There was no reply. A tentacle roared past, snapping the mast. The whole boat jolted, and everyone fell down. “Damn it,” said Josiah, “she’s gone completely unpredictable. She does this when I stop paying attention. Cuerva Lachance, we need you to aim for the head!”
“Did someone want me? I was counting things. Then I got bored. Then I went to Egypt. Then I got bored again. Why does that one have a gun?” said Cuerva Lachance, who was now standing on the deck with them, looking in exactly the wrong direction.
“Will you concentrate?” Josiah inquired with brittle, exaggerated impatience. “On the tentacles? Behind you?”
“Oh!” She turned around. “I remember that from ten seconds ago.” Three of the tentacles turned into what appeared to be pasta and fell, steaming, into the boat.
It all got frantic. Tentacles shot down from the sky. Everything smelled strongly of rotting fish. Freddy squeezed out bolt after bolt; finally, her gun sputtered and died. She looked around for the others but could see only Josiah scrabbling at a tentacle with his bare hands as it fought to lift him into the air. Freddy threw the gun aside and leapt for the tentacle, not sure why she did. A few minutes ago, she had been almost willing to let Roland turn Josiah unreal.
She had underestimated the tentacle’s size and strength. It curled around her as well, seemingly without effort. “Freddy, what are you doing?” Josiah gasped. Then both of them were high above the sea. Fighting to free her arms, Freddy saw the world tilt dizzyingly. “Just hang on,” she said.
“Do I have a choice?” he said. The tentacle whipped them back and forth beneath the pleasure-dome. Freddy’s stomach tried to rise into her throat.
Their tentacle, still high in the air, slowed and stopped. It seemed to be taking a break. “The others?” said Freddy, yanking one arm free.
Josiah was squeezed up against her. “No idea. I saw Mel a minute ago. Your stepbrother’s a psychopath, incidentally.”
“I think he’s just overreacting to everything right now. But we have to find some way out of this.”
“The fun bit is that it may kill him. Then we’ll truly be stuck here, except maybe for Cuerva Lachance.”
“But he created it,” she panted. “He should just kill it. Why doesn’t he?”
“He has to follow the story. He told you. Look out … here we go!”
The tentacle plunged downward. It was a little too obvious why. “There’s got … to be … some sort of mouth…”
“There,” screamed Josiah. “Right in the middle! Teeth! There!”
The creature’s mouth was half the size of the high school. The teeth were as big as houses. Aim for the head? If this was the mouth, the head wouldn’t have even felt a bolt from her gun. The stench of the mouth was unbearable. “You’re not real,” Josiah was howling at the creature. “I refuse to be eaten by something that doesn’t exist.”
Someone screamed from below.
They looked. Mel was clinging to one of the teeth. “Freddy,” she was shrieking. “Grab a tooth as you go past!”
“It’s making it drop us that’s the problem,” said Josiah. “We need something to stab it with.”
“Oh,” said Freddy.
For the second time in the last fifteen minutes, she pulled out her keys.
The creature dropped her first, then Josiah. Freddy landed firmly on a tooth, but Josiah almost went straight into the maw. He would have done so if Freddy hadn’t caught his arm as he tumbled past. Clinging to her, he dragged himself to relative safety. Mel was on the tooth next door. “Roland?” said Freddy.
“I don’t know,” said Mel.
“What are we supposed to do?” said Josiah.
Mel said, “Isn’t it obvious?”
They looked at her. The creature juddered, and Freddy was nearly flung clear of her tooth. Josiah growled, “No, it’s not obvious. Nothing is ever obvious with you.”
“Cuerva Lachance can beat it,” said Mel, “or she could if she wasn’t surrounded by logical people. We’re holding her back.”
“Do you want the entire universe to turn into raspberries?” said Josiah. “We have to hold her back.”
“No,” said Mel. “We have to set her free. Roland set up an impossible story. He didn’t mean to. But there’s no way out without cheating.”
“I thought we had to follow the rules,” said Freddy. “I thought it was the only way.”
“It is for us,” said Mel. “It isn’t for her. That’s her character. That’s what she’s for.”
Freddy and Josiah looked at each other. Tentacles writhed overhead, but the creature didn’t appear able to sense their current location. They still couldn’t hang on forever.
“Listen,” said Josiah. “What happened to the house earlier … that was Cuerva Lachance let about a tenth off the leash. For this to work, she needs to be off the leash entirely. Anything could happen. Anything. Balance will be lost. You need to be prepared for that.”
Freddy and Mel nodded. “We understand,” said Mel.
“Then hang on.”
He closed his eyes.
For a moment, Freddy couldn’t figure out why he had done that or what seemed wrong about it. Then she knew. She had never—never—seen him close his eyes before, not even to blink. The clos est he had ever got was letting various people punch them, and even then, he had been able to see through the slits. Something shifted in the air around them. Even the creature, seething and moaning beneath and all around, seemed to hesitate for a moment.
And Cuerva Lachance was there, her clothes torn to ribbons, her hair over her face. “This hasn’t happened in a while,” she explained in a voice that was far too cheerful. “No peeking, Josie, dear.”
The world went strange.
*
Freddy was walking down a road, Roland at her side. It was winter. Her mother’s funeral had been the day before. Mel had cried. Freddy hadn’t. She hadn’t really spoken to her mother in nearly twenty years.
Roland stopped in place and signed, I think you’re in denial. You need to see that. The argument had been going on for some time.
She looked at him. He was about forty now, tired-looking, with a sparse black beard. I’m not in denial, she signed. We never had anything to do with each other. Most of the time, she didn’t remember I existed.
Was it all her fault? Did you ever even tell her you had a problem with the way she treated you? I don’t think she knew she was doing anything wrong.
“Oh,” said Freddy, “and it was my job to tell her? She should have seen it herself.”
“Not everyone is good at seeing things,” said Roland.
Seeing things. The words tripped a memory, vague and far away. “He closed his eyes,” said Freddy, then wondered why she had.
Roland’s own eyes narrowed. “Who did?”
“Josiah.” It was a name from her childhood; she hadn’t thought about it in years. She hadn’t remembered she’d ever known a Josiah. There was something tragic about the thought of Josiah closing his eyes. Unexpectedly, she felt the faint prick of tears. No. She hadn’t cried for her mother. Why should she cry at a name from long ago?