be leaving behind?”
“I can’t just walk away from my job,” Dennis reasoned.
“Fine,” Ezra snorted. “Throw me out that window. I’ll find someone else. I’ll leave you here to your cleaning,” he sneered. “I’d hate to take you away from this.”
As uneasy as the toothpick made him, Dennis was smart enough to realize that Ezra was making a rather solid point. It would be no more pathetic to follow a toothpick somewhere than it would be to stay right where he was and wish for nothing more.
“Is it a certain city we’re going to?” Dennis asked.
“We’re?” Ezra growled.
“Do I need different clothes?”
“Do you have different clothes?” Ezra asked.
“Well, no.”
“Listen,” Ezra said irritably, hopping onto Dennis’s shoulder. “We’re going somewhere important. We are going to find the one who did this to me, and we are going to help him understand what he did. We are going to a place no map here knows of.”
“Like Asia?” Dennis asked without thinking.
“Is Asia on maps?” Ezra howled.
“Well, I—”
“Hello! Are you in or not?”
“Will we ever be back?” Dennis questioned.
“No.”
“I’ll never see this again?” Dennis asked, motioning to his surroundings.
“Why would you want to?”
“Will it be dangerous?”
“Ahh, yes,” Ezra smiled. “Very.”
A feeling unlike any he had ever experienced washed over Dennis—a warm, thick, smothering feeling. The sensation swirled around and tugged at his soul with a strong emotional undertow. He bobbed a bit where he stood, letting the sensation soak him entirely.
“Do you know what you’re doing? What if—” Dennis began to ask.
Ezra screamed at him. “What-ifs are worthless!” He threw his short, toothpick arms in the air. “You have no idea of what lies around you—this Reality and its lack of imagination! My world has already begun to seep in, thanks to those who have traveled back and forth to Foo.”
Ezra touched the wall and smiled an evil, cold smile.
Dennis might have wondered what the smile was for, but his wonder was interrupted by the building beginning to shake and wobble. Dennis could hear screams coming from outside his closet as the world jiggled. Cleaning supplies crashed in their metal drawer, exploding. Dennis could hear screaming through the window from the street down below. There was also a symphony of cars honking and careening into each other.
As the building continued to sway, Dennis looked out the window and saw the scenery moving. It was such an odd sensation that he had to hold onto his desk to remain standing.
The building of Snooker and Woe was moving—all twenty-four floors of it.
Its corners shifted in sync as the building literally “walked” across the street, blocking traffic and causing anyone within a mile’s radius to stare in wonder. The entire city seemed to shake and wobble. Pipes beneath the building stretched and burst. Water and sparks shot everywhere, making the scene wet and smoky. Most people ran for their lives while a few fainted and a few others drew closer to take pictures. The building hoisted itself over the curb and up into the empty lot where the briefcase had landed earlier. Once cleared of the street, the building stopped moving.
As it settled it let out a gigantic, “Ahhhhh!”
Everyone inside the building and out screamed and hollered as they tried to comprehend what had just happened. What it looked like was that one of their city’s skyscrapers had stood up, walked across the street, and sat down in a new spot.