An hour later, I was alone in my room, pacing the very small floor. That is to say that I took two steps each way before turning around, so it was more like a tiny circle, if a circle was flat. Ten minutes made me dizzy. Terra sat on my bed, cleaning herself. I hadn’t wanted to face Mabel. I had only gone out back long enough to send Chester and Lily to bed with a fake cheer that I’d won.
Why didn’t it feel like I’d won? I’d gotten the message. I should have gotten the prize. So where was it? Where was my daughter? Was she in the woods, alone in the dark? Was she down in the tavern? I ran down to check. Twice. I checked the kitchen. I checked the well and the outhouses. I checked the stalls and got licked by a three-foot tongue or two, but I’d remembered to keep my mouth clamped shut as I’d done it.
I ended up with my head stuck down the well, casting heals on nothing because I’d become convinced that she was down there drowning. It wasn’t pretty. My mind is not always a pretty place.
“What are you doing?”
I swung around and clenched the zippers of Sammi’s leather jacket in both hands.
“Where is she?” I ground out.
“I came to ask what reward you want for your Nemesis Quest completion?” Sammi smiled at me indulgently.
“Kat,” I said, without thought, before they could complete the previous sentence. As quickly as my mouth could form words, they were out of my mouth. “I want my daughter, Katherine.”
My heart tugged. I’d briefly thought of bringing her dad here first, so there would be two of us to protect her, but I knew that he would understand.
“As you wish,” Sammi intoned.
I had expected some trick, some catch or at least something more that I’d be asked to do. Instead, my heart sobbed in relief as she was there before me. I just grabbed her and hung on, sobbing like a lunatic. There was a short pause as she pushed me away, but her eyes narrowed only briefly before recognition kicked in. Of course, she knew me, even the younger version of me in foreign garb. We hung on and cried and hung on.
Kat wore a dress a lot like mine. It was standard peasant garb. It was a beige underdress with a scratchy brown kirtle and apron. Her curly hair hung in ringlets that tickled my face. She looked and felt so good that I didn’t want to do anything but hold on forever. I didn’t have to look at her to know she was completely real and totally her. She shook in my arms.
Kat pulled away long enough to look at me, my face, touch my hair. Her eyes swam with tears that fell down slightly chubby cheeks. As she’d turned seventeen, those chubby cheeks had been slimming, but she was back to the sixteen-year-old body just like I’d been and she still boasted just a touch of that baby fat. Her lips were all ragged, like she’d been chewing on them. It was a nervous trait that I was constantly nagging her to stop doing, but that she couldn’t break. She was also taller than me by an inch. While I’d stopped growing at five feet eight inches tall, Kat had gotten to that by the time she was fifteen. She’d bloomed up to five feet eleven inches tall at seventeen, but now she was almost eye to eye with me.
The oddest part was seeing her without her glasses. I had lost my own glasses in the transition to this world, but I had shrugged that off as no longer needing them because I was young again. I’d only gotten glasses because my eyes were getting old. Kat had had glasses since she was six. They were gone, but she seemed to be able to see just fine. I checked her hands for ten fingers like I had when she was born.
“You’re here,” I breathed out, holding those hands in mine.
“I’m here,” she squeezed my hands in response. “Wherever here is. Whatever this is, I don’t care so long as I’m here with you.”
“Me too.” We wrapped our arms around each other again, laughing and crying stupidly and not caring.
“Uh, Mom,” she whispered to me. “Where is here?”
I didn’t know where to start. What did I say? “It has magic,” I blurted out the first thing that could be considered a good thing about it.
“I only care that it has you,” she hugged tighter, then pulled back. “Am I hurting you?”
It was a fair question. I’d been so sick that hugs were painful most of the time. “No,” I shook my head in wonderment.
“Really?”
“Yeah,” I shook my head and gave her a straight look. “I’m not sick.”
“Is it because you haven’t gotten sick yet?” she asked. My illness, my pain and my fatigue hadn’t hit me until I was sixteen. I hadn’t felt it since being in this world, but I had thought that it might have been too early. Walking across a room had gone from being easy to feeling like I’d run a mile during the summer I’d turned sixteen back home. Touch had become painful. By the age of eighteen, I flinched at hugs. By the time I became a mom, I had realized that hugs were worth the pain. I just hid the pain so that I could get those very precious expressions of love, but my daughter knew me, and she’d learned to hug me very carefully.
“Whatever illness your mother had in the real world will not curse her here,” Sammi butted in to answer.
“Are you responsible for her disappearance?” Kat asked Sammi, nudging herself forward in a protective gesture that shamed me as a mom. I was supposed to protect her, but she’d learned she was stronger physically than I was, so she’d started trying to protect me from a world that was not only hostile to my autism but also my invisible disease.
“No,” Sammi shook their head holding up their hands.
For a moment, I remembered the pain and responded as if it still held my mind prisoner in the broken shell my body was. I realized I was acting as if the pain was back. I checked my physical body quickly and had to force myself to stand up as straight as the lack of pain allowed. I had to remind myself that I wasn’t sick. Seeing Kat again had brought it all back, and I took a second to be a bit in awe of the things I’d accomplished here with a body that allowed me more. I was lost in that as Kat turned on Sammi.
“What are you supposed to be?” my predictively abrasive daughter asked Sammi. I knew she was only trying to protect me, but I didn’t know how to pull her back. Just because I didn’t need her protection, didn’t mean she wasn’t going to react badly. Between that and the autism she and I shared, when we’re surprised, we rarely give off a good first impression.
“They’re who brought you here,” I answered, holding her still, but opening up to wave a hand at Sammi and the quill. “This is Sammi and the silent one is the quill.” Realizing how absurd it sounded, I tumbled forward with, “They’re our fairy godmother… of sorts.”
“Great,” Kat gave me a not-subtle eye roll, “Only we would get Frank Marino as a fairy godmother.”
“Frank wouldn’t be caught dead in that,” I responded without thinking. I’d ghost-written the book for Frank Marino, Queen of the Las Vegas Strip and the most famous person I’d ever personally known. I’d spent five years collaborating with Frank on the phone and my family had a love/hate relationship with him. Frank and I had grown to love each other over the process, but he’s so intense and driven to perfection that it wasn’t always easy.
“Unless the tutu was Louis Vuitton,” Kat laughed, and I joined her even as Sammi looked on in confusion. The only reason anyone in my family knew who or what Louis Vuitton meant was that Frank had taught us bumpkins. One of my most cherished gifts is the one I got from him when we’d finished editing both books. He gave me a Louis Vuitton purse that I took to every show I went to. It’s amazing the service a person can get when you take it out. “Does Gucci make tutus?”
“Hey! I’m right here,” Sammi interjected, offense clear in their tone. I pressed my lips together to try to hide my smile. “A little respect for the person who brought you across worlds so you could be together.”
“Sammi’s pronouns are they/them,” I explained as Kat cocked her head to the side like a dog that cringed from fireworks. I decided to try to break the ice a little better than Kat had. I didn’t do it well, but I tried. “Sammi, I did mean to ask. I’ve been around cross-dressers and trans. You have to admit this outfit is more clown than drag queen. Not that it isn’t a completely valid choice. But why so…?”
“Cliché?” Sammi asked, the leather of their jacket squeaked as their arms tightened convulsively across their chest. I just had a sense that the clothes weren’t Sammi’s normal style. I’d been around enough of that scene to know that much. “If you must know…”
“I gotta hear this,” Kat put in. Our whole family had a way of not caring about the outside of people. I’d seen Kat treat a homeless person with an offensive body odor as if they were Frank and Frank as if he was a homeless person. We all did. It was just another aspect of our manifestation of autism. We didn’t recognize authority figures as the gods they wanted to be.
“It’s in protest,” Sammi admitted with a haughty snort.
“Of what? Taste?” Kat muttered, probably assuming only I would hear her. I wondered if I should stop her but didn’t have the heart to just then.
“If you must know…” they repeated.
“Oh, I must,” Kat put her elbow on my shoulder to prop her head on one hand. They wouldn’t actually turn her into a toad, right?
“You know that I do not like the term fairy godmother,” Sammi huffed, glaring at Kat, who couldn’t seem to care less. I knew it was bravado and that she was being purposely offensive to cover how scared she was. It was her defense mechanism and I hated that she had it, but how else was an autistic twelve-year-old going to survive college? “I petitioned to have the name changed, and when I was denied, I chose this form of protest.”
Kat deflated a little at that, dropping her elbow and giving Sammi a thoughtful look. It was about misfits recognizing misfits, the misunderstood understanding the misunderstood. We just got people who didn’t get got by others. The bluster sputtered out of her like air from a balloon. I gave a quick sigh of relief. A mom could only protect their kids so much. Even when she’d actually been sixteen in body and mind, I had let her blunder through awkward conversations. It was hard to watch, but I knew it was right.
“Yeah, I get that, big guy,” Kat held out a fist to Sammi, her awkward way of trying to make amends.
“Fine,” Sammi consented after an uncomfortable pause, giving Kat a reluctant fist bump. I honestly didn’t care if Sammi liked Kat or not. As long as they didn’t turn her into a toad, Sammi could pout all they wanted. I knew that Kat was doing her best.
“Are you also responsible for this hideous outfit?” Kat stepped back from me and waved her hands down at the peasant dress she was wearing.
“It’s standard,” Sammi told her, their eyebrows rising as they looked down their nose at her.
“Sammi, buddy,” Kat tried to be charming, but she had an edge to her that had Sammi crossing their arms over their chest. “It’s just that… well…do I strike you as a particularly standard person?” I could see her finally trying to choose her words more carefully. “You don’t look standard and I actually admire your dedication to the protest. I get it. I do. I’ve always hated being judged by what I wear, but this getup is for church or something. I’m not really the Cinderella type.”
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“What did you want to look like, a strumpet?” Sammi sassed at Kat, but they dropped their arms and shrugged.
“I’m not really the dress kind of girl at all. Give me jeans and a pair of biker boots at least. I’m honestly thinking I could die of embarrassment in this… this… ?” Kat pulled up the skirt and sent Sammi an aghast look. “Please don’t tell me these are bloomers!”
I watched with wide eyes. I wasn’t all that fond of the outfit either, but I hadn’t pushed it because I hadn’t even thought about the chance of wearing something different in the setting I’d found myself in.
“It’s just that it’s what girls get,” Sammi argued.
“Look, Sammi,” Kat put a hand on Sammi’s leather-clad shoulder. “I might have had to act stupid for the lab techs that couldn’t find their dermal layer if they’d been flayed and hung out to dry in front of their eyes, but I don’t have to look as stupid as people seem to want me to act.”
“I could give you a copy of my attire,” Sammi threatened sweetly, making Kat draw her hand back like they’d physically shocked her.
“The jacket is great,” she hemmed. “I’d take that and those boots in a second. But I think I’d kill myself if I had to wear the tutu and wings. Are those real?”
“Hang on,” I darted between them.
Dexterity +1
“Let’s worry about what we’re wearing later,” I suggested, trying to sound cheerful. “We can always buy new clothes, but there are more important things to worry about that only Sammi can do, I think.”
“Like what?” Kat crossed her arms and eyed Sammi suspiciously.
“Like a class?” I suggested with a nod at Sammi.
“Like a new Nemesis Quest to get the rest of your lovely family here?” Sammi suggested over the top of me.
“A what quest?” Kat asked and a chill ran down my spine.
“Wait! No!” I swished my hands in the air in the middle of the three of us. “I’m not signing up for another Nemesis Quest. It’s evil and wrong to pluck someone out of their lives and… and…”
“The Nemesis Engine picks your worst enemy,” Sammi argued while the quill flashed its feathered plume at my nose. “Think of the person you hate most in the world and having them dropped into all this…”
“The worst thing you could do to me is take me away from my family,” I said, shooing the quill out of my face and crossing my arms. All I heard was Beau’s prediction that I’d do the same when it was my turn. I didn’t want to live down to that. I wanted to be better than that. Different. “I’m not doing that to anyone. I learned the hard way that it took far too much energy to hate someone. I just don’t think of them. The best revenge is living well.”
“Denise?” Kat suggested. “Maybe Margo?”
“Old silly teenaged stuff,” I protested, forcing my natural disdain for my stepmother and stepsister. “I’ve moved on and I hope they’ve both grown up from the jerks they were.”
“Fine then,” Sammi challenged my professed evolvedness with a mocking look. “Initiate the quest to reward these people by bringing them to a world where they regain their youth, lose their disease, and have access to magic. I’m sure you could convince them that you’d done them a favor as you defeat them with your sheer self-righteous attitude.”
“What do you get for completing this quest?” Kat interrupted Sammi.
“The prize is another of your loved ones to join you here,” Sammi was quicker to explain than I was. All I felt was shame and a little fear that she would think less of me. “Your dad? Your best friend?”
“My best friend is already here,” Kat put her arm over my slumping shoulders.
“I completed the quest to get you here,” I admitted, ducking my head.
“Wait! Who?” she sputtered at me, ducking to get low enough to look me in the eyes.
“You probably don’t remember him,” I hedged, lifting my eyes to let her stand in front of me more comfortably. “He was just an old boyfriend. I was his nemesis. It’s stupid and old and it doesn’t matter. I wasn’t given a choice before. He brought me here because he initiated the quest to get someone he loved here. I have a choice now, and I’m not doing it. You and me. It’s enough. I don’t need anything else.”
“Daddy?” Kat laid bare my blatant lie. “You don’t want your soul mate here? And what about Cliff? He’s your best friend. We’ve all played Dnd together. You KNOW that they would jump at the chance to be here with us.”
I shook my head sadly. I knew I’d probably change my mind, but for now I felt strong enough to resist. I just needed Kat. My heart ached.
“I’ll do it,” Kat professed, turning to Sammi. “But only if you give me better clothes first. I want black leather pants. I want a long-sleeved black turtleneck, a leather jacket like yours, and some kick-ass, steel-toed boots. I’ll take a bandolier with a few throwing daggers and a short sword with a scabbard and belt too.”
I held my breath waiting for Sammi to scoffingly ask her if she wanted a pony and chocolate cake like they had with me. Technically, I didn’t know that she couldn’t ask for it. The thought made my head spin.
“You can’t initiate the Nemesis Quest until you reach level three,” Sammi countered, pointing at me. “And even then, you can’t unless she already has.”
“Don’t believe them,” I pushed between the two. “I already know they can lie. Sammi tricked me into thinking I’d already taken a class to trick me into taking it.”
“What?” Kat asked, and I realized I’d explained it wrong.
“It doesn’t matter,” I argued, trying to keep hold of control over the situation.
“I can convince her to do it,” Kat told Sammi over my shoulder.
“What? No, you can’t,” I protested. “Who would it be anyway? I don’t hate anyone!”
“Yes, you do,” Kat challenged me, her arms over her chest and a smug look on her face. “Sammi, give me my new clothes and I’ll prove it.”
“Go buy them yourself,” Sammi sat back on the ledge of the well and reached out to pet Terra who was just sitting there watching the show. Terra flinching away from Sammi made me feel childishly better for a second.
“Point me to the nearest Walmart and I will,” Kat tossed to Sammi, without even looking at them. She was still staring at me. “You got a credit card to go with that? I didn’t think so. So, the very least you can do is give me one decent set of clothes or I’ll just help her build a little cottage back there in the woods and retire to a sedentary life in a magical world.”
“That’s what I’m talking about,” I agreed. “Just give up, Sammi, and we’ll be out of your hair forever.”
“Like Lily and Chester did?” Sammi dropped the bombshell that shattered my illusions of this world forever. I stood in shock, imagining how I too could end up in a sick bed while Kat became Katniss Everdeen. My mind spun out one horrible scenario after another. I didn’t even hear them talking until Sammi mentioned Kat’s class.
“Are you choosing Assassin as a class?” Sammi asked, their face carefully neutral.
“I am,” Kat said as if she was saying she’d kill them where they stood.
“Wait! No!” I protested, waking from my daze.
“Too late,” Sammi told me coldly. “She’s chosen. And she will be able to choose her own Nemesis Quest at level three, but only if you choose to do it now.”
“Wait!” I pushed them both to get their attention.
“What,” they both said, glaring at me. Twins in leather, at least the top half.
“I don’t hate anyone!” I fumbled madly for an excuse to stop this runaway train.
“What?” they said together again, each with a different inflection. Sammi was annoyed, but Kat was just impatient.
“I can’t do it,” I stated firmly.
“This is Dad and Cliff,” Kat argued. “They think you’re dead. I know you think you’re being all noble and shit, but you held this family together. You. Without you, they are totally lost.”
“But who would suffer for it?” I couldn’t look in her eyes. I wanted them here. “And I’d be no better than Beau! I was his fourth! He didn’t stop with just one. He got his wife here and then he did it again, probably for his son, and then who was he bringing over if he defeated me?”
“I don’t care, Mom,” Kat made me look at her. “You don’t understand. This is a game world. I don’t need a tutorial. I understand the quest engine just fine. I’m taking the quest.”
“Please, Kat,” I stopped her. “Who would the engine bring to this world for you? Who would it bring for me?”
“Your step-monsters for a start?” she suggested, her voice rising indignantly. “They so deserve it. I’d love to see any one of them trying deal with this. To you and me this is a dream world. I get it. I really do! I want to be here more than I even wanted to breathe at home. This is our dream, but only if we’re together.”
“What about you?” I pushed. “Who would it bring over for you? Think about this. We aren’t the heroes here. Whatever way we spin this, taking away someone else’s rights isn’t the way we do things. It’s just wrong.”
“Fine, wrong.” Kat gave an impatient huff. “No, I get it but, is it really a curse to anyone we hate? My stupid ex-boyfriend, for starters. No way that he’d protest living in a game world like this. Or maybe that witch of a professor who said I’d cheated when I hadn’t. She belongs in a game world.”
“Joey?” I interrupted her. “You broke up? I thought things were great with him.”
“Yeah, Mom,” she scoffed, not able to meet my eyes. “They were great until you disappeared. I went a little nuts and he dropped me like a hot rock. Never had any spine anyway.”
“A little nuts?” I prodded gently.
“Fine! He found a girl who was less nuts than me and lived right down the street. I think she was even from his church. Forget it,” she shot a glance at Sammi and the quill. The quill was scribbling madly at something. “Just one, Mom. We can do just one. I won’t ask for another thing. I promise.”
“The whole thing is moot anyway,” Sammi broke into our chat, impatience in their tone. “You have to initiate a Nemesis Quest. It’s part of the rules.”
“No, it isn’t,” I told Sammi.
“Yes, it is,” Sammi insisted, looming toward me.
“It can’t be,” I argued. It didn’t make sense. Beau hadn’t even suggested that it hadn’t been an option.
“Okay,” Sammi relented, reluctantly, losing our game of chicken. “It isn’t technically required, but you won’t like the consequences if you don’t choose to start a Nemesis Quest.”
“What consequences?” I pursed my lips, waving my hands around. “Being punted into this world by a petty teen squabble from forty years ago isn’t consequence enough?”
“Even she knows that this world isn’t a punishment,” Sammi chided me impatiently. “Why can’t you just get off your high horse and take the quest. It isn’t like you have much to lose!”
I sat on the edge of the well and considered throwing myself into it. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t be the villain they painted me to be. And I wouldn’t let them strong-arm Kat into it either. My mind raced through a dozen people that could be considered enemies. There were a dozen administrators at the college we attended. No matter what they said, my neurodiversity was not grounds for a Code of Conduct violation, and they did use the Code of Conduct to try to intimidate outspoken students into dropping legitimate Title IX complaints. Any one of them could be sucked into this world and I’d be hard pressed to care enough.
Kat was right in that I had a stepsister who had made my teen life miserable in almost every way. I had a stepmother who had taken away my dad and turned him against me. They were trite but classic tales. I tried not to think about them. I didn’t want to think about Cliff’s ex-wife, who had stolen his kids, turned them against him, and then stuck him with exorbitant child support bills that were higher than my mortgage payments. Or my mother-in-law, who treated me like a dim-witted anathema to her way of life. I would love to see any one of them up against a vorpal bunny with nothing but a butcher knife.
It wasn’t that I couldn’t imagine how gratifying it would be to have any one of those people punished for their inhumanity toward me, but I didn’t want to be the one to do it. My name might have been Karma, but I wasn’t a bitch. How was I any better than the monster they all thought I was if I enacted revenge? I wanted revenge. I wanted to be able to hate. I wanted them to pay for how much they hurt me. But, I wanted to be better than that. I wanted to be better than that more than I wanted revenge. It was a very very very slim margin, but it was the truth.
“I can’t do it,” I repeated.
I could feel Kat goggling at me. Was she wrestling with the same demons? Probably not. She was younger and wilder and while she tried very hard to live up to the example I set, she had a hotter temper than I did and less experience to temper it with.
“I can sweeten the pot,” Sammi broke into our thoughts.
“It won’t help,” I insisted, taking Kat’s hand in mine. She was trying not to cry but it wasn’t working. I thought about the tissues upstairs. I would have given them all to her if I’d thought it would help.
“How about a little cottage right back there,” Sammi suggested with a smile. I could see a faint image of it, just there, pushing the woods back almost to where I’d fought the rabbit. “Complete with a working bathroom, witch’s hearth and three bedrooms.”
My heart yearned, but I shook my head. If I wasn’t going to do the quest to get my soulmate, I wasn’t going to do it for a cottage I could eventually build myself. I wasn’t that petty.
“I’ll throw in a dozen potion recipes that will keep you and your family in business for generations,” Sammi added.
“Think about Dad, Mom, please,” Kat took my hands and pleaded with me. It’s hard not to spoil your kids when they worked so hard to please you. Kat was always there for me, even when I collapsed from trying to do too much, even when I took on the college for being unable to accommodate autism. Kat kept me going. They said a parent and a kid couldn’t be friends. They were wrong. Just because they hadn’t been able to do it didn’t mean I hadn’t found a way.
Nemesis Quest Accepted
My eyes shot open in shock, but then I remembered the insanity trait and shook my head. “You won’t fool me with that again. You can’t make me accept the Nemesis Quest and I won’t do it.”
“Fine, but don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Sammi said, his eyes sliding to sad in a way that finally broke through my noble intentions. “If you don’t take the Nemesis Quest at least one more time, Beau, the Bard will be considered the winner of your previous Nemesis Quest. Kat will return to her home, and you will never be allowed to try again.”
“Sammi, don’t do this to me,” I whispered.
“Then initiate the quest,” they urged me firmly. “I’ll even throw in the perks I offered before. Just accept it.”
“I don’t hate anyone!” I protested. “Who would you bring?!”
“Kat gave us that answer,” Sammi proclaimed, and I knew this time he wasn’t joking.
“I didn’t say anything,” Kat pushed between Sammi and me. I just let her, because this time I knew that Sammi had me over a barrel. I couldn’t live here without Kat. I just couldn’t.
“You didn’t have to,” I whispered, my voice thick with emotion. It was true that you would do anything for your kids. I couldn’t even chance that Sammi was bluffing on this.
My husband would have understood if I’d left him behind over the principle of things. He’d had hated it, but he’d have forgiven me. No, he wouldn’t have. He’d feel betrayed. He’d left us once for a week-long midlife crisis. I’d told him I would never do it. And yet, now I knew myself better than I had back then. I knew that there was only one thing I’d go against my principles for.
“I accept the Nemesis Quest,” I said, looking at Kat.
Nemesis Quest Accepted – Nemesis Engine Engaged… Nemesis Found… Transporting.