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Let’s skip over the slow workings of Stefan’s mind as he sought to make some sense of the fact that he had come quite close to dying at the age of fifteen.
And while we’re doing that, let’s skip over the fact that Mack’s father didn’t notice that Mack was more or less covered in blood.
Mack’s parents didn’t pay a lot of attention to him.
It wasn’t really sad or tragic. They weren’t bad parents. It was just that at some point they had given up trying to figure Mack out.
He’d had one phobia or another since age four. His mother had tried many, many, many (many) times to talk him through these irrational fears. His father had tried as well. And sometimes both at once. And sometimes both at once with a school counsellor. And a minister. And a shrink. Two shrinks. Two shrinks, two parents, a minister, a school counsellor. But they had never had much success.
In between talking Mack out of being terrified of things that weren’t really scary, they had tried to talk him into being scared of things he actually should be afraid of.
Things like bullies, for example.
The boy had no sense. That was clear to his parents and everyone else. The boy simply had no sense.
So, over time, Mack’s parents had learned to steer around him. They’d given him his own space. Which was how he liked it. Mostly.
Mack assumed that when Stefan returned to school he would have to demonstrate his toughness by giving Mack a serious beat-down. The upside was that in anticipation of the epic bloodbath, the other bullies were leaving Mack alone. It was just possible that Stefan would be irritated with any bully who presumed to prebeat Mack. No one wanted to deny Stefan his clear rights.
So in the short term, things were good for Mack in the aftermath of the Wednesday Massacre (as it came to be called).
Stefan was not back at school on Thursday or Friday.
“Maybe he croaked after all,” Mack said to himself on Friday. “And that would be bad. Yes; bad.”
But when Monday rolled around, that guilty hope was banished.
Stefan was definitely not dead. He had a massive bandage on his arm, white gauze wrapped by a sort of weblike thing. But Stefan wouldn’t need both arms to murder Mack.
It was a scary moment when Mack looked up and saw Stefan’s sullen face at the far end of a hallway full of kids on that fateful Monday.
It was scary for Mack and the few kids who considered him a close friend. But everyone else was just plain giddy. This was the most anticipated moment in the history of Richard Gere Middle School. Imagine the degree of anticipation that might have greeted the simultaneous release of an Iron Man movie, a brand-new sequel to a Harry Potter book and albums by the top three bands all rolled into one happy, nervous, “OMG, I totally can’t wait to see this!” moment.
The kids saw Mack step into the hallway.
They saw Stefan also in the hallway.
The kids parted magically in the middle, as if they were hair and someone had dragged a comb right down the middle of the hallway.
There was a part. That’s the point. Kids hugging the lockers to the left. Kids hugging the lockers to the right. And all the kids were incredibly excited.
Mack felt a lump in his throat. He was excited, too, but of course in a very different way. He was excited in the way that had to do with thinking, So, I wonder if there really is an afterlife? That kind of excited.
“Should I run?” Mack wondered.
He sighed. “No. Wouldn’t do any good, would it?” No one answered, so he answered himself. “Better to just take my beating here.”
If Stefan pounded him here in the hallway, some teacher would probably break it up. Eventually.
So Mack squared his shoulders. He tugged at the back of his T-shirt. He rolled his neck a little, loosening the muscles there. He wasn’t going to win this fight, but he was going to try.
Stefan walked straight towards him, his overly adult biceps barely contained by his T-shirt sleeves. Stefan had pecs. Stefan had muscles in his neck. He had muscles in places where all Mack had was soft, yielding flab.
Mack walked towards him and oh, boy, you could have heard a pin drop. So everyone certainly heard it when Santiago dropped his binder and everyone jumped and then giggled – and the anticipation just grew because now it had an element of humor to it.
Stefan came to a stop five feet from Mack.
And at that moment, a very, very old man wearing a black robe that kind of hung down over his face – a man who Mack could not help but notice smelled like some unholy combination of feet, garbage cans and Salisbury steak – simply appeared.
Appeared as in, ‘Not there,’ followed immediately by, ‘There.’
“Ret click-ur!”
That’s what the apparition cried. And no, it did not make any sense.
And weirdly all the kids in the hallway – all except for Mack and Stefan – were bathed in a sort of overbright light. It was like the light in a bus station bathroom. Wait, you’ve probably never been in a bus station bathroom (lucky for you), so imagine the kind of light you’d get if you floated up and stuck your face in a Wal-Mart ceiling light.
It was an eerily bright light of a colour that seemed to drain all signs of life out of normal kids’ faces.
“Hold!” the old man said in a whiny, hectoring croak of a voice.
And he lifted one wrinkled, age-spotted hand. The fingernails were long and yellow. The cuticles were greenish. Not happy, flowery meadow-green but mouldy, eewww-something-is-growing-on-this-sandwich green.
The aromatic, ancient, green-nailed apparition stared at nothing. Not at Mack. Not at Stefan. Possibly because his eyes were like translucent blue marbles. Not blue with a little black dot in the middle and a lot of white all around, but a sort of smeary blue that covered iris, pupil and all the other eye parts. As if he had started with normal blue eyes, but they’d been pureed in a blender and then poured back into his eyeholes.
Mack froze.
Stefan did not freeze. He frowned at the ancient man and said, “Back off, old dude.”
“Touch ye not this Magnifica,” the old man said. And he stepped between Stefan and Mack and spread his arms wide.
Then he dropped his arms, seeming too tired to hold them up.
“Fie-ma (sniff) noyz or stib!”
At least that’s what Mack thought he said. That’s what it sounded like.
And suddenly Stefan was clutching at his chest like something was going very wrong inside. His face began to turn red. He didn’t seem to be breathing very well. Or at all.
“Hey!” Mack yelled.
Stefan definitely did not look good.
“Hey, hey, hey!” Mack protested. He had some questions for the old man, starting with, Who are you? Where did you come from? How did you just appear? And even, What’s that smell? But none of those was quite as urgent as the question he did ask.
“Hey, what are you doing to him?”
The old man’s eyebrows lifted. He turned towards Mack. His creepy blue eyes were on him without seeming to focus and he said, “He may harm you not.”
“That’s fine, Yoda, but he’s not breathing!”
The old man shrugged. “It matters not. My strength fails.”
And sure enough Stefan coughed and then sucked air like a drowning kid who had just barely made it up off the bottom of the pool.
The old man blinked. He seemed perplexed. Lost. Or maybe confused.
“I fade.” The old man sighed. His shoulders slumped. “I weaken. I will return when I am able.”
Then, with a wheeze, he added, “My head hurts.”
And he was gone. As suddenly as he had appeared.
His smell left with him. And the light.
And suddenly, the kids were moving again. Their eyes were bright in anticipation again.
Mack looked at Stefan. “I know you have to beat me up and all,” Mack said to Stefan, “but before you do, just tell me: Did you see that?”
“The old guy?”
“So you did,” Mack said. “Whoa.”
“How did you do that?” Stefan asked.
“I didn’t,” Mack admitted, although maybe he should have pretended he did.
“Huh,” Stefan commented.
“Yeah.”
The two of them stood there, considering the flat-out impossible thing that had just happened. Mack could not help but notice that none of the other kids in the hallway seemed upset or weirded out or even curious, aside from a certain curiosity as to why Stefan had not yet killed Mack.
They hadn’t seen any of it. Only Mack and Stefan had.
“I wasn’t going to kick your butt anyway,” Stefan said.
Mack raised one skeptical eyebrow. “Why not?”
“Dude – you saved my life.”
“Just now you mean?”
“Whoa!” Stefan said. “That makes two times. You totally saved my life, like… twice.” He’d had to search for the word twice and he seemed pretty pleased to be able to come up with it.
Mack shrugged. “I couldn’t let you bleed to death, or even choke. You’re just a bully. It’s not like you’re evil.”
“Huh,” Stefan said.
“Kick his butt already!” Matthew shouted. He’d tolerated this cryptic conversation for as long as he could. He had waited patiently for this moment, after all, for the king of all bullies to destroy the boy who had caused him to be painted yellow.
Bits of yellow could still be seen in the creases of Matthew’s neck and in his ears.
Stefan processed this for a moment. Then he said words that sent a shock through the entire student body of Richard Gere Middle School. “Yo,” he said. “Listen up,” he added. “MacAvoy is under my wing.”
“No way!” Matthew snarled.
So Stefan took two steps. His face was very close to Matthew’s face and a person who didn’t know better might think they were going to kiss.
That was not happening.
Instead, Stefan repeated it slowly, word by word. “Under. My. Wing.”
Which settled it.
A REALLY, REALLY LONG TIME AGO…
Grimluk rounded up Gelidberry, their nameless baby son and the cows and hit the road.
They carried with them all their most prized possessions:
One thin mattress made of straw and pigeon feathers that was home to approximately eighty thousand bedbugs – although Grimluk could never have conceived of such a vast number
A lump of clay shaped like a fat woman with a giant mouth that was the family’s goddess, Gordia
One small hatchet with sharpening stone
A cook pot with an actual metal handle (the family’s most valuable object and one of the reasons many others in the village were jealous of Grimluk and thought he and his family were kind of snooty)
One jar of bold ale, a beverage made of fermented milk and cow sweat flavoured with crushed nettles
The tinderbox, which contained a piece of rock, a sliver of steel that had once chipped off the baron’s sword and a tiny bundle of dry grass
Gelidberry’s sewing kit, consisting of a thorn with a hole in one end, a nice spool of cowtail-hair thread and a six-inch-square piece of wool
The family spoon
Other than this they had the clothes on their backs, their foot wrappings, their caps, the baby’s blanket and various lice, fleas, ticks, crusted filth and face grease.
“I can’t believe we’ve acquired all this stuff,” Grimluk complained. “I was hoping to travel light.”
“You’re a family man,” Gelidberry pointed out. “You’re not just some carefree nine-year-old. You have responsibilities, you know.”
“Oh, I know,” Grimluk grumbled. “Believe me, I know.”
“Just point the way and let’s get going,” Gelidberry said, gritting her teeth – she had six, so her gritting was a subtle dig at Grimluk, who had only five.
“The Pale Queen comes from the direction of the setting sun. We’ll go the other way.”
So off they went towards the rising sun. Which was rather hard to do since in the deep forest one seldom saw the sun.
They walked with the cows and took turns carrying the baby. The mattress was strapped to one of the cows while the other cow carried the pot.
At night they lay the mattress down on pine needles. The three of them squeezed together on it, quite cosy since it was still the warm season.
They rose each day at dawn. They milked the cows and drank the milk. Sometimes Grimluk would manage to hit an opossum or a squirrel with his axe. Then Gelidberry would start a fire, cook the meat in the pot and they would hand the spoon back and forth.
From time to time they would encounter other fleeing families. The fleers would exchange information on the path of the Pale Queen. It was pretty clear that she was coming. Some of the fleers had run into elements of the Pale Queen’s forces. It was easy to spot the people who’d had that kind of bad luck because they didn’t always have the full number of arms (two) or legs (also two). Many had livid scars or terrible wounds.
Clearly fleeing was called for. But Grimluk still had no idea what the Pale Queen herself was, or what her agenda might be. None of the others he met had seen her.
Another way of putting it was that those who had seen the Pale Queen were no longer in any position to flee or tell tales.
But it happened that on their fifth night in the forest, Grimluk came to a better understanding of just what or whom he was fleeing.
He was out hunting in the forest, armed with his hatchet. The forest was a frightening place, full as it was of wolves and werewolves, spirits and gnomes, flesh-eating trees and flesh-scratching bushes.
It was dark in the forest. Even in the day it was dark, but at night it was so dark under the high canopy of intertwined branches that Grimluk could not see the hatchet in his own hands. Or his hands, either. Let alone fallen branches, twisted roots, gopher holes and badly placed rocks.
He tripped fairly often. And there was really very little chance that he would come across an animal to strike with his hatchet. No chance, really. But the baby was teething and therefore crying quite a bit and Grimluk hated that incessant crying so much that even the forest at night seemed preferable.
As he was feeling his way carefully through the almost pitch black, he saw light ahead. Not sunlight or anything so bright, just a place where it seemed starlight might reach the forest’s floor.
He headed towards that silvery light, thinking, Hey, maybe I’ll find an opossum after all. And then I will rub it in Gelidberry’s face.
Not the opossum. The fact that he’d found something to eat. That’s what he would rub in her face. Because Gelidberry had accused him of only pretending to hunt so that he could get away from the crying, crying, crying.
Grimluk expected to find a clearing. But the trees did not thin out. Instead, he noticed that he was heading downhill. The further downhill he went, the more light there was. Soon he could see the willow branches that lashed his face and make out some of the larger rocks that bruised his toes.
“What’s this about?” Grimluk wondered aloud, reassured by the sound of his own voice.
He heard a sound ahead. He froze. He listened hard and tried to peer through the gloom.
He crept, silent as he could make himself. He crouched and crept and squeezed the handle of the axe for comfort.
He moved closer and closer, as if he could no longer stop himself. As if the light was drawing him forward.
Then…
Snap!
The sound came from behind him! Grimluk spun around and stared hard into the utter darkness. It was too late to go back now – something was there.
Grimluk now had an unknown terror behind and a light that seemed ever more eerie ahead. He lay flat and breathed very quietly.
There was definitely something moving behind him and coming closer. Something too large to be a tasty opossum.
Grimluk wished with all his heart that he could be back at the little campsite with the screeching nameless baby and Gelidberry and the cows. What would happen to them if he never returned?
Grimluk crawled on his belly, away from the approaching sound, towards the light, further and further down the slope.
And there! Ahead in the clearing… a girl!
She was beautiful. Beauty such as Grimluk had never seen or even imagined. Beauty that could not be real.
She was perhaps his age, although there was an agelessness to her pale, perfect skin. She had wild red hair, long curls that seemed to move of their own accord, twisting and writhing.
Her eyes were green and glowed with an inner light that pierced him to his very soul.
She had a sullen mouth, full red lips and more teeth than Grimluk and Gelidberry combined. In fact, she seemed, miraculously, to have all of her teeth. And those teeth were white. White without even a touch of yellow.
She wore a dark red dress that lay tight against her body.
Grimluk realised with a shock that the light he had seen was coming from her. Her very skin glowed. Her eyes were green coals. Her hair glistened as it moved.
“Who comes hither?” the girl asked and Grimluk knew, knew deep down inside, that he would answer, that he would stand up, brush himself off and answer, “It’s me, Grimluk.”
But he also knew this would be a bad thing. No creature could possibly be this beautiful, this bright, this clean, this toothy, unless she was a witch. Or some other unnatural creature.
As he was in the act of standing up, a voice spoke from the darkness behind him.
“Your servants, Princess.”
The voice was definitely foreign. It wasn’t simply that the voice spoke the common tongue with an accent; it was that it seemed to form sounds within that speech that were unlike anything that could come from a human mouth.
A dry, rasping, irritating, whispery voice in response to the cold, confident voice of the stunning object identified as ‘Princess.’
“Ah,” the girl said. “At last. You have kept me waiting.”
Grimluk heard things moving behind him, more than one thing – several things, maybe as many as six. Or some other very large number.
He crouched and did not move. If he could have stopped the very beating of his heart, he would have. For the creatures that now emerged into the light of the princess’s perfect form were monsters.
They stood as tall as the tallest man (five feet, three inches). But they were not men.
Like huge insects they were, like locusts that walked erect. They moved with sliding steps of bent-back legs and planted clawlike feet. Jointed arms stuck out from the middle of their foul, ochre-tinged bodies. And a second set of arms, smaller than the first, emerged from just below what might be a neck.
And the heads… smoothly triangular, with bulging, wet-shining eyes mounted atop short stalks.
They were hideous and awful. And from their midsections – not waists so much as precarious narrowings – hung belts that held varieties of bright metal weapons. Knives, swords, maces, scrapers, darts and all manner of objects for stabbing, cutting, slicing, dicing and chopping.
Grimluk hoped they were simply well-equipped cooks, but he doubted it. They moved with an arrogant swagger, not unlike the way the baron moved – or would have, had he been a very large grasshopper.
They gathered around the princess, illuminated by her own light.
For a moment Grimluk feared for the girl. They were a desperate, frightening bunch and looked as if they could make short work of the red-haired beauty.
But the girl showed no fear.
“Faithful Skirrit minions, do you bring me news of the queen, my mother?” she asked.
“We do,” one of the bugs answered.
“Good. You have done well to find me. And I will hear all you can tell me, gladly. But first, I hunger.”
This news caused a certain shuffling and back-pedalling among the Skirrit.
“Hungry?” their spokesman or leader asked with what must be nervousness among his kind. “Now?”
“One will be enough,” the princess said.
The Skirrit captain pointed his two left-side arms at one of his fellows. “You heard the princess,” he said.
The designated Skirrit drew a deep breath and released a shuddery sigh. Then he bent his long legs and knelt down. He bowed his triangular head and his ball eyes darkened.
And then the princess, the beauty beyond compare, began to change.
Her body… her form…
Grimluk had to clap both his hands over his mouth to stop the scream that wanted to tear at his throat.
The princess… no, the monstrosity she had become – the evil, foul beast – opened her stretched and hideous mouth and calmly bit the bowed head from its neck.
Green fluid spurted from the insect’s neck. The headless body collapsed with a sound like sticks falling.
And the princess chewed as if she had popped an entire egg into her mouth.
Grimluk ran, ran, ran, tripping and falling and leaping up to run again through the black night.
He ran, shrieking silently in his mind, from the terror.
“So, David, how was school?” his father asked as he tonged chicken strips onto his plate.
His parents called him David. It was his actual name, of course, the name they’d picked out for him when he was just a slimy newborn. So he tolerated it.
“Bunch of interesting stuff happened today,” Mack said.
“And don’t just tell us it was the same old, same old,” his mother said. She passed ketchup to her husband.
“Well, it definitely wasn’t the same old, same old,” Mack said. “For one thing, some ancient dead-looking dude froze time and space for a while.”
“How did the maths test go?” his father asked. “I hope you’re keeping up.”
“That wasn’t today. That was Friday. Today was the whole deadish guy suspending the very laws of physics and speaking in some language I didn’t understand.”
“Well, you’ve always done well in your language classes,” Mack’s mother said.
“Plus, it seems I’m Stefan’s new BFF.”
“A B and two Fs?” His father frowned and shook salt onto mashed potatoes. “That doesn’t sound good. You need to crack the books.”
Mack stared at his father. Then at his mother. It was one thing to have a theory that they didn’t really know him or listen to a word he was saying. It was a very different feeling to prove it.
It made him feel just a little bit lonely, although he wouldn’t have wanted to use that word.
After dinner he went to his room and found himself already sitting there.
“Aaaah!” Mack yelled.
“Aaaah!” Mack yelled back.
Mack stood frozen in the doorway, staring at himself sitting on the edge of the bed staring back at Mack in the doorway.
Although, on closer examination, it wasn’t him. Not entirely him, anyway. The Mack sitting on the edge of the bed looked a lot like Mack, but there were subtle differences. For one thing, this second Mack had no nostrils.