Page 31 of The Wicker King

August drummed his fingers on the table. He couldn’t even begin to think of how to explain what had happened at the river earlier that year. Much less illustrate the concept of “games” and what they had grown to mean. He thought about Jack’s fingers at the back of his neck and tasted a bit of shame. “Quit baiting her, Jack. Rina, it’s nothing. I’ll tell you later,” August lied.

BESTIARY: BEASTIARY

“It was a bright place,” Jack said. Everything was hyperrealistic and detailed. The only way he knew something was real sometimes was if it was unspeakably drab. “But it’s almost a closed circuit now.”

Before, he’d mostly seen people in drab, but these days it was all reds and yellows and greens. The clothes were different, rustic. They were running out of time.

“If things get too far, like I know they will, write down everything I say and describe. Everything that happens. Everything,” Jack said.

Of course August would. Of course he did. It was too good a story for him not to.

August purchased ten notebooks and thirty pens. Slotted a pen into each notebook and bound the rest with a rubber band. Now he never left the house without a pen and notebook.

ORDINARY

The woods were still the woods in Jack’s world. Most areas without urban alteration were basically the same. The older something was, the more likely it was to remain exactly as Jack had remembered it from before; he couldn’t tell the difference.

The oldest thing in town was the river. It flowed over nearly the exact same path as the river in the other world, and August figured it was comforting to Jack because of the regularity with which he demanded to go there these days.

Based on what he’d described, wherever Jack was, was somewhere in the East around the heyday of the Silk Road, maybe earlier. At least that was about the level of technological advancement that there was to deal with. Jack had taken objects from this other world and stashed them in the corner of his room. He described them in detail; some had parallel histories here. For a while, August suspected that it wasn’t so much where Jack was but when Jack was.

“So what about the Rapturous Blue?” August asked, pulling his pen out of the spirals of the notebook. “What is it?”

Jack closed his eyes. “It’s like … it’s like a star. Or like a god made of … rock? It’s difficult to describe … but it’s small enough to hold in your hand. And so bright that you can barely stand to look at it. Like … a very small star? I don’t know. I don’t have all the answers, August. It’s a big, shiny magical star battery thing and everyone is dying now that it’s gone. It’s causing their version of the apocalypse, I think.”

“Annnd … how are we going to find it?”

“I don’t know, but I’ll find it. I have to.”

NULL HYPOTHESIS

Jack held Rina’s hand as he pulled her up the hill.

They wanted to show Rina a bit more of what Jack was seeing so they could test the validity of their theory. They agreed that Rina was enough of an impartial observer that her opinion would have more impact than August’s. Jack had brushed his knuckles across August’s chin in a parody of a blow and said, “I’ve gotta know that you’re not just telling me what I want to hear.”

August’s eyes were locked on Jack’s hand grasping Rina’s. It made his stomach feel so …

“You can see the whole town from up here,” Jack said.

The hill put them just high enough that they could see the lights of the buildings fading into the dark beyond the town.

“What do you see?” Rina asked.

“Everything. There are stone buildings in the middle of the town that turn into wood ones, then into mud ones the farther from the center you go. Over by where the toy factory should be there is a larger building made of white stone. It’s like a church or a town hall or something. There are a couple of fields where animals are grazing…”

“At night?” Rina scrunched up her nose.

“They can see in the dark or they’re being guided,” Jack finished.

From their hilltop, they could see a few people walking their dogs at the dog park below.

August came shoulder to shoulder with Rina and nudged her gently. She looked sad.

“It’s okay,” August whispered.

Jack turned suddenly to look at them.

“The birds like you,” he said to Rina, dropping her hand. He reached forward and cupped some air near her shoulder. “They’re fluttering near.”