Chương 260: slanting surfaces; unplumbed voids - 23.5

On the final day we did many things. None of them were rest. In the morning, while still in bed, after Evelyn and I woke shoulder-to-shoulder and lips-to-neck, she said to me: "You have one job today, Heather. One purpose above all others, understand? Make yourself ready. Let Raine and me worry about the logistics and the practical details. You just concentrate on hyperdimensional mathematics." Raine laughed from the other side of the bed.

"Prep the payload! Pack our cannon with powder and shot. Present arms. Five rounds rapid!" Evelyn sighed and rolled her eyes. That expression made me want to kiss her brow.

"She's not a fucking warship, Raine. And you're mixing your metaphors. And you, Raine, no horseplay today, no screwing about. Absolute focus."

"Me?" Raine grinned.

"I'm always on." Evelyn grumbled.

"Yes, that's usually the problem. Come on. No time for a lie in. We all have things to attend. One of you fetch my leg." First of all, I forced myself to stop thinking of it as 'the final day'; it was merely a very busy Saturday, not the last full day of my mortal life. I would not die on the morrow, nor a year from then, nor five, nor ten years hence. I was not going to die before thirty, or forty, or even fifty years of age.

I had tasted the sweetest fruit of all — a night sandwiched between people I loved — and all seven Heathers had sworn together that we would taste it again, over and over. We re-swore to ourselves that morning. We were going to live into our eighties, or nineties, or even beyond. We were not dying here. Nobody was. Reality would break before we would surrender to any end.

Which was all well and good to swear in the middle of the night after an emotionally exhausting episode of passion, but it was a bit different when sitting at the breakfast table and eating soggy cereal. Domestic life has a way of making sworn oaths seem a bit silly. Lemons helped. I chased my coffee with two. Between myself and Raine and Evelyn, we had many things to square away and secure and double-check, if we were to have any hope of mounting the first expedition to Wonderland on the following Sunday morning.

We did not want last-minute preparations to drag on past lunchtime and into the afternoon; we wanted everyone alert and well-rested, with empty bowels and fully caffeinated bloodstreams. We wanted no surprises, no interruptions, no stragglers. Evelyn had a very specific way of phrasing this problem.

"Operations is a woefully neglected aspect of military action. Did you know that, Heather?" she said, then pointed her walking stick at Raine.

"High-speed low-drag brain here thinks all you need is grit and a gun." Raine chuckled and waved a piece of toast.

"Sure, what more could I want? Maybe a girl, too. The three G's." Evelyn ground on: "In the real world, if you're not all in the right place at the right time, you've already lost. Everyone wants to be a special forces murderer these days, or a general doing strategy in the tent, the kind that never gets mud on his boots. But if you're not all at the starting line when you're needed? You're fucked. We're going to be ready and prepped hours before the starting whistle." Raine perked up, a grin on her lips.

"We're gonna have a starting whistle?" Evelyn snorted.

"You wish." To that end, we were gathering our forces on Saturday, a full day in advance. Twil was planning to stay the night. She arrived that afternoon, with a bag packed for an overnight stay and a hand-held video game console for some light entertainment in the meantime.

"You're going to play Doom?," I asked, trying to contain my grimace.

"On the night before we venture out to some unspeakable hell dimension?" Twil boggled at me.

"You know what Doom is!? I thought you were like … well … you know."

"I know what? Excuse me, Twil?"

"You know what I mean, Big H. Like … non-techno girl. Cottage-core. No video games." Evelyn sighed as if Twil had just stepped knee-deep into a puddle of stagnant mud.

"That is not what 'cottage-core' means, Twil. Try being a little less internet-poisoned for one second of your life." Twil snorted.

"Says you, Evee."

"I know what Doom is, Twil," I said.

"And I don't think it's the best thing to be playing before Wonderland."

"Naaaah." Twil grinned.

"Gets my blood pumping." Twil also brought her mother and her aunt with her for a brief but important visit. Christine Hopton, the High Priestess of the Brinkwood Church, had words of encouragement and kindness for us, but also extracted a promise that we would return her daughter safely.

"We swear on our sister, on Maisie. Everyone is coming home from this. Whatever it takes." Christine had unexpectedly offered me a hug. I'd taken it.

"Good luck, dear," she said. Meanwhile, Twil's aunt, Amanda Hopton, brought us messages from her mind-linked god, the kindly old Outsider cone-snail, Hringewindla.

"He wishes you 'good hunting'. I … I think. Good hunting, godspeed, good luck. At least, those are the only ways I can render his feelings into words. I'm sorry for my pitiful attempts. And … and he wants you to carry his gift with you. In case you have need of it, out there where so few things have solid meaning."

"His gift?" we'd asked, a little confused.

"The stone coin he gave me?"

"The very one."

"I don't see what good it could be, but … I will. I promise." I bowed my head.

"Thank you, Amanda. And thank you, Hringewindla. Thank you for all your help. We'll come see you again, when we get back. I'm sure Maisie will want to meet you." Zheng had been strictly forbidden from wandering off into the woods or ranging across the landscape with Grinny, no matter how much enjoyment the pair of demon-hosts were getting out of their countryside adventures.

'Confined to quarters', as Raine put it. We were concerned that Zheng would take the brief imposition poorly. She did not enjoy being ordered, even at the best of times, let alone when those orders involved constraints on her range of action — and she had taken very strongly to Grinny over the last two weeks. Grinny, the demon-host who inhabited the body of Edward Lilburne's late wife, was stuck to Zheng like glue now. She was even dressed in Zheng's spare clothes, great baggy jumpers and loose jeans.

"Want to go out!" she had bellowed in the kitchen.

"Out out out!" Raine had cheered at that.

"At least she knows what she wants now. Well done, Zheng, you've got this girl thinking for herself." But Zheng had grinned with anticipation and pleasure. She knew what was coming, what was planned for the following morning, and she would miss it for nothing.

"We await the hunt, shaman," she rumbled after she swept me off my feet.

"After we crack the god apart, we have many tales to tell you, of things beyond the city." And then, to Grinny: "Patience, little one. I will bring you more grand trophies. Today, we eat, and grow strong." Evelyn's day was occupied with the last of the magical preparations out in Camelot; the scaled up version of the Invisus Oculus had to be perfect. She spent hours testing the thing, going over the lines and angles and the lettering of the words, making sure the Knights and the Cattys had missed nothing.

We left the gateway in the magical workshop open for once, to limit additional trips back and forth, though Praem accompanied her all the same.

"Think of it like a spacecraft," Evelyn told me.

"Or perhaps a submersible. We are all getting in this thing, and it cannot have a single flaw, or our lives are forfeit. If it was just me …

""No," Praem intoned.

"Ahem. Yes, well. If it was just me, I would probably have cut corners. But this is you, and Raine, and Praem, and Lozzie, and everybody. I will brook no errors, no time-saving short cuts. It will be perfect or we will not go at all."

Evelyn attended to two further matters as well: she helped Lozzie go over the plan with the Knights and the Caterpillars, including the essential steps of watching out for the imitation-Lozzie the Eye might send against us again — and she supervised moving the clay-squid thing in the magical workshop into a fresh bucket of water and clay, with climbing ropes for handles. The bucket was to be carried by one of the Knights.

Mister Squiddy was still an unsolved mystery, sent either from Maisie or from the Eye itself, but more likely the former; if we came up short with other methods of contact or interference, Mister Squiddy might serve as a backup plan. Raine was on what she called 'agitprop duty'. Evelyn had sighed and looked like she wanted to punch Raine in the kidneys.

"Do not call it that. Raine, just don't. Don't be ridiculous." Raine laughed.

"What? I'm running interference, sending messages, getting the word out there. Doesn't that make perfect sense? Right, Heather?"

"I'm not getting involved in this argument," I said.

"But … no, it doesn't count."

"Oh, you wound me, my squiddy girl."

"Just. Get. On. With. It," Evelyn ground out between clenched teeth. Raine's role that Saturday was to check up on everybody who was not joining us on the expedition to Wonderland — to either inform, deflect, mislead, invite, or simply make clear what was happening and where we were going to be.

She called Amy Stack twenty four times (with one, singular, gruff response); she made sure Kimberly was safe and sound; she went to visit Badger and Sarika, simply to reassure both of our distant charges that there was nothing to be concerned about. She called Nicole for a terse, awkward, private chat. She made certain that everyone staying behind in the house knew what to do in an emergency.

Lozzie and I had a very special task that morning: we went to visit Natalie, the little girl I had saved from becoming part of Edward's collateral damage. We kept it short and sweet, merely a little meeting in the Skeates' back garden, to remind her we were still on her side. We mentioned nothing of Wonderland. A rumble of low-level activity continued all through the morning and afternoon and into early evening, matching the growl and grumble of anxiety growing in my guts.

All I could do was remind myself of the oath I had made, no matter how silly it felt by the cold light of day and the context of so much practical preparation. But there was one last step I could take, to ensure I had the strength to keep that oath. Which was why, at five o'clock in the afternoon, I was seated on the floor in Lozzie's bedroom, at the low table Tenny used for her laptop and her books and her games, getting myself soundly thrashed at chess.

"Brrrrt!" Tenny trilled as one of her silken black tentacles finished another move. She looked very satisfied on the other side of the chess board. She was sat on the opposite side of the little table, which was currently cleared of everything except her favourite chess set — the hand-carved one which she'd received as a gift from Jan.

Tenny was cross-legged and very comfortable, with her long leathery wing-cloak folded back over her shoulders, her tufts of white fur extra fluffy from a fresh bath, and her inky dark skin gleaming warmly in the lamplight. Her wiggly white antennae twitched as she played, but my level of skill did not merit the deep-thought indicator of her tentacles spinning in little circles. That display was reserved for real challenges, not for running rings around Auntie Heather.

"Rook takes kniiiight. Aunty Heathy move now!"

"Okay, okay," we murmured, squinting at the board.

"Thank you, Tenns. Okay. We're going to try … we're going to try that pawn there." We pointed.

"That one—""Beeeeee threeee," Tenny supplied.

"Thank you. Pawn from B3 to B4." We took a deep breath, flexed our aching tentacles, and concentrated on the narrow space between the chessboard positions.

"Now … carefully …" Lozzie spoke up, from over on the bed: "Take your time, Heathy. Just go slow. Slow-slow, go-go."

"I appreciate the thought," we muttered, "but I don't need to go slow. Speed is not the problem. Precision is the problem. And reaching out without physically touching, that's … very challenging. If I can't move small objects like this, this …" Seven-Shades-of-Subtle-Correction purred a reassurance: "Concentrate, kitten." Lozzie stage-whispered: "Can I be a kitten for you, too?"

"Sadly not, my sweet one," Sevens replied.

"But you may select any other name you so wish."

"Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm," went Lozzie.

"Puppy?"

"A good choice," Sevens replied. I tutted.

"You two are making it harder to concentrate on this."

"Merely simulating battlefield conditions, no?" said Sevens.

"Go ahead, Heather. You must not stall."

"Pawn to B4 …" I repeated — then scrunched up my concentration, reached through the air with a thought, and blinked the unfortunate little pawn Out and back again. The pawn promptly crashed into two of Tenny's pieces with a little wooden clatter, sending them careening across the board and threatening a full collapse of the current state of play.

Tenny's silken black tentacles whipped out from behind her shoulders and grabbed all the flying pieces with absolute precision, holding them in place before the dominoes could finish falling.

"Baaaaa!" she trilled.

"Brrrrrr! Brrt-brrt-brrt. Auntie Heathy missed!"

"Oopsie!" Lozzie chirped.

"Pawn to B6 instead! He's a fast little guy!" I sighed and drew a hand over my face.

"Sorry, Tenns. Sorry. This is … let me try again. I can— I can make this work." Tenny's tentacles quickly re-set the board, clacking all the pieces back down in their previous places. She puffed her cheeks out and shot me a big, wide-eyed, sceptical look.

"Sorry …" I repeated. Tenny expelled the air in her puffed-out cheeks with a big loud, "Brrrrrrt!" Then she quickly added: "Auntie Heathy stop-saying-sorry challenge!" We blinked at her three times, then burst out laughing.

"Oh— okay— okay, Tenny, okay. Um, point taken, that's very kind of you, and very reasonable. Sorr—""Brrrt!!!" Tenny vibrated on the other side of the table, trilling so hard I worried it might injure her.

Apparently Marmite worried the same thing; the massive off-white spider-servitor had been clinging to the wall behind Tenny since we'd started the chess game, apparently content to watch quietly, trailing two of his own tentacles across the floor to hold Tenny around the waist, like a hound who needed to rest a paw against his master's ankle. But at Tenny's violent trill, Marmite came scuttling down off the wall and nosed his way under Tenny's right arm, nuzzling at her side.

Huge metal cone-shaped eyes swivelled upward at Tenny, as if checking on her health. Tenny delegated three tentacles to attend to her friend and pet, stroking Marmite's fuzzy bristles and scratching the back of his head. But she didn't cease pouting at me.

"Right, Tenns," we said, a little awkwardly.

"Right you are. No more saying sorry."

"Pbrrrt," Tenny trilled. Seven-Shades-of-Sensible-Suggestion spoke up again, from over on the bed: "The dutiful daughter does have a point, kitten. You have done nothing but test and stretch the basics since you started. You have had more than enough warm-up."

I sighed, flexed my tentacles outward again, and tried to shake off the stiffness; the pain of distributed brain-math ran down all of our additional limbs, quietly burning inside the neurons and nerves of our pneuma-somatic flesh, threatening our primary brain with the ghost of nausea and headaches. A small price to pay to limber up. We had not done any serious brain-math in a while. We would not be found wanting on the morrow.

"Warming up is half the point," we said gently, still staring at the chess-board and preparing to move a piece with brain-math once again.

"Even if I do nothing else, this is important. Another five moves. Fifteen minutes. Then we can turn to the meat of this. I—""Pfffffffft!" Tenny trill-fluttered deep inside her chest.

"Five?! Auntie Heathy …" I blinked up at Tenny.

"W-what? Sorry? Pardon?" Tenny blew out a big puff, then reached forward and clacked several pieces around the board in a rapid sequence of moves, my pieces as well as her own. In three moves she had my King in checkmate, pinned by a Bishop, a Rook, and her Queen. I gaped at the board for a second, then gathered myself, clearing my throat and huffing.

"I … Tenny … you … you don't know those were the moves I was going to make. That's hardly fair."

"Brrrt?" Tenny tilted her head to one side. She somehow managed to look both unimpressed, smug, doubtful, and pitying all at once.

"Really? Really really?" I tutted.

"You sound just like your mother, sometimes." Tenny smiled, smug and pleased.

"Compliment!" Lozzie made a little squeal.

"Awww, Tenns!" I stumbled over my words.

"Yes, well, of course. That's not— not what I meant. I would never compare anybody to Lozzie as an insult, now would I? Really?" Tenny did not let up, however. Nor would she be distracted from her purpose. She pointed at the board again.

"Really, Auntie Heath? Different moves? Different moves?" I sighed.

"Well … probably not. Fine."

"Game done," Tenny announced. She narrowed one huge black eye at me, as if telling me she was wise to my tricks.

"Alright, alright." I surrendered, leaned back, and gave in to the inevitable. Seven-Shades-of-Sunlight said: "Are we to dine on the meat of the matter now, kitten?" Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. Sevens was seated on Lozzie's bed, comfortably settled in a divot among the messy sheets and wildly disobedient pillows, with her long and elegant legs hanging over the edge and her be-stocking'd feet planted on the floor.

She was wearing the mask of the Yellow Princess, starched and prim and very proper, with eyes like ice and hair cut ruler-straight. Sevens' usual strictness was undermined completely by Lozzie, who was lying sideways with her head pillowed in Sevens' lap, the rest of her wrapped up like a happy little bug in her pastel poncho. Lozzie's wispy blonde hair was draped all down Sevens' skirt, but Sevens didn't seem to mind.

On the contrary, she had spent the last twenty minutes petting Lozzie like a cat, combing out her hair, and generally showering her with casual physical affection. By the time I finally looked up from the chess board, Sevens was busy weaving Lozzie's hair into a pair of long braids.

"The meat," I echoed.

"I'm not sure we should call it that." Sevens gave me a warning look.

"Fine, fine," I relented.

"Yes. I'm good and warmed up. So …" I glanced at Tenny once again, who was now listening with that attentive innocence that only children could muster without effort. A lump formed in my throat. Perhaps I was making a mistake after all.

"Lozzie, are you certain about this?"

"Mm?" Lozzie blinked. Her face was sideways in Sevens' lap, which made the expression extra clueless. But then she glanced at Tenny too. She took my meaning.

"Tenns knows what we're doing. Don't you, Tenns? You know, you know!" Tenny nodded her fluffy head up and down. Several of her tentacles dipped and bobbed. Marmite's metal cone-eyes followed the motion, like a cat watching a finger.

"I know! I know!" Tenny insisted.

"Going to get Maisie back. I want to meet Maisie too. Please?" We took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

"Thank you, Tenns. Hopefully, yes, you can meet Maisie too, and soon. Okay, you can stay for this, but you have to promise me that if you start to feel uncomfortable, or scared, then you will speak up. Okay?"

"Mmmm-rrrr! Promise!" Another deep breath down into our lungs. Why did this feel so much like a moment of no return? Because I was finally facing how little I knew? Or because I was finally reaching out for a specific kind of help? Tenny must have seen my doubt, because she reached across the table and wrapped one of her tentacles around one of ours. A second black tentacle deposited a chess piece into our lap — the white queen. We stared at the white queen for a long moment, then picked it up.

We turned the piece over with our fingers as we spoke.

"The people in this room — the three of you — represent the best possible advice I can get about the Eye itself. Lozzie, you have more experience Outside than anybody else. Sevens, you're the daughter of the King in Yellow. I know, I know, neither of you have any direct knowledge, we've been over this before, but I need to talk this through, and not from the kind of practical angle that Raine or Evelyn might provide." Tenny tilted her head sideways as I spoke, then trilled a wordless sound of soft question.

"Brrrt?" We smiled at her.

"And Tenny, you're here because, well, I need somebody to poke holes in my assumptions. You have a very, very, very keen and unique mind. You understand mathematics in a way that others don't, and that might help somehow, even though brain-math isn't like actual maths. You're probably the smartest person I've ever known. Now, yes, of course, that doesn't mean you're going to have any special insight, but it might help you spot something that nobody else has, not yet. And I want to include you.

You're not coming with us tomorrow, but you're one of us. You're part of our family."

"Brrrrrr," went Tenny. She seemed uncertain.

"Just listen to Aunty Heathy talk to your mum and Sevens," we said.

"And if something seems wrong, speak up, please." Tenny nodded. She squinted one eye shut, then the other; several of her tentacles stood up from her back, their tips twitching in deep thought. Marmite seemed to sense something was changing in the air. He coiled a single tentacle in Tenny's lap, then went very still. We took a deep breath and marshalled our thoughts.

"You all know the practical parts of the plan by now," we said.

"Once we're in Wonderland and we know we're secure, everyone else is going to watch the edge of the circle and guard me while I try to find Maisie." I held up the white queen from Tenny's chess board.

"I'm going to define her, in the same way that I've defined Raine before, in order to locate her. I've got Maisie's t-shirt as an anchor for that equation, and the photograph from Taika, as well as the shape of my own body to use as a reference. I'm relatively confident that I can 'scan' for her, if she's out there, physically." Lozzie rose from Sevens' lap; Sevens put the finishing touches on Lozzie's twin braids. The braids bobbed when Lozzie nodded.

"Yeah! Yeah, you and May-May share the same mirror, it should be quick and easy!" I squinted.

"I'm sorry, Lozzie — 'May-May'?"

"Mmhmm!" Lozzie nodded again, very proud. Sevens stroked the back of Lozzie's braids.

"A fine name."

"We'll have to ask her," I sighed, struggling to find it amusing right then.

"Anyway, if that works, if we find her physical form is out there somewhere, then we withdraw. Evelyn has plans to make one of the Caterpillars safe to traverse the surface of Wonderland via a different form of the Invisus Oculus. Once that's ready, we go back in, ride a Catty, and pick up Maisie. Simple."

"Catty steed, away!" Lozzie cheered. Sevens was more sober.

"It is never simple, kitten." We sighed.

"Yes, Sevens, we know. Even if that all happens as planned, it won't be simple. We don't know what the Eye has out there, or what it can put in our path, even if it can't see us. Picking up Maisie may be difficult, but it's straightforward, but … but personally I doubt that we'll be doing that."

"Brrrrt?" went Tenny. We spared her a guilty smile. I closed one fist around the white queen, engulfing her.

"I strongly suspect that Maisie doesn't have a physical body anymore. If she doesn't, then there's only one logical place she could be."

"In the Eye," Tenny trilled. I blinked at her in surprise. How much had she overheard prior to this conversation? How much did she know? How much implied horror had we exposed to our poor Tenny? Tenny puffed her cheeks out at me; she could tell how I was looking at her, like a child who needed protecting.

"Aunty Heath," she grumbled.

"S-sorry, Tenny, you just surprised me. You do know that your mother and I have tried to keep you sheltered from the worst of this, yes? Not because we think you're childish, or because we disrespect you, but … we don't want to frighten you." Tenny unpuffed her cheeks and narrowed her big dark eyes, with a strange little smile on her face.

"Tenns does not scare easy." We laughed at that, gently, with more love than we had expected; had she picked that one up from Raine?

"Okay, Tenny. Thank you. And yes, you're right. I suspect Maisie is inside the eye. Not physically, I don't think, but metaphysically, spiritually, somehow. Lozzie, what do you think about that? Do you think I could be right? Does it make sense?" Lozzie tilted her head from side to side, slowly, as if thinking by sloshing her brain back and forth. Her new braids swayed with the rest of her.

"Mmmmm. Maybe maybe? Not sure, Heathy, I dunno."

"Thank you regardless, Lozzie," we said.

"So … so …" I gathered myself by wrapping a trio of tentacles around my belly in a tight and secure self-hug, then I held up the white queen again.

"We don't have weapons on the Eye's scale. And even if we did, fighting it might not help Maisie. A fight might not free her. It might even hurt her, in some metaphysical sense." Sevens spoke up.

"I am in agreement with this, kitten."

"Ah?" Sevens gestured with one hand, fingers out, palm up, the very picture of aristocratic debate.

"Think of my father, the King. How would one 'fight' my father? With sword and gun? No. He would write them out of the script."

"Exactly," I said, breathing a sigh of relief. I wasn't the only one thinking this way.

"The Eye, it observes, that's all it does. Like your nature is narrative, plays and stories. The Eye's nature is seeing. How would that affect fighting it? Do you have any ideas?" Sevens allowed a delicate frown to crease her brow. Lozzie bit her lower lip. A moment of silence passed over the room. Tenny trilled: "Hide and seek?" I laughed softly, and not only from politeness. This was the other reason, the emotional reason, for having Tenny in the room with us. Her shoulders were light with far fewer cares.

She knew she was loved and secure. We needed that reminder of what we were 'fighting' for. Lozzie giggled too.

"Tenns!"

"No," said Seven-Shades-of-Suddenly-Sharp. Tenny flinched, tentacles all a-whirl as she turned to look at Sevens.

"Brrr?" The Yellow Princess smiled — a rare look on her ice-cold, perfect face, thin and frosty, but genuine beyond any words.

"My apologies. I did not mean to make you jump, dear Tenny. I mean to say that you, young Miss Tenny Lilburne, are more right than you may realise."

"Brrrt? Prrrr?"

"Sevens?" I said.

"What do you mean? You think the Eye will play hide and seek with us? You can't be serious." Sevens-Shades-of-Supercilious-Simile gestured with both hands this time, spreading her fingers in a subtle shrug.

"Imagine this for me, kitten. Lozzie and Tenny, too, if you will. A brigand surprises my father with a rapier, intent on murder. He has slipped past all my father's guards and has come upon the King while his royal person is unarmed and unprotected. What happens to the villain?" I raised my eyebrows.

"Is this a serious question?"

"Yes, kitten."

"He gets … well … I can say this in reality, can't I? As long as we're not Outside." My tentacles bunched up and hesitated all the same.

"He gets Hastur'd."

"Hazzzturrrr," Tenny echoed in her fluttery trill. I winced and grimaced and tried to put my face in a tentacle; Lozzie looked amused, which I thought was completely inappropriate. How foolish we were being!

"Tenns," I said quickly, "you must never say that word when we're Outside. I-I shouldn't have even said it then, I'm sorry, that was teaching you—" Sevens cleared her throat gently.

"Tenny is known."

"Ah?"

"Special!" Lozzie chirped. She reached over and patted Sevens' thigh, which would have made my eyes bulge in surprise under other circumstances. For now I filed that away. Sevens tilted her head in acknowledgement.

"She would be in little peril. Calm yourself, Heather." Sevens turned to Tenny.

"Best not to speak my father's secret name, other than in most dire need. He knows my bride-to-be, your Aunt Heather, and would know you as her family. But his wrath is hard to aim, and harder still to guide. Do you understand, Tenny dear?" Tenny nodded, wide-eyed and more serious than I'd ever seen her before.

"Good," I added, feeling like we'd veered horribly off-course.

"Um, Sevens, please, continue. You were saying?" Seven-Shades-of-Protective-Auntie raised her chin.

"My father would be unable to simply overpower this hypothetical assailant with brute strength or superior skill, no matter the mask he wore, for that is not within his nature. He would rewrite the script as each action and choice clove the directions and results of fate. The brigand would perhaps think himself victorious, but then trip and fall upon his own sword in his haste to slit my father's throat.

Or perhaps my father would appear to take many wounds, yet neither weaken nor slow from loss of blood and the trials of pain, until the villain is exhausted merely from delivering cuts and blows, and dies at the bare hands of an unarmed man.

Or maybe the fool would appear successful, presented with the 'corpse' of the King, but then find himself trapped in a maze of corridors upon his attempt to flee the scene, a maze that would return him again and again to the putrefying body, until he is left with no choice but to slake his starvation on the regal meat of the King. With such poison in his belly he would …" Sevens trailed off and turned her eyes upon Tenny, who was listening with the rapt attention of a child exposed to her first horror film.

"Well," Sevens added with another special smile for Tenny.

"I am only speculating. My father's methods and tastes are distinct. I am certain he would devise far more creative fates for such a fool." We nodded, with our head and every spare tentacle; we had terrible trouble imagining the King in Yellow in a physical fight, at least while wearing either of the masks we had met — the Kindly Prince or the ridiculous Banana General — but this was exactly the kind of insight we had been hoping for.

"I think I comprehend, Sevens," we said.

"Thank you." Sevens bowed her head.

"So, you think if I confront the Eye, it would …" Sevens shrugged with dainty shoulders beneath her starched blouse.

"The great observer may do something incomprehensible, something outside the boundaries of how it is approached, just as the brigand with a knife would not comprehend the shape of my father's response."

"Hide and seek," Tenny repeated. We nodded.

"Yes. Yes, I suppose it's not impossible. I always thought of it as a staring contest, like I would have to look into the Eye and hold its gaze, but … hmm." We sighed.

"I suppose it could hide Maisie? I'll have to identify her pattern, her soul, or whatever is left of her. I've done that before, I can do it again, in theory. It's how I found Raine when she got kidnapped. It's how I saved Sarika. It's possible. But if the Eye hides her away on purpose …" I trailed off and shook my head; what would that even mean? Sevens purred, "It will not be that simple, kitten. I do not know what form the exchange will take, but 'hide and seek' is only a metaphor."

"But—" Before I could mount another round of questions or deepen the conversation by plunging into a boggy mire of magical metaphysics and metaphor, a sneaky little silken tentacle snaked over my shoulder and plucked the white queen from my hands.

"T-Tenny!" Tenny snatched up the queen and then held it in the air next to her face. She smiled with sudden twinkling mischief.

"Tenns," Lozzie cooed.

"Taking things without asking isn't nice!" Sevens made a soft 'hmm' sound, then said: "It is her chess set, however." But Tenny just smiled at me, dark lips curled upward in delight. She wiggled the white queen at the end of one tentacle, and said, "Maisie!" My eyebrows shot upward; our Tenny had unique insight after all.

"Maisie?" I said. Tenny nodded, very excited now. Her fluffy white antennae were twitching back and forth, her chest purring with a deep, fluttery trilling sound.

"Maisie. Aunty Heathy, close your eyes." I did as I was told. I stopped looking. I even coiled up my tentacles. A few seconds later, Tenny announced: "Open!" I opened my eyes. Tenny's hands and tentacles were both spread wide. Marmite had retreated a few paces toward the wall, as if before a confrontation between a pair of larger animals. The white queen chess piece was nowhere to be seen. Tenny grinned with childish enjoyment.

"Tenny?" we said. Tenny's eyes flashed with a playful challenge.

"Find her!" We spread our tentacles outward in a mirror of Tenny's pose. We felt our lips curve with sudden and unbidden delight. We plunged our mind down, down, down into the sunken depths of our soul and pulled at the machinery of the Eye.

"Ready or not, here I come." And so Tenny and I played hide and seek. The first attempt went terribly; we began by defining all of Tenny in hyperdimensional mathematics, unfolding our vision of her in all the infinite detail of any living being.

The principle was straightforward enough, because Tenny was right in front of us; but we may as well have attempted to witness and catalogue every blade of grass and grain of soil on a continent of open prairie, or list and map every feather in a flock of flying birds as they wheeled and turned in the sky, or measure each ring of wood in each and every tree in a primordial forest.

Tenny was an equation just as complex and dizzying as any human — but different in subtle ways, formed from long interleaved strands of meaning and muscle, like a rope of the soul — a billion-billion-numbered definition spiralling out into near-infinity, dragging the eyes deep into the labyrinthine depths. We tried to locate the one piece that didn't fit, the one element which was not Tenny, the chess piece, the white queen, the surrogate for Maisie inside the Eye.

We surfaced from that equation with a full-body wave of nausea, our tentacles cold and cramped and coiled, curling up to cradle our head and clench our eyes shut. We tasted blood and bile, but we kept our lunch down, choking and coughing. It was not the difficulty of the brain-math which caused such reaction, but the complexity of that which we beheld.

"Heathy!?"

"Kitten, hold your—""Heath! Heath!"

"U-under your wing," I croaked into my lap.

"Left shoulder. Left shoulder, Tenny." Tenny produced the white queen and held it up. She was blinking in surprise that the effort had pained me so much. Panting with victory, I nodded to her.

"One point to me."

"Aunty Heathy?"

"Again. Please, Tenny. Again. Auntie Heathy is okay. Again." The second and third attempts went better — smoother, faster, with less pain and less nausea, less blood in the back of my throat and dripping from my nose. Sevens produced a wonderfully thick and absorbent handkerchief from somewhere, in softly glowing yellow, embroidered with lilies. Lozzie fetched a glass of water so I could sip in between the attempts to clear my throat, with a slice of lemon floating in the cool liquid.

I located the chess piece buried in Tenny's head hair, then hidden behind her backside. Each time she produced it with more confidence, flashing between her fingers and standing atop her silken palm. She knew she was helping now. Then I started using my bioreactor, popping the control rods free, feeding additional energies into my core. The fourth and fifth times I was faster, growing with confidence and power, more familiar with the fresh equations I had fashioned.

By then I had formed an outcrop of the Eye's machinery into a probe, a searchlight, a miniature little eye itself, suited for picking out that one object amid all of Tenny's wide and whirling definition. Could I do the same thing for Maisie? Could I craft an imprint of her from memory and love, and then cast it into the Eye like a socket on a hook, to find her amid all that endless mass? On the sixth attempt I went too far — my abyssal senses drank too much of Tenny's definition before I found the queen.

It was like force-feeding myself the entire British Library in the blink of an eye, too much information crammed into my skin, glowing and straining until my brain was ready to burst. I blacked out for three seconds and came round slumped against the wall, cushioned by my own tentacles, with Lozzie tapping her fingertips to my cheeks and Tenny peering at me in alarm.

"She is quite alright," Sevens announced from the bed. She didn't seem too concerned.

"Heather is not pushing herself too far, she is merely concentrating too hard. Sit up, kitten. That's it. You are untouched." Lozzie helped me sit. My head felt thick with effort, my tentacles numb with hyperdimensional aftermath, like I'd spent hours threading needles over and over again until my fingers were numb. Lozzie hugged me tight, poncho engulfing me for a moment.

"Heathy, you can stop now! You can stop! You can do it! You're doing it!"

"No," I croaked, gently peeling Lozzie away from me.

"I can't, not yet. I can't stop just yet. I'm not doing it all the way yet." I looked up at Tenny and smiled for her.

"Again. Tenny, again, please. Please."

"All the way?"

"All the way," I echoed.

"Finding is not enough. I have to reel her in, too." On the seventh, eighth, and ninth attempts I refined the equation to narrow the amount of 'Tenny' I had to cover; that was easier, with less effort and less pain, like using a thinner piece of thread to loop through that hidden needle. That was quicker. I yelped out the location of the white queen within half a second of Tenny announcing, "Ready!" On the eleventh try I didn't declare victory.

Instead, I reached out with hyperdimensional mathematics, with a filament of thought and intent, a fishing-line loaded with the definition of the chess piece. I cast it into 'Tenny', like hovering a hook over the surface of a vast lake of inky darkness. A hook and a void, a key and a lock, a harness awaiting the eagerly rescued. The white queen leapt forth.

I skimmed the chess piece across the membrane, like a flat stone bouncing on the water's surface; I used Camelot to slingshot the queen — my little Maisie-to-be — Out and then back. Tenny flinched when she felt the sudden absence of the chess piece — and then gasped in delight when I raised my open palm. The white queen appeared in my hand, the token of Maisie's rescue jumping forth into reality.

"Yaaaaay!" Tenny cheered.

"Yaaaaaa! Aaaaa!" Lozzie went, "Oooh!" Seven-Shades-of-Celebration applauded softly. Even Marmite raised his forelegs, eager to join in the victory. I doubled up and vomited. I hadn't done that in a while. We were lucky, however, as Sevens had the good foresight to provide us with a paper bag, though where she got it from we had no idea. She suddenly shoved it under my face as I folded up and voided my stomach. I could have kissed her for that, but I doubt she would have enjoyed my lips at that precise moment.

"Heathy …" Lozzie sounded upset and worried as she rubbed my back. Tenny's enthusiasm was dulled as well. She let out little trills and purrs, soft with concern.

"Thank you," we croaked as we straightened up.

"Sorry about the … the upchucking. It's the … the complexity of the task. Hunting through all that … that life. But." We drew ourselves up and flexed our spine; we were shaken, but not exhausted.

"The principle is sound. Hide and seek like this, it can be done." We held out one tentacle toward Tenny.

"It's okay, Tenns, you did so well, well done. I think that's enough." Tenny took my tentacle in one of her own. We held on tight.

"Helping," Tenny trilled. More clean, cold water, another slice of lemon, and a nice quiet sit was more than enough to recover my coherency and strength. The trilobe bioreactor purred away in my guts, pouring out heat and energy and topping me back up. Lozzie kept rubbing my back. Sevens went to sit by Tenny, then murmured softly to her, talking about responsibility and harm and how Aunty Heathy knew what she was doing. I hoped she was right. When that soft conversation fell away, I spoke up again.

"I can play hide and seek with the Eye," I said.

"At least once. This was proof of concept. It will hurt. It will push me to my limit. I may bleed, a lot. But I believe I can do it." Did I? I didn't know, not for certain. Those words were simply what I needed to believe. Tenny was a billion-billion equations folded in on themselves like an infinite fractal; with great care and precision and specially-crafted hyperdimensional tools I could dip into that sea and find the one part which did not fit.

But compared to the Eye, tracing Tenny's being was like mapping the veins on a single fallen leaf. Performing the same trick with the Eye would be like trying to investigate a world-spanning forest to locate a single ailing magpie. Sevens sighed softly.

"It will be more complex than that, my beloved kitten. The response may take a form none of us here can comprehend."

"The Eye is a great observer," we said, thinking out loud. We pulled our knees to our chest.

"A staring contest, or hide and seek, or … what's that game? Red light green light? Stop and go? Or …" We sighed.

"Yes, Sevens, before you say it, we know what you're going to say. All of these are only metaphors for something we won't understand, not until we experience it directly." Sevens bobbed her head. Tenny chewed on her lower lip. We were getting a bit beyond her depth now.

"You can see anything in a mirror," Lozzie murmured. We put a hand on one of Lozzie's hands, on our shoulder. Her advice was sweet, but Lozzie comprehended the world and Outside in a way we did not.

"There's one question I haven't answered yet," we said.

"If we can communicate with the Eye in some fashion, even if that communication is only via 'hide-and-seek', or metaphorical, metaphysical hide-and-seek, what should we say?"

"Give Maisie," Tenny said instantly. We smiled and tried to laugh. At least that was honest. Seven-Shades-of-Sure-Suggestion said: "Show it a play." We sighed.

"Sevens."

"I am serious, kitten. I know full well of my bias toward my chosen medium of expression, the nature that makes up my very being, but does it not make sense? The Eye is an observer, a viewpoint. How does one change the nature of a viewpoint? Make it into an audience. Show it something it has not seen before. Show it a play." We sighed again.

"The play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King," I quoted, one of my favourites, but not right that moment.

"Yes, Sevens, I get the feeling we've been over this before. But I don't think that particular line of Shakespeare is helpful right now. I don't think the Eye has a conscience. And it's too big to catch."

"We're getting very metaphorical, kitten," said Sevens.

"You too."

"Ask it for help," Lozzie said from behind us. We twisted to look Lozzie in the face. She had a small, strange, shy little smile on her lips, so uncommon for her. She almost looked a little bashful.

"Lozzie? Are you feeling okay?"

"Mmhmm! Just ask it for help, Heathy. It's what I did, when I was younger, when I met the star below the castle. I just asked." Her smile wavered.

"There was nothing else to do. No fighting. No struggling. Just surrender and asking." I chewed on my own lower lip. Ask the Eye for help? Lozzie's experience was not like my own. Her shining star beneath the castle of the Sharrowford Cult was not the world-shattering attention of the Eye. I had not the heart to say that out loud, but she must have seen the doubt in my face, for her smile turned a little sad.

"Lozzie, I'm sorry, I just …

""Give Maisie," Tenny repeated.

"Give Maisie! Give Maisie! Give her back!" For the first time I had ever witnessed, Tenny seemed genuinely angry. We stared at her in shock. She nodded, more serious than I had ever witnessed her fluffy face and feathery antennae.

"Give Maisie," she repeated.

"Perhaps you're right, Tenns," we said with a laugh.

"Maybe that's all we need. A demand, and determination." Tenny nodded.

"Give Maisie." Seven-Shades-of-Sunlight placed her hand gently on Tenny's arm; Tenny responded by wrapping a tentacle around her forearm in a tight little hug, creasing Sevens' perfectly starched blouse. Sevens did not complain. Sevens said: "It will not be like anything we have experienced. It will not be hide and seek. It will be the unknown." I raised my chin.

"I've gotten very used to facing the unknown, this past year of my life. In fact, I'd say I've grown into somewhat of an expert on it, rather by necessity. Be prepared for the unknowable. If I wasn't, I wouldn't have made it past Raine and Evelyn." We smiled.

"Thank you, all three of you. I'm limbered up. I think I have the right tool, for hide and seek, or whatever comes next. I think I'm ready. Let's go help make dinner."