Chapter 16: The Cat’s Out of the Bag
August and Echo were deep in the woods. There wasn’t much else to do besides walk around, and August was still holding onto the hope that they could find Baby in their forest, get the information they needed, and get to Cecily as soon as possible, preferably before anything too crazy happened to her. Then they could find a way home, back to the lives that felt so far away by now. It had been summer when they left Earth, but the fall semester would have started by now, so August was grateful he hadn’t paid the semester’s tuition ahead of time since he clearly wasn’t going to be taking classes. He had no idea what must have happened to their apartment and all of their belongings after two missed rent payments, but hopefully everything would be there when they got back. If not… Well, he and Cecily had started from scratch before, and they could do it again.
Time to think about something else, August decided, glancing over at Echo as she walked next to him through the multicolored trees. She seemed like a ripe source of conversation. “So, Echo, how did you learn all your magic recipes?”
“They all come from a recipe book,” she answered. “My great-grandfather made it and it’s been passed down in my family, but the recipes weren’t magical until I started making them.”
“Really?” August stepped over a curly tree root. “So, do you think the magic part comes from you and is triggered by the act of making the pasta?”
Echo thought for a moment. “I suppose that’s one way of explaining it, sure!”
“How did your great-grandfather end up with all those Italian recipes anyway?” August asked.
“Well, I don’t know what ‘Italian’ means, but as far as I know, he gathered the recipes from people he knew when he was younger and compiled them all.”
August pondered that. How likely is it that people in this world came up with the same recipes as people in Italy? “Do you know if he had any connection to Earth? Could he have been from there or known people from there?”
Echo shrugged. “I truly have no idea. I never met him, and my parents never said anything about him being from another world.” She looked at him with curiosity in her yellow eyes. “Do you think that’s possible?”
“I don’t know,” he answered, feeling a whole mess of emotions: confusion, curiosity, his constant underlying worry, etc. “But I’m starting to wonder just how common it is for people from Earth to end up here. There are too many similarities to ignore in the culture, architecture, cuisine… This whole place feels like a knock-off of Earth that’s been sprayed down with rainbow paint and pixie dust.” It was a compelling thought, but if people like Echo’s great-grandfather had come here from Earth, it seemed probable that they had never left, and that idea was hardly encouraging.
Unless no one else wanted to go back, he thought, remembering their first conversation with Amy. She hadn’t had much family back on Earth, and August and Cecily had even less. What if this world only sucked in the people that were most likely to stay forever?
“I wish I could tell you more,” Echo said, interrupting his speculation, “but I agree that it’s unlikely that you, Silly, and Amy are the first people to ever come here from Earth. In any case, I’m glad you did.” August’s surprise must have shown on his face because Echo rushed to add, “I’m sorry if that’s rude. I know you don’t want to be here and that you have a home to get back to, but I like you and Silly and I’m glad I got to meet the two of you. I feel like I’ve learned a lot in just a few days.”
“I’ve certainly learned a lot, too,” August agreed. For one thing, he’d learned that however creative he thought he was, it was nothing compared to whatever imagination was running this place. The way that all the random pieces fit together and somehow still functioned was something that astonished him, but that he hoped he could replicate in his writing. Heck, I could just write a story set in this world, he thought, then shook his head. No, this place is too unrealistic even for fiction. Fantasy wasn’t really his genre anyway.
As they got deeper, August started to notice broken tree branches and bushes that had been crushed, as if something large had barrelled through this part of the forest. He walked closer to Echo, telling her, “We should probably stick close for this part, it looks like an animal–” Before he could finish, the animal in question came crashing through the trees toward him in a blur of lavender. August yelped as he saw the enormous shape approaching, but was too slow to get out of the way and could only shut his eyes and brace himself for impact.
The impact turned out to be very gentle and very soft, and when August opened his eyes he found his face buried in the fur of a giant kitten. “It’s you again!” he exclaimed, wrapping his arms around the fluffy body and inhaling the musty but oddly comforting cat smell. He stood there for a minute or two, allowing his body to relax against the soft fur, then pulled back. Echo was petting the kitten on the other side, her face absolutely delighted.
“I wonder where the others are,” August mused aloud, looking for signs of the rest of the litter. The lavender kitten offered no explanation as it watched him with its enormous, innocent eyes. “Do you live here now?” August asked it as he resumed petting. “Are there any people in this forest?”
He wasn’t expecting a response, but the kitten’s ears perked up and it nudged him with its nose. “Is that a yes?” August asked eagerly, with no idea whether or not the kitten actually understood human speech. It just mewed and nudged him again, then turned and started walking deeper into the forest.
August looked at Echo to ask if they should follow, but she was already hurrying to catch up with the kitten, reaching out once she was next to it to bury her hand in its fur again. August shrugged and adopted the same position on the other side, enjoying the feel of the fur against his hand and grateful for a brief moment that Cecily wasn’t there to make the kittens angry. He immediately felt guilty for the thought, but it had seemed from the start that this world somehow didn’t agree with Cecily. All the more reason to get her home.
August heard Echo’s voice from the other side of the cat, although he couldn’t see her. “If multiple people are coming here from Earth, how does it happen? I mean, how did you and Silly get here?”
“Well, I still don’t really know how it happened, or why,” August admitted. “It just sort of happened.”
They walked in silence for a few more seconds, then Echo said, “You and Silly have opposite ways of dealing with things you don’t like, huh? She always says what’s on her mind, while you deliberately say nothing.”
August was so taken aback he almost stopped petting the kitten. “What makes you say that?”
“Well, there must be a story associated with being in one world and then suddenly being in a different world, but you dodged the question. Is there a reason you don’t want to tell me?”
August felt himself blushing. She’s surprisingly good at reading people. “No, there’s no reason I can’t tell you, I just… Silly and I haven’t talked about it since it happened, and it’s been easier to just forget about that whole day.” Echo was right: he’d been avoiding even thinking about his last day on Earth, but if the two of them were going to be lost together for three days he might as well tell her. Maybe it would be helpful to get a third-party perspective on what had happened. In any case, it would pass the time.
August took a fortifying whiff of kitten smell and started talking.
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It was hard not to feel responsible for what had happened, since it was August’s fault that he and Cecily had been walking home from the library at the time they were whisked away. August had spent the summer after his freshman year of college finishing his book, an anthology of short stories and poetry that got rejected from all the publishers he sent it to, and without any connections or money to hire an agent, there wasn’t much else he could do. He had a good relationship with the local library, though, so August printed a single copy of his book to donate to their shelves. He wouldn’t make any money on it, but at least someone would read his writing. Hopefully.
When he’d left for the library, Cecily had been relaxing at home, so August was surprised to see her march into the library as he was finishing his delivery of the cheaply-bound paperback book that he was somehow both deeply proud of and terribly embarrassed about. Cecily had a paper clutched in her hand and a look in her eyes that immediately told August he was in deep trouble. He almost flagged the librarian back to him for protection, but Cecily got to him first and shoved the paper in his face. “I found this in the garbage can,” she hissed. “Care to explain?”
The paper was too close for August to read it, but he knew exactly what it was. “There’s nothing to explain,” he said, taking a step back. “And why were you rummaging through the trash?”
“There’s a lot to explain!” she protested. “You applied to transfer to the University of Connecticut? And you got in?”
August put up his hands in surrender. “Dr. Jimenez told me to do it. Anyway, it was just an idea and I’m not going, so you don’t have to worry about it.” He had kept the acceptance letter in the drawer of his writing desk for several months, but had finally decided it was time to throw it away. Apparently that had been a mistake.
“Well, why the hell did you apply if you weren’t planning on going? You got a scholarship! And they offered you housing assistance! Why wouldn’t you take advantage of that? It’s a better school, and it will be almost completely free for you!”
“But the housing assistance is only for one person to live in their dorms. And if you stayed here, U Conn is an hour and a half away and neither of us has a car.”
Cecily lowered the paper, her face unreadable. “You’re saying you rejected their offer because of me?”
August got the feeling he had to tread lightly. “In part, yes, but I also think it’s way out of my league. The scholarship is needs-based, not merit-based, and I have a way lower GPA than the average for that school. I figured it would be better to stay somewhere that I knew I could be successful instead of pushing my luck.” It wasn’t a complete lie, but that hadn’t been the reason he’d thrown the letter away. He couldn’t leave Cecily, and he hadn’t been able to bring himself to ask her to uproot her life again to come with him, not when she’d already sacrificed so much to support him through his first year of college.
Cecily went quiet. “Oh. Okay, then.” August waited for her to say something else, to encourage him to go anyway and reassure him that their relationship would stay just as strong despite the distance, maybe even offer to move with him. But she didn’t.
Instead, they left the library together, walking silently as they took August’s usual route, a shortcut through the local park. August couldn’t tell if Cecily was still upset with him or if she was just thinking about what might have been, like he was. “I’m sorry I yelled,” she finally said. “You’re just kinda dumb sometimes.”
August snorted. “It’s genetic. And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the application, I just didn’t want to cause a big deal over nothing.”
Cecily shrugged. “Don’t be sorry, it was none of my business. I’m glad you’ll be sticking around, though. Who knows what kinds of trouble I’d get into without my voice of reason there to set me straight?”
August laughed again. “Silly, no power on Earth or heaven could set you straight.” She laughed, too, and August put the thought of transferring out of his mind yet again. He was here with Cecily, and that’s where he wanted to stay. He didn’t even notice when the trees in the park started to change color.
“So, that’s how we ended up here,” August concluded. “We were just trying to walk home and we somehow walked right into this world instead.” Now that he had told the whole story, he didn’t know why he had included the argument in the library. Compared to the chaos of this world, his young adult drama felt so petty and insignificant. I should have left that out, he thought, blushing again. Why do I always end up oversharing?
Echo wasn’t saying anything, and for a moment August thought they had become separated until he peeked under the kitten and saw the witch’s legs still walking on the other side. “I guess I don’t understand,” Echo finally said. “Why couldn’t you and Silly both go to that place you wanted to go to?”
“Well, she’d already moved with me to go to the community college, and I didn’t want to make her uproot her life for an expensive move where she’d have to find new housing and a new job and everything,” August tried to explain. “And I know Silly–if she had wanted me to take the offer, she would have told me to. You know how she speaks her mind. The fact that she accepted my decision meant that she agreed with it.”
“But you wish she hadn’t agreed, don’t you?”
“No!” August argued immediately, feeling surprisingly defensive. “Of course not. It was a great opportunity, but I made the decision that was best for both of us, and I don’t regret it. It was the right choice.” He looked around at the multicolored forest and let out a huff of air. “Besides, even if I had decided to transfer, we would have gotten teleported here before I started and I would have missed the chance anyway.”
“Hmm, I suppose so,” Echo said, then was quiet for a few moments before saying, “Earth sounds complicated.”
August laughed. “You live here and you think Earth sounds complicated?”
“Well, yes! It sounds so much harder to live there.”
He thought for a minute as they walked with the lavender kitten. “I guess it is, but there’s a lot of beauty and creativity on Earth, too. It’s messy, but it’s still home for me.”
As the kitten led them further, August started seeing other strange animals: a goat with wings, a pair of purple birds that appeared to be covered in fur instead of feathers, and a turtle that scurried across the ground in front of him like a mouse. “Are these animals pretty typical for this world, or are they unusually… unusual?” he asked Echo.
“Well, I generally don’t see animals like this in my day-to-day life, but I’ll run into them on occasion,” she replied. “They look like the kinds that crawl out of the fissures back by Amy’s house. I wonder what they’re all doing here!”
Their giant kitten mewed and suddenly bounded forward, leaving August and Echo behind. “Where is it…” August started to ask, then stopped as he caught a glimpse of one of the strangest sights he’d encountered since arriving here.
It was like a supernatural zoo had exploded, releasing a menagerie of bizarre creatures that were all either running around or dogpiled on top of each other. There were squirrels, dogs, horses, cows, turkeys, lizards, and more, all of them the wrong size and color. Some animals looked like combinations of different species mashed together, like Frankenstein’s monster if Dr. F. had been a veterinarian. Interestingly, none of Earth’s own quirkier animals were represented: August didn’t see any versions of kangaroos, elephants, platypuses, etc. Maybe those oddballs were exclusive to Earth. The one exception was a naked mole rat sitting on top of the animal heap, which appeared to be the only animal that looked the same as Earth, probably because it had already met the quota of weirdness without any modifications.
“Want to come up?” a voice reached August from somewhere above him. He looked up and saw a treehouse high in the branches of the blue tree next to him, with a man waving from the window.
“Sure!” Echo answered for them while August was still taking in the sight of the treehouses. There were dozens of them spread through the canopy above, with rope bridges leading between them and ladders either built into the tree trunks or hanging down on ropes.
The man in the treehouse right above August threw down a rope ladder, which took August an embarrassingly long time to climb. By the time he reached the top, he was breathing heavily and his hands hurt. Echo was right behind him and didn’t seem like she’d struggled nearly as much, which August wanted to believe was due to her magical properties rather than his lack of fitness.
“Welcome, new arrivals!” the man said with a smile. He was short and stocky, wearing a fascinating outfit of a blue velvet coat over a floral orange romper. “Make yourselves at home: we have plenty of houses and we can help you build a new one if you’d like!”
August blinked. “Oh, that’s very kind, but we’re just passing through. We won’t need a house.”
The man scratched his salt-and-pepper hair and cocked his head at them. “You’re just passing through? On your way to where?”
“We ended up here on accident,” August explained apologetically. “We were looking for someone named Baby; do you know him?”
The man shook his head. “Nope, never heard of him.” He kept staring at August with a perplexed expression. “It’s unusual that you would find us by accident. I’ve been here for a while and I’ve never heard of anyone ending up here before they’re ready to stay.”
“Where is here, exactly?” August asked, looking around the treehouse at the collection of random trinkets and mismatched furniture that filled the room.
“Oh, right, you’re new!” the man exclaimed, then smiled and gestured around them. “Welcome to the End of the World!”