5:6
There were no giants. Not in the landscape as they approached the dark entrance which did, in fact, lead to a cave. Not in the cave itself. Maybe in the time it had taken for Ben to rouse, gain mobility, and accuse Kim and Gwen of riffling his pockets (which, yes, they had), the giants had all wandered off.
Banking the fireball she was holding over her head to light the way, Kim turned to Dan who was at her back and mouthed, “Giants?” to which he shrugged. Their progress was slow as the cave was dark and the ground uneven. Several times they had to stoop to avoid the low ceiling and shift to avoid the sharp protrusions of stalactites.
“Ooops!” Gwen called out from somewhere behind them.
“That was not the wall!” Ivan said in a dry tone.
“I said ooops!”
“That’s also not the wall.”
Prairie giggled. From ahead Patti said, “Oops!” with feeling. “Eep!” said Sass, with equal feeling.
Kim turned with a smile. “So giants?”
Dan lifted his brows. “Still shrug.”
“I think I see something!” Ben’s voice was still a bit weak, probably reflecting the physical condition he’d refused to acknowledge when he’d taken up point for the group, and echoed strangely.
The latter likely was because the walls were crawling. That was right. Crawling. As in moving around like they were made of ants. Or mobile mold. Yeah, slime mold, that was a thing. A thing of nightmares. Or maybe, probably, words, as Dan suggested. Anyway you looked at, not a surface Kim wanted to touch. Those on the edges of the light she cast honestly had it good because they didn’t have as clear a view of the vertigo-inducing walls.
Irreverently and out of the blue the song “Can’t Touch This,” started playing in Kim’s head. And suddenly visions of dancing slime mold, slime flapping like Hammer-Pants, played through it in time to the music.
Her mind was a playground for the weird and bizarre.
Up ahead Patti started humming “Can’t Touch This!”. She frowned. Where the fuck had that come from? Weird. Weirder when Sass began gyrating in the same rhythm as the song.
“Sass?” she whispered. “What the fuck?”
Sass stilled and squeaked.
“What is it?” Patti asked Ben.
“Uh… A giant?”
“Whaa…?!” Patti hurried her steps so she could join Ben in the chamber the tunnel let into. He’d stopped dead just short of the entrance and she had to shift hard to the right to avoid running into his back. The reason for his stopping became clear nearly immediately. As did the question mark at the end of his declaration he’d found a giant.
The figure in front of him wasn’t much taller than he was but it had to be, no joke, four maybe even five times wider than he was. Genuinely it looked like someone or something had brought down a massive weight on a very tall figure and physics or the laws of nature or some fuckery had taken it’s mass and spread it wide in compensation. it’s back was to them and it stood unmoving.
Arms like a gorilla hung at the figure’s side, the knuckles dusting the rock floor. It appeared to be wearing some kind of fluffy sweate… Nope that was hair. Short, curly hair. Patti drew back in a combination of disgust and awe. Because, damn, that was hair! At least it was wearing pant… She squinted and stared at it’s lower regions. Yup, pants. Breath she didn’t know she’d been holding puffed out of her lips in a rush. There was a neck, but not much. Head the size of a small boulder that was vaguely head-shaped in that it was kind of rounded though wide sat largely on it’s shoulders instead. Wide, wide, wide, and a little flat on top, furthering Patti’s initial thought that someone had squished the guy.
Patti tensed, waiting for the giant to turn and beat the living shit out of them. After a moment when it didn’t happen she shifted her gaze this way and that, confusion and assessment combined.
“Ben?” she asked out of the side of her mouth. “Why isn’t it moving?”
“I don’t know,” he said in a similar manner. “Want to ask?”
“Not really.”
“Guys? Y’all? Whatever is politically appropriate to call a mixed gender group? What is that thing?” Kim lifted the flame she was holding and stepped to Ben’s left so she and Patti were bracketing him.
“It’s a giant.”
Dan walked around Kim and carefully edged around the giant.
Kim tensed, prepared to spring into action if the still giant moved to attack. She shouldn’t have wasted the effort as it continued to stand still as a stone as Dan made a slow circuit around it, stopping when he was in line with it’s face.
“It doesn’t have any features.”
“Come again?”
“No face.”
“For reals?” Kim hurried around the giant, curiosity winning over caution as it so often did with her. “Yeah, that’s a whole lot of shifting moebius stuff there, isn’t it?”
“What?” Patti hurried around the right side of the giant to join Kim and Dan in staring intently at it’s face which was, in fact, shifting like it couldn’t decide where the nose should be or if it should have a moustache or maybe a lovely full beard and eyebrows to match. It was disconcerting to say the least. “That is just weird.”
“Uh, huh.” Dan’s agreement was muffled by the hand he was scrubbing over his mouth and jaw.
“Doesn’t look like it’s going to attack us,” Ben said from the position he’d taken up behind Kim.
“Doesn’t look like it can.”
Ivan, Prairie, and Gwen joined them in assessing the giant.
“That’s one wide giant,” was Gwen’s assessment.
“It’s very sad,” was Prairie’s response.
“It proves absolutely no threat to us,” was the conclusion Ivan came to and immediately started moving forward again. “Come on. Burning daylight here.”
“Unwritten?” Kim asked Dan quietly beneath her breath as they fell in to follow Ivan deeper into the cave.
“Seems like it.”
“Everything we see seems to confirm your theory.”
“And makes me ask more questions.”
Patti dropped back to walk with them. “This is a pretty big cave.”
“Yep.” Dan’s agreement was short, like he was listening but not really listening.
“You think it’s going to end any time soon?”
“Yep.”
“You say anything but yep?”
“Yep.”
Kim grinned. “Ask him something that doesn’t require a yes or no answer.”
“What color are your underwear?”
They hadn’t heard Gwen come up behind them but they sure heard her question. Both Kim and Dan shook their heads at her.
“Not telling you that.”
Gwen shrugged. “More for me to imagine.”
“Dan?” Kim drew his attention.
“Yep?” The corner of his mouth quirked.
“What happens next? In the story?”
“Jack comes upon a giant living in an enchanted castle who imprisons him in a room. Jack overhears the giant talking to another giant about eating him. While they are at a gate below the window he’s watching from he uses some rope that is in the corner of the room to catch them both in nooses and chokes them insensible then slides down the ropes and beheads them with a sword.”
Ben turned to walk backwards. “Man has style.”
“Man has a weird ability to find stuff when he needs it.” Patti harrumped. “Several ropes just happen to be in the room where he’s imprisoned? And he has a sword?”
Sass stabbed an imaginary sword and ‘Peeped!’.
“Let me translate,” Patti said. “Sass agrees. The sword is a stupid miss by the giant captor.”
Kim cocked her head. “You can understand Sassafras now?”
“Eh…?” Patti wobbled her hand in a mezza-mezz motion. “The inference seems clear.”
“So,” Gwen fished around under the collar of her shirt, hooking her bra strap and situating it on her shoulder. “Kind of what happened in the Siobhan story.”
Dan replied with a “Yep.”
“I see another cave opening up ahead!” Ivan’s call had the others picking up their pace. There was only so much empty space they could fill up with idle talk, though the compulsion was there. There was something so utterly wrong about the unfinished area around them. Even if you could stand the crawling surfaces or the giants with features that crawled over their bones, something was going to raise your hackles, screaming ‘wrong!”
It might be the silence, so flat it swallowed up their footfalls and ate the sound of their voices as soon as they drifted farther than a few feet from them. The stalactites should drip water to fall plink, plink, plink into puddles at their base. But there was no plink. There weren’t even any puddles, though the stalactites, on inspection, did glisten as if the idea of water on their surface had been approached.
It might be the complete lack of smell. A cave should smell. Like turned earth or wet stone or the damp that should have been pervasive. The space was literally scent dead to the point that Ben could smell the leather of his jacket and Kim could smell the garlic that had flavored Gwen’s lunch. And, uh, ick. Usually you didn’t smell what your friend ate for lunch unless they’d smeared it on their face or clothes – yeah, Gwen could be a messy eater but she wasn’t completely uncivilized, questions regarding underwear and comments about butts excepted.
Probably taste and feel were off as well, though none of them was stopping to lick anything. Gwen might have – it wasn’t *completely* beyond her – but they were moving at too much of a clip, eager to be out of the weirdness and to find Siobhan, for that.
The opening Ivan had found was small. He had to stoop to exit but Prairie sailed right through behind him without making any adjustment. The space they entered might have been a dungeon. Or a room with roughly-hewn stone walls and wood beams stretching across the ceiling. Might have been, but it was kind of hard to be sure. The lightning wasn’t dim. Sunlight poured through a large – giant-sized – window in the wall, casting an image of a rectangle of light on the floor.
Kim, who’d popped out of the entrance behind Ben and in front of Dan paced around the space with her palm-sized ball of fire held up to illuminate the details of the space.
“I’d swear it’s even less solid than the cave was.” She squinted, then turned to Dan, “I think I see words.”
“Yeah?” Dan stepped up as close as he could to the ball of fire without singeing his eyebrows and peered intently at the wall Kim was standing in front of.
“Isn’t anyone concerned about threats?” Ben’s tone questioned their intelligence and the intelligence of their parents as well.
Kim didn’t even turn from the wall. “Dan said the giants were outside in this part of the story.”
“Well, if Dan said!”
Turning Kim focused her squint on Ben. “Dan said that there should be ropes going out the window that Jack went down to escape. Maybe find those?”
Ben gestured at the window. “No ropes.”
“Maybe ropes somewhere in the room?” Her expression suggested ‘do I need to think of everything?’ but she wisely didn’t say it.
Patti turned her head, following the exchange like it was a ping-pong game. In it’s house Sass did the same.
“Best show ever!” Patti intoned quietly to the mouse to which Sass replied “Squee!”
“Maybe ropes to choke you with.” Ben squeezed the air with his hands, like there was a neck between them, then threw his hand down at his sides and stomped towards the half-formed wall to the left.
Kim just rolled her eyes and looked back at the wall. “There are gaps where I can almost see the words.”
Dan nodded, then pulled out a notebook and began furiously writing in it. “Maybe…” he muttered, then scribbled something else. “If I…”
Gwen wandered over to Kim’s side and muttered. “Boring.”
“It really isn’t.” Prairie stepped up next to Gwen and hovered her hand over the vibrating wall. “It’s actually quite mesmerizing.”
“Dizzying,” Gwen countered, pressing a hand to her stomach and crossing her eyes.
“That too.” Prairie shrugged. “But I guess I’m used to twisting landscapes in the Spiritus. I might have more of a resistance to the effects. it’s like a kaleidoscope. Pretty.”
Ivan, standing at the wall in which the window sat, strained to see out it. Even with his considerable height the sill was at his eye-level. He considered grabbing the sill but the ants on glass texture of it gave him pause. Would his hand go through it? Hmmm….
Scientific curiosity getting the better of him, he poked a single finger forward slowly until it met the surface of the sill. It depressed beneath his finger, giving a little before the resistance he expected asserted itself. It was like poking his finger against jello. He pulled his finger back, pushed forward with equal force. And again. Bounce, bounce, bounce.
Every instinct inside of him told him this was impossible. His Magick, so firmly tied to the concrete and the manipulation of it, couldn’t key to this. At all. And it, such an integral part of who he was, was demanding he find the explanation. But, there didn’t seem to be one.
It *was* dizzying. So much so he actually swayed on his feet.
“Whoa there, big guy!” He felt Gwen’s arm bracket him from the side and then the slighter press of Prairie on the other.
Something about them, about their touch, grounded him. He felt the gentle pulse of Gwen’s Magick, a warm fizz against his skin, and oddly he was pretty sure he felt Prairie’s, cold to Gwen’s warm. Something inside of him equalized, finding the balance between Gwen’s touch of life and Prairie’s connection to what lay beyond. Muscles that had gone slack found blood flow once more and his head cleared of the static that had filled it.
He shook his head, smiled down at Gwen, then turned his head to smile down at Prairie too. “Thanks ladies.”
“No problem,” Prairie said, all sweet and gentle and doing something wonky to his head so for a moment he thought maybe the foreignness was overcoming him again.
“No problem,” Gwen echoed, slid her arm down a little, and patted his ass. “No problem at all.”
Ivan flexed away from her, almost hitting the wall. “Ya gotta make it weird!”
“Found some rope!” Ben called out from a shifting corner of the room. Seriously, the more Ivan tried to focus on the environment the more it shimmied and swayed around him, like he was drunk off his ass only he wasn’t. Instead of trying to get his head and his Magick to make sense of what they both told him made no damned sense, Ivan focused on what did. His friends.
By keeping his eyes and his brain on Ben he was able to push the spin and twist of the room away. That was until he looked at Ben’s hands and what was probably rope piled there. To Ivan it just looked like squiggle, wobble, slorp. Literally how he imagined intestines would look spilling from an abdomen.
Bile rose. He swallowed hard and shifted his gaze away from the slipping, sliding mass in Ben’s hands.
“Dan?”
Dan’s response to Ivan’s call was an extremely distracted sounding, “Yeah?”
“What should Ben do with the rope?”
Dan looked up from the book he was writing in, his expression at least as distracted as his voice had sounded. “Huh?” He blinked. “Oh. Look out the window. Are there two giants underneath it?”
“Look out the window?” Ivan eyed the dancing, writhing, not wall and the window set in it.
“Giants?” Ben’s voice rose a little. “You said Jack used the ropes to escape.”
“By looping them around two giant’s necks, then around the beam, and choking them out.”
“Well,” Ben’s retort was very ‘Ben’, “that’s a detail you didn’t mention.” He lifted his brows. “I’m supposed to lasso not one but two giants and choke them? Without them resisting in any way? Who wrote this story?”
“People with very little grounding in reality.” Ivan muttered.
Ben eyed the window. Eyed the wall. Eyed the window. Took three steps back and did it all again. “No way I’m jumping up to that. Ivan? Give me a boost.”
And touch that wall? Urgh.
“Here.” Gwen stepped up close to the wall and made a cradle with her hand. “Let me. It will make me feel like I’m doing something.”
She flashed a look past Ben’s shoulder and a second later Kim approached and took up a position next to Gwen.
“I’m feeling pretty useless too.” So saying she laced her fingers hard to make a stirrup of her hands. “C’mon, Ben, you know you’ve always wanted to plant a foot in me.”
Ben flashed a grin. “Not untrue.” He put his foot into the cup of Gwen’s and pushed off from the ground. His foot flailed and then found Kim’s hands. When he wobbled a little in the hold Prairie hurried in front of him, turned her back to the shifting wall, and pressed her hands lightly to his shins.
“Thanks,” he mumbled and leaned lightly into the touch so he could poke his head out the window without actually coming in contact with the wall. “I see… Yep, I see two heads. Hmm…”
Ben shifted the ropes in his hands, shoving one into his armpit while his hands quickly and efficiently tied a hangman’s noose in the other. When he lifted his arm, the rope trapped against his body slipped faster than he expected, falling towards the ground instead of into the crook of his arm. As he was contemplating it’s fall Patti swooped in and picked it up.
“Here’s let me.” She started twisting the rope. Then twisted it another way. Then again before stopping and looking at Ben. “So, I don’t actually know how to tie a noose. And also I find it a little disturbing that you do.”
Ben shrugged. “Knots are used to secure inventory.”
“Uh, huh.” Patti sounded less than convinced.
Prairie spoke before Patti could say anything more. “Here. If you come forward and support his legs I can tie it.” At Patti’s look Prairie said, “I’ve seen a noose or three before. Here.”
At her beckon Patti moved forward and switched places with Prairie. Faster and potentially more efficiently than Ben, Prairie twisted the rope into a noose then handed it up to him. “All set.”
“Do I want to know?” Patti muttered to Kim. Kim shook her head ‘no’. Prairie had seen ‘things’. Probing wouldn’t really add anything to the conversation and it could be… sensitive for Prairie.
Ben snapped his fingers. “I didn’t look for a sword.”
Ivan turned to Dan. “Does it have to be a specific sword or would any sword do?”
“No idea.”
“Big help.”
Dan shrugged and turned his back on the wall he’d been probing with his Magick. “Could be it won’t matter. Could be only a specific sword will actually hurt the giants. This is all unexplored theory for me.”
“What’s your gut?” Ivan asked.
Another shrug. “It has to be the sword from the story.”
“Okay.” Ivan looked to the cheerleader pyramid made up of Patti, Kim, Gwen, and Ben. “Can you hold that for a minute?”
Gwen curled her lip. “For a minute. Longer than that…? Probably not.”
“Then we have a timeline. Got it.”
Swallowing hard and focusing his eyes on the ground, Ivan started for the opposite corner from where Ben had found the rope. Dan stooped and started searching the space along the base of the wall he had been studying.
“Anything?” he called out.
“Nothing. Gonna try for the beam.” Putting action to words Ivan jumped for the beam. His finger brushed the edge of it and it wobbled like jello, like the windowsill had. “So,” he said, dropping back on his heels to rub his jaw with his hand. “Maybe you should try.”
Dan looked up from his crouch, then looked further to eye the placement of the beam. “You’re taller.”
“And something about this place or it’s Magick seems to be antithetical to mine. Everything I try to touch shimmies or actively pulls away from my hand.”
Dan’s expression took on the intensity of a dog on a scent. “Really?”
“Yeah. And we can explore that further later but right now I need you to get up on that beam.”
Rising, Dan dusted the knees of his pants off with his hands and walked over to Ivan. “Give me a boost?”
“So, you going to be much longer?” Kim called, her voice sounding a bit strained.
“Nope.” Ivan laced his hands together. When Dan planted his foot in the cradle Ivan heaved upward, sending Dan soaring for the beam. Where the space and it’s elements seemed determined to shy from Ivan they definitely didn’t appear to have that issue with Dan. In fact, Ivan squinted, he was pretty sure the beam moved, dipping a little, to make it possible for Dan to get his hands around it and boost himself up onto the support.
Dan lay on his stomach and pulled himself along the beam. As he hit a spot of shadow near the far wall he called out, “Think I found it.”
A cloth wrapped bundle loosely fabric shape dropped from the beam. Dan called out when Ivan moved to catch it, “Let it drop! If it is the sword from the story it can cut anything. Although…” he trailed off in thought. “That might be a sword later in the story.”
“Already dropped, my man.”
“Good call. If I was wrong it could have taken your hand or arm off.”
“Way to look out.”
“I’m good like that.” Dan responded to Ivan’s droll words as he lowered himself gingerly from the beam. It was a long drop from beam to ground. Giant-sized spaces. Once on the ground he scooped up the cloth-wrapped bundle, peeling back the wrappings to reveal a sword. It glinted, solid and real where everything else around it except for Dan and his friends was made of shifting uncertainties and possibilities.
Dan gave himself a moment to parse the ramification of this then strode over to the wobbly pyramid of Kim, Patti, Gwen, and Ben. “I got a sword for you.”
Before he could hand it off to Ben Prairie reached out and took it from the cloth. At Ben’s burst of protest she gave carefully poked it into her belt and firmed her chin. “I should be the one to do this.”
“Come again?” Ben’s indignance was clear in his voice and the way he planted his fists, rope dangling from them, on his hips.
At his motion Kim took a step back and Gwen took one forward to try to compensate. Patti hurried to adjust and keep the pressure on Ben’s shins. Prairie gave the entire dance a pointed look.
“I’m lighter.”
“And?”
“I’ve used a noose before.” She didn’t give anyone time to ask how, why, or when, but kept up her stream of explanation. “Also, are you ambidextrous? There are two giants and you’ll have to rope them at the same time or the other will react.”
Ben’s “No,” had a bit of pout in it.
“I am. Ambidextrous. So, I’m lighter. I’ve used a noose. I’m ambidextrous. And…” a lift of her chin, “you always get to do the fun rogue-y stuff.”
“That would be because I’m the fun rogue-y person.” Ben spread his hands in emphasis, causing Kim and Gwen to have to shift again and giving Prairie something else to stare at pointedly.
Ben narrowed his gaze and harrumphed. Prairie tucked the sword carefully in her belt then held her hands at her sides and lifted her chin higher, meeting Ben’s narrowed gaze with one of her own.
“Fine! Ladies?”
“Fina-freaking-lly,” Kim said, releasing the cradle of her fingers at the same time Gwen did so Ben dropped to the ground.
Gwen massaged the tendons in her right hand with her thumb, then looked at Prairie. “Try again?”
“Sure.” Prairie grabbed the ropes in Ben’s hands, tugging when he retained his grip. Ben narrowed his gaze on her then released the rope, then pointed a finger at her. “I’m only doing this because your cute. And because I’m a little shook by your whole ‘I’ve used a noose before’.”
He pointed at his eyes with two fingers than back at her in the universal “I’m watching you” gesture. She bobbed her head side to side and adopted a sappy smile in response.
Kim and Gwen made cradles of their hands again and Prairie stepped into them. “Huh,” she said half beneath her breath as she reached to grasp the window sill.
“Huh?” Patti called up as she stabilized the front of Prairie’s legs.
“Yes. That was a ‘interesting!’ huh.” I can sort of see the grid under all of this without going into Spiritus.”
“Not normal?” Patti asked.
“Not normal. But interesting.”
“Huh,” Dan echoed as he came to stand behind the group with his fists planted in his lower back. “Have you ever seen it before?”
“No. Kim? Gwen? Can you move forward a teeny bit?”
When Kim, Gwen, and Patti moved to comply, Prairie stuck her head out the window.
“Those are definitely giants.”
“Hopefully deaf ones.” Ben grumbled.
“Oh, I don’t think they’re deaf. I think they are inanimate, like the giant in the cave. it’s going to make it a lot easier for me to rope them. I don’t have to worry about doing a two-hand toss. Which, honestly, I was a little overselling my ability to do so.”
Ben grunted at this.
“Anyhow! Here goes!”
Prairie flicked one of the nooses out the window, exclaiming a second later, “Score!”
Ivan came to stand beside the pyramid, making an obvious effort to stay clear of the wall, and stared up at Prairie. “We should talk about this noosing thing.”
Prairie hummed. “Not going to happen.”
She positioned the other rope in her hand and then tossed it out and to the left. “Darn! Real glad I was right about them being inanimate!”
Ivan scowled and muttered, “real glad,” but didn’t otherwise interfere.
Prairie’s second toss got a ‘yes!’ from her and then she was carefully flicking the two ropes over her shoulders to drape down to the ground behind her. “Ben?”
“So you need me now?”
Kim grinned at Gwen. “Wow, I need some fries for all that salt.”
“Popcorn too.” Gwen grinned back.
Ben stomped over and grabbed the ropes. The grin he flashed at Kim belied the heat in his movements and got an answering one from her followed by a mouthed, “salty!”
“Can you get those over the beam?” Dan asked Ben.
Ben eyed the beam. “If I have a little slack, yes.”
Prairie, Kim, Gwen, and Patti scrambled to disassemble their pyramid, with a little help from Ivan who caught Prairie as she dropped from the top. This gave Ben the slack he needed to toss the ropes over the beam with a some trailing for a handhold.
“Here.” Ivan lowered Prairie gently to her feet, sparing a glance for her face, then walked over to grab one of the ropes, only to recoil with his fingers curled into fists. “Uh,” he slanted a glance at Dan. “A little help?”
Dan nodded and took a rope. Ben took the other one. They tugged until the ropes were taut from outside the window, over the sill, over their beam, and then to their hands. Dan leaned back to anchor the rope he was holding.
“Ben? Can you get up on the beam and tie the ropes off so they remain taut? The story said Jack slid down them to the giants so I’m guessing we need to do the same.”
Ben eyed the beam. “I’ll need someone to hold my rope and a boost.”
Kim looked at Prairie, a silent communication passing between them, then they moved as one to place their hands below Ben’s on the rope. “Prairie and I can hold it.”
“Boost coming up!” Gwen announced and walked over to create another hand stirrup.
Patti stepped up and did the same. “Good to go.”
Ben placed his foot in Gwen’s hand, then placed a hand on both she and Patti’s shoulders and pressed up so he could pop his other foot into Patti’s hands. From there he pushed up onto his toes, with the women making minute adjustments to accommodate the move, and sprang for the beam.
“Ooof!” Patti called out, dropping to her butt on the floor when she over adjusted.
“Ha!” Ben called out, moving to straddle the beam and trap the rope he and Dan had been pulling against it. At his signal Dan tossed the end up to him and Ben tied it off, carefully testing the strength of the knot, then signaled for Ivan to do a similar process. Once the second rope was tied off and tested he swiveled so he could hang off the beam by his arms with his legs dangling. From there it was a slightly less than easy drop to the floor.
Hiding that his knees had taken the worst of the impact, he gave a wide grin and dusted his hands together. No Problem! he projected while inwardly wincing. “Let’s do this thing.”
“How do we do this thing?” Patti asked, eyeing where the ropes went out the window. “That’s a long way up. Seems like Ivan can’t get close to the window or touch the ropes so how do we swing this?”
“I can get close.” Ivan loosened his fists and squared his chin. “I just don’t… really… want to. Or my Magick doesn’t want me to.”
“You think your Magick wants to keep you stuck in here?”
“Not sure. Just know it’s making me stay back from everything in here. Feels like maybe it wants to take it apart.”
“Huh.” Patti rubbed her chin and looked at the wall.
“Huh.” Kim walked up to stand beside Patti. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Kool-Aid Man!” they said as one.
“What?”
At Ivan’s question Kim turned. “Seems like Dan and probably Prairie and maybe even Patti affect the Magick that is making all of this.” She swept her hand to encompass the walls, window, rope, and floors. “And you seem to think you can too, but maybe where they can affect it positively you can break it. At least that’s what I’m reading from what you said. What if that actually is true?”
“So you want me to break it?”
Kim wobbled her hand. “Yes. But in case I’m wrong and you doing that kicks you out like the giant’s club from Mal’s story I’m going to say don’t throw that spaghetti, and by spaghetti I mean you, against the wall until after everyone else is clear.”
“So kill only myself?”
“Eh…” she shrugged. “Maybe?”
Prairie spoke up quietly from Ivan’s side. “Do you think that if you touch the rope or the window something will happen?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think there’s any chance it won’t?”
Ivan was quiet a moment then shook his head. “No. Pretty sure if I touch anything in here my Magick is going to try to ‘fix it’. I don’t know what that means. Maybe it means it does fix it and everything is cool but I’m not getting those feelings from the Magick.”
Everyone looked to him, remaining silent, so he continued. “My Magick seems to see all of this,” a hand gesture around, “as nothing but energy. Energy that isn’t making the correct bonds to hold. And I think my Magick will take the energy and try to direct it, but I’m pretty sure it won’t direct it into a landscape or a story. Honestly, my biggest concern is it will just disperse it completely and I don’t know what that will do to us since we’re inside of a construct the energy has made. Could be good. Could be bad.”
“Could be kablooey.” Kim suggested
Ivan nodded. “Could be kablooey.” He stretched his palms apart about six inches. “Could be big kablooey. Like atomic bomb kablooey.”
“So,” Gwen drew the word out. “Bad. Bad kablooey.”
“What’s to say that even if we all clear out the kablooey won’t take us out?” Leave it to Ben to broach the subject they’d all probably been dancing around.
Ivan turned to Dan and shrugged. ‘You take it?’ seemed implicit in the gesture.
“I think the worst that happens is the story dissipates and we end up back outside the house.”
“Without Siobhan.”
Dan nodded in acknowledgement of Gwen’s assessment. “Yes.”
“Not an answer I want to hear.”
“Not an answer I want to give.” Dan said. “That’s the worst case scenario. The story goes away and we have no way to get Siobhan. Slightly better is the Story goes away, then resets and we start again.”
“Potentially without me.” Ivan added.
“Potentially without you. We’d be weaker without you and I hope it doesn’t come to that but, yes, if the story dissipates because of something you do and then resets I think we have to return without you. But, again, worst case scenario. Best case is your Magick disrupts the elements of the story but not the story itself. Kim and Patti’s Kool-Aid man suggestion.”
“That doesn’t sound too bad.”
Dan shrugged. “It could be? Maybe your Magick disrupts just the environment you interact with. And you are out of here and with us. Or it affects the environment and you are out of here but somewhere we aren’t. Or it affects the environment we are in and kicks us out but you are still in here.”
“You are really making me want to try this.”
“What’s the other option? You stay here and we go on? Or we stay here and starve to death?”
Gwen winced. “Wow, way to rain on our parade. Poop in our cheerios. Pee in our..”
“So, we standing around forever yapping or we doing this thing?” Ben’s voice came from the window, cutting off Gwen’s creative ramble. While they’d been considering Ivan’s options Ben had hauled himself up to the window and was now lightly gripping the rope . At Ivan’s ‘What The?” glare Ben gave an exaggerated ‘What…?’ shrug back. The silent communication of good friends. So heartwarming.
Enter The Woods 