The Order of Odd-Fish (38 page)

But everything was dimming, wobbling. Her eyes were mashed, full of blood, her body was full of holes, leaking out. She could hardly hold on to the gold thread—and suddenly the Belgian Prankster loomed up like a huge, monstrously beaked bird in the black red haze, coming for her.

In a flash of feathers and armor, Aunt Lily swung back around on her ostrich, leaped off, ignited her lance in midair, and landed in front of the Belgian Prankster, slicing and slashing at him with sizzling double arcs of flame, as rapid and merciless as a machine. The Belgian Prankster fell back, meeting her lance with his beaklike stinger. Aunt Lily ducked, danced away, lunged, and locked her lance against the stinger. They swayed, pressing against each other.

“Run, Jo!” Aunt Lily shouted. “Get out, get out!”

Jo tried to push herself up—and collapsed.

The Belgian Prankster lunged forward, forcing Aunt Lily back. Her shoulders heaved, her body swayed. “Jo, I can’t hold him!
Run!
”

Jo tried, but it hurt too much. Her body didn’t even make sense anymore—she didn’t know where her arms or legs were. She was just a chewed-up, half-melted mass. The world was flickering; any second, it might fall away again.

“Jo,
get out
!” screamed Aunt Lily.

Jo just barely saw, out of her crushed and bloody eyes, the Belgian Prankster lunging with his stinger, thrusting, forcing Aunt Lily back, back—

The Belgian Prankster knocked her lance away.

Aunt Lily stood shocked, empty-handed.

The Belgian Prankster drove his stinger into her chest.

Jo screamed.

Aunt Lily shivered, her arms and legs twitching, and fell. Jo was still shrieking. The Belgian Prankster stopped for a moment and lifted his head to make a peculiar noise—a long, mournful wail, like a snuffling foghorn—as he swayed back and forth.

Then he turned to Jo and grinned.

He started coming for her.

The All-Devouring Mother screamed, its entire enormous body lurching. Everything in the mouth churned up in a sloshing gurgle, surprising even the Belgian Prankster, who slid away from her, startled and off balance, and tumbled down the All-Devouring Mother’s throat—along with Aunt Lily.

Aunt Lily’s eyes fluttered open. “Jo…”

The Belgian Prankster and Aunt Lily swirled down the dark hole and were gone. The throat was angling downward all around Jo, every second becoming more slippery and steep. Jo slipped, but scrambled and grabbed a tooth to hold on as the throat fell away. She looked up and saw Ian staring over the edge of the mouth.

Ian took a terrified step back. Jo pulled him close and pressed the gold thread in his hands.

“Take this,” gurgled Jo. “And run!”

Ian stammered, “I—I—”

“Trust me, Ian! Run! RUN!”

Then the esophagus opened up, the All-Devouring Mother howled, and Jo was sucked down in a flood of spit and gristle.

Jo churned down through a tunnel of jelly and cartilage and was spat down into the All-Devouring Mother’s stomach—now hugely bloated with hunks of buildings and streets and trees, all of it sliding into the shimmering pool.

Aunt Lily was crumpled in the corner.

Jo tried to shout. Her throat wouldn’t work. Little by little she pulled herself over to where Aunt Lily lay. It seemed impossibly far. The world was blacking out, rushing in, flashing and flickering, stabbing her behind her eyes. She fell to her knees, out of breath, next to Aunt Lily.

“Aunt Lily?” rasped Jo. “Can you hear me?”

Aunt Lily’s eyelids twitched and her lips moved.

“We’ve got to get out of here, do you think you can…can you…” Jo looked at Aunt Lily’s gashed chest, her glassy eyes. She didn’t know what to do.

Aunt Lily whispered: “Jo?”

Jo gathered Aunt Lily up and cradled her head. “It’s me.”

“I can’t see.”

“That’s okay, I’ve looked better. Oh no, no, no—” Jo felt her shiver in her arms. Aunt Lily’s breathing became shallower. Jo tried to move her so she would be comfortable, but she didn’t know what to do.

“Everything’s dark,” said Aunt Lily distantly. “I just feel like…I had the strangest dream.”

“I don’t…What?”

“It was marvelous,” said Aunt Lily. “We were together. Some old friends took us in a plane, we went to a city…We had so many friends, and…and…Jo?”

Jo swallowed. “Tell me more.”

“I’ve never had a dream like that,” said Aunt Lily. “It was such a good dream.”

Jo managed to say, “Close your eyes. Maybe you’ll dream about it again.”

Aunt Lily closed her eyes. Jo held her in the flickering light, long after she stopped moving. She clutched Aunt Lily and rocked and didn’t know what to do. Aunt Lily was dead.

When she heard the Belgian Prankster coming up behind her she didn’t move. She felt him, a faint tingle in the small of her back, electricity crawling up her spine. The stinger appeared over her shoulder, and she closed her eyes tight.

The Belgian Prankster put his arms around her. Aunt Lily slipped away and was gone. He was carrying Jo away. She beat him with her arms, but she was weak, exhausted.

The Belgian Prankster whispered in her ear: “I know. I know.”

Jo was crying, but she didn’t feel anything. Her body shook, her mouth made noises, tears streamed from her eyes, but she couldn’t feel anything. He was carrying her toward the glowing pool. Jo stopped fighting and clung to him, burying her head in his furs.

“Soon it’ll be over,” said the Belgian Prankster. “You won’t hurt anymore. Nobody will, when we are all inside you again.”

The pool was right before them, gurgling and bubbling. Jo took her head out of the Belgian Prankster’s furs and stared at it with something like craving.

“Now you know,” he whispered. “Now you understand what we want.”

He was lowering her into the pool. It felt cool and smooth and tingly. Every tension in her slackened, and a tremendous relief stole through her.

“It’s all over now. It’s almost over. It’s like falling asleep.”

The world sank away into watery darkness, and her mind was flowering outward, swelling and unfolding into a vast, complicated consciousness, filling up the All-Devouring Mother, clicking into place in a thousand little points, locking.

She opened her ten thousand eyes.

She glared at Eldritch City all around. She howled—buildings flew apart, the mountain shook, trees were torn from the roots, flung into the sky.

“Now finish what you have started,” said the Belgian Prankster, “Ichthala.”

She lumbered forward, smashed, and ate. She screamed, stomped, chomped, tore, and gobbled blindly. She couldn’t stop. She was feverish, bloated, too fat and disgusting to move, but burning inside, filled with a sucking emptiness that needed more, more, more.

But pain tore through her—someone was pulling her apart. The thread holding her together was straining and ripping loose, pulling further and further out.

“Someone is trying to kill you, Ichthala!” whispered the Belgian Prankster.

Tiny nuisances were flying around, pricking her—fat men with mustaches and beards, some bony old women, boys and girls flapping about on shabby-looking birds—she snatched them out of the air, squeezing them as they struggled against her.

“Who are they?” said the Belgian Prankster.

She didn’t recognize them.

“They are trying to kill you! Take them, crush them!”

She stared dimly, puzzled. Now she remembered them vaguely. But it was worlds ago, when she had a different name…what was her name?

She stopped, confused. What
was
her name?

“Your name is Ichthala!” said the Belgian Prankster.

No, no, something else. The little things were wriggling free—

“That name no longer exists, Ichthala! Kill them!”

Claws snapped, jaws chomped shut. She grabbed the little flying things, tied them up in knots. There was only one left, darting and looping away from her. It had the gold thread, pulling faster and faster, popping open her stitches, yanking the life out of her.

“That’s the one, that one!” said the Belgian Prankster. “Get that one, kill
that
one!”

Her tentacles ran out, snaking and twisting, and caught it. She could feel its tiny heartbeat—a boy on a bird. The boy was still pulling on the gold thread, as taut as a wire. Her vast, bubbling, bulging body trembled, the last stitches straining, stretching with agony. The boy kept pulling the thread, his bird bleating. She focused her ten thousand eyes on him. He was shouting something.

“He’s going to kill you!” screeched the Belgian Prankster. “He, all of them, they want you dead! They’re not your friends, they never were! Now finish it, crush it, kill it, finish it all!”

In a hot haze, she tightened—

And a sudden searing agony shot through her entire body, further out and deeper inside than anything she’d ever known. The last stitch popped open, the last bit of gold thread loosened, the last knot untangled, and the gold thread flew out of her and was gone.

Everything dropped away. She plunged down, tore upward, ripped in half. A rush of stars pulsed, reversed, flourished into a million-spined, burning white snowflake and shattered away.

The All-Devouring Mother fell.

Jo’s eyes flipped open.

She was awake. Someone was holding her under cold slime. She grabbed its hands. They crumbled, burst into fire. Someone was howling. Jo stood up and saw the Belgian Prankster staggering away, stumbling as fast as he could away from her, his goggles off and his eyes wild with terror. Jo was white-hot, pure flames licking all around her—and in a dazzling flash she was upon him, burning him, shredding him, boiling higher and hotter every second, radiating blinding light everywhere.

She grabbed his stinger with fiery hands.

“No! No! No! Don’t do that! Anything but that!”

Jo flared up into a perfect incandescence, scorching lightning rushing through her—and tore the stinger off his face.

The Belgian Prankster screeched, scrambling away, holding his hands to his nose. A whirl of sparks, and Jo flew at him in a streak of lightning, bringing the stinger down.

And then the stomach collapsed; the esophagus collapsed; the heart collapsed; the mouth collapsed; the intestines collapsed; somewhere outside, the All-Devouring Mother collapsed, crashing down on Jo, the Belgian Prankster, everything, everything, and then there was nothing.

F
OR
Ken Kiang it was the final indignity.

Not prison; no, actually Ken Kiang had quite liked prison. He had his little cell, his hour of exercise, his three squares a day—really, what more did a man need?

No, the indignities had started when Ken Kiang was sitting in his cell and heard a screech outside. Ken Kiang ran to the window and was astonished to see a great, four-winged, yellow, purple, and red feathered beast attacking the prison, its talons shredding the walls as if they were cardboard.

The Schwenk (for that was what it was) was accompanied by a flock of armored ostriches, flapping and fluttering around, swooping into the demolished walls; moments later they burst out, each ostrich with a knight, and they all flew away.

The Schwenk started flying away, too. But it hesitated—and with a mischievous glint in its eye whirled and flew straight at Ken Kiang.

Ken Kiang yelped, scrambling across his cell—and the Schwenk came crashing through in an exploding spray of bricks, snatched him up with its monstrous beak, and tossed him on its back.

After that, all Ken Kiang could do was hang on.

Ken Kiang hung on as the Schwenk and the ostriches flew to the cathedral on top of the mountain; hung on as they all dived down to attack a vast, incomprehensible monster, all mouth and teeth and eyes and tentacles; held on when the Schwenk was caught and squeezed by the monster’s claws; held on as a gold thread stretched farther and farther out from the monster, drawn out by a boy on an ostrich, until the boy gave a final yank and the monster fell, unfolding into a melting pile of meat.

And even this was not the final indignity.

It was the congratulations.

“Outstanding Schwenkmanship, old boy!” roared Colonel Korsakov, slapping Ken Kiang on the back. “Never knew you had it in you! A top-drawer Schwenkrider, eh? You must tell me your secret!”

“Thank you, Mr.—
Kiang,
is it?” said Dame Delia. “I don’t know what we would’ve done without your help. I’ve rarely seen such valor in battle.”

“Breathtaking,” agreed Sir Oort. “You are clearly a warrior of exceptional prowess.”

“No I’m not!” protested Ken Kiang.

“Oh, come now,” said Sir Festus.

“Really, I didn’t do anything,” Ken Kiang tried to explain. “I still don’t even know what happened.”

“A modest man.” Dame Isabel nodded.

“But most ferocious when roused to battle,” squeaked Dame Myra.

“I like this man’s face,” declared Sir Alasdair. “He possesses a quiet nobility.”

“Are you blind?” said Ken Kiang. “
Look
at me—I’m the idiot who interrupted your concert!”

“Oh well, it would’ve been interrupted by the Belgian Prankster anyway, right?” said Sir Alasdair cheerfully. “Come upstairs, I want to show you my smells organ.”

“No, no!” interrupted Sir Festus. “Before Mr. Kiang goes anywhere, I move that the Order of Odd-Fish present him with an honorary knighthood!”

The applause, and Ken Kiang’s protests, subsided when Sir Oliver cleared his throat.

“I will not have it,” said Sir Oliver quietly. “I will not allow this…
Ken Kiang
to be given such a preposterous recognition. Honorary knighthood, indeed.”

“Finally,” said Ken Kiang. “The voice of reason.”

“The only suitable reward,” continued Sir Oliver, “is a proper,
full-fledged
knighthood! Therefore I, Sir Oliver Mulcahy, Grand Bebisoy, dub you Sir Kenneth Kiang of the Order of Odd-Fish!”

“Isn’t anyone
listening
to me?” shouted Ken Kiang. But the cheering of the knights drowned him out, and soon he was silenced entirely when the cockroaches dumped the Hat of Honor onto his head.

Jo opened her eyes.

Everything was blurry. Her throat was dry, she couldn’t move. She was in a bed. Her eyes struggled to focus. She saw a chipped wood desk, a wardrobe, a little leaded-glass window…

A lean, spindly man sat at her beside, watching her closely. His dark skin was peppered with freckles, and his round spectacles were perched askew, almost diagonally on his nose. He was saying something to her, but her ears felt sealed with wax. She tried to speak but her tongue was as dry as paper.

The man held a glass of water to her lips. She could hardly open her mouth. The glass tipped and water trickled down her throat, cold and delicious. The fog began to lift. Jo blinked. It was her bedroom. She was at the lodge of the Order of Odd-Fish. And this man…

“Don’t speak,” said Sir Oliver. “It would be too much for you. You’ve been through enough. And Jo…you did brilliantly.”

Jo looked at herself—and her heart, though fragile, managed a feeble leap.

She wasn’t a monster.

Sir Oliver saw Jo’s reaction. “Yes, you’re okay, mostly,” he said. “The gold thread that held the All-Devouring Mother together also bound you to it. Once the monster fell apart, the metamorphosis started working backward. We almost didn’t recognize you when we first found you. But you’ve been coming back to your old self, little by little.”

Sir Oliver paused, weighing his words. Then he said:

“Except for your wound from the Belgian Prankster. That you will always have.”

Jo almost couldn’t hear him. But she could move a bit. The more she tried, the more blood seemed to flow back to her limbs, and she felt like a statue coming to life. She managed to lift her arm. Slowly, with difficulty, she reached behind her neck and felt around. The wound was there, but barely there, a tiny closed mouth.

Then darkness crept in the corners of her vision, stars blinked and swirled—she fell back, her breath shallow and painful.

“Don’t strain yourself.” Sir Oliver gently put her arm back, adjusting her pillow to a more comfortable position. “You’ll be able to move eventually. For now, just rest. Although…there is something I must tell you.”

Jo stared at him blankly.

Sir Oliver took a deep breath. “Lily is dead.”

The fact hit Jo like a hammer. In a dim corner of her mind she’d hoped that Aunt Lily might come barging into her room with some wild, hilarous story of how she survived—the kind of thing that only happened to Aunt Lily, some crazy combination of chutzpah and ludicrousness. Jo would laugh till her ribs hurt, Aunt Lily would already be planning their next adventure, and…

Jo’s face crinkled, but her body was so drained she couldn’t cry. She tried to speak, but all that came was a dry croak. She closed her eyes, all the breath came out of her, and she lay very still.

For a long time Sir Oliver did not speak. When Jo finally opened her eyes, he was dabbing his eyes with a handkerchief. He looked at Jo and gave a small, lopsided smile.

“As for the rest of us, the knights and squires…we’re the worse for wear, but all alive, fortunately. And perhaps a bit wiser. Sir Festus, at least, no longer talks so enthusiastically about dying in the glory of battle.” Sir Oliver paused. “A sprained nose has that effect.”

A noise involuntarily came out of Jo, something more like a cough than a laugh.

“Seems you’re coming around.” Sir Oliver peered carefully at her. “I admit there were days we lost hope. A couple of times we almost lost you. I don’t mean to shock you, but…you’ve been unconscious for about a month.”

Jo’s eyes widened.

Sir Oliver nodded. “Thirty-eight and a half days, to be precise. In fact, today’s the day of the Grand Feast. That means you have been in Eldritch City for one year exactly.”

Jo could hardly comprehend it.

“It’s been a nerve-wracking month.” Sir Oliver looked at Jo with concern. “We brought doctors in, but it seems modern medical science is ignorant on how to treat a half-digested ex-goddess. When we found you, you weren’t much more than a glob of burnt skin, teeth, bones, inside-out guts, strings of cartilage, and…feathers?” Sir Oliver looked genuinely puzzled. “Why on earth had you sprouted feathers?”

Jo answered by drooling.

“I’m going to call that progress.” Sir Oliver wiped away the drool with his handkerchief. “We ransacked the archives for what to do. The best research we could find was from a certain Dame Zulinda, who specialized in avant-garde hypochondria. But even Dame Zulinda, in her most extravagant fantasies, never envisaged an affliction like yours. In the end, we had to accept the inevitable and use the tools we had at hand. Yes,” said Sir Oliver gravely. “I was obliged to dither.”

For the first time, Jo was glad she couldn’t speak.

“At first I merely fudged, I hedged,” said Sir Oliver, his eyes growing distant. “Then I floundered, I waffled, I malingered…I noodled about, I loafed…”

The door opened and Daphne came in with a stack of blankets. At the sight of Jo awake Daphne’s eyes widened, she gave an involuntary “eep!” and threw the blankets down, running back out the door.

Sir Oliver watched Daphne run away with a faint smile. “Everyone’s been taking turns watching at your bedside,” he explained. “There’s a betting pool over who’d be with you when you woke up. I’m happy to say that you have made me a moderately wealthy man.”

Jo could hear Daphne shouting downstairs, and a murmur of voices answering. She looked up at Sir Oliver, her eyes frightened and questioning.

Sir Oliver nodded. “Don’t worry, Jo. Nobody blames you for what happened. Some buildings were destroyed, but it could’ve been much worse. Very few people were killed. The city knows they owe their lives to you. The Silent Sisters gave you a terrible fate—we know. And you handled it better than anyone could have asked.”

All around the lodge, the mumble of voices rose to a roar as doors slammed and feet ran up and down the hallways.

“But I have to apologize to you.” Sir Oliver sighed, and for once there was no twinkle in his eyes. “We were wrong, Jo. Me, and Lily, and Korsakov—we didn’t want to believe you were the Ichthala. We thought all you needed was to be protected from the Silent Sisters. But we should have told you more. We should’ve trusted you. Still, Lily said that even if we were wrong…even if you
were
carrying the soul of the All-Devouring Mother…she assured us you’d never do what the Belgian Prankster wanted. And in that, at least, she was right.”

Jo hardly heard the last sentence; the words
Belgian Prankster
made her body go cold. In her bedroom, in the cozy haze of being half awake, she had almost forgotten about him. Her heart pounded against her fragile chest.

Sir Oliver saw the panicked look in her eyes. “It’s okay. You don’t need to worry about him anymore. We didn’t find the Belgian Prankster’s body, but…” Sir Oliver hesitated, then stood up and held out his hand. “Actually, Jo, let me help you up. I have something you need to see.”

At first Jo thought she couldn’t possibly. But Sir Oliver helped her put her feet on the floor, and with difficulty, she was able to stand. He held her up, and Jo took one step, and then another, and together they inched out of the room, out into the hallway.

Step by hobbling step, Sir Oliver helped Jo around the corner, and they made their unsteady way to the staircase, and down into the common room. Jo squinted around: it was just as she remembered, with Sir Festus’s and Colonel Korsakov’s favorite overstuffed chairs, the fireplace, the huge head of the Prancing Gobbler, the ranks of bookcases and portraits, and…

Something new was on the wall: a withered tube mounted over a dirty scrap of paper. At first Jo didn’t understand what she was looking at—and then she gasped.

It was the Belgian Prankster’s stinger, nailed to the wall, right above a ragged note that Jo had forgotten about:

Sir Oliver turned to Jo and shrugged. “A slapdash memorial, I know, but we were in a hurry and…”

But he never finished. A great happy shout went up, and Jo turned and saw that the room had filled with the knights, squires, and butlers of the Order of Odd-Fish. She couldn’t hold it in anymore, and collapsed into a sob of relief. Sir Oliver held Jo up as everyone gathered around her, cheering. She remembered her first morning at the lodge, the first time she had walked down these stairs, when she wished there was something she could do, something to make her feel like she belonged in the Odd-Fish.