The Wondermark Gazette

I dreamt I was at the cave. The words of Grenadon had infected me, like a phlegm-beetle laying its eggs in my ear-canal, and now those tiny, earwax-eating word-larvae were squirming and wiggling and hatching into my consciousness.

There is a path along a lonesome cliff. I won’t direct you to it, because I’d rather it be forgotten, but if you find it, you’ll know. There, you will find your answers.

The orange dot of flame I had seen from the air-ship was a million billion times brighter up close. I shielded my eyes with my whole hands — and still I could see through the layers of skin and tissue as if they were, uh, tissue, but the other tissue. I peered between my finger-bones and made my way slowly along the rocky path.

Behind me, a steep cliff led to tiny waves, far below. That water stretched all the way to a land-mass on the distant horizon. Ireland, I knew — for in my dreams, I was smart.

I turned my head and found my idiot nephew Josiah by my side. He wore a green novelty leprechaun-cap adorned with a sparkly foam shamrock. “Been to Ireland, I see,” I told the boy.

He nodded. “I found the Tome,” he said. “I swam ashore and just started asking around. Three weeks later, here it is!” He held up a massive, leather-bound book that looked like it belonged in a stuffy library somewhere. It reminded me exactly of all the books I had burned back at the Manor. I had to restrain my innate urge to set it alight at once.

“But this is the Cave,” I protested. “Grenadon sent me here. He said this is where I’ll find my answers.”

Josiah shrugged. “Dunno about that,” he said. “But I’ve got the Tome. I’m going to head back to Easthillshireborough-upon-Flats like we planned. See you there?” With this, the whelp turned and walked slowly down the path, rubbing his shoulder against sheer rock, his opposite toes trailing over the steep edge.

After about twenty feet of sure-footed striding, he turned back to me. “Come with me,” he said. “Come back home. This is it. It’s really the Tome. I really found it. It was actually pretty hard to find — I can’t wait to tell you all about the hair-raising scrapes I got into!”

“But…” I stared at the impudent lad, the colour draining from my face to be replaced with a thin white whine. “But this is my quest! I’ve had all sorts of heart-break and distress and terrible, ultimately-rewarding adventures! I need to find the Tome!” I stamped my foot. “I’m at the freaking Cave, for crying out loud! Let me just go in, at least!”

Josiah looked out over the sea. “All right,” he said. “I’ll wait, but only for a minute, because it’ll be dark soon.” His face shone brightly orange from the brilliant glare of the cave-mouth. Against the shadowed mountain-side, he looked like a torch, or a little like a Q-tip on fire.

I turned eagerly back towards that brightness, squeezing my eyes tightly shut against the light. I took a blind, tentative step, then another, feeling rock beneath my feet, and rock on either side.

I stepped in something warm and wet. Dampness engulfed my foot, then my calf. I tried to step backwards, but I couldn’t — I was stuck. I shuddered: could it be slime-mould? Knowing my crazy dream-mind, it would try to gross me out as much as possible. I covered my eyes with my hands and tried to peer through a tiny slit in my fingers.

It wasn’t slime-mould. It was magma, and I was sinking in it.

My feet were a trail of ash on the flowing current. My legs were next. In three seconds I was waist-deep in molten, flowing rock, and then I was twisting my elbows to keep them from touching the burning surface. I wondered briefly why I wasn’t feeling any pain.

Oh. There it was. I screamed. My dream-mind slipped me a note: Thanks for the reminder. My dream-mind was being sarcastic.

The orange light turned strangely green, and Grenadon’s mocking tone echoed through the cave around me — or was it within me? It was hard to tell.

“Foolish, foolish fool,” came that creaking, immortal voice. “You just had to go poking your nose where it doesn’t belong.”

This had been a trap — Grenadon’s deadly go-away cave for people who asked too many questions! There were no clues here!

My last sight before the magma swallowed my eyes was Josiah, carrying the Tome, peering around the corner.

“No!” I tried to shout around the wet, hot rock filling my mouth and dissolving my burning teeth. “No, take the Tome away! Don’t let it get burned up! Take it back to Lara!”

But all shouting resulted only in a faint, gravelly burble. Lava filled my lungs, and then there were no lungs. Man, I thought, this is one depressing dream.

Any time now.

The brightness turned to darkness, and I turned to see Peapoddy standing beside me. Natty, foppish Peapoddy, with two good eyes and a reasonable height/weight ratio — not bloated, disgusting Peapoddy of the dirigible. Peapoddy the devious fop. The enemy of Wondermark Manor.

“Looks like it’s just you and me now,” he said.

I kept turning, and saw Mr K____. “Oh, and me, sir,” he said. Behind him, his fellow Ectologist — a chap who’d died in the Hospital back in Easthillshireborough-upon-Flats. “And me,” added this second man.

I was afraid to keep turning, but I did, and they kept appearing, until they were all there — everyone I’d killed, from the training-urchins of a well-spent childhood to Rikah’s clumsy horse just yesterday. And behind them all: Lara.

“Why are you here?” I cried, rushing to her side, which was bizarre, because I was in a realm where time and space had no meaning. “We’re going to save you. We’re going to come back with the Tome and save you. You’ll be healed!”

She shook her head slowly. “I died a long time ago,” she said, softly, in a voice that didn’t sound quite right. I realised then that I could not remember the true sound of her voice.

My mind had given her Rikah’s voice.

“I died in the Hospital three days after you left,” she said, enunciating each word clearly, as if speaking to a child. “You don’t have to worry anymore. It’s nice what you’ve done — but you don’t have to bother. We’re all fine, now. We’re all here.”

Grenadon stepped forward then, beard and all, as did my Uncle M____, and his brother, my own father. Uncle M____ still had the hatchet-wound on the back of his head where I’d laid him out cold when he’d answered the Manor’s front door without his hatchet-armour (his over-sight!). I wasn’t sure what to say, but he caught me in a sturdy polar-bear-hug, ruffling my hair agreeably — “Caught me by surprise, you did!” he said, miming his receipt of the killing blow, his eyes bugging out comically. We laughed. Everybody laughed. Everyone was happy! Everything was working out great!

Peapoddy stood with a man who could only be his father, and Grenadon, their sworn enemy, put his arms around both their shoulders. “Grudges don’t matter anymore,” he said. “I spent so many centuries trying to add meaning to my life — but the most meaningful thing of all was to simply let it all go. I’m glad you eventually took the initiative to do it for me — thank you.”

“Thank you,” they murmured, the whole crowd as one, and it was a little bit creepy, and all of a sudden I wasn’t sure if they were being sarcastic, or what.

I looked over that smiling crowd, an un-counted horde of my enemies, homicide victims, and unnoticed collateral casualties to various unspeakable acts of violence, and I sighed, and I shrugged. “Okay, I guess!”

I let it go, and with that, an invisible anvil lifted from my ribs and floated into the aether like a balloon, its tether too gossamer-thin for me to clutch after even if I’d wanted to. But I didn’t want to, because it felt great. I was liberated from guilt, from obligation, from pain and bitterness and hate and duty and all of it. It was just gone.

“You’re right,” I breathed, sucking in sweet, rose-hinted air, renewing my lungs, rebuilding those millions of tiny passageways that the lava had eaten away with new ones made of sugar and perfection and bliss. “This is so much better. And you guys don’t hold any grudges at all? Really?”

Peapoddy and Grenadon and Uncle M____ and all the rest of them smiled, all as one, all in the same instant, which was again a bit creepy. “Grudge?” Peapoddy chuckled, spreading his arms, taking in the whole black nothingness on every side. “You gave us the gift of passage into this perfect, blessed land.” He — I couldn’t tell if he was being ironical or not.

And then he leaned close, and the ice hidden behind his eyes jumped the gap to my spine. I felt its chill stab me in each of the four humours. His voice was flat, with none of the sing-song affect that had once grated on me so. “The least we can do is pay you back.”

–And before I could say anything at all, everyone was gone, and I was staring directly into the blazing noon-time sun.

“Aaaahhhhggkk!” I shouted, sitting bolt upright, shaking sand and sea-weed from my cold, heavy body. I hurt all over. My head rung and my ears were filled with sea-water. My eyes burned from salt and light. All I could see was blinding whiteness. Was I back in the cave? Was I still dreaming?

The anvil-balloon suddenly found its weight again, and I was nearly knocked be-sillied by its return. It all came rushing back at once — the guilt, the pain, the hatred, the fear, the terrible, terrible crush of life’s many and conflicting demands. I was definitely not still dreaming — which meant I wasn’t in the cave, either.

In fact, I was on a rocky beach, piled among a hundred massed bodies fallen from Peapoddy’s airborne engine-room. Dead now, like so much more of the dirigible debris that littered the area — canvas, wood, bits of twisted metal, bone fragments scattered over miles of shore and ocean. Not three yards from me, half a skull was buried to its nasal bone in the sand, one wide, hollow eye staring at me. Mocking me. Peapoddy, probably. Why not.

“Look — one’s alive!” came the cry from far to my right, and as I clamped my gritty, wet hands over my eyes, I heard voices shouting and foot-falls on sand and stone. I coughed, and my lungs burned with soot and ash from the engine-room still; no sugar or bliss here. Everything I had was in pain. Some new stuff I didn’t know I had was also in pain. Each second, each movement, each breath brought new discoveries of novel types of pain.

Over here, guys. I’m alive.

Great.

NEXT: A New Man

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