Chapter 13: Throw Out the Baby with the Wrath Water

Cecily’s new stone ankle thumped against the table leg as she swung her feet impatiently, waiting for the storm to lighten up. It was raining heavily, the kind of thick rain that sounds like applause at a giant concert–not that Cecily had ever witnessed that in person. Ravioli Girl was looking at the ceiling with concern.

“Can the house teleport in this weather?” Cecily asked, partially out of curiosity but mostly in the hopes that she and August could finally get home after their unexpectedly eventful outing.

Ravioli Girl made a face. “Usually not. She has a hard time with storms, depending on the severity and what mood it is.”

“The house has moods?” August clarified.

Ravioli Girl shook her head, then paused. “Well, actually yes, but I was talking about the mood of the storm.”

Cecily frowned. “Do I even want to know what that means?”

“I could show you” Ravioli Girl said with a mischievous smile. “Come on, Silly.” She walked over to the window and opened it slightly, then held out her hand to Cecily.

Cecily hesitated, but Ravioli Girl was still smiling at her with bright eyes as she held out her hand, and after a few moments, Cecily stood and clunked over to the window. Ravioli Girl took Cecily’s hand and held it out to the open window, allowing a few raindrops to splatter onto her dark skin. Nothing happened, and Cecily suddenly found herself feeling very irritated. She was tired, but she didn’t want to go to sleep, but she was still frustrated with everything and everyone that was keeping her awake. She yanked her hand out of Ravioli Girl’s grasp, and was about to yell at her when the angry feelings faded as quickly as they’d come.

What was I just mad about? she wondered, looking around. August had stood up and was watching her cautiously, probably having noticed her change in expression. He was a little too in tune with her emotions sometimes, but that’s what happens when you live with someone for twenty years.

Ravioli Girl was staring at her, too, but she was still smiling. “Let me guess, was it anger? Or maybe fear, you seem to express those two pretty similarly.”

What Cecily was mostly feeling at this point was confusion–and a bit of defensiveness at Ravioli Girl’s observation–and she couldn’t find a way to explain what she had just felt. When Cecily didn’t answer, Ravioli Girl stuck her own hand out the window, then her gaze darkened and her mouth twisted into a frown. Her pale blue hair stood up like someone had rubbed a balloon on it and for a moment, she looked like a true witch instead of the quirky pasta chef Cecily had reluctantly come to like. The threatening glare only lasted a few seconds, then Ravioli Girl’s hair settled and her face brightened again.

“Yep, that’s an angry storm for sure! I shouldn’t have second-guessed myself,” she said as she closed the window and returned to the kitchen table. Cecily followed, rubbing her hand where the rain had touched her.

“So, the rain changes your mood?” she asked.

Ravioli Girl nodded. “Yes, whatever mood the storm is, that’s what you’ll feel if you’re caught in it. It’s unpleasant while it lasts, but the effects wear off pretty quickly once you get under shelter. Unfortunately, my house can’t really take shelter, so she just has to endure it.” She patted the wall comfortingly, then yelled at the ceiling, “You’re doing great, Ma!” As far as Cecily could tell, the house didn’t reply.

“Do you know why the storms have that effect?” August asked, looking nervous at the idea of the house turning angry while they were sitting inside it.

Ravioli Girl shrugged. “As far as I know it’s always been like that. We usually have one really intense storm every few years, but most of them are short and mild. There was a lonely storm a few months ago that was one of the most severe storms I’ve ever seen! I was stuck in it for a few minutes and by the time the effects wore off I’d made a whole plan to move into town so I’d never be alone again.” She shook her head with a grimace. “It was not a fun feeling.”

August seemed thoughtful. “I wonder why they are like that, and why each one has its own mood.”

“Haven’t you learned by now that ‘why’ is a pointless question here?” Cecily pointed out. “Nothing here happens for a reason, it’s all completely random!”

“Yeah, but…” August sighed. “I guess the idea of complete randomness is hard for me to wrap my head around, because it shouldn’t work. Back on Earth there could be some randomness, but there were scientific explanations for everything that happened. It’s hard to believe this world doesn’t have any of that, because how does it keep running without some sort of organizing principle? Why don’t all these chaotic elements just destroy each other?”

“I don’t know, they seem to like coexisting in chaos,” Cecily said, leaning back in her chair. “Everything here–with the exception of Bright and those crazy bear-lizard things–seems weirdly friendly and optimistic.”

“So they don’t need an organizing principle because they are all inherently good?” August replied, nodding slowly. “Maybe, although there are those exceptions you mentioned, and the fact that the storms are negative emotions also doesn’t totally fit that.”

Ravioli Girl was watching the exchange with apparent fascination. “You two really do think differently than everyone here. I’ve never felt the need to figure out why everything happens the way it happens, and I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone else who asks these kinds of questions.”

“That’s probably why no one has any answers,” Cecily sighed. “Even if someone did figure out a method behind the madness, no one else would ever ask them about it and the knowledge would just die with them.”

Ravioli Girl perked up abruptly at that. Huh, dying is a point of interest? Cecily wondered as she watched the witch’s hair spike upward again. “Unless they don’t die!” Ravioli Girl exclaimed. “That’s a great idea! I’ll take you to Baby!”

“I hope you know, these names have gotten entirely out of hand,” Cecily said, then couldn’t resist asking, “Who’s Baby?”

“Baby is the oldest person in the world. He’s been alive since the very beginning, so he probably knows more about the world than anyone!”

Cecily felt her heart leap. “Wait, that’s perfect! He might know if anyone has traveled back and forth from Earth before! Where can we find him?”

Ravioli Girl hesitated. “I have no idea,” she answered, her enthusiasm waning. “I know he usually keeps his distance from this region, but I don’t know where he lives instead. I’ve never met him personally, but Seed once told me that their grandfather met Baby, and we know they are a reliable source. I think Baby moved away for good around the same time the river was created.”

“So, how do we track him down?” August asked. The rain outside was starting to lighten up: apparently the sky was quickly getting over its angry tantrum. The three of them sat in silence for a few minutes, then Cecily got what was either a very good or a very bad idea.

“We technically aren’t the only two people here that ask questions,” she said slowly, watching August’s eyes widen in recognition. “I wonder if Amy ever learned about Baby. She’s been a lot better than us at exploring and might have some idea of how to find him.”

August furrowed his eyebrows. “True, but Amy also has a habit of attacking our friend with giant robots. I’m a little worried about the idea of going to her for help.”

Cecily knew that Amy wasn’t the most ethically upstanding person and certainly hadn’t forgotten about the robots, but now that the idea was in her head, she couldn’t stop thinking about Amy. It had felt so good to have another woman from Earth to talk to, and even if Amy wasn’t necessarily an ally to their cause, Cecily still wanted to see her again. She didn’t want to explain all that to August, though, so she just waved a hand dismissively. “Pfft, those robots aren’t that big compared to some of the crap we’ve seen lately. Plus, Amy said she wants to be our friend, so she wouldn’t hurt us. And, even if she tried something crazy, I bet the three of us together could take her!”

“But I don’t want to take her,” August groaned. “She’s intimidating, Silly: she’s a woman in STEM for crying out loud! I don’t want to fight a woman in STEM!”

“You need to stop being intimidated by powerful women. Besides, if anything goes wrong, we’ll just feed her some leftover lasagna and she’ll be temporarily soup-ified, right?” Cecily suggested, although the thought was still extremely disconcerting.

Ravioli Girl raised her hand. “Actually, my pasta doesn’t save well. If you eat it the next day it tends to have very unpredictable and often negative effects.”

“Really?” Cecily asked, surprised that the optimistic young witch would describe anything as ‘negative’. “Like what?”

Ravioli Girl nodded at the locket around Cecily’s neck. “That raccoon ate day-old fettuccine that I’d left out by accident. I tried to undo it, but I don’t have any pastas to free animals trapped in jewelry, so there was nothing I could do.”

Cecily looked at the necklace, feeling suddenly sympathetic toward the feral raccoon trapped inside. “Well, that’s bleak.”

“Noted: don’t eat leftover pasta,” August said, grimacing at the locket. “In any case, do we think it’s worth the risk to talk to Amy about what we’re trying to do? Her note made it sound like she hopes we won’t return to Earth, since she wants our help here. What if she sabotages the search in order to keep us from leaving?”

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“Well, we won’t have much of a search to sabotage if we don’t get some kind of lead,” Cecily pointed out.

August sighed. “Looks like we have a Samantha situation.”

Cecily rolled her eyes. “August, not every disagreement we have is a Samantha situation. That was a very specific scenario.”

“No, I mean we have to solve this the way we solved the Samantha situation,” he clarified, and Cecily smiled as she realized what he meant.

The Samantha situation had occurred in high school when both August and Cecily had a crush on the same girl, and after almost a month of arguing between the two of them, they had finally decided to simply tell Samantha what was going on and let her choose between them. As it happened, Samantha didn’t like either of them, so it had turned out to be a pretty pointless conflict, but August liked using the term for almost any time the twins were at odds with each other. In this case, though, Cecily could see what he meant. “We’ll go to Amy and let her choose if she helps us or not. If she says no, we can go try to figure it out on our own, but if she agrees, it could save us a huge amount of time.” And either way, I’ll get to talk with her.

“Sounds great!” Ravioli Girl said cheerfully. “But I don’t know what a Samantha is. Could someone explain that to me?”

“It’s an Earth thing, it doesn’t matter,” Cecily said quickly, not in the mood to explain her failed love life to Ravioli Girl. August smirked at her and she made a face at him, then cleared her throat. “So, when can we leave?”

Ravioli Girl said that her house wasn’t quite ready to move again so soon after the last teleportation and the angry storm, so the three of them would have to wait inside. Cecily was getting hungry but didn’t want to mention it to their host in case she offered lasagna as a solution, until her growling stomach finally gave her away.

“You haven’t eaten in a while, have you?” Ravioli Girl asked, looking at the twins.

“No, but we’re okay!” Cecily tried to reassure her over the sounds of her stomach claiming the opposite.

Ravioli Girl smiled ruefully. “I have some ingredients, but I’m afraid I can’t cook anything that isn’t magic pasta. If you wouldn’t mind being soup for a bit, you would at least re-solidify afterward with a full stomach!”

“So, do you just deal with the magical effects of your pastas every time you get hungry?” August asked.

Ravioli Girl laughed. “No, although that would keep things exciting! My pastas actually have no effect on me, so I can just eat them like normal food. That’s one of the reasons I always sell them; they do me no good–beyond being tasty, of course. It does get a bit old if I have the same pasta come up multiple times in the same week, though.”

August stood up. “Well, if you have ingredients and would be willing to share your kitchen, I could cook something for us! It might provide a bit of variety for you, and it wouldn’t turn Cecily into soup.”

Ravioli Girl enthusiastically agreed and Cecily watched as the two of them got to work in the kitchen. Soon, August had made a delicious-smelling stew that was all the more enticing for the knowledge that it was magic-free. They all ate, and Cecily felt better than she had in a long time. Eating stew with August and Ravioli Girl in that strangely ordinary kitchen, she could almost forget that she was in the wrong universe.

By the time the house was ready to teleport again, it was getting on toward the evening, so they decided to wait until the next day to approach Amy. Ravioli Girl teleported her house back to the woods next to the market so August and Cecily could take the path home. “Goodbye, August and Silly!” she called to them as they were leaving. “I’ll see you tomorrow!”

“You’re smiling,” August observed to Cecily as they got on the path and began the short trek home.

Cecily shrugged, forcing her expression back into her natural RBF. “Why wouldn’t I be? We finally have some leads on how to get home!”

“And you finally made a friend,” he added, poking her in the side. He was obviously very pleased with himself, but Cecily didn’t bother arguing with him. Resistance would only make him tease her more, and the sooner he could get the gloating out of his system, the sooner they could move on from this topic. She had to admit as they walked home, though: this was the first time in a while she’d looked forward to tomorrow.

The next morning, Cecily was up before August, which turned out to be pretty boring, as she had nothing to do on her own. She flipped through some of his poems, but she’d read all of them before. At the bottom of the pile of papers, though, she found one that wasn’t August’s writing. Instead, it was a crude black-and-white drawing of a girl and a boy that Cecily assumed were supposed to be her and August. Must be Glow’s handiwork, Cecily thought, noting the smaller character next to them that vaguely resembled the little girl.

“Hey, I’d forgotten about that!” August said as he walked into the kitchen with a yawn. “Glow brought it over on one of the first days after we met.”

“It really doesn’t look anything like us,” Cecily said, looking at the drawings’ straight hair and lack of noses.

August sat next to her to get a better look. “Yeah, I’m no art critic, but the only resemblance between us and them is the fact that they come in a pair and have Glow next to them at all times.”

“Maybe it’s not actually us,” Cecily suggested as she put the picture on top of the stack of papers.

“Glow said it was, but she also said she drew it before we met her, so she can’t really keep her story straight. Either way, it’s cute.” August smiled. “I wish I had tape to put it on our wall or something.”

“We can bring it home with us and put it on the wall there,” Cecily said dismissively as she got up and got her shoes. “Like a souvenir from the weirdest trip ever.”

“That’s actually a good idea,” August said as they left the house and started walking toward Ravioli Girl’s house to meet up with her. “We should bring a few momentos from this world to remind us that this whole experience was actually real.”

Assuming we ever get home, Cecily thought, then felt her stone ankle and touched the chain of her raccoon locket. Either way, I don’t think I’ll be forgetting this experience anytime soon.

Whatever spirit and/or family member that possessed Ravioli Girl’s house had never been to Amy’s place, so they couldn’t teleport there, but it wasn’t a far walk once they’d picked up Ravioli Girl from where she was parked next to the market. Cecily and August followed the path they’d taken when August had first heard those fateful lyrics of Call Me Maybe. Was that really just a few days ago? Cecily reflected. It feels like so much longer than that.

As they walked, August explained to Ravioli Girl how they had met Amy and the fact that Amy was using robots to attack Puddle. Cecily zoned out for most of the summary, not particularly interested in reliving the disappointment.

“Wow, I’m glad I met you instead of Amy!” Ravioli Girl exclaimed when August had finished. Her hair and eyes were yellow today, which Cecily found disconcerting. She’d never liked the color yellow, and it looked especially strange as an eye color. On top of that, she felt a bit guilty for making fun of Ravioli Girl’s hair the day before now that she knew the witch didn’t get to choose the color. “She sounds awfully interesting, though,” Ravioli Girl continued. There’s the positive spin I was waiting for, Cecily thought with a small smile.

“She certainly is interesting,” Cecily agreed as they reached the clearing where Amy’s house stood. They started walking toward the door, but a dark figure swooped down from the sky and landed in front of them.

“It would seem that nowhere is safe from your presence,” Bright whispered, crossing his arms.

“Oh, hello, Bright!” Ravioli Girl said, giving him a small wave. “How are you?”

“Hello, Echo. I am as you would expect,” the winged boy whispered, briefly raising one of his pitch black hands in a greeting.

Cecily and August looked at each other. “Wait, that sounded almost civil!” Cecily exclaimed indignantly. “Bright, are you only mean to me and August? What gives?”

“I feel no need to explain myself to small minds,” Bright answered. “You would only hurt yourselves trying to understand.”

“Are you speaking from personal experience?” August asked archly, and Cecily raised her eyebrows. If August’s sassy side was coming out, Bright had truly gotten on his nerves, and she couldn’t wait to watch whatever came next.

Bright’s intense blue eyes widened in surprise and he surveyed August curiously for a few seconds, then turned and flew to Amy’s house, entering without knocking. “I think you broke him,” Cecily said to August. “Well done.”

A few seconds later, Bright came back out, followed by Amy, who immediately ran to meet the twins. Her dark hair was in a ponytail again and was wearing a red t-shirt with a faded logo Cecily didn’t recognize. “Weavers!” she exclaimed. “I’m so glad to see you! When you didn’t reply to my note, I was worried you were upset with me, so I’m glad you came around.” She nodded at Ravioli Girl. “Who’s this?”

Cecily bristled. “First of all, we didn’t ‘come around.’ We’re here to crowdsource a question we have, but we aren’t about to join your weird crusade against Puddle.” She paused and decided she might as well answer Amy’s question. “This is R– this is Echo. She’s helping us right now.”

Amy looked hurt by Cecily’s rebuttal, but still nodded politely at Ravioli Girl then looked back at Cecily. “Helping you with what?”

“We’re looking for someone named Baby, and we were wondering if you’ve heard of him or know where he might be.”

“He was the first person born in this world,” Ravioli Girl added. “He’s been alive for centuries, so he should know a lot more than us about how the world works.”

Amy pursed her lips. “Well, I am curious about how the world works, so I wouldn’t mind meeting this ancient guru myself. Do you think he would know why the storms are so emotional? Speaking of which, did you guys get caught in the storm last night? It was a weird one, but not as bad as some of the other ones we’ve had this year. That really crazy one was probably right before you two arrived, wasn’t it, or were you here already?”

“Amy,” Cecily interrupted. “Focus, please. Do you have any idea where Baby is?”

“I haven’t ever met or heard of him,” Amy replied, and Cecily felt herself deflating. “But, I did come across a very old-looking forest a few years ago when I was still trying to find a way back to Earth. It was all overgrown and there were no paths leading into it, but I could see smoke rising from the center that looked like it was coming from a chimney, like there was a person living there. It all had a very hermit-y vibe to it, so if someone has been living on their own for centuries, that would be my best bet as to where they are. I never actually got to the house, though, so I can’t make any guarantees about who lives there.”

“That’s something at least!” August said. “Where is this forest?”

“It’s about a three-week journey that way.” Amy pointed in the direction of Seed’s town. She must have noticed Cecily and August’s dismayed expressions and shrugged. “I had a lot of free time to wander around.”

“Three weeks?” Cecily groaned. “That’s almost a month each way! That will almost double our time here!”

“Unless Amy comes with us and describes the location to my house,” Ravioli Girl pointed out. “My house could get us close, assuming Amy remembers where it is.”

Amy perked up like a dog smelling bacon. “Your house is some kind of vehicle?”

“It teleports,” Cecily answered, feeling a bit superior. That’s right, our new friend is way cooler than you.

“Well, that I would love to see! I’m in!”

“Really?” Cecily narrowed her eyes at Amy. “How do we know we can trust you?”

Amy laughed. “Come on, Cecily, I’m not some kind of villain! Sure, I have my own agenda for this region, but that doesn’t mean I’m out to get everyone, and especially not you! I would never hurt you or August, and I would be honored to help my fellow Earthlings. Plus, if it means I get to ask some questions to the oldest person alive, I’d say that’s a pretty big perk.”

Cecily, August, and Ravioli Girl looked at each other. “Well, this is the best plan we’ve got,” August finally said. “Let’s try it out.”

“Ground rules,” Cecily said, pointing at Amy. “No robots.” She paused, trying to come up with another rule. “And no conquering anything.”

Amy grinned and crossed her heart. “Deal. This sounds like it will be fun enough without any of that stuff anyway.” She looked back at Bright, who had been standing a short distance away but clearly eavesdropping on the whole conversation. “Are you coming, too, Bright?”

If Bright whispered a response, it was too quiet to hear, but Cecily could see him nod once. “Oh, joy,” she sighed. “This is going to be a fun roadtrip.”