Four
“Where a giant caste is discovered,” read the sign that greeted them as they gained the top of the beanstalk.
Rising from the fog – clouds, Dan corrected himself as he tested the “ground” beneath his feet by digging his toe in – a short distance away rose a giant wooden door. No walls rose around it. It was just a door. Looming from the clouds. And it spoke to the oddness of what they’d already faced that each member of the crew did their equivalent of a shrug and headed off towards the door.
Eyes scanning the sky Prairie sheathed her daggers in her cross back holster while Gwen jauntily leaned her plunger on her shoulder and bumped Prairie with her hip. Prairie flipped her foot up in back, catching Gwen in the hip. Kim covered a snort with her hand then hurried to catch up with the other two women. Ben fell back slightly to walk side-by-side with Ivan, leaving Dan to walk with Siobhan.
From the vicinity of the door the sound of a voice continued, singing the first line of Tears for Fears Everybody Wants to Rule the World. Not ominous at all.
Gwen and Kim picked up the line about mother nature. And Ivan exclaimed, “Hey I know this one!” and joined in.
“You would know this one,” Ben joked then yelled out loudly into the mist, “Is it too much to ask for some Hip Hop?”
The singing stopped dead. Then started up with the first lines of Walk This Way by Run DMC in a syncopated tone and from the side and all around echoed beatboxing.
As the voice rolled into the line referencing a muffin Ben smiled, spread his arms wide and turned to address the fog, “Thank you!” then joined in.
Gwen bent her elbows, made pistols of her fingers, and made staccato motions towards her groin and Kim did an impromptu really horrible twerk that more resembled someone standing on a live wire as she came in on the next line.
“So, the songs?” Siobhan asked in a quiet aside to Dan. “There is some kind of Magick in them?”
Dan nodded. “Pretty sure. Nothing I’ve ever seen before but yeah… Some kind of Magick.”
“Anything that helps I’m all for.”
“You and me both,” he replied as they drew up to the door. As they drew adjacent to it the wall it was connected to resolved out of the fog, blurry, reminding Dan again of his earlier Vaseline on a lens impression.
Trailing off and leaving the rapping for the syncopated cloud cover Ben reached for the handle which was somewhere slightly above his head. If there was any doubt that they were in Jack and the Beanstalk and that this was a giant’s castle the placement of the door latch seemed an argument towards that end.
“Locked,” Ben declared. He then stooped to look at where the door disappeared into the cloud bank, disappearing into the cover. When he popped back up he announced. “So, the part of the story where Mal went under the door. Misleading. The door seems to be rising straight out of this cloud shit.”
“So…?” Ivan asked
“So,” Ben replied with a rogue’s grin, looks like you’re going to be my stepladder, my good friend. Hike me up and I’ll pick this sucker open in no time.”
Ivan linked his fingers together to make a stirrup which Ben stepped into. He tucked his foot up to his knee like a cheerleader and started on the lock. Dan hurried up to add his hands to the configuration and Ben leaned into them as he fiddled at the lock with a set of picks.
“Go Team!” Gwen called out from behind them, causing Prairie and Siobhan to snicker.
“Okay!” Ben clapped his hands and then held his arms akimbo and pressed his fists to his hips before executing a sweet backflip off of Dan and Ivan’s cradled hands, then sang along with the fog as it intoned a wish for a kiss.
Dan slanted a look at Ivan, saying with his eyes “That’s your friend,” to which Ivan curled his lip, “Yours too, amigo.”
“Yeah, but you picked him,. He was thrust on me by circumstance.”
“Still counts,” Ivan muttered as Ben pushed at the door. Which didn’t budge an inch.
“Can I get some help here?” Ben called over his shoulder. Ivan and Dan put their shoulders to the door and shoved. It was like pushing a cement block, like one of those giant balls in strongman contests.
Without being asked the others stepped up and applied their strength to the door. It was so large and wide that all seven of them were able to push on it at the same time and there was still a bit of room to each side of their combined width.
“Teamwork makes the dream work,” Gwen extolled with exaggerated perkiness as the door pushed open enough that they could get through the crack. Which Kim did without hesitation, squirming through the gap between the door and the hazy frame.
Dan considered calling out to stop her but when she got something in her head that was kind of a lost cause. Plus Prairie quickly moved to follow her, followed by Ben and Gwen who did a slapstick routine as they both attempted to fit at the same time and managed to jam themselves in the space between door and frame with their shoulders pressed together. Gwen did a twist with her shoulders and threw Ben back a step so she could scurry into the space. Ben slapped a hand between her shoulder blades as he dived in behind her, causing her to stumble a step and then turn to flail at Ben who easily dodged her.
Dan rolled his eyes at Siobhan who shrugged. Sometimes it was hard to be the adults in the group, a role they all too frequently got thrust into though their ages were close enough to the others to make no difference. “Didn’t make ’em; still love ’em,” was their fallback response.
Ivan, Siobhan, and Dan squeezed with varying degrees of difficulty through the gap to find Ben and Kim starting off down the hallway that lead off from the door. Gwen and Prairie weren’t far behind. As the four of them went they sang along with the soundtrack which continued to play through the walls, picking up the first line of Bonnie Tyler’s Holding Out for a Hero.
Kim sang quietly, poking Ben in the side to get him to watch as she pantomimed along with the next line. Ben rolled his eyes and then snickered as Gwen came up, linked arms with Kim, and blended her voice, loudly, with Kim’s.
Prairie pressed her hands together, cutting between them to slide in and sing about needing a hero.
Siobhan hurried to join them. “Maybe a little quieter?”
Gwen immediately raised the volume by five, her voice soaring over the other two and clenching her fist dramatically against her chest to which Siobhan shrugged – as if to say she *tried* – then linked arms with Gwen and joined in, casting a glance back at Dan.
“Bum bum bum,” Ben poured in, then grinned sheepishly to be caught giving into the moment. He stooped, raising a fist to call a halt as they approached an opening at the end of the hallway.
The song was everywhere around them but there was a wave of it pouring from the left that drew their attention.
Ben turned his head slightly, brows raised. He flicked a finger to the left, he flicked a finger to the right, indicating the hall went in both directions. Then he shrugged and headed to the right, humming under his breath.
Ivan and Siobhan headed in the direction he went while Gwen, Kim, and Prairie headed to the left towards the source of the music. Dan vacillated a moment and went to the left. He found himself singing quietly under his breath along with the music coming from the walls as he hurried to catch up to the other three.
The line echoed from the walls and mist.
The hall turned several times and boxes and discarded broken furniture littered it’s length. The clouds that formed the floor made it hard to see all the things that could trip them up. Moving carefully to not disturb the obstacles, Dan kept losing sight of Kim, Gwen, and Prairie. He hurried his steps more, dodging smoothly around the impediments as he found his gait, following the sounds of their singing. Then he heard something that made his heart drop.
“Fee Fi Fo Fum!”
In the instant it took him to realize how they should be proceeding, which was as *Jack would* not as *they were* which was to say quiet and stealthy not joyfully bopping to the song of what could only be the Magical Harp, which if their responses were anything to go by might have had something of a Siren in it’s Song, he heard Kim’s voice cut off on, “Somewhere after midnight, in my wildest fanta-“ ending on a pained “erp!”
Gwen’s “What the…!” was overlaid by a deep voice that had about it the sound of mountains shifting. It gritted, “Delete Character!”
To the sounds of Gwen’s inarticulate tear-choked screams, Dan ran the last length of the hall, turning abruptly and then stopping dead for a heartbeat as his gaze took in the sight of Gwen popping what could only be a giant with her plunger while Prairie slid low to avoid the club swing that whistled over her head, finishing her slide with a swipe of her daggers at the hamstring of the giant. Where Kim should have been a column of text wavered, bisected by the backswing of the club. Dan’s heart sank, bottomed out, and his knees wobbled. “No!”
Before Dan could dive into the fray the text swirled on the air, spiraling upwards to break apart and dissipate like ash. The giant stood, transfixed, gazing rapturously at the text as it seeped into the ceiling and then away. Dan too stood transfixed, watching the Magick which resolved into individual words to his senses. Words like ‘curiosity’, ‘courage’, and ‘intelligence’ danced with ‘stubborn’ and ‘analytical. The elements of Kim swirled and drifted then seeped through the weft and weave of the tapestry, disappearing from his sight.
It wasn’t her. It wasn’t her, he repeated as his mind worked over what his eye was seeing. That’s not a body.
Using the moment of distraction, Dan grabbed the back of Prairie’s shirt and jerked her back as he dropped to the ground and the relative cover of the clouds swirling around three feet from what Dan’s feet told him was ground. Holding her small frame tight to his to hopefully limit her ability to shiv him, he rolled behind a box. He whispered a quick cantrip he used so often it was habit, one that hardened the air around his body to add extra protection.
The leather of his jacket took a tattooing from her daggers but he didn’t feel any impact with his skin. The moment she recognized it was him and not a threat was clear by the cessation of the stabs. When she gave him a furious look and made to leap up he pressed down on her shoulder with one hand and with the other pressed his finger to his lips.
“Trust me,” he mouthed.
After a second she jerked her chin in the affirmative and curled up tight behind the box. With her settled Dan dropped and low-crawled through the cloud cover to where Gwen was repeatedly slamming the giant in the hip, the highest target she could reach on the giant’s bulky frame. The giant turned, slowly, into position to batter her with the club. She braced her legs and raised her plunger.
“Bring it!” She struck a classic baseball players stance, plunger back and ready to swing from the hips. Determination hardened features glazed with tears. The giant reared back in a very similar stance, club pulled back to deliver a powerful swing. It tilted it’s head as if listening for something and sniffed the air but didn’t move to strike.
Dan catalogued this in the back of his mind. There was something off there but he’d process it later. Right now there was only action and reaction.
In the frozen moment of pose meets pose, Dan grabbed Gwen’s legs and yanked down. She faceplanted, letting out an expressive “oof.” Dan started reeling her in, straining his gaze to see through the clouds hiding them to assess the giant’s next move.
The giant spun, club on shoulder, his gaze going from point to point and his nose sniffing the air hard enough to suck in dust, and his slack lips moved. “Fee Fi FoMo, where’d did that girl go?”
Gwen reared back to kick Dan in the head and he had to drop his weight on her to stifle her movements.
“It’s Dan. We have to be like Jack,” he whispered in Gwen’s ear, clapping his hand over her mouth. “Quiet.”
“It killed Kim!” her words were muffled by his palm.
“It didn’t. I don’t think it did,” Dan added, keeping the uncertainty from seeping into his tone. Had to stay authoritative. This was his Magick. Maybe. “I think it Edited her out.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
Dan rolled off her and nudged her forward through the clouds. When she resisted he propped his hand under her butt and pushed. “Not sure yet, but I have a theory.”
“Great a theory!” Gwen batted at his hand. Once it was clear that he was not going to relent she started crawling forward, keeping below the misty cover. They reached the box where Prairie crouched. Dan risked popping his head up enough to see above the clouds, pinpointing where the giant stood scratching his head and looking comically confused.
“I don’t think it can see us,” Prairie’s normally quiet voice was on a new level of silenced.
“What?” Gwen whispered a bit louder.
Prairie pressed a finger to her mouth. “I was watching. When you stopped moving it did too. It just stood there when you did. Sniffing and listening. Like the dinosaurs in that movie.”
“T-Rexes?” Gwen supplied
“Sure.”
The thing Dan had set in the back of his mind to process clicked as Prairie spoke. “I think you’re right. I noticed that too but I didn’t stop to digest it. It might be the giant doesn’t see us until we act or interact with the story. We’re here but we’re not supposed to be here and when we move the Story pulls us along with it’s narrative.”
“Huh?” Gwen grunted then repeated but this time the sound was more contemplation. “Huh.”
The giant did another full circle then shrugged and headed off from the way he’d come, in the opposite direction of Dan, Gwen, and Prairie.
“Fee Fi FoFarp, gonna listen to my harp.”
Dan relaxed back against the wall and breathed a shallow sigh. “That was close.”
“That was messed up!” Gwen gritted.
“Why are you so calm,” Prairie whispered. “Kim is just gone. Is she dead?”
“I don’t think she’s dead,” Dan theorized. “I don’t think any of us is actually here.”
“Come again?” Gwen asked low.
“Remember when we heard ‘Welcome Character Something. Designation Your Name’ when you first got here?”
Prairie answered, “I heard ‘Welcome Character Three’ but I didn’t hear that designation thing.”
“I heard ‘Welcome Character Four’. Also didn’t hear any designation thing.”
“So,” Dan murmured, “The story knows my name. Maybe. But not any of you. Could be my Magick. Interesting.”
“Sure, real interesting,” Gwen poked. “Explain us not being here and Kim not being dead.”
“Not sure I can. Well, I can explain the concept. I think we are in the story Kim got from that guy. And I think we are supposed to play it out as it’s written, not change or Edit it.” By habit he emphasized the Bibliomancer spell term.
“Great,” Prairie whispered, “What’s the next part of the story?”
“I think we have to find the Harp,” Dan suggested.
“The Harp the giant is going to see.”
“Yes.”
“Okay.” As Gwen started to rise, Dan snagged her wrist. “And not let the giant catch us or I think we’ll be Edited out of the story.”
“Fine.” She jerked her wrist out of his hand. Crouching low so the only part of her above the cloud cover was the top of her head she started moving forward. “Let’s find this Harp. Guessing we just follow the singing.”
“And keep singing along,” Dan intoned. “Just quiet so we aren’t heard by the giant. It seemed to be doing something to the story when we were singing together.”
Prairie nodded and then duckwalked behind Gwen into the cloud, quietly singing along with the words flowing from the walls which had switched over to a ringing version of “Love is a Battlefield”.
To the sound of her singing the line about being young and the echo of the next line seeping out of the clouds and the walls, Dan dropped to his belly and low-crawled after his friends.
*
Meanwhile down the hall to the right the stealthier members of the team creeped quietly. Siobhan whispered to keep singing, quickly giving a digest of Dan’s suggestion, so they did so but under their breaths.
She sang the line about the hero being sure and the disembodied voice that wasn’t any of theirs picked it up, echoing the last line back from the walls and the clouds wreathing their knees.
“What is this place?” Ben subvoced.
“By Dan’s reaction I’d go with story. Or, Story, emphasis on the first letter.” Siobhan whispered in his ear.
Ben grunted, “Weird. But what about this place hasn’t been?”
“Less talking, more walking,” Ivan whispered.
Ben replied, “Less being an ass.”
“Shhh!” Ivan raised a fist to halt their forward motion. He gestured to the right with his right hand and forward with his left, “Room to the right. I think there’s a sign.”
Siobhan moved up to his side, squinted, and read quietly, “Where a room with gold is found.”
“Gold?” Ben’s smile flavored the word.
Siobhan raised her brows and then jerked her head to the right to indicate Ben should enter the room. It was clear he was going to with or without permission so might as well give the nod.
“I am going to Scrooge McDuck the fuck out of this!” he whispered as he slid cautiously into the room, hugging the wall and thinking invisible thoughts in case there was something lying in wait. Up to now invisible thoughts had not worked but he still had hopes that with practice would come success.
The walls sang of wildest fantasies, a compliment to the sight that greeted Ben’s eyes. The entire room was a heap of coins. Big coins. Little coins. Shiny coins. Dull coins. Like a Dr Seuss book written especially for him.
Standing stock still against the wall, he rubbed his hands up and down his thighs. It had to be a trick. He scanned the area, gaze narrowed for traps. Nothing. He pulled some powder from a packet in his coat pocket and blew it across the space, watching as it filtered down to see if it caught on anything. Nope. Still nothing.
He fingered his lower lip. Experience had taught him that when you are looking for something, in a place where there should be something, and you found nothing then that was something. Or it was nothing. Crap.
The voice from the wall goaded right besides his ear, calling out for a hero. Ben muttered the line about being strong under his breath and pushed away from the wall. Mumbling the line about being fast under his breath, he dropped to his front and started crawling towards the pile having learned if you are going to be blown off your feet it was best to already be on the ground.
Seriously, what was with these old ass songs? You’d think he was on some singing competition that was glorified karaoke. The thought flitted through his head, distracting him from the potential of burning to ash as he reached a finger out and poked the pile of coins.
It didn’t have the heft of metal. The fuck?
He rolled his hand, sliding the knuckles along the floor under the pile, and scooped some coins into his hand. A laugh startled out of him when he realized they were those chocolate coin things, the ones with the chocolate that was more brown wax than delicious candy. He thrust his hand into the side of the pile around the center of the height which was probably hip high to him and yanked out another handful of, yep, crappy chocolate coins.
Rising to his full height he grabbed a few off the top of the pile. He had to lean way in, his belly against the sliding mass, to do so. That was how high this giant fakeout was.
More chocolate.
Like the kid in that story that kept digging in a room of manure, sure to find a pony, he dove into the shifting pile. Fake coins fell away from his face as he surfaced from the top of the pile like a demented dolphin. He snorted. He chuckled. He laughed the fuck out loud.
Ridiculous. But kinda fun.
With that thought he dove back in, his hands seeking anything in the mass that didn’t belong.
*
Crouching to draw as little attention as possible, Siobhan and Ivan crept past walls singing of wild fantasies. From somewhere deep in the area a voice ground low, “Fee Fi Fo Fum.”
Siobhan stopped and turned to Ivan who gave her a shrug. “There was bound to be a giant, right?”
“Okay,” Siobhan whispered, “that seemed fairly far away. Keep moving?”
Ivan nodded. “Keep moving.”
The walls and the clouds sang about someone reaching back for the singer. The skin between Siobhan’s shoulder blades pricked. Was someone reaching…? A quick glance to each side and then up and down to be sure and she confirmed no one, in fact, was reaching for her. Didn’t alleviate the prickling though or the sense that the song knew something she didn’t.
Arm outstretched in front of her, she tapped her fingers delicately along the stone wall as they moved forward, instinctively hoping touch or echo location or something would warn her of danger ahead ‘somewhere just beyond her reach.’
Her fingers hit a void. She whispered back. “Think there’s a turn or another room ahead.”
She kept stepping, patting the air until her fingers contacted another wall. “Door. Hold on.” Her fingers slipped over rough paper. “Got another sign.”
“Where a giant nest is unearthed,” Ivan looked over her shoulder as she read then peered into the darkness beyond the door.
“Together?”
Siobhan nodded. “Always.”
They each took a giant step into the room, Ivan falling to the right of the door and Siobhan to the left with the smooth movement of familiarity. As the sign had suggested what greeted them in the room was a giant nest. A giant nest. Ivan immediately started searching the air for the giant bird that went along with it.
“The goose that laid the golden eggs,” Siobhan said.
“Geese are vicious. I was chased by a goose once.” Ivan muttered, dire memory flavoring the words. “Once.”
“And then you stabbed it repeatedly and we ate well.”
“And then I stabbed it repeatedly and we ate well.” Ivan nodded. “Don’t underplay my trauma.”
“Wouldn’t think of it.” Siobhan carefully stepped across the floor and gave the outer sticks of the nest a poke with her foot. Ivan tensed, sword at the ready, prepared if a goose burst out at them. After a moment when nothing came flapping at them, neck outstretched, derision in it’s nasal honk, Ivan sheathed his sword, pretending as he did so that the sensation juddering along his spine was readiness and not fear.
“So,” he drawled. “You okay to dig around in that?”
Siobhan, who already had one foot in the nest, turned with a small smile. “Goose shock?”
“You mock my trauma.”
“I mock your trauma,” she agreed as she hopped her other leg into the nest. It was so large that everything except the top half of her head disappeared. “This thing is roomy. If my house ever burns down I might consider moving in here. Let’s see. Stick. Stick. Piece of fur. Ugh. Stick. String. String. Stick. Stick. Something… ew… wet. There better be a golden egg in here is all I’m saying. Stick… Ow.”
“What?”
“Trap, I think. Ouch.” There was the sound of a vial top hitting the ground. “All good now.”
Ivan settled back letting the sound of her search mingle with the music coming from the clouds and walls. “Stick. Stick. He’s gotta be strong and he’s gotta be fast and he’s gotta be Stick Stick Ew I need a hero… Ouch.”
“Trap?”
“Trap.” Another vial top and then she was back to cataloging and Ivan was back to letting it become background noise as he focused on guarding the area.
Was that? He stopped mouthing the words and jerked his gaze skyward, scanning for goose. Or geese. Gaze finding nothing he settled back with his shoulders against the wall.
“He’s gotta be sure and it’s gotta be…”
Thump. That was definitely a thump. Ivan poked his head out the door, straining his ears to hear above or below the sounds of the singing.
“Fee Fi Fo…”
“Fuck.” Ivan leaned back into the room and pitched his voice to be heard in the nest. “Siobhan. Incoming. I’m going out.”
In the nest Siobhan paused in cataloguing each discovery. Had she? Damn it, Ivan! She grabbed the top of the nest and tried to scramble out. The twigs and detritus that made the thing did not make for an easy scramble. In her rush her feet moved faster than the surface wanted to allow and she ended up sliding into an undignified face plant in the nasty stuff.
She tried again, slower, and managed to get her way up and over. Fingers checking her bandolier of vials she rushed from the room. Pausing in the door she considered left or right. Her decision was made for her by the sound of a fight to the right.
Clutching the strap of her bag in her left hand and grabbing for the small punch shield she kept strapped on her back with her right she ran towards the sound. The cloud cover made her footing uneven, causing her to stumble and slide as she rounded a corner into a larger area that was dotted with heavy columns. Ivan and what appeared to be a giant danced in and out of the columns, their shadows creating a pantomime of grace on the walls.
Siobhan tightened her grip on her shield and yanked an unmarked potion from her bandolier. As she reared back to throw it the giant’s club made an arch towards Ivan’s head.
“Delete Character!” came from the giant in a tone like rocks shifting.
Ivan’s sword came up too slowly and Siobhan’s heart dropped to her knees as she watched the club connect with a sound like a bat hitting a melon. Thunk. The hollow sound hung on the air as Ivan was picked off his feet and flew back and to the side.
Siobhan had a moment to see the certainty in his eyes before Ivan’s form suddenly dissipated into a swirl of ash or smoke or… words? She squinted, her mind trying to process what her eyes saw. Words. Where Ivan had been big and hearty and whole a moment before now there was a vaguely Ivan shaped cloud of words that broke apart as she watched and started drifting towards the ceiling.
“Pretty,” the giant intoned, standing still and watching Ivan break apart.
Pretty, Siobhan thought then shook herself. Not pretty.
She dropped back a step. Eying the potion in her hand she did a quick assessment. Could she take the giant? Did she dare? No. To both. She couldn’t and she wouldn’t. Retreat was called for. But… Ivan.
No. She squared her jaw and ground her teeth. No body. That was not a body. This was some deep Magick that she didn’t understand but no body meant… Her gaze darted as she processed. It meant.
Slowly she put the potion back in the bandolier and began to back away. She wasn’t sure what she was dealing with but common sense dictated caution. That wasn’t a bear out there but it was big as a bear and childhood instructions told her when faced with a bear show no aggression and back away. So she did.
The giant’s head turned in her direction just as she was turning the corner in the hall. Common sense was overridden by a deep sense of “shit!” which lead to her abandoning common sense, turning on her heel and running as fast as she could down the hall. Now that the haze of battle was no longer in her ears she could hear the song coming from the walls and clouds had changed over to Love is a Battlefield. Her running feet syncopated with the line about being young and the walls sang of heartache.
She bypassed the room with the nest and headed for the one she’d left Ben in. “Ben!” she whisper screamed over the sound of the chorus.
Ben’s head popped out of the pile of coins in the center of the room.
“Ivan’s gone. We need to find the others!”
“Ivan?” Ben’s eyes widened. He dove out of the coins, executing a neat somersault and finding his feet.
“No time.”
Ben grabbed Siobhan’s arm. “There is time to tell me what happened to my best friend.”
“He’s gone. I don’t think he’s dead.”
“You don’t *think* he’s dead?” Ben’s voice rose.
Siobhan pitched her voice low. “Keep it down. There’s a giant and they are coming and we need to get out of here now. We need Dan. I’ll explain as we run.”
“Fine!” Ben released Siobhan’s arm. There was steely determination in his eyes as he matched her pace for pace, running through the ever swirling clouds and down the hall in the direction they’d started.
Over the sound of “You’re begging me to go then making me stay” Siobhan panted out the details. Ivan. Giant. Words. So many words making up a man. Courage. Strength. Determination. Leadership. Pride. All gone from this place.
Ben gritted out a few questions which she couldn’t answer, making her glad when they turned a corner and almost ran into Prairie who was duckwalking through the clouds, so small only the very top of her spiky haircut was visible bobbing over the swirling fog line.
“Hey,” Dan’s voice carried from under the clouds a second before a hand closed on Siobhan’s leg. Instinct had her kicking before she registered the sound of his voice.
“What is with all the kicking?” Dan gritted out, releasing her leg as Siobhan shuddered to a stop. His head rose above the cloud cover enough that he could meet Siobhan’s gaze.
“All the…?”
“I kicked him in the face earlier.” Gwen popped out of the clouds in front of Prairie.
Siobhan didn’t take the time to process that, swiftly moving into an explanation. Ivan. Giant. Swirl of Ivan words. Gone.
Dan nodded. “Same thing happened to Kim. I have my theories.”
“Which are?” Ben’s tone had a snap to it. He may have listened to the explanation but it didn’t sound like he’d internalized it fully.
“First,” Dan whispered and swept his arms to gather the group near. Once they were all around he dropped to a sit, disappearing in the cloud cover. Siobhan and the others had to choose to sit or not see him. They all chose to sit.
Once everyone was adequately covered by the cloud cover, Dan continued, “Prairie pointed out something and I’m in agreement. The giant can’t seem to see us if we don’t interact with the story. As long as we don’t do something to actively catch it’s attention I think we can move somewhat freely.”
“Second. Kim is gone. Same thing that happened to Ivan. Hit by the giant. Turned into words and left the story. Deleted.”
“Deleted? What does that mean?” Ben asked in a low voice.
Dan’s shrug was small in direct contrast to the hugeness of what he suspected. The song from the clouds echoed his thoughts.
The next words of the song popped out of Dan’s mouth instead of the explanation he’d been intending. He shook his head and started again. “I think this is some new version of BiblioMagick. An exponentially more powerful version. A few of us have speculated it’s possible to bring life to words with our Magick but we’d always thought it would take such a well of Magick and also probably draw from the Magick of the people involved which is a violation on a level I don’t want to think about.”
The others each seemed to be processing in their own way. It helped to be working with people who trusted him and who also were very quick. “I think we’re trapped in a story. Jack in the Beanstalk specifically. I said that already, earlier, didn’t I?” He fell into the place he got when discussing theory with other Bibliomancers. “It might have variations because the story we read, Mal, was modern and had definite differences. Specifically the drug references. And we could be in that version of the story, considering it’s what I read before we were pulled in.”
“Ivan and Kim?” Ben asked.
“Pulled out of the story, I think.” He rubbed his forehead. “It makes sense. I think we may all be made up of words not flesh in here. Like we were filtered by whatever Magick is making this a reality, then reconstructed within the story. Or written in. So when Kim and, it sounds like Ivan, were Deleted by the giant their construct was unraveled and removed from the story.”
Gwen sighed. “I really hope you’re right. I just…” Her shoulders slumped and Siobhan put an arm around her.
“We’re going to fix this.” That said, Siobhan turned to Dan, “How do we fix this?”
“We finish the story,” he stated with more conviction than he was feeling. Authority, he counselled himself, this was his Magick. Probably.
Siobhan rose. As the walls sang about being strong she added her voice to their magic. Or Magick.
Singing the next line, Prairie got to her feet. Gwen’s voice had a wobble to it but her stance was steady as she sang the next phrase. Clouds swirled around their bodies, heightening the drama.
“Let’s find this Harp,” Prairie said, lifting her chin and looking down the hall. “And finish this.”
Enter The Woods 