Gretel didn’t say anything at first; she just kept looking at Sofia as if she needed some time to absorb all the things she’d been told.
“Well?” Paul asked to break the awkward silence. “What do you think? Things as rosy as you pictured, living out here in your swamp palace?”
The old woman looked sharply at him, her expression turning grave. “Son, what you’ve just described to me is far, far worse than I imagined, even in my worst nightmares after the earthquake that hit this place. I think I finally understand why George sent you to me. Come, we need to enter my safe haven.”
She stood up, her eyes distant, and gestured for the young Realitants to follow. Paul and Sofia exchanged uneasy glances then joined Gretel, leaving the comfy living room with the warm fire and entering a cold, uninviting room with shiny steel walls. There was a bare light in the ceiling that flickered and a large safe in one corner of the room. Gretel shut the door behind them with a heavy, ringing thud; Paul spun around to see that it was also made of steel like the inside of a bank vault.
Gretel spun a wheel-handle and clicked a big lock. Then she walked over to the safe in the corner—a big, black square—and started turning the large combination dial. Paul stared, wondering what in the world they were about to see.
As Gretel continued to work at the safe’s mechanism, she spoke over her shoulder. “I don’t call it the safe haven for nothing. It’s a haven for my safes. A safe within a safe. What I’m protecting here is very important.”
Paul asked the obvious question. “What is it?”
There was a loud click, and then the door of the safe swung open. Paul and Sofia stepped forward to see what was inside. It was an old, tattered, dusty shoebox. Gretel pulled it out and set it on the floor. Carefully. Then she sat right beside it, folding her legs underneath her like a teenager. Paul and Sofia sat next to her on the ground. Paul’s eyes stayed glued to the box. He was so curious he almost reached out and opened the lid himself.
Gretel flicked both of them a knowing look. Then she lifted the warped lid and flipped it over. Inside the box lay a small cube of gray metal with a green button on top. The old woman lifted up the cube and held it out for everyone to see.
“Push this button,” she said in a mesmerized voice, almost like a chant, “and the Realities will change forever. For good. Or for evil.”
Chapter 15
The Ladies of Blood and Sorrow
Tick sat in the snow in the meditative pose of a Buddhist he’d seen once on TV—his legs crossed under him, his arms resting on top of them with his fingers pushed together and pointing upward, and his eyes closed. Couldn’t hurt, he’d thought.
He’d been trying for at least a half hour to push all other thoughts from his mind and focus on the riddle he’d seen written on the ice. But he was having a hard time concentrating. The words floated in the darkness of his thoughts, visible in his mind’s eye as white letters on a black background. He ran through the lines, letting the skills he’d developed for this sort of thing take their natural course as his brain digested and regurgitated the riddle again and again:
The smallest thing begins to grow
It needs no light, it needs no glow
This thing, it fears the weakest breath
And yet it cannot embrace death
The greatest man or bull or steed
Or queen or doe or stinging bee
Eats it, smells it, drinks it some
And one day it they will become
Tick sat in the wind and the cold and relaxed, doing what he did best.
Thinking.
Lisa and her mom followed Mordell down a long, cold passage under the hard stone of the castle, walking along the dark waters of the stream that rushed by. Lisa knew this was the place Tick and his Realitant friends had barely escaped from during their first harrowing trip to the Thirteenth Reality. Imagining them at that time—Tick and the others desperately waiting for the Barrier Wand to kick in and wink them out, while hordes of bloodthirsty fangen beat down the walls and came after them—sent chills across her skin. It made her feel incredibly sorry for her lost brother, and made her love him more than ever before. Tears welled up in her eyes.
She knew what had happened next. The Barrier Wand didn’t even have a Chi’karda Drive inside its golden case at the time—Mistress Jane had secretly removed it—but Tick had displayed his unbelievable power over Chi’karda, using his powers to wink everyone to safety on his own. There had been signs and hints his whole life that there was something special about him, but after that day, the Realitants knew it for sure.