“I’m sick of crickets,” says Oliver, peeling another antennae from between his teeth. “How does Rick eat this stuff all the time?”
“They actually are an excellent source of protein. Steak has less protein than crickets. Plus, I liked the ones last night,” says Olivia. “They were good covered in chocolate, like a Crispy Crunch bar.” Oliver wrinkles his nose at the thought and Olivia laughs. The two of them are sitting around a roaring fire under a dark sky in Rick’s camp. Eight giant tarantulas lie snoozing in heaps of hairy legs and torsos, exhausted and satisfied after a dinner of creeping critters. Rick and seven other amnesiac nomads sit around the fire with the kids. They are all shovelling tiny crickets into their mouths. Today, the crickets are covered in tomato sauce and served alongside boiled cactus leaves and pods.
Oliver and Olivia have been staying with Rick for the last few days, ever since Vellie left. On the first day, Olivia tried to get Rick and his traveling companions to teach her how to port between worlds using the rabbit-issued passport, but it was no use. They either didn’t remember how to hop between worlds, or had never been able to do it. Asking the spiders is out of the question because neither of the children speaks Arachnid. Olivia tried to get Rick to ask Arachne about the Dark Web, but she only grew silent and withdrawn and refused to speak of the subject. Rick looked so confused by the whole conversation that it made him a little angry, so Olivia didn’t try again.
So they are stuck.
“Vellie will come back for us, Olivia, he has to,” says Oliver now, his voice more hopeful than certain. They talk about this every night around the fire.
“What if we move camp?” Olivia worries. “That can happen any day now. We’ve been here for three days already.” Swallowing her last cricket, Olivia pulls her wad of bubble gum from where she’s saved it on the edge of her tin bowl. She never thought she’d have to start rationing gum, but here they are.
“Don’t think about that, Ola. Vellie will find us and it will be okay.” Oliver rests his head on Olivia’s shoulder as she chews the bland wad. “It has to be okay.”
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The Seers have already received Bartimaeus’s final tele-text when Vellie arrives back at the office. He is greeted with new deference. A couple of his colleagues bow deeply as he walks past them in the office doorway. He beat out four or five strong candidates, each vying for his seat on the Council. And many of the Seers will know he was called before the council for a serious time-related infraction. How a mistake like that can lead to a promotion will make Vellie the topic of tele-text gossip for several moons.
The Sixth grabs onto Vellie’s lower elbow in the hallway just inside the front door.
“Come on, Seer Vellie! We must get your Ceremony underway!”She e says in an authoritative voice like she’s announcing it, more than telling Vellie.
“Ceremony?”
“Of course! Your Ceremony of Appointment to the Seers! You must receive your stars and be properly introduced before all Seer-folk.” She steers Vellie toward the Council Chambers. Seers stream from all corners of the office and fold in behind them. The Sixth propels Vellie right through the ancient stone doorway as the growing crowd of Seers gathers in the waiting area.
“I can’t - “ Vellie begins to tell The Sixth that he has to get back to the NowHere and then stop The Eighth, but The Sixth cuts him off.
“Ok, here is what will take place next. The Seers come in to watch, you stand in front of the stone throne for The Seventh and wait for the moon men to sing you your stars. Then there are speeches from each of the Council Members…”
“No no I can’t. I have to get to the NowHere!” Vellie tries again.
“What? Of course you can.. Do not be nervous, Seer Vellie. I wanted to run away from my Ceremony too. It is a lot of pressure to have all Seers watching you, but most of what takes place in the Ceremony happens to you. So just listen here. After the speeches there are stories about The former First, from all the Seers, and then stories about you from your colleagues, and then a speech from you about what you plan to do on the Council. Do not worry about your speech, because it will take a long time to get to that one. It will likely be tomorrow by then, and Seers will be tired so they will do you the favour of not listening too closely.” The Sixth goes on about the rest of the ceremonial activities at a rapid pace, all the while pulling Vellie along until they are standing in front of the throne for The Seventh, his throne. Vellie wants to stop and stare at it, feel its smooth cool texture and practice sitting in it, but there isn’t time. He must get away from here and back to the NowHere.
Just then the other Council members rush in in a pack.
“Oh good, you’re already in place.” Says The Fourth. Each of the other Seers on the Council stands in front of their own throne and faces the expansive stone floor in front of the thrones. Without any further warning, a page opens the door and the rest of the Seers pour in from the waiting area to fill the floor. After a few moments of shuffling and whispering, the entire floor is filled with Seers. Vellie feels hundreds of eyes watching him from that floor, where he just stood ready to accept his own punishment a couple of short days ago. There must have been an all-Seer tele-text which didn’t get sent to him, because this is everybody, even those on suspension or leave or retired from active duty. He straightens his shoulders under his robe and tries not to fidget. He wishes idly that he still had the Narwitches’ orb, or something like it, so at least two of his hands would have something to do.
Oh no, he thinks, getting back to the NowHere is going to be even more difficult than I predicted.
“We have gathered here today,” thunders the new First, “for the promotion ceremony of Seer Vellie into the Council of Seers. Let all Seer-folk be witness: today you see before you the latest addition to the Council. Our dearly beloved First has released his spirit to the ether. Thanks be to the departed spirit.”
“THANKS BE TO THE DEPARTED SPIRIT,” say all the assembled Seers in unison. The sound echoes off the stone walls, giving the impression of a huge amphitheatre.
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“Seer Vellie, we welcome you. Your promotion to the Council occurs under…unusual circumstances, but we regale you nonetheless. You are our new Seventh. Without further ado, I call this ceremony to open with the singing of stars by the Moon Men.”
From somewhere high in the ceiling comes a rapidly-brightening yellow light, and then another and another. Vellie sees the Moon Man, his round face jovial and welcoming. Flanking him on all sides are more like him, more Moon Men. Vellie realizes these must be the Moon Men past, those who have retired from active service. He sees a couple smaller round circle-faces as well, and assumes these must be the Moon Men in training who will take over after the current Moon Man retires. In an acapela falsetto, all the Moon Men past, present and future sing a dainty little chorus with these words:
We come from afar
Carrying your stars
Your reign will be grand
And with you we stand
With these stars we guide
As a light by your side
Your efforts and acts
Through excess and lack.
When your time has come
When your last deed is done
Our stars return in peace
As your spirit is released.
The voices of the Moon Men fill the whole cavernous interior of the Council Chambers. Vellie feels emotion well up inside him at the beauty of their song. The same stars that will twinkle on his robe have adorned the skies for countless moons, and when he is finished with them, they will twinkle in the sky again. He wonders if some of the stars are the same ones Bartimeaus Moonflower wore, or The First before him, or The First before him. Vellie feels lifted on the strong wings Council Members past. He nearly forgets about The Eighth and the NowHere at this point, but only almost. As special as this is, he knows time is running out.
As the final stanza of the Moon Men’s chorus ensconces the assembled Seer-folk, Vellie sees a shimmering in his peripheral vision. He hears a gasp and scattered whispers from the crowd. He looks down and sees that his midnight-blue robe now has thousands of tiny little stars all over it. A couple have diameters as large as tennis balls. Some are as tiny as a pinprick. Vellie smiles and straightens his back. Alone in his hovel at night, he barely allowed himself to dare imagine this very moment. Now here he is.
Once the Moon Men are finished, they fade away and the new First stands up again.
“Council Members, take your seats,” he says, and five glittering, star-studded midnight blue robes fall into their thrones, followed after a few awkward seconds by Vellie. The Seers assembled on the Council Chambers floor settle into more comfortable squats or cross-legged seats on the stone ground. “Assembled Seer-folk, we now begin the speeches with a speech from The Sixth,” says The First after everyone has stopped shuffling. The Sixth stands up and opens her mouth to speak. Vellie can’t stand it anymore. He needs to get back to the NowHere! There is no time for this! There is no telling what The Eighth is doing right now, and there is no way Vellie will sit here and listen to days of speeches while it happens. The Sixth is mid-sentence in her introduction, but Vellie stands up and shouts:
“Stop!” Thousands of eyes turn to stare at him. The Sixth stops talking and stares at him. Vellie takes a deep breath and says, “We do not have TIME! I must complete a mission, and I must complete it now. Trust me. This is for the good of all worlds.” He tries to sound confident but the sentence lands more thinly and condescendingly than he anticipated.
“Seer Vellie, I mean, The Seventh, please sit down! This is supremely untoward behaviour!” The Fifth leans over The Sixth’s throne and hisses at Vellie. The Sixth herself is stone-faced, staring in disbelief at Vellie’s rude interruption of her speech. This is clearly not a scenario any of the esteemed Council Members were prepared for.
“Apologies but I cannot!” Vellie hisses back at The Fifth. “I have somewhere to be.” And with a swish of his newly-star-infused robe, Vellie ports shakily out of his own promotion ceremony. As he fades, he hears The First say slowly, calmly:
“This is unconventional, but we must pause these ceremonies for the time being. Rest assured, Seer-folk, they will be continued in due time and we will alert you via telepathic text when the time comes. Right now, as you see, our guest of honour and newest Council Member has departed the Chambers…”
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The suns are just about to crack the horizon as Vellie lands in Rick and Arachne’s camp. The white canvas tents gleam in pre-dawn light. Vellie lifts a couple of flaps before finding the right one.
“Oliver!” He whispers as loudly as he can. “Olivia!” He uses all four hands to shake them each by one shoulder simultaneously.
“Vellie!” Olivia stifles a squeal and rushes forward to hug him. He moves out of the way at the last second and she pulls back. Oliver giggles, shoving a hand over his mouth to stop the noise.
“Come, children. We must go. We must find Arachne. There is no time.” Vellie waits a few impatient seconds for the kids scramble into their shoes. Rick snores lazily from a far corner of the tent, blissfully unaffected.
“Where have you been?!” Olivia hiss-whispers at Vellie.
“With Her Supreme Eminence. She has laid out how to solve all of this!”
“You said that name earlier. Who is that?”
“She’s like….” Vellie quivers impatiently. “The closest word you have on Earth would be…God.”
“GOD?” Olivia is confused. “God is a woman called Supreme Eminence?”
“Yes, but no… er. Something like that. I cannot explain, really. Come on. I cannot make time for this now.”
Olivia wants to ask Vellie more questions but Vellie nudges them insistently out of the tent. The three of them lightly tiptoe out of the tent, around the side and behind it to where Arachne is resting. Her eight eyes stare blankly into the distant purple light. Spiders don’t sleep and they can’t close their eyes because they don’t have eyelids, but Arachne and her fellow giant tarantulas have adapted to a resting schedule that matches the humanoid routine of Rick and the other nomads.
Vellie squeezes his eyes shut and concentrates to make the ground rumble his communication to the giant spider. This time the shaking is less severe than before, almost like he is making an effort to whisper. Arachne responds, also at a subdued level.
“What is she saying?!” Olivia demands eagerly.
“She has received communication through the Dark Web,” says Vellie, which makes Olivia narrow her eyes at the spider. Wouldn’t talk to me about the Dark Web, would you? But you waited for Vellie and now you talk?! She thinks but does not say.
“Yesss this is elucidating. Some clarity is emerging,” Vellie says in a calm, pleased tone. “This explains the rabbit passport…”
“Where is Paul?” Asks Oliver. “Where do we have to go?”
“Your Paul is in the Burrow,” Vellie replies. “In the world known as The Rabbit Kingdom. He resides with the rabbit people.”
“The rabbit people?” Olivia regards him somewhat skeptically.
“Yes. The rabbit people. We must port there immediately. Olivia, you have your passport, right?”
“Yup.”
Vellie grasps Oliver and Olivia’s hands with his lower ones. As the red earth and the purple sky and the two rising orange suns begin to fade, Oliver says,
“Hey Vellie — how come you have stars on your robe now? Are those new?”
“Oh yes, Earth child. I got promoted,” Vellie replies. “Now hold on tight. The Rabbit Kingdom is not a place you want to be alone. The world known as the Rabbit Kingdom creates magic that is known across many worlds. An elite force of rabbit person magic practitioners perfect it. Even in your primitive Earth, magicians utilize the magical powers of the rabbit. But as a result of their magical inklings, the rabbit-people are notoriously sneaky.”