Tiny at first, but growing larger. Shadowy vehicles, flying through the night.
More Librarians, I thought. That’s obviously what that is. More Librarians, flying in gigantic glass birds. That makes perfect sense. My, those Librarians look awfully strange, wearing armor and carrying swords like that. One might even think that they’re actually . . .
I sat upright, shocked. Or, well, I would have sat upright, save for that whole pinned-to-the-ground-and-tied-up thing. So, anyway, I lay pinned to the ground, tied up, but I did it feeling completely shocked.
There, swooping down out of the darkness, was a fleet of twenty glass vehicles with Knights of Crystallia riding on their backs. They dove behind the bats, dropping into the city. The sounds of yelling, fighting, and cheers of war rose in the air.
It had worked. My stoopid plan had worked.
Perhaps I should explain. Do you remember back right before Kaz ran off to attack the robots? You should, it was only, like, two chapters ago. (Too busy talking to books to pay attention to reading them, eh?) Anyway, I sent him with a message for my grandfather. ‘Tell him that we really, really need him here by midnight. If he doesn’t arrive by then, we’re doomed!’
You might have ignored the message. Of course we wanted my grandfather to arrive immediately; it was obvious.
But Kaz’s explanation of Talents had changed my perception of them. The way we, as Smedrys, see the world affects how the Talents work. Like Aydee – if she thinks there are thousands of teddy bears, then there are. Reality doesn’t matter as much as the Smedry’s view of reality.
Aydee’s and Grandpa’s Talents are very similar. She moves things through space and puts them where she thinks they should be. Grandpa moves things through time, putting them when he thinks they should be – so long as that when is something he perceives as being late.
Does your brain hurt yet? ’Cuz if it does, try being me. Anyway, here’s the short of it: You might think Grandpa’s Talent works only when he’s late. But that’s not true. It works when he thinks he’s late.
There was no way he was going to get the knights to Tuki Tuki on time. His Talent wouldn’t let it happen. But if he thought that he was already late . . . If I could persuade him that he needed to be there at midnight . . .
Then he might just arrive at twelve thirty instead.
In the sky above, a bird flew by with a distinctive, white-haired man in a tuxedo riding on the back, waving a sword wildly like he was a conductor leading an orchestra. I smiled despite myself. I’d gotten my grandfather to arrive early – all by tricking him into thinking he was late.
But I was still captured. None of the knights came near to where I was laying. The Librarians around me looked to the sky with shock, guns out. The one holding my Lenses – the single remaining Bestower’s Lens and my one Truthfinder’s Lens – dropped them for the moment.
The fighting in the city grew louder.
This left me feeling very odd. I’d been convinced I couldn’t save Tuki Tuki. But I had saved it. Or, at least, I’d taken a large step toward doing so. I hadn’t failed them as king.
The me from the past had been clever enough to come up with a plan, even if the me from the future hadn’t been able to. (Not me from the far future, that’s the one writing these books, I mean the me from the slight future, the me tied up, which is actually the me from the past, as the me from right now is the one writing. Actually, that me is the past me too, by the time you read this. And actually—)
‘Shut up!’ I said to myself. Or, at least, I tried to. Being still gagged, it came out as ‘Shusmalgul pulup!’
There wasn’t time to think about my failures, my past, or my future. Because my Librarian captors were focused on me again. One lowered a gun, pointing at my head.
I felt a moment of panic. These were Librarians of the Shattered Lens. They were the most devoted, the most fanatical of all Librarians. And they hated Oculators passionately.
They knew what I was, and they weren’t about to let me get rescued. The lead Librarian cocked his pistol. It didn’t look like one of the fancy, laser pistols used in the war. Just an old-fashioned Hushlander pistol, the kind that shot out a bullet and made you very, very dead.
I tried my Talent. Nothing. I struggled but was pinned tight. I could wriggle my right hand, but that was it.
One of the Librarians said something, as if objecting to the murder of a tied-up kid.
The Librarian with the gun barked something back, quieting the opposition. He looked at me, eyes grim.
I panicked. I couldn’t fail now! Not when everything was confused. I needed to know. Was my father right, or was my mother? What was this all about? I’d gotten the knights to Tuki Tuki. I couldn’t die now! I couldn’t! I—
The Librarians had dropped my backpack right beside me.
I blinked, realizing for the first time that a string was peeking out through the back zipper. One of the pull-tag pins for the bears tucked inside; I could see a bit of purple fur peeking out behind the tag.
Frantic, I strained my fingers out and pulled the tag, yanking it. The backpack lurched up against me, but the tag pulled free.
The Librarian pulled the trigger.
There was a crack in the air as the gun fired.
Something flashed in my eyes, the backpack exploding, vaporizing, the bullet vanishing in the air. The explosion washed over me, and – as I’d planned – it destroyed the net, the tag, and everything tying me down.
Of course, it also vaporized my clothing.
∞
Now, perhaps, you can see why I asked you not to act out that last chapter. If you decided not to take my advice, then I really can’t be blamed if you get in trouble for tying yourself to the ground and running around nak*d for the rest of the afternoon.
Anyway, what just happened is something we call a teddy bear on the mantle. This is an ancient storytelling rule that says, ‘If there’s an exploding teddy bear that can destroy people’s clothing in a given book, that teddy bear must be used to destroy someone’s clothing by the end of the book.’ Coincidentally, this is actually the only time a book has included a teddy bear that can destroy people’s clothing, and hence is the first, last, and only application of this literary law.
The blast radius of the bear grenade wasn’t large enough to hit the Librarians. (Pity). However, it was just large enough to vaporize the ends of their guns. It also dropped me into a crater in the ground that was some five feet deep. I could see the Librarians above, standing, dumbfounded by what had happened.
I felt a surge of adrenaline. Not because I was still in danger, but because I was now lying stark nak*d in the middle of a war zone. And though the weather was tropical, the night air still felt rather chilly on my skin.
I scrambled free of the hole, blushing furiously, dashing past the Librarians. I stopped only long enough to scoop up my jacket – with the Bestower’s Lens and the Truthfinder’s Lens lying on top of it.
The Librarians finally began shouting and giving chase. The explosion had shocked them, but a nak*d Smedry seemed to have shocked them even further. I tried holding my jacket down to obscure the most delicate parts of my anatomy, but that made it really awkward to run. Keeping my skin intact was more important than keeping it covered, and I started running through the zoo as quickly as I could, holding the jacket and Lenses in my right hand.
So it was that I tore around a corner, completely in the buff, and ran smack-dab into the middle of Aluki, Aydee, twenty Mokian soldiers of both genders, and Draulin, Bastille’s mother.
It was not my finest moment.
‘Librarian commando superspy assassins!’ I cried out, hiding behind Draulin, who wore her full Crystin plate armor and helm. ‘Following me! Gak!’
The group turned to look in the direction I’d come from. No Librarians followed. We all waited for a few tense moments, then finally Draulin looked back at me. ‘Er, Lord Smedry? Are you all right?
‘Do I look all right?’ I asked.
‘No, you look nak*d,’ Aydee said.
‘Gak!’ I said, quickly covering myself with my jacket, tying the sleeves around my waist. It had been cut off of me, though, so it didn’t stay on real well. ‘Ah,’ Aluki said, nodding. ‘I know this story. His Majesty is pretending to wear invisible clothing to show how stoopid we all are.’
‘I don’t think that’s how the story goes,’ Draulin said, eyeing me appraisingly, ‘not do I believe that Lord Smedry is taking part in such an elaborate scheme. Those are grenade powder marks on his arms.’
I looked down, noticing that the explosion had dusted my arms with a bit of burned gunpowder. ‘Er, yes,’ I said, holding the jacket in place. ‘And I was being chased by Librarians.’
‘It is well that we came, then,’ Draulin said. ‘Come with me, Lord Smedry. Aluki, you should take your soldiers and warn the perimeter guard that a group of Librarian infiltrators are haunting the zoo. They likely saw us up here and decided not to confront us directly.’
The Mokian saluted, taking his soldiers and rushing away. Draulin steered me and Aydee toward a field behind us, where a glass bird was waiting, this one shaped like an owl. I hurried forward eagerly, hoping to find some kind of clothing inside. We found Kaz waiting for us, a big grin on his face.
I hurried up to him. ‘Kaz! You did it! You got the message to your father!’
He shrugged modestly. ‘I should have realized why you chose the words you did, kid. The moment I spoke them to him, the ships all seemed to speed up, instantly.’ He eyed me. ‘You may have just revolutionized the way we think of Talents. If my pop’s Talent can be tricked into making him early . . . Well, it will change everything.’
‘It’s what we were already doing with Aydee,’ I said as Draulin and Aydee herself climbed into the glass ship. We stood in a kind of cargo bay at the base of the owl. ‘She’s the one who sparked the idea in my head, actually.’
The girl smiled pleasantly at that, though she obviously had no idea what I was talking about. It was her ability to keep getting fooled that make her Talent work.
Though . . . as Draulin sent Aydee off to the head of the owl to help pilot, I thought I saw a twinkle of understanding in the girl’s eyes. Could she understand? Did she know exactly what was happening when we tricked her into adding things wrong? Sometimes, living with a Smedry Talent requires a person to develop in very odd ways. As a child, I’d learned that everyone would hate me for breaking things and had compensated by pushing people away.
Could Aydee have learned to trick herself into ignoring numbers and speaking randomly, off the top of her head, when asked to add something?
Perhaps I was reading too much into that simple glance. I didn’t really know what she was thinking, all those years ago. Here, wait a second. I’ll go talk to her.
. . .
Okay, I asked her and she says yup, that’s exactly what she does. Also, she said, ‘If you’re writing about the fall of Tuki Tuki, you’d better make certain to include that part where we caught you frolicking in the zoo nak*d. I think you were seriously going crazy there, cousin.’