1

Fiona sat spooning potato soup into Carter’s mouth. Nothing much else to do now but read, feed Carter, and chew nails. She noticed she was chewing one to the point of pulling skin from the side and stopped. She looked around the room. Carter sat directly to her right, and Quint was pacing on the other long side of the dining room table. A grandfather clock ticked quietly behind where Quint walked. Fiona looked to her left, where Putnam stood by the door to the kitchens, staring unblinkingly ahead. Phase-shifters … made Fiona feel quite uncomfortable. She had grown fond of Putnam in the five and a half years since she had stumbled into the front yard of Quint’s Manor House, but she still had that slight uneasiness when he was around.

It was a group of phase-shifters who had chased her through the Forest of Midnight, surrounded her, and fed on her vibrations. At the time, she had no idea what they were eating, just that she was being sucked on, and it felt like they were pulling her apart—like nothing good ever was or would ever be. She had felt like her eyes were on fire, like hives were forming around her eyes, then—she had blacked out. That was her first memory; anything before the Shadow Wood did not exist in her memory, and no matter how hard she tried, she could not remember her life before it. When she awoke from the phase-shifter attack, she was in the Forest of Midnight, alone. Standing up, she’d felt for the nearest shadow tree, and started walking, using the trees as anchors in the dark. She hadn’t known where she was going, just that she needed to continue to go. In the Forest of Midnight, nothing could be seen, not even one’s own hands—everything was black. Tree by tree she walked, toward nothing, when one step brought sudden light all around her—light, and a small cottage in the middle of a field full of knee-high pinkish-purple lilies. Later, Quint had told her some people called those flowers stargazers.

The place looked enchanted, which made Fiona apprehensive, but she would have taken anything over the pitch black world from which she had just emerged. Fiona noticed a lone shadow tree standing on a hill behind the house. She felt drawn to it. A single tree, not a cluster trying to suffocate the light from her world. A lone shadow held high up so the light may shine more on its branches than the others. She felt a kinship to it. Coming out of her reverie, Fiona had thought that talking to the owners of this place might be a good idea before they decided she was one of the creatures that had attacked her in the woods.

She walked warily toward the cottage, and when she was halfway there, the front door had opened and out stepped an aged man with circle-rimmed glasses, long, fuzzy, gray hair and long beard that seemed to come to several points around his head. The old man was followed by two young men with blonde hair. They stared at her as she came to a halt. Then a black, oily shape stepped from behind the trio. At this last, she had fainted.

All Putnam had showed Fiona was a fierce love and dedication since, but when this memory came up, nothing mattered but the fear. She didn’t need more of that on top of what Leslie’s disappearance had inspired within her. It could mean so many things—perhaps the Eraser would not work on Carter. Where had Leslie gone? Why had he looked so insane when he’d grabbed it?

A tear began to fall down Fiona’s cheek, followed by a second. She didn’t understand. Her cheeks turned a deep red. Sometimes these spots turned into hives when she was upset—hives that seemed to spread to the whites of her eyes with how bloodshot they would get, and she itched at the area now, as if the hives were already forming. She caught Quint looking at her and she wiped her eyes, turning away.

It was so confusing. Carter had pushed Fiona away, and she had almost given up on their marriage entirely before he became … well, mantra scrambled. And it felt as though I had run out of love for him, she thought. But how could I even think such a thing after this happened? And why did Pip Fish that card if it led to this? Pip was sure the Eraser would be the only way to fix the mantra scramble in Carter’s brain. Fiona was impatient, not only to heal her husband so he could get back to his life, but also—if she still felt this way—to leave him the right way. To maybe even give him the chance to redeem himself. He’s been gone longer than the mantra scramble. I got one year of marriage to him. One wondrous year. Then six months of his distance followed by six months of … this. A year and a half. How long does one wait? How would I begin to explain to the others?

Stolen novel; please report.

Carter babbled to himself, seemingly unaware of what had happened to his brother, or of his wife’s wavering affection.

2

Leslie took full control of the connection between himself and the sesnickie. Pip arched their back in their mind in protest—although Pip wasn’t actually arching their back because they were in the no-space where Moving happened. Suddenly, in the middle of the Move, the image of the austere dining room disappeared and was replaced by the meditaz, only—it was different somehow. It felt … wrong.

3

Leslie felt strange. There wasn’t much to him but a feeling of divine urgency for—her. To have her he knew what he had to do. He saw his brother sitting cross-legged on a pillow against one of the pillars of the meditaz, eyes closed, a little ways away from where he stood. Leslie felt the tickling in the back of his head that signaled the beginning of a sending from Pip. He wasn’t sure how he did it, but he thrummed into the Eraser and felt a cold-ness fill him. Pip’s sending was cut off and Leslie felt the sesnickie stiffen underneath him. Frozen like disco freeze, he thought. Low Vibrations. Leslie dismounted and took a step behind the pillar to his left. There was a reason Leslie had used the Eraser’s strange powers to Move back to this time and day. This was the Day Of Contemplation six months ago and Carter would be in a deep trance.

THE LOW SELF had also shown Leslie the way; where to go, what to do; all would be provided. Fiona would be Leslie’s. He peaked out from behind the pillar to look at his brother again. He turned and began to walk toward Carter. A very muffled piece of him commented on the nature of the scene being a bit questionable—Leslie, naked, walking through the dimly lit meditaz toward his brother who was so involved with the vibrations presently that he might as well have been miles away.

Carter hadn’t exactly been present around this time, and he barely even spoke with his wife, Fiona. The part of Leslie that knew these things was buried deeply however, beneath layers of old wounds and obsession ripped open to show how empty things really were without the thing that should mend the hole, fill him up. Fiona … He could barely hear these phantoms of a self he no longer acknowledged. The hole, had eaten that self up, eaten it whole.

He knew all would be taken care of, but where was the bug? He continued to walk, then paused as he saw a red-cloaked figure towering over him to his right. Brown, twisted horns peaked out underneath a hood that concealed the rest of what Leslie assumed was the head of his bug provider.

HELLO LESLIE

Leslie’s face twisted, terror filling him as he dropped the Eraser and then the creature pointed a transmogrifier at him. The world grew around him, the pillars becoming gigantic, the ceiling being pushed miles away.

The red-cloaked creature bent down and picked Leslie up. He was a bug, a mantra scramble bug, and the creature carried him toward his brother and placed him inside Carter’s ear. Leslie the bug crawled through Carter’s ear canal and smooshed his way through Carter’s brain up to the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex where he sat and made his home. Leslie extended his one-hundred legs into specific spots of the brain to infiltrate communication, then stuck his pincers into the middle of the prefrontal cortex.

Mantra scramble.

Carter came out of his trance with a gasp, eyes wide open, and began to babble.

4

Pip watched from the shadows, completely helpless. Still frozen from Leslie’s strange control over the vibrations—Pip assumed it had something to do with the Eraser that Leslie still held as he walked toward the oblivious Carter. Pip watched as Leslie turned to the right, stiffened—his face an image of utter terror—and started to shrink toward the ground. Then a very tall, red-cloaked figure walked from behind a pillar, and, with a gloved hand, picked Leslie’s tiny, flailing bug body up off the floor, pivoted its feet and then made its way toward Carter and put Leslie in his ear. Carter started babbling. The cloaked figure stood back up straight and turned around to look at Pip. The sesnickie, now free from Leslie’s vibrations, jumped for the Eraser and wasn’t sure how, but they used it to travel to their original time where they had been, before getting pulled into this place by Leslie and the Eraser.

Pip materialized in the dining room holding the Eraser and immediately dropped it to the floor and scrambled away into the corner of the room.