The wind shifted as we entered the building. My neck hair prickled and I rubbed my arms, trying to keep warm. Our shoes crunched against glass as we walked.
The fog was thick and suffocating. I could barely make out what looked like a balcony above us and the faint outlines of toppled shelves. I wasn’t sure if I could find my own feet, much less an imbued object that a big guy like Bloomberry couldn’t track down.
“Maybe we should stick together so–”
“Not happening,” Misty interrupted and disappeared into the fog.
Great.
I trudged in cautiously. The whole place smelled rank, as though something had died.
“I should bring Bess’s plant here to get rid of that smell,” I said aloud, trying to keep my voice calm. “Unless it only works on human smells. But maybe that is a human smell?”
Somewhere to my right, I heard creaking wood. I stopped cold.
“Misty, is that you?” I tried.
Nobody responded.
“It’s probably you, trying to freak me out,” I said. “Well, it’s not working.”
My foot bumped into something, and I jumped, whipping my umbrella around like a sword. But there wasn’t anyone there.
I looked down and saw a broken white mask. I shivered and stepped carefully around it. I hoped that it wasn’t the imbued object because I really didn’t want to touch it.
A loud creak from my left startled me and an entire bookshelf came toppling over. I barely had time to dive out of the way as it crashed down.
“Whoops,” Misty said, appearing from the fog.
“You– you nearly smashed me!” I said, my pulse hammering in my neck.
I almost thought I saw a change on her face, like guilt. A fraction of a second later it was gone and she said, “Watch where you’re going.”
Misty disappeared into the fog once more.
Fantastic. Not only did I have to worry about crazy indoor storms, but Misty pulverizing me as well. So much for working together. I decided to go the opposite direction. A bright flash of light illuminated the fog and an ear-splitting crash of thunder reverberated throughout my body. Then it started to downpour. I hurriedly whipped out the umbrella and ducked underneath it.
I pulled out my phone and lit the flashlight, hoping it could help, but it just made the fog surrounding me brighter.
I needed to pull myself together and think.
I was standing in the rain, in an old store where there had been a magical explosion, looking for an imbued object. Maybe if I started calling out for it? But would it even want to talk to me?
It couldn’t hurt to try.
“Does anything out there want to talk?” I called out. “Preferably something that isn’t a creepy mask?”
Nothing answered, unsurprisingly. I kept talking though—partially to keep myself sane and partially because maybe it would work.
“OK, even a creepy mask would be alright,” I admitted.
Water soaked through my shoes as I trudged through the rain.
“Maybe you don’t want to talk because I’m a stranger,” I said. “I’m from the Underland so this is only my second time visiting up here. I really like it up here—most of it anyway.”
I nearly walked straight into a metal spiral staircase, leading upward. I grabbed the handrail and the center pole and pushed a few times, making sure it was stable before I started walking up the stairs. I held tightly to the cold metal handrail as I ascended to the balcony.
As I climbed, the temperature plummeted even further, but I was able to see much better. The cold pierced right through my clothes and skin. I rubbed my bare arms, glad that I hadn’t worn shorts today. Maybe Corbyn’s message about clothes really was supposed to tell me to wear clothes that could protect me from crazy weather.
The pitter patter on my umbrella stopped and it took me a few seconds to realize that the rain had been replaced by snow. Huge flakes descended from above.
Emerging from the spiral staircase felt like stepping into the north pole. I was surrounded by white. Several inches of snow had piled on the floor and shelves.
“Whatever you are, I h-h-hope you’re n-n-n-not up here,” I said.
It looked like a wooden rail once lined the balcony but much of that had been destroyed—either from the explosion or from the constant storms. Some of the floor was missing. I got as close to the edge as I dared and looked down to see if I could spot anything from above, but the fog was still too dense.
Snow soaked into my tennis shoes, making it even colder. Whatever I was going to do, I better do it fast, or my feet would freeze to the floor.
“Sunny and pleasant is a type of weather too, you know,” I shouted at no one in particular.
I moved though the rows of deteriorating shelves. Walking down an aisle, I found what looked like a shattered vase. What happened to imbued objects that were broken? Did that break the magic too? Or were all the pieces still imbued? Or just one?
And how would I even know I’d found the object? Would it just start talking like Mr. Chronshaw had? What if it was shy? Or didn’t like me?
I reached down and picked up a shard, to see if I could sense anything from it.
“I hope you’re not imbued. It looks like you’ve had a pretty rough go,” I said, turning it over.
It didn’t say anything back, so I set it back down.
“If you change your mind and want to talk, let me know.”
There was very little that was identifiable among the shelves. I came across a pair of metal scissors that were slowly opening and closing on their own accord. I reached down to touch the handles but they didn’t start chatting either. I wasn’t even sure touching them would reveal anything other than the fact that they were wicked cold.
I shivered, wiggling my numbing fingers on the umbrella handle. I couldn’t take much more of this.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a small leather pouch, narrower than the one that Bess gave me earlier. I could barely make out the words etched into it: Magickal Bootlaces.
I was intrigued. I propped the umbrella between my head and my shoulder as best as I could and popped open the flap. Then I gingerly touched the black laces inside.
I didn’t sense anything.
“Are you alive, little guys?” I asked the shoelaces.
They didn’t answer. Maybe they didn’t like to be called little. I sure didn’t. What if I could string them into my shoes to help me run faster? Wouldn’t that be fun to smear in Carl Hyde’s face?
I pocketed them, feeling slightly guilty. Whoever owned them died 200 years ago, right? Did that make it OK?
I looked around, remembering what I was supposed to be looking for.
“Urgh,” I muttered. I didn’t need to see my own emotions to know I felt frustrated, annoyed, and alone. Bess’s spell hadn’t helped.
Then I had an idea. I clapped the back of my hands together a couple times. My coat immediately appeared on my chest. It was surprisingly warm.
“Much better,” I said. My face, hands, and legs were still cold, but this was a significant improvement. Still, though, I wished that Bess had taught me something more useful. Imbued objects didn’t have feelings.
Did they?
Something Bess said came back to me: That clock gets lonely if I don’t chat with it every day.
Lonely was an emotion. So, some imbued objects had feelings. Could I sense them?
I withdrew a leaf from the pouch in my back pocket and stuck it into my mouth. My brain felt like a block of ice between my ears, but I managed to unlock my phone and open the note I’d made earlier.
“Runap sunqunman chayayta atisun,” I said, my teeth chattering. My body filled with warmth that countered the frigid cold of the building.
But nothing else happened. What might an imbued object feel after being stuck in a cursed store for two hundred years? Lonely? Bored? Afraid?
I shut my eyes, trying to channel those emotions myself. I didn’t know how to make my body match whatever object I was looking for, so I tried to keep it neutral. I breathed in and out, loving the warm tingly sensation of magic coursing throughout my body from the leaf. It was like eating Pop Rocks or drinking soda, except the sensation spread from my head to my toes.
I slowly opened my eyes, scanning around. The snow made it hard to see, but I didn’t notice any flashes of light on the upper level.
I moved back from the ruins of the shelves toward the edge of the balcony. A section of it looked like it could collapse down to the lower level any minute. The handrail was practically gone and given how slick the floor was, I didn’t dare go anywhere near the edge. I instead chose a portion that was mostly level with part of the handrail still intact.
Peering down, I saw gusting winds clearing the fog, revealing what looked like a crater in the middle of the floor below. It was amazing I hadn’t walked straight into it earlier. It was too deep and dark to make out what was below the gaping hole. Massive cracks in the wooden floor around it looked like they could shatter at the slightest touch, making the crater even bigger.
Emotion read, I reminded myself. I shut my eyes, reoriented myself, and opened my eyes again. Gazing down, I noticed a brief flash of green down below. It was in the same direction Misty had been heading.
Misty—where was she? Even though most of the fog was gone, I couldn’t see her anywhere. Was she OK?
I made a mental note of the location of the green flash and eagerly fled to the staircase. As I went down, the temperature went up. Once I got down to the main level, I kicked the snow from my shoes, wiggling my toes to restore circulation.
I jogged over rotting wooden shelves toward my goal. A surprisingly pleasant breeze blew as I clapped my coat off, figuring I didn’t need it anymore. The leaf grew bitter, signaling it was about to give out. I hurried and soon found myself in front of a fireplace.
I breathed in and out, ignoring my tense shoulders and the knot in my stomach. As I focused, an intense green light erupted from the fireplace. It was the strongest read I’d had yet. I felt a sense of peace and determination that contrasted sharply with the chaos of the rest of the pop shop.
And then, as quickly as it appeared, it was gone. The leaf had given out. I spit this one out and stuffed it in my pocket, not wanting to litter. Then again, given the state of the shop, it probably wouldn’t make much difference.
A green haze lingered as though my leaf were still working. I could still make out, Arnold the Adventurer etched into the worn wood. I instinctively ran my hand across it and felt a thrill go through me. This felt different. I could sense someone there.
“Are you– are you Arnold?” I asked, excitedly.
I didn’t hear anything, but I felt something confirming that this was, indeed, Arnold, imbued in the fireplace.
“Can you tell me where the Pearls of Prescott are?”
I didn’t feel any specific answer. Bess mentioned that not all imbuings could talk. Maybe it could write or make pictograms or something.
I glanced around and my eyes fell upon the cement above the mantle where lines of text were carved into the stone. The words were blocky and crisp, unlike the wooden mantle. I was surprised that the letters hadn’t eroded. I pulled out my phone and took a picture of the whole thing with the flash on.
It said:
This World is Upside Down.
you will never find the Pearls of Prescott
don’t fall victim to the notion that
you are worthy
I’ve learned this:
trust in my own strength
because of this, I do not
reveal my secrets to the young and unlearned
I will exert every effort to
destroy all my work so the naïve cannot benefit from it
because of what I’ve experienced, I’ll never
trust others
you must
hear me now:
in all of my actions
I will be justified
at the throne of judgment
the key is
betray others before they betray you
the surest way to pain is to
allow others to get close to you
if you learn nothing else, remember this:
when the earth faces its own destruction
I work to prevent the day
of liberation from its own just consequences
I am driven to grant the world the gift of what it is worth
people don’t change
you’d be stupid to believe
if you pursue this path
you can change things for the better
This World is Upside Down.
Well, that’s depressing, I thought. This must be the “manifesto” that Bloomberry mentioned. I stowed my phone and touched the mantle again.
“So you won’t tell me where the Pearls of Prescott are?” I asked.
Something hit my back and at first, I thought it was a response. Then dozens of tiny somethings pierced my shirt, cutting through to my skin. I was immediately enveloped by a cloudy haze, different from the fog. The fog was dense while this was more like what gets kicked up by an air blower.
A thunderous noise pierced the air. I covered my ears, turning around.
A tornado had formed in the middle of the building, between me and where I’d entered. It was at least 15 feet high, reaching up to the ceiling.
“Ah crap.”
I backed up and immediately bumped into the mantle, then started skirting around the side of the room. Wood, glass, and other debris circled around at a dizzying pace as the tornado drew closer and closer. I felt my body start to be sucked in like a spider being gobbled up by a vacuum.
I saw a door on the back end of the building. Maybe it was an exit?
I ran toward it, briefly turning my back on the tornado. I could feel the pull of the air trying to yank me back.
I reached the door. My hands wrapped around the latch and immediately started turning it, but it was either locked or just too rusty to work.
My feet were wrenched out from under me. My hands wrapped around the door handle, desperately trying to keep myself from being pulled into the vortex behind me.
With my feet now above my head, my body felt like it was going to be ripped apart. I didn’t know if I should let go or hang on for all my life.
My hands made my decision for me. They slipped off the handle and I was yanked back. Feet first, I went careening toward the vortex, clawing at the air as I went.
I felt like I might get whiplash as I flew around the tornado. I closed my eyes, trying to protect them from the dust and debris.
I lost all sense of direction as I was spun around and around, rising higher and higher.
The circles my body was making seemed to get wider and wider.
Finally, I was pitched up into the balcony, landing painfully in a pile of snow, in the section of the floor that was inclining downward. My hands fumbled through the frigid snow, trying to grasp at something—anything—but my body started sliding toward the drop off.
My body plunged over the edge just as my hands caught onto the broken stump of one of the railing posts.
I grunted in pain as my fingers gripped tightly onto the cold wood, unsure of how long the post would hold. Glancing below, I saw the crater in the middle of the floor. Dropping into that would really hurt.
After the strain of having held onto the doorknob earlier, I knew I wouldn’t be able to stay here for long.
“Today stinks,” I said.
My hands slipped off. I started falling, waving my arms wildly, hoping to catch onto the edge of the main floor.
Then something came lurching out of nowhere, slamming into me. My body hit the floor hard, but not as hard as I was expecting. I groaned upon impact with the floor, buried underneath another body.
“That was crazy, dude!” a girl’s voice said right over my ear.
For half a moment, I thought it was Misty who had rescued me, but I quickly realized that wasn’t the case. Where Misty’s voice was subdued and disdainful, this new one was cheery—playful even. Not to mention the fact that I couldn’t picture Misty ever uttering the word dude.
The girl rolled off me and clambered to her feet.
“Th-th-thanks,” I said, my body still trying to figure out if it still needed to shiver from the cold.
“I’m Hen, by the way,” she said. Her voice was as pleasant as though we were watching a golf match.
I glanced over and saw the tornado—it had been near the fireplace but was now starting to move back toward us.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said.
“Ya don’t need to tell me twice,” the girl said, reaching down. I took her hand, and she hoisted me up.
With the tornado at our backs, we sprinted toward the entry and out into the sunlight.
The beautiful, bright, and very warm sunlight.
