CHAPTER ELEVEN
Nobody
XIV
Wilburn, Alfajean, and Buttrom rematerialized in the middle of the Dream Road. The emptiness and stillness of the place came as a shock to Wilburn’s overstimulated system. No thunder in his ears. No stench of brimstone in his nostrils. No sun or clouds in the blue sky, and nothing underneath the sky but flat brown earth and road. The air was neither warm nor cool. And of course, there was no Iddo.
A melancholy feeling settled over Wilburn as the telefraction tingles faded. He guessed he’d have to go home now and get in massive trouble for having left without permission. He guessed Mom must be worried sick. He guessed there would be a lot of math in his near future.
“… big fire… big hot… very big hot… very fire… ” Buttrom stared wide-eyed into the distance, babbling to himself. He seemed to have lost all grip on reality. His grip on the clay bowl, however, remained as tight as ever.
“Very fire,” Alfajean agreed, focused on their wizidex. “I’m just punching in our next coordinates, Buttrom… dumpty dumpty dum… confirming destination… and… ready. Well, goodbye, Wilburn. Have fun fulfilling your destiny!”
“Mkay,” Wilburn said, glumly. “See you, guys.”
Buttrom blinked at him. “I just make pots.”
Wilburn shook his head, grinning in spite of himself. The man was cracked. It was a little sad. But it was also kind of funny. That was how Wilburn felt as he watched them telefract away: half of him ready to laugh, the other half to cry. The angel and the prophet vanished in a POOF of swirling speckles, leaving him standing in the middle of the Dream Road, all alone… or so he thought.
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XV
The second Alfajean and Buttrom disappeared, Wilburn realized what an idiot he’d been—he should have asked Alfajean to point him toward the crossroads. Now he had a fifty-fifty chance picking the right direction, and a fifty-fifty chance of picking the exact opposite direction. If he went the wrong way, he’d end up in Open Dreamspace; he had no idea what that was, but even if it was amazing, it would mean staying away from home, and the longer Wilburn stayed away, the more math problems he expected to have to solve.
This conundrum, however, was driven clean out of his mind by the abrupt and decidedly unexpected appearance of the Girl in Black. She didn’t materialize out of a cloud of swirling particles or anything. She was just there, without any kind of warning or transition, standing right in front of Wilburn in the road. Her clothes and hair were somehow clean, though she’d been drenched in blood and honey only minutes ago, and she was wearing her long coat again, the one that had dissolved into black mist.
Wilburn might have screamed a tiny bit, but only because she startled him so badly. “GAAAAA! Oh,” he said, “it’s you. How did you…” He looked into the girl’s brown eyes, and found that he couldn’t look away. Like, for real. He was paralyzed.
The Girl in Black flipped open the lid of Wilburn’s mind and riffled through his marbles collection. He couldn’t sense her psychic touch at all, only the effects of it. The girl’s eyes held his, unblinking, while on the stage of Wilburn’s mind, his entire life replayed itself in reverse, starting from the present moment and rewinding at nauseating speed, back, back, back, into to the hazy memories of infancy. It was over in a matter of seconds.
The two of them stood looking at each other. Wilburn didn’t understand what he was seeing in the girl’s face. Her expression was neutral, and yet… he could almost make out the shape of some profound emotion swimming deep below the surface.
The girl looked down, breaking eye contact at last. “You don’t know how lucky you are,” she said quietly.
Wilburn swallowed. The paralysis had lifted. “Who are you?” he asked.
The faintest trace of a wistful smile touched the girl’s lips, as she answered, “Nobody.”
Then nobody was gone because nobody had ever been there, at least as far as Wilburn was aware. He looked around. He was alone. And for the life of him, he couldn’t remember what had brought him all the way out here to the middle of gosh-knew-where the heck without shoes.