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Part 2-15: Gold
Later that night I lay in my bed, unable to sleep despite my exhaustion. I toyed with the ring. It was stuck there, unable to come off.
We’d reappeared in the office as soon as I yanked on the clock’s pendulum door. Deluxe and Fergus explained what happened from their perspective: I’d said, “See you on the other side,” then the minute hand on the clock snapped back and Persi and I sagged our shoulders before twisting around, wide-eyed. We were beat up and bruised, Persi looking worse for wear with a brownish mat of dried blood coating near half her face.
“It was like you’d said a spell, then zoop, clock-o wound back,” Fergus had said.
“To go back a minute took nary a second,” Deluxe observed, “but how long were you really gone?”
Persi and I guessed it was maybe two, three hours worth of horseshit. Most of which was spent wandering the circular hall and counting ugly demons. We went home, and they cleaned us up and heard our story. Dack even showed up, even though he was supposed to be limiting his social calls while suspended.
Eventually, the guys went home. Persi stayed on our couch. I crawled in my bed and failed to sleep, thinking about a million things, one of which was how long we had until the Collector sought to fill that third-to-last cell once more.
Around 4:30am, when the only rustles and bumps came from Lobster the calico cat’s nocturnal adventures, I crept out of bed, used the washroom, then went and sat in the kitchen with the lights off. I watched one wall. Three quarters of the way up, there was a tiny line of green, orange and blue LCD lights. Our wifi router. In Eden’s strange, shifty otherworld, it would feel like a tanning lamp gone haywire, and look like nothing but a blast of whiteness. Unless it was off.
Overtired, I let the LCD’s flickering cadence mesmerize me for a while. Then I got up and felt around the edges for the power button. I held it down until all the blue and green lights died. I took a step back, and was mustering the will to try it when I heard Deluxe get out of bed and scamper around. She ran to my room, then into the kitchen, flipping on the light.
“Alena, the wifi, tell me it’s you who choked its power, and not…” she said.
“Yeah. Yeah I just did it. You have it set up to warn you, don’t you?”
She rubbed at her elbow. “I failed to inform you. Figured you’d peg me as cowardly.”
I went over and hugged her. It made me feel five times sleepier. “I didn’t even think to do that. It’s a terribly smart idea, Prime.”
“I have the alarm set to play the climactic bit of Rachmaninoff’s Ostrov myortvikh.”
“I don’t know what that is,” I said, squeezing her and letting her go.
“Spooky Russian orchestral music.”
“Sounds fitting.”
“Everything okay in here?” Persi appeared from the living room entrance behind us, rubbing her eyes.
I looked over my shoulder. “I was uh, planning on seeing if I could do the thing. Where I go into the other place where you can see the wifi? Figured it’d be a handy skill.” I wondered if I’d made a pun, since I wore the ring on my hand. Get it? Handy? Boy, I really was tired.
They watched, waiting. I guessed no one was about to talk me out of it. An audience was better anyway; it felt safer. Many questions had kept me up: what if Eden was there waiting for me? What if the other monsters had my scent now? At least someone could flick our wifi back on if I became incapacitated.
I closed my eyes and willed the ring to prickle and scratch. It did, and I coaxed tingles all the way up my arm, into my chest, up my neck. A new sensation of fullness swelled in me. Like the tingling had found a home. I opened my eyes.
And I was there. In Clockworld. It didn’t look much different at all, but there was no mistaking the blue haze billowing out of Deluxe, or the odd, pulsing shimmer coming from the dampened router. Lobster mrowed and curled around my roommate’s feet, also emitting the blue haze that all living creatures seemed to do in this bizarre reality. Food for pearl demons that seeped out of the ground.
I tried sidestepping, and felt that crazy, head splitting (literally) sensation of being in two places at once. I turned slowly, and looked at the side of my own head. I needed a haircut. I wiggled ghostly-me’s fingers. I concentrated, then tapped original-me’s foot.
It felt… good. I could control it, same as I had a few weeks ago when we first met Eden the Collector in the park. It was familiar. The Queen’s Band was empowering. I felt a buzz in my hand. It wasn’t scratchy, like the book. It was full. It was strong. It was me. Perhaps we stood a chance.
“I’m in, I did it,” I said, through original-me’s growing smile.
Deluxe clapped, and Persi said, “Should we try to get me in too?”
I turned to face her, about to agree, and the words stuck in my throat.
Persimmon’s smoky haze was a deep and brilliant gold.
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