“I think I like
souliken
better,” Sofia said. “I’m not a big fan of ghosts.”
“Wuss,” Paul muttered. “Ow!”
Tick heard the punch on Paul’s arm that he’d fully expected.
“Doesn’t matter right now,” Tick said. “What matters is that the Haunce is a collection of millions and millions of soulikens, and it acts like a guardian of the Realities. Sort of a gatekeeper or a watchman. Whatever. But we gotta trust it.”
“Yes, indeed,” Master George added, his voice already a little winded as they tramped through the forest. “The Haunce has the Realitants’ highest respect—there’s no doubt in this matter. What the Haunce says, we should do.”
“Okay,” Paul said. “So what is it we’re gonna do?”
Tick walked around a huge oak then settled back in on the course his instincts marked as east. “Well, ultimately the Haunce, me, and Jane are going to link and use our . . . power”—how he hated using that word!—“to rebind the barriers of the Realities that are falling apart.”
“Yeah, ultimately,” Paul said, a major hint of doubt in his tone. “But something tells me we’re not gonna like hearing what you keep avoiding—what we have to do to
get
to that point.”
Tick winced. Paul had hit at the heart of the matter. “Um, yeah, you’re probably right on that one.”
Tick felt Paul’s hand grab his arm as Paul forced him to stop and turn around.
“What!” Tick shouted way too loudly. But then he remembered what the next stage of the plan was and that being quiet didn’t quite play into it. Now that he had to tell them what the Haunce wanted, he was terrified of their reaction. They weren’t going to be very happy.
“Come on, dude,” Paul said, almost pleading. “Don’t make me give the corny speech about how we’re all part of a team. Tell us what’s going on.”
Tick shook Paul’s hand off his arm, but then nodded. Paul was right. He had to tell them. “Sorry. Obviously I’ve been avoiding that part.”
Paul folded his arms disapprovingly. “Yeah, obviously.”
“Come on, Tick,” Sofia said. “Just tell us real quick.”
Master George put his hands on his knees to catch his breath, not seeming to care one way or the other.
Tick thought furiously for a second. It hadn’t sounded so bad when the Haunce had told him about this part. But then again, they’d been tucked away safely in Tick’s home at the time. He decided to just get it over with. “Jane has a new creation—something called a Sleek.”
He expected everyone to repeat the word or start asking questions before he could continue. Instead, they all just stared at him, waiting.
“Once she had the fangen all figured out and perfected, she moved on to other creatures. And from the sound of it, always nasty and terrifying creatures. No big surprise there. But she always works with a purpose. The Sleeks are what she created to guard the Factory. And, um, we’re getting really close to the place where they’ll be hunting through the woods.”
Tick saw fear flash across his friends’ faces, and seeing that made him feel even more scared. “The Sleeks sound really, really awful. The whole purpose of their existence is to hunt down anything that’s not supposed to be in these forests. They’re tall and thin when seen straight on, but most of the time they’re impossible to see clearly. They have ten times the strength of a fangen, and they have almost magic abilities using Chi’karda. The Haunce said they’re wispy and fast, almost like living smoke mixed with wind. And once they catch sight of you, forget escaping. No way, according to the Haunce. But don’t worry—there
is
some good news.”
“I’m having quite a hard time seeing the
good
news in any of this,” Master George said.
Tick looked at him. “Well, there is. Kind of. The Sleeks aren’t allowed to kill what they hunt down. Mistress Jane wants to interrogate any intruders.”
“Oh, no,” Sofia said. “Don’t tell me . . .”
“You’ve gotta be kidding,” Paul added.
Tick was relieved they’d gotten it before he had to say it, but he did so anyway. “You guessed it. The Haunce wants
us
to find
them.
We have to let the Sleeks capture us.”
~
Sato sat alone, his heart like a dying filament inside a light bulb, about to burst and flame out at any second. What Mothball had said—about Jane planning to use human kids for her creations—horrified him like nothing ever had before. He knew a lot of bad things had happened in the history of the world, but this had to top it.
Killing was bad enough, but . . . what was the word Mothball had used? Melding. Jane was melding animals together . . .
He slammed the door on that thought. His mind had already slipped close to an edge overhanging a dark and awful abyss from which he didn’t know if he could escape. He needed to keep it together. Hold onto the anger, sure. Let it fester and boil inside him until he had no choice but to go forward in a rage and do what he had to do to stop what the witch was doing. But he couldn’t allow himself to sink back into that dark place which had once haunted him every day after seeing his parents murdered, burned alive by Jane herself.
He shook his head, slammed another door in his mind. Looking around, he saw that the people of the Fifth were gathering around him again, though a bit more timidly than before. They must have seen the anguish on his face, enough to scare them a little.
But that look of awe still clung to their expressions, their eyes filled with something he could only describe as hope. Which was good. Ever since reading the note from Tick—and
especially
since Mothball’s revelation about the Factory—he’d been heading down a path toward a decision. He didn’t even quite know if he consciously controlled this path, but every part of him walked along it.
He was going to do exactly what Tick asked. Somehow.
The tall people of the Fifth inched closer and closer, surrounding him on all sides. Sato craned his neck to look through the scant open spaces to where Lisa and the rest of Tick’s family huddled far outside the crowd, still seeming to revel in their reunion and the good news that Tick was alive.
Mothball and Rutger had told them about the note—all of it. Now wasn’t the time to hide anything from anybody. Sato knew that the Higginbottoms also had mixed feelings, and more reason than ever to worry over their son. Just another twist of the path Sato traveled. Just another reason to make things happen, no matter what.
“Excuse me, good sir,” a soft female voice said close to his ear. Closer than he felt comfortable allowing—he wasn’t ready yet!
He looked up, ready to snap at whoever had invaded his space. But it was an old woman, as tall as Mothball and just as gangly, leaning over him like a wind-broken tree. She had a gentle, pretty face, and Sato’s anger quickly slipped away.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “You all keep asking me the same thing, and I can’t answer it any differently. I’m not the guy you think I am.” He returned his chin to his fists, his eyes to the floor. How was he going to do this?
“We don’t rightly think that anymore,” the woman answered. “We’re not a bunch of dumb lugs, ya know. But there’s somethin’ right special about you, there is. And we want to ’ear from ya, that’s all. Not too much to be askin’, now is it?”
Sato took a long, deep breath. He had to do something, get the ball rolling. Sitting there with all of them gawking like kids at a zoo would drive him crazy if it went on for another minute.
“Fine,” he said, sighing as he forced himself to stand. The old woman smiled, her grin revealing that she only had about half her teeth, and those remaining were dark yellow. But still, she had a pretty face, despite its age and wear and tear. Somehow, she was keeping him polite and level-headed.
“Give us a speech,” she whispered to him, still leaning down considerably. “We could all use a bit of uppity-up, no matter the source. You’ve got the looks of one who can do that right nicely. You do, really.” She winked at him then stood straight, a good foot taller than Sato.
Sato looked away from her and around at the crowd. Many had taken a seat—especially the ones closest to him. Those farther back stood, arms folded, staring at him expectantly. There had to be at least three or four hundred people packed all around him. He slowly turned in a circle, taking it all in as he tried to think of something to say. The whole lot of them grew quiet.
You can do this,
he thought to himself.
“I know why you guys are so fascinated by me,” he said, wondering if he could’ve possibly started his speech with anything more stupid. He doubted it. “I know I look a lot like the kid who was your ruler until those crazy Bug soldiers assassinated him.”
This caused an uproar, people shouting and yelling things all at once, many of them throwing their arms up and shaking their clenched fists in anger.
“Boo to the Bugaboos!”
“Death for the Bugs!”
“Drown the clowns!”
“No rest till the pests’ death!”
Sato didn’t think it was possible, but he felt even more uncomfortable. He held his hands up, palms out, trying to shush them. Finally, they quieted. And he started talking; where the words came from, he had no idea.
“I’m not the same person as your leader who was killed. It’s really hard to explain, but I’m from a different world—one that’s a lot like yours but . . . different. Maybe it’s not so hard to believe if you just look around at this weird place. But none of that matters. I know why you want me to be your Grand Minister. Everyone wants a leader, someone to look up to. But I don’t know if I could ever really be that person.”
A surge of complaints started to explode from the crowd, but Sato cut the noise off by swiping his hands back and forth. “Just listen to me! We all need something here, and I think we can help each other.”
“What’s that then?” the old woman asked, her right eyebrow cocked high. “What can we do for ya, lad?”
Sato was thinking on the fly, caught up in the moment. He was
feeling
it. “I know Mothball. I know her family. I know that the people of your world are fighters. You’re warriors. Am I right?”
A hearty shout of cheers rang through the air, fists pumping toward the endless gray sky of nothingness above. A surge of heat and electric energy filled Sato’s veins.
“The first thing we have to do is get out of this place. I have a very good friend who’s in a lot of trouble, and if he dies, we all might die. I need your help to go after him, to help him, save him. We also need to stop something that a very evil person named Mistress Jane is doing—the sickest, most horrific thing I’ve ever heard of. We’ll give you all the details soon enough—I think we have a little time yet. But if you do this—if you’ll help me and . . . fight for me—I’ll make a promise to each and every one of you.”
Sato paused, scanning the crowd, in awe at how every eye was trained on him. Complete silence settled across the strange place. Even Mothball and Rutger stood rigid, mouths slightly agape, probably wondering who’d possessed Sato’s body.
“If you’ll go with me,” Sato said, the rush of adrenaline inside sounding like an ocean’s roar in his ears, “and fight to help my friend and stop Jane, then I promise to go back to your world with you and lead the war against the Bugs. The endgame of all endgames. We won’t stop until we wipe them from existence. All of them! We will fight. And I swear, we will win!”
The roar that filled that impossible place made Sato want to take a step backward and cover his ears. He did neither.
He stood tall and yelled right along with the warriors from the Fifth Reality.
~
The sounds of the night-darkened forest were starting to get to Tick as he and his friends slowly made their way eastward.
Besides the normal buzz of insects going about their business, a wind had picked up, something that seemed impossible based on how many trees crowded their pathway. Limbs and branches swayed and scratched against each other; leaves rustled; small animals jumped and ran through the bushy ground cover. Eerie mating calls moaned through the air, and every once in a while a cat-like thing screamed far in the distance. It all added up to give Tick a major case of the shivers.
He’d tried his best to show a brave face when telling the others about how the Haunce wanted them to be caught by the Sleeks. It had seemed a practical matter—the best way they could get into the Factory and possibly face-to-face with Jane. And the others had reluctantly agreed to the plan after wasting five minutes arguing about it. Master George had proven to be the voice of reason that cut through the obvious hesitancy to do something so scary.
But now, trampling their way through the spooky woods, his flashlight beam stabbing the darkness ahead, getting closer and closer to something that was created by and for evil, Tick felt a different kind of fear than he’d ever experienced before. A thick terror sprinkled his skin with chills and surged in his throat, like a balloon had been shoved down there. With every crick and crash of broken twigs and crushed leaves as his companions and he walked forward, he had to fight the urge to look around, searching for an enemy he knew was coming for him.
Instead he forced himself to look ahead, to keep walking and dodging his way through the tightly packed trees until the attack came. He held onto the fact that they wouldn’t have to fight or run this time—they just had to give up and be taken prisoner.
“Tick,” came a soft whisper from behind him. Sofia. “Have you seen or heard anything weird yet?”
Tick turned to look at her quickly before facing forward again, not missing a step. “We don’t really need to whisper,” he called out, louder than he needed to. “It kind of defeats the purpose of what we’re doing. And no, I haven’t really noticed anything too weird yet.”
“Nothing too weird?” Paul repeated. “Some demon cat is being eaten by Satan out in the woods, screaming its fool head off. I’d call that weird.”
Tick had to suppress a snicker, a fleeting break from the fear that had been suffocating him. “It’s probably just a deer or something that broke a leg.”