Furthermore (16 page)

Alice bit her lip as she looked Oliver over, taking care to really notice him now. She squinted at the simple clothes he wore—the ones she'd so carelessly dismissed earlier—and this time noted the careful stitching, the heavy fabric, and the expertly tailored fit. She noticed his hands, smooth and unblemished, his nails clean and short and buffed. Her eyes roved over his shiny hair, his glowing brown skin, the healthy brightness in his blue-violet eyes. Alice was beginning to realize something about Oliver that she'd never realized before.

“Oliver,” she said quietly. “Are you
very
rich?”

Oliver blinked fast. “What?”

“Do you have a great deal of money?” she asked, valiantly ignoring the heat blooming in her cheeks.

“A great deal?” he said, eyes wide and surprised. “No,” he said. “I don't think so. Not any more than most people, I imagine.”

Alice bit the inside of her cheek and swallowed back all the things she nearly said.
Much more than me
, she nearly said.
I've never touched a stoppick in all my life
, she nearly said.

“Oh,” was what she actually said.

Oliver wore a pained expression, his cheeks warmed by a truth neither one of them wished to acknowledge, and Alice was surprised to find that his discomfort bothered her. Embarrassed her, even. So she changed the subject.

“The town of Still seems so small compared to Slumber,” she said, staring at the colorful barricade Oliver had built. “Where are we now? Why isn't anyone trying to eat us anymore?”

“Right! Yes!” Oliver said too loudly, relieved to be discussing something new. “Well! The villages in Furthermore are all built differently.” He nodded. “Some are big, some are small, some are very, very tall. But Still isn't a proper village—and it's not meant to be. Still is only home to one person.”

“One person?” said Alice. “But what about all the ladies who just tried to eat us?”

“Ah, well—the ladies of Still are just a security measure,” Oliver explained. “They're here to protect the land from unwanted visitors. But the person we're here to meet has no interest in eating anyone. In fact, he's one of my few good friends in Furthermore.”

“Who is he?” she asked. “Who are we here to meet?”

Oliver met her gaze, the moon glinting behind him.

“Time.”

Alice sat there a moment longer,
waiting for Oliver to tell her he was joking, when he tugged on her braid and said, “Narrow-mindedness, Alice, will do us no good.”

Alice scowled and slapped his hand away from her hair. “I'm not narrow-minded,” she said. “It's just difficult for me to believe that we are actually about to meet
Time
.” She nearly rolled her eyes.

Oliver gasped—and very loudly.

His eyes were wide and horrified, and he dropped his voice to a whisper. “Listen closely,” he said. “Do not let those words leave your lips again. You do not disbelieve in Furthermore. Do it enough times and you'll end up there.”

“End up where?”

“In Disbelief,” he said, and shuddered. “It's a horrid town.”

Alice was afraid to ask him why, so she only nodded and said nothing more, keeping her disbelief to herself.

After their lungs had rested awhile, they walked on tired legs into the Still night, where birds were free to sing and
crickets were free to dance and frogs would happily croak. They walked through grass that grew up to their knees and ponds that kicked quietly at their shores. Oliver stomped on and smiled at nothing in particular, while Alice distracted herself by peeking into the dark woods that crept just beyond, wondering all the while where everyone had gone, or if anyone had ever been, and what Time would look like, and would Time be nice, and what would happen if Time grew old? What would they do if Time died? And then she had a thought that wasn't relevant at all, because she was reminded in a quiet moment that she'd been hungry—very hungry—not too long ago. Strange. She didn't feel it at all anymore.

She mentioned this to Oliver.

“That's not strange,” he said. “Eventually you'll stop being hungry ever again.”

“Really?” she asked him. “But why?”

“Because the longer you stay in Furthermore, the farther you get from Ferenwood.”

“I don't understand,” she said.

Oliver hesitated. Tilted his head.

“Back home in Ferenwood,” he explained, “we have to sleep every night and eat frequently throughout the day, don't we?”

Alice nodded.

“Right. So, life without those two things,” he said, “would be impossible.”

“But not in Furthermore?”

Oliver shook his head. “In Furthermore you sleep for the dream and eat for the taste.”

Alice hesitated, considering his words.

“So when they eat people,” she said, “they do it only for the taste?”

Oliver was so caught off guard by her question that he laughed and coughed at the same time. “Well—no,” he said. “Not exactly. I
have
heard that humans have a very particular taste, and that the magical ones give the meals an extra kick”—Alice shuddered at the thought—“
but
,” Oliver said, holding a finger up in the air, “they eat people because their souls are empty, not their stomachs.

“Here, hunger and exhaustion don't exist the way they do back home. The infrastructure of Furthermore was built with so much magic as to make the very air we breathe work differently—it makes it so food and sleep are no longer a necessity, but a luxury. It was an irreversible decadence that magically bankrupted the land. Now people can indulge in dinners and dreams only in the pursuit of pleasure. Because doing so for any other reason,” he said simply, “is considered a waste of—”

“—time,” she finished for him.

Oliver stopped walking and looked at her. He nodded slowly. “Yes.” He smiled, just a little. “You seem to be catching on.”

“You think so?” she said. “I don't think so.”

“No?”

“No,” Alice said. “I don't think I'm catching on at all. I haven't the faintest idea why we need to meet Time, not a clue what it has to do with the pocketbook, and not the tiniest inkling what any of this has to do with finding Father.” She sighed. “Oliver,” she said, “I have never been more confused in all my life.”

Oliver looked worried for only a moment before his worries danced away. He laughed, which made him look lovely; and then he charged ahead, whistling a tune she could not place.

Finally.

They stood in front of a door attached to no house (this seemed to be commonplace in Furthermore), and Oliver was looking nervous. Alice couldn't understand why—it was just a door, after all, and very similar to the one they had encountered at Border Control—though this one was even bigger, and much taller, and bright red and shiny as an apple, with a fancy handle made of gold. It was a beautiful door, but its secrets must've been contained somewhere she could not see, because on the other side of the door was nothing but trees.

She took a moment to inspect it.

“Where—Alice, where are on earth are you going?” Oliver said.

“I just want to look around,” she said. “It's only right that I have a chance to see what we're getting ourselves into, isn't it?”

Oliver threw his hands up in defeat. And then he leaned
against the door frame, crossed his arms, and nodded, as if to say,
Please, by all means, take a good look
.

So she did.

They were right at the edge of the woods now and surrounded on every side by very, very tall trees whose densely packed, triangle-shaped leaves were a shade of green so dark she had to squint to see their silhouettes. But when she tiptoed farther into the forest, Oliver panicked.

“Not in there,” he said, pleading. “Not—Alice—”

“Why?” She glanced back. The look on his face, really. “What's the matter?”

“Not in the forest,” he said quietly. “Please, Alice.”

“Oh very well.” Alice relented and tried not to roll her eyes, thinking of how gracious, how patient and tolerant she was of Oliver's whining, and turned to leave. But then—

Well, it was strange.

She couldn't move.

She didn't want to alarm Oliver, so she didn't say a word, and anyway she was sure she'd just gotten her skirts caught on a branch or some such. It certainly felt that way.

Maybe if she tugged a little harder?

Hm.

No, that wasn't working either.

She tried again.

Finally, she cleared her throat. “Oliver?” she said loudly. “I appear to be stuck.”

“What do you mean?” Oliver was in front of her in an instant, paler than a wax moon, but careful to maintain his distance.

“Oh, it's nothing to worry about,” she assured him. “Really.” She tried to smile. “It's just that”—she tried tugging—“I can't seem to”—she tugged again—“get free.” She sighed. “Will you see if my skirts are caught on something?”

Oliver went even paler. He was such a little turtle sometimes, his neck disappearing into his chest. “I told you not to go in the forest,” was all he managed to whisper.

“Oliver, please,” Alice said, irritated now. “Don't be such a—”

There was no time to finish that sentence, I'm afraid. No time at all, no, because Alice was suddenly screaming. It was all fairly embarrassing, actually, because the ordeal was over and done with in only a moment.

Alice fell to the ground at Oliver's feet and righted herself in a hurry, dusting off her skirts and whipping around too quickly, trying to get a look at her assailant.

But Oliver's face froze her still.

He was staring at something with a look of shock she could not have anticipated. She thought nothing in Furthermore could surprise him. She thought he'd seen it all. Apparently not.

This was a fox.

An origami fox. A sheet of rust-and-white paper folded expertly into a real, live, deceptively lovely animal.

It scampered about and made little fox noises and yipped and jumped and chased itself; and when it trotted along toward Alice, she wasn't afraid at all.

Oliver had nearly climbed a tree in fright, but Alice stepped forward, hand outstretched, ready to pet the paper fox. It bounded forward and nuzzled her hand before plowing into her legs, and she laughed and laughed and touched the top of its head, awed by the coarse paper of its fur.

“What's your name?” she whispered, crouching down to greet him. Or her. She didn't know. “Are you a boy or a girl?”

The fox jumped around her and bit her skirts, tugging on her clothes. For a fox with no teeth, it had quite a bite. Still, she felt no danger. Her new fox friend held her in place until finally she pet its head again. “Will you let me go?” she asked.

Slowly, it nodded, stepped back, and fell into a bow.

“You understand me?” she asked, astounded.

Again, the fox nodded.

“Alice,” said Oliver, his voice high and shaky. He was rifling through his bag with great urgency. “Could we
please
get going?”

“Do you know anything about paper foxes?” she asked him. “Have you ever seen one before?”

Oliver looked up, startled, his maps clutched in one hand, his notebook in the other, and shook his head. “Furthermore is made up of hundreds of villages,” he explained, now flipping through the pages of his notebook, “and I've only been to sixty-eight of them.” He paused, scanned a few pages, gave a disappointed sigh, and stuffed the notebook back in his bag.

Alice was surprised to see Oliver so anxious.

“I haven't any idea where this fox came from,” Oliver continued, “but he's not from here, and your father—well, your father never mentioned a paper fox in his entries, so this can't possibly be good. No, this can't possibly . . .”

“His entries?” Alice said, surprised. “You mean that notebook belonged to Father?”

But Oliver wasn't listening. He'd unrolled a few map scrolls and was reading them upside down and then right side up, collapsing paper staircases and poking open miniature doors and unlocking tiny windows and finding nothing behind them. He even gave the maps a good shake to see if anything new would fall out, all to no avail. He was looking increasingly worried, which Alice, bless her heart, found highly entertaining.

“It's not right,” Oliver was saying, jabbing at different parts of the map with one finger. “It's not as it should be. There's nothing here about a fox.” He shook his head, hard, and rolled up the scrolls he'd so hastily unfurled.

“Oliver,” Alice tried again. “Is that Father's journal you've got there?”

Oliver's jaw twitched. “What? This? Oh,” he said. “Yes, well, it was all part of my task, you know, to help m—”

“May I see it?” Alice asked, stepping forward. “Please? I'd dearly love to see what Father wrote down.”

Oliver was clinging to his messenger bag so tightly he was nearly vibrating in place. “I'm afraid that's not possible,” he said. “The Elders put very firm magical restrictions on the items I've been loaned for my journey, and if they're handled by anyone but me, they'll know.”

“Oh,” said Alice, crestfallen. She knew how tasks worked and she could imagine the Elders having done such a thing. But more importantly, Alice was still operating under the assumption that she could trust Oliver; she thought she'd be able to tell when he was spinning a lie.

So she believed him.

Oliver was visibly relieved, but Alice, who was once again distracted by the paper fox, didn't seem to notice.

Oliver cleared his throat. “We, um, we should really get going.”

“But he looks so sweet,” she said. “Can't we bring him along?” Alice had little to hold on to in this strange land and she was proud to have discovered something Oliver had not.
She wanted to contribute something important to their journey and couldn't bring herself to give up on the fox just yet.

But Oliver was shaking his head. “Don't be fooled by Furthermore,” he said as he shoved the maps back into his bag. “Please, Alice. Remember why we're here. If we don't stick to my original plan, we might never reach your father.”

Any reminder of Father was enough to set Alice's spine straight. “Of course I remember why we're here,” she said quickly, cheeks aflame. “No need to remind me.”

Oliver nodded and even looked a little sorry to have said anything.

No distractions
, Alice scolded herself. No distractions. Think of Father, she thought. Waiting for help. Hurting somewhere.

That was all it took.

She offered a small smile to the fox (who then scampered back into the forest) and joined Oliver at the red door. They were here to meet Time. They were here to save Father.

She took a deep breath.

“Are you ready?” Oliver asked her.

“Always,” she said.

And they knocked.

The two of them together, her knuckles and his. Oliver said these were important manners in Furthermore. When two people came to visit, both people should knock.

“Otherwise,” he said, “it would feel like a lie, wouldn't it?” He smiled. “Thinking only one person was coming over for tea, when actually it was two!”

Alice raised an eyebrow. She didn't say it then, but she was thinking it: Oliver was growing odder by the moment.

So they knocked on Time's door until Oliver said they'd knocked enough, and then it was time to wait.

“How long?” Alice asked. “How long do we wait?”

“As long as it takes,” he said. “We wait until Time comes.”