[8] Everything's Dead But the Tree

Such a sad and lonely little twig! Only the length of a needle, and as thin too. What story did it tell? How came it to be here, on the ground at the feet of giants, their big chunky stalks rising up into a black sky of their own devising? This was no place for such small things, that's for sure. It must've once been part of something bigger, an offshoot of a branch overburdened with excessive bounty, sprouting too many leaves to support, bushels that made it sag into a dour frown until one day the weight became too much and the branch came crashing down. And so the branch was separate from its whole, but that was alright, because the branch still had its family of leaves to keep it company, and all of them could be here so happy together in the mutual inevitability of their doom. What is horror when you have each other? This is the meaning of peace, an understanding that surpasses disparate parts.

"Jesus! Christ! Lalum you thoughtless croaker, what in the name of God are you doing? Are you stitching me together or ripping me apart?!"

But alas, the story of our fallen branch didn't end there, as we know via the benefit of dramatic irony, for now we see only a twig, and no branch, and must listen with bated(?) breath to the bard as he or she relates its tragic tale. Perhaps it was a deer, nibbling at the still-vibrant leaves so typically out of reach, or perhaps a carnivore whose paw thoughtlessly trod upon it; but the branch shattered, and its unity, its component parts—let us say, four thousand four hundred forty-four of them—divided, and now all that remained of what once was whole, and what before breathed together with the much greater Tree of Life, now all that remained was this teensy tiny itty bitty twig.

"O sister of mine, damned as we are in tandem, still your needless thrashing! See you not the fruitlessness of such struggle? If it is God's judgment that we suffer, then suffer we must; and in His wisdom He has devised our pains so that our raging against them only multiplies His tortures."

The twig bent, much as its branch once did, but not as recompense for its own gross multiplication. Two hands bent it, and bent it until it snapped in two clean pieces, even tinier divisions of its progenitor, and then those hands tossed one piece to one side and one piece to the other side of the head of the unconscious elf.

"The only thing 'multiplying tortures' is you Charm. Keep at it and see I don't make Lalum stitch your mouth shut too, birdbrain!"

Over this elf hovered Olliebollen Pandelirium, barely larger than a twig itself, as it considered the snapped halves. A little fairy dust and those two halves would come together to their modest whole. They would come together regardless of what was between them, they would come together in the midst of this elf's brain, swirling and twisting and churning and making that brain all holey and gooey and gross, causing that poor brain to leak out the elf's ears and nose and mouth, and rendering that elf unquestionably, irrevocably DEAD.

DEAD things don't come back to life. They're gone forever. That was the rule, and only something that broke the rules could change it. Olliebollen followed the rules.

For Olliebollen, those rules were simple:

1. Heal the sick!

2. Make hurt things whole again!

3. Ease all pain and suffering!

Simple, simple, simple, but when Olliebollen watched its siblings slaughtered oh so infuriatingly limited. Impotent, able only to sob as brothers and sisters chose of all their number Olliebollen alone to save, each of them willing to fling their bodies in the path of relentless genocide to pave the narrowest route to escape, a route only the smallest of their kind could tread. Olliebollen could do nothing then. Nothing at all.

Now, thanks to the hero, Olliebollen had a new rule. That was the power of a hero. A hero could break the rules of this world. Once the rules were broken, things that once were became something else. Olliebollen was now something else. Olliebollen could do more than simply cure. Olliebollen could now kill.

Yet.

Yet there was another power. A power that determined not what could be done, but what may be done: The Master of this world.

Killing, at least this wretch, at least this time, was prohibited. And in imitation of Master's voice, the Master having gone quiet since her last commandment, Olliebollen whipped its haphazard self into order: Don't kill. Don't do it. Look away. Look at anything else. Don't think about it. You know all the logic and even though faeries and logic are something at odds with one another (rules notwithstanding) you have bigger goals than this and you need to work toward them. Turn your head. Yes, good. Just like that.

Across the clearing, clustered around the road and not far from Sansaime's headless horse (Sansaime's head Sansaime's head Sansaime's—) the archbishop's three twisted women congregated. An ugly sight, although not as ugly as Sansaime, so Olliebollen focused on them, narrowed its eyes until the dark edges of the forest blurred. The spider, Lalum, threaded silver webbing through the knife wound on the angry twin's shoulder. Olliebollen tried to remember the name of the angry twin. Tried to focus fully on that purposeless mental search to crowd out other thoughts budding and blossoming, cutely comforting thoughts of Sansaime's death.

Lalum was doing something, and both twins were watching. Between her hands she strung a thick pattern of web and on it were words Olliebollen really really had to strain to read from so far away, and while straining to read these words that didn't matter managed in some faraway compartment of a mind only recently requiring compartments to muster the will to emit healing dust on Sansaime's body, and not on the snapped twig-bits beside her.

The words written in Lalum's web read—

Not like Olliebollen knew how to read! Wahaha!

"Whaddya mean Lalum?" said the angry twin, suddenly less angry after she read the words Olliebollen could not. "Pluxie got cut off? What's that mean? You mean your strings got cut?"

"Alas, our poor sister Pluxie, sister in suffering if not in blood! Severed from Lalum's mooring just as we have all been severed from God's benison—"

"Shut up! Shut up, shut up, shut up, it's not the time Charm!"

By that time the elf began to stir. And the disassociated components of Olliebollen's mind, the snapped offshoots separated as a point of necessity if they wished to act against the will of their whole, all of them came back together now that the deed was done. Olliebollen turned to gaze upon the eyes of that hideous reprobate as they finally opened.

"Where—" Then, jolting: "Mack!"

"Quiet that disgusting voice of yours this instant." Olliebollen descended to only a hair's breadth above Sansaime's chest, too repulsed to actually make contact, suppressing the need to gag on her elfin stench. "If you wanted to help the prince, you shouldn't have taken a nap in the middle of battle." Shrug! Just to hammer home how much of a stupid useless fuckup someone would have to be to do something like that!

Sansaime stared, bestial in her brute stupidity. Due to the force that originally knocked her unconscious, her hood had fallen around her shoulders, and finally her full and horrific face was revealed, even more disturbing than the jeering blood-soaked faces of the elves who visited the court of Pandelirium. Discoloration infested it, so without close scrutiny or the careful eye of a healer it'd be impossible to tell what color her skin was even supposed to be, piebald between dark and light. The light patches were enormous scars of some kind, really so tragic, to have one's natural form so corrupted even beyond the ordinary corruption of her ken. So tragic Olliebollen could only help but crack a big broad smile at the pathetic specimen before her.

"Where"—Sansaime shifting her gaze past Olliebollen at the three women likewise corrupted from their natural form—"where'd he go."

"Beg me and I'll tell you."

The last traces of post-awakening daze ebbed off Sansaime's grotesque visage. Her dull mud-colored eyes hardened and Olliebollen could more-or-less guess her thoughts.

"Nuh-uh-uh!" Olliebollen cautioned with a wagging finger. "I've set up a trap. One sprinkle of my dust and you'll be dead forever. So you better—"

Sansaime sat up. Olliebollen flitted back in time to avoid any sudden attack—there was none—but immediately realized that because Sansaime moved her head, the broken twig would no longer reattach inside her brain. Oops.

Even more annoyingly, Sansaime didn't seem to believe Olliebollen's threat for an instant. She focused solely on the three women on the road, who were too tangled in their own conversation to notice the movement in their periphery. Flicking a hand to gesture Olliebollen away, Sansaime replaced her hood and with careful and gradual movements slid herself into a crouched position.

"Hey! Heyeyey! You can't ignore me like that! I'm the only one who knows the prince's whereabouts. Hey!"

An almost nonexistent rustle of Sansaime's cloak gave a fraction of a second's warning. Olliebollen managed to move, but only fast enough. The needle, which would've passed through an eyeball, fwipped instead just past Olliebollen's face, close enough that the corrosive heat of its metal tingled the filaments on its cheek several seconds afterward. Olliebollen's heart stopped. That needle had been tossed both with killing intent and casual annoyance. Sansaime didn't even bother to look if she nailed her target; she crept toward the three monstrous nuns.

Lying Master! She said Sansaime was reasonable! Then what was that? Olliebollen really could've died. Really, really could've, and Sansaime didn't even think about it! To her it was like swatting a bug! Olliebollen couldn't even stick a tongue out to taunt her for missing because she didn't look!

Twisty, turny went Olliebollen's insides, an impossible-to-parse glut of anger fear hate and all that good stuff. The attempt at murder, okay! Sure! Olliebollen was used to that by now! But the utter lack of respect! Why did nobody ever want to hear what Olliebollen had to say? What was the point of being so smart if everyone else, even the hero, committed themselves to ignorance?

Whatever. Let's do it your way, idiot elf. What astounding plan have you concocted in your tiny brain—your brain, mind you, free of sticks only thanks to Olliebollen's preternatural self-restraint? Ah yes, I see, so you're creeping toward the archbishop's women, drawing a knife, this is a smart move and not one completely irrelevant to the task at hand, which is rescuing the hero (and the prince) from Flanz-le-Flore's clutches!

Lalum saw Sansaime before the other two, albeit only when Sansaime had already cleared half the distance to their group. With her mouth stitched shut, she resorted to frantic gestures to grab the twins' attention, gestures that only caused them to look more closely at Lalum and not at the cloaked assailant who, upon being spotted, burst into a run with the glint of a second dagger shining in her other hand.

At the last possible moment, at the exact time the barely-perceptible ruffle of Sansaime's cloak indicated the tension of her arms as she prepared to strike, Lalum extended her own hands and silver strands sprung from her fingertips to latch onto Charm and Charisma's heads.

What happened next happened very very fast, so fast only a truly detail-oriented observer (such as, let's say, Olliebollen Pandelirium) could've comprehended exactly what they witnessed. Charm and Charisma, who previously didn't even know Sansaime was coming, whipped around in perfect unison and raised a talon each to catch one of Sansaime's daggers mid-slash. The tink of metal striking bone made Olliebollen's fur bristle in psychosomatic sympathy but by the time Olliebollen overcame the shiver Sansaime had already swiped three, four, even five more times in rapid succession, each time deflected by the twins' frantic defensive motions.

The twins never moved anywhere near that fast before. Olliebollen knew for a fact! Neither at the graveyard nor during the fight with the bear only a few minutes earlier. (The sad one was especially slow.) But now not only were they quick, they were skillful, and they danced with an elegance and grace unbefitting their degeneration into subhuman monstrosities.

Ace observer Olliebollen Pandelirium knew what was what, though. Moving closer to the action, secure in the mutual distraction of all the fae's various archnemeses with one another, the truth wafted as a pungent scent emanating from perhaps the most visually odious of the whole gallery of rogues; the spider, Lalum. (Visually odious less for aesthetic purposes—that'd be Sansaime of course—but moral, the spider being fastidiously clean as though she believed she could, somehow, render her innate form less deplorable by such ministrations.) The scent of death! Carried even in the thick, oppressive air of an enchanted wood seeping the evil it absorbed from their runoff, carried straight to Olliebollen's nose from Lalum's breath. The cages on Lalum's hip only confirmed the suspicion: Lalum had devoured a faerie and drawn upon her animus.

Earlier, Olliebollen guessed Lalum's animus involved healing, but guess that was wrong. Oh well! More pressingly, while this front row seat to a bout between people Olliebollen would love to see die sparked some excitement, right now Olliebollen needed to focus on saving the hero.

"Heyeyey!" Olliebollen shouted into the whirlwind of attacks and parries, ready to swerve if necessary. "Hey idiot elf! These fools have nothing to do with it. The hero—and your prince—blundered right into Flanz-le-Flore's court. They're definitely in her hands now." And because nobody noticed, Olliebollen cupped its hands and repeated: "Flanz-le-Flore—They've gone to Flanz-le-Flore!"

Sansaime danced back and at first it looked like merely another pirouette in this oddly ballet-like battle but she put distance between her and the marionetted twins and stayed put with her daggers bared. The twins, on the defensive most of the fight anyway, didn't take advantage of the lull to attack, if they even had the ability to. Lalum herself had used the twins as a shield while she scuttled behind the nearest tree, but her lines continued to connect her to her impromptu living weapons.

"Is that true," said Sansaime.

"Yes! Of course! I never lie—"

"It's not you I'm asking, faerie." She pointed her daggers at the twins. "Speak."

"Why should we tell you, huh?" said Charisma. "Right after you tried to slit us open, to boot! Think we're daft, elf-woman? Well, my sister and the spider are, but I'm sure not."

"Tell me what you know. Or die. You're alive thanks to that spider's trick. But she needs fae blood for it, no? How long d'you think she can keep it up?"

Charisma tilted her head onto her shoulder, which seemed to be the extent of her range of motion while strung by Lalum's thread. "Eh, we've plenty of faeries. Lalum doesn't gobble em all down at once like my nincompoop sister here. You may not run on animus, elf-woman, but you've only got so much stamina."

True! Sansaime, although steadfast and standing firm, was breathing more heavily than normal after a few minutes of lightning-quick strikes. Whereas the twins, who hadn't moved via their own physical exertion, looked fresh as flowers. Olliebollen's magic could replenish Sansaime's stamina, but doing that would require Olliebollen to barf out all its guts in disgust first, so good luck.

However—Olliebollen knew something good, and knowing something good and not saying it was really hard to do. "The spider's only got one more faerie! It's true, I saw it! Two cages on her hip, and she ate one already. They've only a few more minutes at best!"

"Well now." Sansaime levied a knowing smile at Charisma.

"So you'll trust the faerie now, will ya?" Charisma said. "Who's to say he isn't baiting you into a fight you can't win?"

"Oh please! I coulda killed her myself while she was knocked out but instead I magnanimously—"

"Shut up," Sansaime and Charisma said in unison, and Olliebollen tossed up its—or his, according to Charisma—arms in frustration.

"It's no matter of trust," Sansaime said after everyone collectively decided to forget Olliebollen existed again. "I'm not blind am I? I saw your spider's cages before she scampered away. Now, I only need one of you alive to learn what I need. Keep bluffing, and I'll have your sister's innards out on the ground. Like the thought of that?"

"No more fitting end could I imagine than—" Charm began, quickly cut off by a terse command from Charisma, and she sank into an unhappy silence with which Olliebollen could commiserate, loath as he(?) was to experience any slight sympathy toward these butchers.

After an interval of quiet, while Charisma made all matter of scowls but said nothing substantive, Sansaime said: "Look. There's no reason we need to fight beyond lack of trust, now is there? The lot of you, we've coexisted before. We both use this wood as our hunting ground. It's only the hero you want, no?"

A slow, sidelong glance from Charisma to Charm and then Charisma to Lalum. "Aye," said Charisma. "The archbishop needs him."

"Well, you can have the bastard. My interest lies only in royal blood."

"What!" said Olliebollen. Nobody even looked at him though. "What!" Still nothing.

"If Mack and the hero have truly fallen into Flanz-le-Flore's grubby little clutches," said Sansaime, "then I propose a deal. We put our respective talents together to snatch them both back. You take the hero, I take the prince. Mack might not be happy about it, but—" She hesitated. "But I know what's in his best interest."

"You sound real sure," said Charisma.

"Have you a better option? Or think you can simply waltz into Flanz-le-Flore's court yourselves and haul the hero out?"

Olliebollen could not believe it. Absolutely. Positively. The Master claimed Sansaime would be practical when it came to rescuing the prince, but this defied belief. Worse yet—worse yet! Charisma glanced back at Lalum, and Lalum peeked out from her tree and signaled something, and now Charisma was looking like she wasn't so opposed to this plan either! Unreal. Didn't they hate each other? Didn't they just try to kill each other? Why couldn't they get back to that! Why couldn't they open each other up and spoon all their blood and guts until they were as limp and DEAD as that headless horse on the ground! Well, it didn't matter. Olliebollen was drawing the line. He—or she—or it refused to allow this gaggle of wickedness to conspire against the hero.

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Contacting the Master for advice might've been prudent, but the Master told Olliebollen to never ever speak to her when in the presence of others. So Olliebollen acted on its own, fluttering its wings and zooming into the empty span between Sansaime and the twins.

"No! No, no, no! I say no! You're not supposed to work together, that's not the way it's supposed to happen! Idiot elf, it's the two of us who are supposed to work together, and it really took a lot of willpower for me to even say that, so the least you could do is give me the simple courtesy to listen to what I have to say! Huh? Think ya could manage that? Huh, huh?"

Entire body quaking to the point that even seeing straight became impossible, every word spilling out in increasingly heightened frenzy, Olliebollen jittered glances between Sansaime and the twins, although the twins weren't even addressed. But they could listen too, they could all listen, Olliebollen was sick of being ignored and disregarded. And this time, finally, Olliebollen wasn't being ignored. Every recipient of its ire watched with careful consideration.

"So we can eat this one, right?" said Charisma. Her sister took a moment out of her ceaseless sobbing to salivate at the sight.

"Oh sure! Just gonna try and eat me, huh?" Olliebollen extended its arms wide. "Sure! But you'd be really super dumb to do that, y'know! Wanna know why? Huh? Wanna? I bet you don't. I bet you don't even care what I have to say about Flanz-le-Flore and her animus and how to beat it, do ya? Nope. Why care about things like that! Criminals, the lot of you, base and bestial brigands, too concerned about how to divvy the earnings to think how you're gonna earn it in the first place! You think the four of you even got a chance against old Flanz-le-Flore? Huh?"

"Bah!" Charisma tried to move, probably just to flap her hand in dismissal, and was barred from the act by Lalum's strings. "You're fae yourself. Only a trickster, and inclined to protect your kind. We all know how to hunt, we don't need your help."

"I want to eat it," said Charm.

Olliebollen whirled on Sansaime. "Don't tell me you don't know! Flanz-le-Flore isn't just any faerie! She's the Faerie of Transmogrification, and all she has to do is snap her fingers and poof! You're a pumpkin. Poof! You're a squirrel. Poof! You're a boot. How d'ya plan to handle that, huh? Huh!"

It took a lot of faith in the Master to stand here and speak like this. A lot of faith the Master knew what was right. Any moment any of them might attack, assuming Lalum hungered as much for fae flesh as the twins. The humans had faith in their God, but the fae knew this world much better than the humans, spoke to the trees and the birds and the bittiest insects. They knew, if not by name, if not by voice, at least by presence what truly ruled this world. Please. Oh please, everything good and natural, oh please let the Master know what she was talking about. Because Olliebollen was real exposed here and the prolonged silence from particularly Sansaime was turning pent-up anger into anxiousness.

"You know where I stand," Olliebollen said, directly to Sansaime. "You know who I'm loyal to."

"Do I," said Sansaime.

"I can," said Olliebollen, "rejuvenate things that have been transmogrified."

"Can you," said Sansaime.

"Without me, you don't stand a chance. And if you're willing to work with them"—thumb cocked over the shoulder—"you can work with me."

"Can I," said Sansaime.

Olliebollen wanted to scream and a lesser Olliebollen would've screamed but this Olliebollen was the best possible Olliebollen. "You know what I want. And if you really don't care about the thing I want one way or another you have no reason not to let me try for it."

Rather than another inane comment, Sansaime said nothing. Said nothing long enough for Olliebollen to glance back at the twins and their naked gluttonous stares.

It came down to Sansaime. The elf. The fae hunter. But really, it came down to the Master. Sansaime would act how the Master said she would. And if she didn't, the Master could make her. So it all came down to the Master.

The really scary thing was that after the Master told Olliebollen what to do to save the hero, Olliebollen stopped feeling the Master's presence.

Sansaime only stared, that ruinous mottled face mostly invisible. Knives still drawn. Under that cloak the same type of silky sinuous body, the exact identical genetic mold, of those that annihilated Olliebollen's court. And only a few minutes ago, Olliebollen could've killed her.

The tip of one of Sansaime's blades twitched. Olliebollen tensed.

But it was only a twitch. Several seconds later, Sansaime retracted both daggers into the folds of her cloak.

"We move," she said, already walking away, "all of us."

Olliebollen glanced again at the twins, saw the lines of the strings slacken, and sped to the other side of Sansaime, who once more gave zero thought to Olliebollen's presence. The twins, finally free of their bonds—and thankfully with Olliebollen too far away for them to attack on impulse—pressed their heads close and whispered, and looked back at Lalum and signaled something, and receiving a signal in response, they followed Sansaime toward the court of Flanz-le-Flore. Nonetheless, Olliebollen never stopped glancing over its shoulder.

—

The Faerie of Transmogrification transmogrified for Jay and Makepeace a lavish cell. It resembled the set of a Hollywood period piece, some English country manor's garden, flawless except for the actors the cinematographer sadly had to allow into the shot. Movies Jay's mother dragged him to until he developed enough sense of self to say "No," movies she forgot she'd seen when they played again on TV and that she watched a full second time before remembering.

Jay didn't bother dwelling on the flowers, the trees, the trellises, the little winding creek with its quaint curved bridge, all of which he figured Flanz-le-Flore put especial care into designing with some brilliant aesthetic purpose and all of which didn't matter. He focused on the wall that penned them in: tall, sheer stone. He and Makepeace quickly rounded it, patting its surface, searching for any weakness or dent, and found absolutely nothing. Not even a gate sealed shut. If Flanz-le-Flore wanted to let them out, she'd transmogrify an exit.

So Jay and Makepeace said, sure. Let's scale the wall. The garden had enough vines to make a rope. They didn't really believe it'd be possible because it was so obvious, but what surprised them was how it wasn't possible. The wall didn't actually end, in a normal way. At first glance it looked like it did; it didn't even seem that tall. But that was because it reached a ceiling. What they first assumed was a pleasant blue sky with clouds and warm sunlight was a ceiling, painted and illuminated with expert technique to imitate the sky flawlessly. That was when Jay stopped thinking of movie sets and started thinking of video game levels, with fixed boundaries and skyboxes.

Makepeace tried to liven the mood with quips that Jay ignored. After trying everything they could think of, including whacking the wall with the baseball bat, they went to the octagonal gazebo and sat in its ornate wooden chairs and snacked from a basket of fruit Flanz-le-Flore so generously provided them.

Makepeace plucked a berry from a bunch and tossed it into his mouth. "Suppose Sansy'll come for us sooner or later."

Jay said nothing.

"My bet's on sooner."

Jay said nothing.

"She prowls these woods often, captures stragglers from the court to sell. All extralegal of course. But she knows her business, which is why I brought her on this little excursion. So worry not, my good sir. Although—rather amusing that old Flanz-le-Flore offered to let me free if I got you to marry her, hm?"

Jay sat hunched forward drilling his eyes into some random patch of garden thinking about what Flanz-le-Flore told him about this world, how everyone in it was a husk, a facsimile, wondering if all he was doing here was playing a video game with a slightly more realistic coat of paint, just another of the endless collection of RPGs cluttering his computer desktop back home. Thinking how there'd been moments, pinprick little points where he managed to escape his own head and believe in the world, how those points were only as broad as the head of a pin.

"Oh well." Makepeace sampled some grapes. "Not the worst gaol I've been in."

"How does the prince wind up in jail," Jay said. Just to interact. Just to try something, just to try and overcome his self-inflicted barriers and believe, even if he knew he never could.

"Great question," said Makepeace. "Perhaps the prince is a lout. Perhaps he's a delinquent little shit who gallivants incognito through the city at night, getting up to all sorts of mischief. Sometimes in the guise of an rapscallion he thumbs his nose at the guards on purpose, simply to do so."

Jay went back to saying nothing, unimpressed by the too-cutely-delivered speech.

Makepeace wiped juice from his chin. "Allow me to ask you a question then."

"About what. France?"

A noxious laugh. "No, no. You must forgive how abhorrently I treated you when we first met, I was understandably surprised by the appearance of a traveler from Earth. But I'm interested. My great-great-however-many-greats-granddad John was a crusader. A man enflamed with holy spirit and pure faith in the divine right of kings. You—and do not take this as an insult my man—you don't quite seem cut of the same cloth, so to speak. You don't seem to have his, shall we say, spirit."

He chewed. Jay waited for him to continue, and when he didn't, said: "So what's the question."

It took Makepeace several seconds more to swallow, hovering a hand over his lips as though to signal patience while he finished the fruit. When he did, he still took his time, tilting his pretty face hither and thither before finishing with a half-shrug of one shoulder. "Why, Jay Waringcrane, are you here?"

"To create paradise." Mechanical, thoughtless, easy.

"Paradise." Makepeace cast a wistful glance at the serenely beautiful garden, where the carefully curated foliage shone colorful with a panoply of technicolor fruit the choicest specimens of which he now devoured. "The Earthly Paradise—the Garden of Eden. Where, we are told, our forebears engendered our Fall and led us headlong into sin and death. That paradise?"

"I meant paradise more generically."

"Ah." Makepeace reached for another fruit, an apple—how cloyingly symbolic!—but let his hand rest on it. "A noble goal, my good man. We could use a paradise, never having known one in this world, much as we've never known an Egypt, or an Israel, or a Rome."

They did, however, know a California—apparently. But Jay said nothing and let Makepeace continue.

"It's easy." Another pause, another moment of contemplation as Makepeace plucked the apple and tossed it between his hands. "For one to feel—oh what's the right word—it's easy to feel remote from the Bible, here. It's easy to read the stories in that great big dusty book and think: Where is this? Who are these people? What does this have to do with me, with Whitecrosse?"

"As if I've ever seen Israel or Rome. I doubt John Coke did either." But the thought nagged, Flanz-le-Flore speaking to him, words stated with especial emphasis: There is no God here. And Jay supposed it was true. God didn't make this world. Perfidia Bal Berith did. "This place is closer to God than Cleveland at least."

"Do you know why Archbishop Astrophicus broke from the church? Why he corrupted those nuns and fled to a monastery in the mountains?"

"Honestly, I haven't thought about this Astrophicus guy once. Villains who don't actually show up until the end are the worst. There's no reason to care."

"Oh." Makepeace kept doing everything with the apple except bite it. It span like a top on the back of his hand before it dropped and he caught it inches from the floor. "Well then. I suppose it's not worth talking about."

They stopped talking. Makepeace finally bit into the apple.

He chewed, swallowed.

He bit into the apple again.

Crunch. Crunch. Gulp.

He bit into the apple again.

"Fine," said Jay, "tell me about this fucking guy."

And Makepeace grinned and still chewing immediately launched right into it: "Archbishop Astrophicus! Second in the Church of Whitecrosse only to my dear mum. A learned man, a graybeard drowning in his own treatises theological and astrological and anti-logical. And, it goes without saying, an absolute bore. I've suffered no worse agony than those dreary ceremonial occasions when I was forced to listen to him prattle.

"But unbeknownst to us all, Astrophicus wasn't satisfied with the knowledge given to man by Godly means. In secret he dabbled in darker arts, fae arts, no doubt a frequent customer of Sansy's, arts he mastered to probe deeper into this world's true nature. He experimented first on women like those we had the fortune of meeting in the forest, nuns mainly—orphans or former whores with nowhere else to turn, the kinds of poor girls none ever keep a close eye on and none ever miss. I doubt those girls even knew what they were doing at first. Perhaps he fed them lies about God and whatnot. Then their bodies started to change and, well—perhaps so too their minds. That was exactly what the dour old archbishop wanted. So he extended his experiments to himself."

"This is a long story," said Jay.

"It's a good story. Telling a good story requires time to flesh out the details, don't you know my man? John Coke's exploits would be rather dull if one simply said 'He conquered the Saracens of California and slew all the dragons, The End.'" Makepeace added a chuckle as though it were all a good-natured joke but Jay thought he understood the guy enough by now to know the comment rankled him. Maybe Makepeace demonstrated intelligence sometimes, but he was still the same guy as all those boyfriends of Shannon's, desperate only to reify his own importance.

Jay was tired of it. He stood up, rising above Makepeace, and Makepeace had sunken into too languid a recline to immediately stand up afterward without making it look awkward. "At least Olliebollen talks fast when she wastes my time with her explanations," Jay said.

"Do you care about anything, my good man? Anything at all? Your utter disinterest makes me wonder why exactly you even want to 'create paradise.' It certainly doesn't seem to be out of overwhelming charitable feeling for humanity."

Humanity. Jay walked out from under the gazebo, into the artificial sunlight, bat on his shoulder as he looked around in aimless pursuit of a potential exit he failed to consider before. He refused to be churned through such sanctimony, but while his initial plan was to ignore Makepeace altogether and force him to either shut up or pathetically dog Jay's heels looking like a whiny bitch, he got a better idea.

"And what about you, Prince Charming? What do you care about? What about Sansaime. You didn't give a shit after that bear got to her. Just fuck her and toss her in the trash, huh?"

Makepeace's chair scraped as he rose. "Sansy and I, we—It's not like we're particularly close or anything—No. You understand nothing about it."

"I understand you. I understood you before I even met you." A husk, Flanz-le-Flore called him, more right than she knew. "What about this altruistic drive of yours to save your sister? How much do you really care about her—I wonder. You only care about the glory, isn't that right. About making yourself the main character."

"Jay, my man, my good man. You shouldn't speak of matters about which you know absolutely nothing."

"Is that so?" Jay reached the picturesque bridge crossing the picturesque brook and turned to see Makepeace sidewinding behind with his arms spread and smile spread further. "Then tell me. Why are you on this adventure basically by yourself? It's the princess who's missing. Why isn't there an army of soldiers behind you? Why when I first met you did you think I was one of your mother's knights, sent to bring you home? Easy. You ran off on your lonesome ahead of everyone else to win glory. It's not about your sister, it's about you."

"Ah! Ah, the great hero believes he understands it all. What unparalleled arrogance. Ignorant of the political situation in Whitecrosse, unaware that perhaps certain powerful players may find it convenient for the most intelligent member of the royal family to disappear, and have thus stonewalled her rescue—"

"Your mother's the queen, what the fuck is stopping her from ordering a whole company of knights to march on the monastery? Hm?"

"Said powerful players perhaps even spreading particularly nasty rumors, rumors that Mayfair wasn't kidnapped at all—"

"I can only conclude your mother doesn't give a shit about her."

Jay said it just to piss Makepeace off, because he liked watching that pleasant smile twist, those elegant and pretty features crease, that douchebag composure crumple into raw, naked, furious aggression. But although Makepeace had advanced steadily with each of his fragmentary attempts to refute Jay's points, he suddenly stopped. His arms fell to his sides. His head lolled and a vast sigh escaped him as his eyes tilted to the replica sky.

"Well," he said, "that's certainly true."

Jay said nothing.

"Jay, do you have a mother? A sister? Any family at all?"

"I do."

"I want to know. Why you left them."

"What?"

"John Coke loved to speak of his life. He wrote an extensive memoir enshrined in our library; it's the only book I've read more than once. The only book I've read that I wasn't made to read. He came to this world because his was being torn apart. He was forced to watch as his country descended into civil war, a war to depose the king he'd served his whole life. He was forced to stand by, disgusted, as his own son warred against that king. It was that disgust that drove him here, to reconstruct the Earthly realm he proved powerless to change on his own. He disowned and abandoned his family to become a knight, a crusader, a king in his own right. So I want to know: Does your family disgust you, Jay Waringcrane. Do they disgust you enough that you'd abandon them to play at hero in another world?"

Jay said nothing.

Jay didn't have to say anything. Makepeace grinned again, but it was not an empty grin, a good-natured one, it was narrow and lacking teeth. "Then perhaps," he said, "perhaps you and I aren't all that different, Jay Waringcrane."

"Oh yeah, sure."

"Let me tell you something then, and we can see if it changes your mind. I truly do, in spite of myself, have a noble purpose for this quest to save my sister. But it's not out of familial piety, you can be certain of that my good sir. It's out of respect to the nation that John Coke built, respect for the monarchial institution he defended so ardently. I'm here to drag Mayfair back—whether she wants it or not—simply so when Mother finally wastes away into nothing there's another Coke to sit on the throne and waste away in her place. One who isn't me."

The garden was growing. The grass curling, the leaves spreading, the fruit overripening. The gazebo split from its piqued roof a second story, the trellises rose in an overpowering grid pattern, and from somewhere distant the sound of singing chimed, a thousand voices all so tiny and all so far away but unified in enough harmony to skitter as an electric pulse up the sheer stone walls.

"I saw what that accursed chair did to my mother. I know of no better person to suffer that same fate than Mayfair. But me? I'm gone. Away from there, never to return. I shall become nothing more than a roaming knight errant. A fellow with a sword and shield and horse—I do hope Flanz-le-Flore returns my horse—who goes where he sees fit, fights knaves and dragons and giants and what-all-else, rescues a damsel or a village here and there, and finally dies young and handsome after picking a fight just a smidge beyond his capability. A beautiful, romantic death. Farewell order, farewell rule. Only myself, free from the will of the world enforced upon me. Free at last to will, love, and die as I wish. Understand me, my good man? I believe you do. Yes. I believe you do indeed."

The ripe fruits fell and in time lapse rotted as more fruits took their place on branches and vines sagging beneath the weight. The singing deepened into a space-pervading choir as the light of the sky turned from blue to glorious rainbow.

Makepeace's gaze was the one Jay knew well. His sheer, steadfast, unflinching look that sliced through whatever stood before his eyes. A look that might make you think he really could cut through the will of the world itself and carve his own path. But it was just a look.

"I tried to go about this in a subtle, more roundabout way," Makepeace continued, "but my man! You've thwarted me at every turn. As you can hear the singing, I imagine our capricious captor is on her way to visit us. We may not get another chance to speak at length before we reach the monastery, which is why I've no choice but to tell you this now."

"Why," said Jay, "does it matter. Why should I care?" Except he did care. For some reason, unknown to him, he cared. He'd gotten Makepeace wrong. He was no mere douchebag. He was far worse.

He really was similar to Jay.

"Because you need to know," said Makepeace, quickly now, because the singing reached a fever pitch and the lights in the garden a frenzy of kaleidoscopic color, "that when you reach the monastery, the archbishop will try to tell you things. You cannot listen to what he says. Not if you want what you truly want in this world: Freedom from the rule of others. You can believe me because I understand what you want, because what you want is what I want as well. No matter what the archbishop says, no matter what Mayfair herself says—she may speak too, she is an excellent speaker, but you cannot listen—no matter what, you must bring Mayfair home to Whitecrosse, do you understand? Do you? Tell me now you do. Tell me!"

"Last time," Jay said, "you tricked me. You told me to go to the castle when you wanted me to come with you. Maybe you're pulling the same trick again."

"Come now, my good man." The ceiling ripped open overhead. "That sort of trick can only ever work once."

And from the rip descended Flanz-le-Flore, contributing her own soprano voice to the chorus that enveloped her. Unlike before, she wore clothes. She wore a Cleveland Browns hat, a corduroy jacket, and jeans, and waved around a wooden baseball bat like a baton. Only her beat-up boots remained the same as before.

Her song ended in a cough. She scratched her throat, coughed again, and expelled a dry breath of exasperation. "Bother! It's been rather too long since last I sang. Rather too long indeed. Oh well. Hero, I've given you ample time to consider your choices. You'll make your decision now. You'll marry me, yes, very much so!"

Jay decided to forgo his typical blunt "No" and instead ask what possessed her to imitate his clothing almost exactly (almost; her version of his jacket lacked a zipper). He didn't get the chance. Suddenly, one of the walls of the garden came crashing down, no longer stone but instead a cascade of sticks and leaves.

A small but high-pitched voice shouted from behind where the wall once was, its owner lost in the dusty plume that rose from the clattering branches: "You won't lay a single finger on the hero, Faerie of Transmogrification!"

Jay didn't need to see to know who it was. Instead of looking, he tilted his head toward the shattered imitation sky and sighed. How lunatic was this world that he was actually relieved to hear Olliebollen Pandelirium?

Then, out of the plume, two figures lunged—Charm and Charisma, the twins. Jay, expecting anything else, scrambled to raise his bat, but the figures swept past him, leaving only a few fluttering feathers to buffet his face. They weren't attacking him. They were attacking Flanz-le-Flore.

The fight began.