Authors: Cameron Jace
“Think of me what you like, but please don’t expose me,” Georgie said. “I have a reputation to keep.”
“Don’t worry,” Loki said. “We won’t. You’ll always be Georgie Porgie who scares every child away. We just want the Baby Tears and we’re gone.”
“Thank you,” Georgie said, and handed Loki the bottle of one hundred year old Baby Tears.
“You really fooled me, man,” Axel said. “You were so close to becoming my evil idol.”
Suddenly, the door sprung open and Cry Baby entered. Georgie had already stood up and dried his tears of disappointment.
“What’s wrong?” Georgie faked being angry. “Didn’t I tell you to knock three times and say ‘Spooky Woogy Boo’ before entering?”
“It’s an emergency,” Cry Baby lowered his eyes, respecting Georgie.
“What kind of emergency?” Georgie asked.
Cry Baby raised his head to answer, but then he saw the grinning baby, wiggling its feet. “Is this a happy baby?” he pointed at it, appalled as if he’d seen the devil.
“Yes, it is,” Fabled sneered at him.
“I thought you were practicing on it, so you could make it cry like no other baby did before,” Cry Baby said to Georgie.
“No it’s not laughing,” Axel interrupted, doing his best not to expose Georgie. How could the leader of Boogeymen have a laughing child in his room? Axel grinned at the baby and it started crying instantly. Loki rolled his eyes, noting that not only animals hated Axel, but little babies as well. “See?” Axel said to Cry Baby. “It’s your imagination.”
Cry Baby scratched his head. “Must be all the Baby Tears I drank making me see things.”
“So what’s the emergency?” Georgie demanded.
“The Bullyvards are outside,” Cry Baby said.
“What?” Georgie said. “How dare they enter The Closet?”
“They say they’re looking for a Loki Blackscar,” Cry Baby said.
“Blackstar,” Loki corrected him.
“Why are they looking for you?” Georgie said.
“They love me,” Loki said.
“They say they don’t want any trouble with us,” Cry Baby explained. “They want the kid and his friends because they have some old business to deal with, and then they will leave.”
“So the werewolves think they can enter Georgie Porgie’s place and take whoever they want and leave?” Georgie said. “Not in a million years.”
“You understand that there’s going to be a massacre outside if Boogeymen and Bullyvards clash with each other?” Cry Baby said.
“I don’t care,” Georgie snarled. “I’m Georgie Porgie, and I hate those hairy, ugly werewolves.”
Georgie pushed the door open, walked outside, and the rest followed.
The Closet was on fire. The two tribes were standing opposite to each other while Loki and the others found themselves in the middle.
“Spooky Woogy Boo!” The Boogeymen clutched their fists, showing their ugly faces to the werewolves—all except Georgie.
“Awooo!” The Bullyvards howled on the other side of the bar, led by Ulfric Moonlcaw, Big Bad, and Paw Paw.
“This isn’t really happening, right?” Axel said, shielding his nose from the awful smell.
“We aren’t here to make war, Georgie,” Ulfric said. “We’re here to get this Blackstar kid. Hand him and his friends over to me. They don’t mean anything to you.”
“Ulfric, baby,” Lucy jumped into her werewolf boyfriend’s arms. “Kick his boogie butt. This Georgie tried to kiss me.”
“Now this isn’t really happening,” Axel mumbled, trying to hide his face in his hands.
“No one comes into The Closet and insults me,” Georgie said. “If you don’t leave now, we’re going to eat every one of you right now.”
One of the Boogeymen pointed at Fable holding the child from Georgie’s room in her arms.
“So you don’t let us werewolves come take those we want, but you let that lousy witch’s daughter take your children?” Big Bad mocked all the Boogeymen.
“It’s not his child,” Fable yelled. “It has parents and it belongs to them.”
Loki watched Georgie’s face go red. Fable’s action made him look embarrassed in front of his peeps.
“Are you going to let her take the child?” the other Boogeymen asked Georgie.
The Bullyvards started laughing at Georgie.
“Do something, Loki,” Axel said. “Those two clans are going to eat us alive.”
“Fable?” Loki looked back at her.
“Loki,” she furrowed her brows back. “You’re the hero. You could help me get this child to its parents.”
“Shouldn’t we get home first?” Axel said as the two clans started closing in on them. Georgie wasn’t going to do anything, or he’d be exposed.
“Loki?” Axel repeated. “You’re the fallen angel. You should have some power to do something.”
“I’m not a fallen angel,” Loki gritted his teeth. For a moment, he couldn’t understand why he was in the middle of all this. How in the world did he end up here, stuck between the Bullyvards and the Boogeymen? How did his mission become so complicated?
“Ora Pedora,” Loki muttered to himself, gripping on his Alicorn again, hoping this useless thing would be of some help.
Maybe it’s a magic wand that should help me disappear.
But Loki knew better. Escaping never works. One has to face his troubles head on. Even if he possessed a magic wand, it would be cowardly if he used it to disappear.
“Ulfric,” Loki said firmly. “This is between me and you. Don’t get Fable and Axel into it.”
“Oh,” Ulfric mocked him. “We have a hero here. Awooo!”
The Bullyvards started laughing while the Boogeymen approached as well. There was no way out.
“It’s too late to play hero,” Big Bad said. “If the Bullyvards don’t get you, the Boogeymen will.”
Loki turned around and the Boogeymen were laughing at him too, rubbing their hands, ready to eat them alive, at least to punish them for Fable’s endeavor to take the baby back to its parents.
“I’m about to suffocate,” Axel panicked. “I feel trapped in a room with its walls closing in.”
Loki pulled Fable closer to him. “Man up, Axel,” Loki said. “We’re going to have to face them.”
“How so? You still got some Magic Dust?”
“Not here,” Loki said. “We’ll have to use our fists.”
“So you’re not a superhero after all?” Axel said.
“I’m sorry to disappoint you,” Loki shook his head. “I’m just a guy trying to find his way back home.”
“Man up, Axel,” Fable said, both clans one stride away from them. “You can do it, and then I will escape and save the baby.”
As the three of them got ready to face the two horrible clans, a parrot fluttered above their heads with its beautiful green feathers and yellow body.
“I’m Pickwick,” it said to Big Bad, hovering before him. “And I’m…going to kick your ass!”
Loki had a big smile on his face. It was only moments until Charmwill entered the bar, smoking his pipe. He stood in his cloak and hood as cool as ever.
“And who are you, old man?” Ulfric sneered.
“It’s not who I am,” Charmwill said calmly, as he took a drag from his dragonbreath pipe. “It’s what I can do.”
Charmwill took one last long drag from his pipe and breathed out fire into the Bullyvards faces, causing them to step back and providing a way for Loki and his friends to escape The Closet.
“What the holy flickering hell is that pipe?” Axel had to stop and ask Charmwill. Loki pulled him out and the three of them jumped into Carmen and drove away, Pickwick the Parrot flying over its hood. They were heading back to Candy House and Loki was looking forward to meeting Charmwill there.
19
Back at Candy House, Fable invited Charmwill in and offered to cook fresh Pookies for him. Charmwill thanked her dearly, but said he wanted to talk to Loki outside on the porch. Although Fable was disappointed, she didn’t argue. She would have loved to know more about Loki’s guardian. She wanted to ask him questions about Loki’s story and the Council of Heaven, Snow White, and about Charmwill’s powers and why he wouldn’t stay near Loki all the time. But Fable, in her politeness, couldn’t ask that of Charmwill. She still had fun feeding Pickwick, though.
Axel didn’t get his answer about Charmwill’s Dragonbreath, or how he could possess such a cool power. Instead, Loki let him try to make his Alicorn work. But no matter how many times Axel said ‘Ora Pedora’ nothing happened so he decided to make himself a Cinderella Mozarella sandwich and eat a Reluctant Jelly for dessert.
Outside, Loki stood waiting for Charmwill to speak.
“I’m glad you showed up,” Loki said. “I thought you’d never visit me in Sorrow.”
“I don’t know how long you expect me to save you, Loki,” Charmwill said, his hands behind his back.
“I know,” Loki lowered his eyes, although Charmwill wasn’t staring at him. Instead, he was staring at the stars. “I should be able to save myself, but I had a lot of confusing choices to make and it was overwhelming.”
“You think everyone around you doesn’t have hard choices to make as well?” Charmwill puffed his smoke, staring back at Loki.
“But everyone around me isn’t like me,” Loki explained.
“Oh, so you think you’re different than everyone else?”
“Of course, I’m different,” Loki said, knowing that Charmwill loved to be tough on him sometimes. “I’ve been thrown into this world without knowing who I am, or who I was. I’ve been told things; that I have to kill ninety-nine vampires to be forgiven and go home to a place I don’t even remember. This isn’t fair. It’s too much for me. I don’t want to be a hero. I don’t want to help anyone else but me. I am doing all of this to go home, to where you told me that I sinned by falling in love with a demon. I don’t understand, Charmwill,” Loki was embarrassed from sounding weak in front of Charmwill who had great expectations of him. “I’m sorry if I raised my voice, but there’s a lot I don’t get.”
“What is it that you don’t understand exactly?” Charmwill said.
“Why am I here?” Loki said. “I know you’re going to tell me that it’s my choices that led me here because I’d do anything to go home. But all the things that happened to me in Sorrow messed with my mind. I feel things that I haven’t felt before, and it’s bugging me,” Loki raised his eyes to meet Charmwill’s as if wanting him to help him with his words.
“Things like caring for friends like Axel and Fable?” Charmwill relit his pipe.
“Things like that, yes,” Loki said.
“Why does it bother you to have friends?”
“I’m not bothered. In fact, what’s better than to have friends to care for and to have them care for you? It’s just so confusing, because I feel like I shouldn’t. I don’t belong here, Charmwill. Until the moment I set foot in Sorrow, I hated Minikins. I have even started to feel like this is…” Loki shrugged. “Like this is—“
Charmwill bowed his head a little as if knowing the words Loki was about to say. “Home?” he asked.
Loki nodded. He couldn’t even say it.
“And why is it so hard for you to say it?” Charmwill wondered. “Ah, I remember. You don’t want to feel home here because I’ve told you about your
other
home.”
Loki nodded again. “Please put yourself in my shoes, Charmwill. I need to remember who I am. It drives me crazy not to know my past.”
“Are you more interested in knowing your past than knowing your future?” Charmwill puffed smoke proudly.
“What kind of questions is that?” Loki said.
“It’s a simple question,” Charmwill said. “Would it matter who you were before if you’ve found a home and friends who will help you become whoever you want to be in the future? What matters more, past or future?”
“Are you saying that my future is more important than my past?” Loki said.
“I’m not saying anything. I only ask, and the answers are all inside you,” Charmwill said.
“Look. I have no grand answers about how things should be,” Loki said. “It just drives me crazy not knowing who I was before, so crazy that sometimes I envy Axel and Fable for knowing who they are.”
“What makes you think they know who they are?” Charmwill said.
“What do you mean?” Loki looked as if he had been hit with a pebble in the face. It’s not like he hadn’t been questioning Axel and Fable’s identities before. But he figured it was none of his business since he was destined to leave Sorrow.
“Look around you, Loki,” Charmwill breathed the night air in, gazing at the curving hills and streets of Sorrow. “This isn’t an ordinary place; although it could fool you into thinking that it’s only a small town. What’s crazier than a town that is inside another town called Hell, a town that is East of the Sun West of the Moon, a town that a first-timer enters on a Train of Consequences? It has fairy tale vampires, werewolf bullies, nursery rhyme Boogeymen, and…” Charmwill gazed back at Loki with shining eyes, “the craziest food menu ever,” he pulled out a bag of Sticky Sweet Bones, summoned Pickwick and fed him a bone. The parrot closed his eyes and moaned, licking the sweets from it.
Loki was speechless.
“So in a town where almost everything insane is possible, you still think people know who they are?”
“Are you saying…”
“Most of the people here don’t know who they are,” Charmwill explained. “They’ve been sent to this place just like you. They just don’t remember it and unlike you, they accepted it and want to make something good out of it.”
“Are you saying they have their own homes, too? But why?”
“That’s too big of a question to answer now,” Charmwill said.
“Why? I want to know,” Loki said. “Why can’t you just tell me everything I want to know without being cryptic?”
“Because if I just tell you, how could you learn or make choices? I’m only your guardian. I will show you the way, or part of it, but it’s up to you to walk the line, Loki. No one can choose your life for you.”