The figure in pleated pink lace was examining itself in a full-length, gold edged mirror, rescued from the palatial bathroom and set up in the living space. There were finger waves in the hair, silk stockings on the legs, a red T-strap heel on each foot, and paint on every nail. A string of pearls on a gold chain was fashionably double-wrapped around the throat. The makeup was flawless and understated, as if applied with a fine brush and diluted calligraphy ink, but for a bright red smile.
She felt her waist with both hands, adjusted the skirt, and turned sideways to have a curious look at her rear.
“This is spectacular!” Ann said, beaming. “Is that really me?”
“Well, it’s you plus,” David said, through Erik’s pleased and very un-Erik-like smile. “But shapewear is nothing without a shape to wear it!”
She turned and clasped Erik’s hands. “You’re an artist — a miracle-worker!” She winked. “And you can’t see the scratches at all!”
He drew back uncomfortably. “You were doing very well with that yourself… Erm, yourselves?”
She nodded. “Selves. But I do know you’re trying, dear. That’s the important thing. I won’t be mad!”
“I am sorry.” He shook his head. “For the other thing. I didn’t mean… I thought you were trying to kill me.” He smiled sickly. “I’m much nicer when I don’t think you’re trying to kill me, aren’t I?”
Ann reached out a hand to coax him nearer, but stopped just short of touching. “Cin always said you were.”
Erik looked hopeful. “You’re not just being nice because you need me to finish forging your papers so you can get out of here?” He regarded the expensive suite and its accoutrements wistfully. “I know why you want to, but if it were just me, I’d linger a bit. Just a bit…”
“Could you please do that more quietly?” snapped the General, a hand to her ear. She groaned. “Not you, Captain. What? No, we are not destitute. Or stranded. Control yourself. Erik provided us with an obscene amount of money — I do not understand quite how, but I see no indication that he won’t be able to do it again…”
“We’re not doing it again,” Mordecai put in.
“Yes, we are,” Maggie said.
“We don’t need…”
“We do. We spent most of it on this room, and wherever we end up, we’ll do a lot better if we’re ‘eccentric’ instead of nuts. We’ll do it downstairs in the lobby. These rich assholes can afford it.”
“What about the staff? You think they’re making enough money to…”
Ann addressed David with a smile. “We’ll stay the night. We’ll have a little fun pretending to be rich. But this isn’t home. We want to go home.”
David touched Erik’s hand to his head and gave a low laugh. “Be it ever so crumbled.” He sighed and smiled. “But I understand.” He scooped up a pocket-sized instant camera, strode to the bathroom and rapped on the door. “Alice, my darling…”
“No,” came the muffled reply.
“…Do you need any help with…?”
“No!”
“I am cutting into Erik’s vacation time…” He popped open the door and leaned in. “Oh, gods.” He vanished inside and shut the door behind him. “At least let me fix your hair,” he went on, still faintly audible.
“NO!” Hyacinth was much easier to hear.
David laughed. “You pro-mised!”
Ann patted her hair and examined Milo’s nice new suit, while Maggie and Mordecai conferred over a map and the General finished up her conversation with Sanaam. There were occasional thumps, clatters, snarls, and snatches of fairy-like laughter from the bathroom.
“Milo’s never had a matching suit jacket and tie before!” Ann declared. She looked over her shoulder at Mordecai. “He’s going to look like you!”
Mordecai looked pained, but patient. “Did it absolutely have to be grey?” He favoured grey herringbone, himself, but when Milo wanted a grey suit in a specific fine wool with its own name, he backed away and asked for a tan one, twill weave, in a different cut. Now he felt like a goddamn pith-helmeted colonizer.
Also, this was the nicest suit he’d ever owned. It felt sturdy enough to last until the day he died, and then he might as well get buried in it. It had been tailored, with measurements the god had provided over the phone after simply glancing at him. The stupid trousers had a permanent pleat and didn’t wrinkle when he sat down. Damn it.
“Black isn’t for springtime,” Ann said gently. “I’m sorry, we never even thought of tan. But it looks marvellous on you!”
Maggie looked over with a frown. “Shh.”
“No.” The General dropped her hand with a sigh. “We have concluded our business.” She turned to her daughter. “I wish you had been with your father to tell Mr. Levitt to ‘shh.’ Perhaps he would’ve listened to you. But it makes little difference.”
She turned back and addressed the room, “If we need money, we must wait for them to make port, so they may fill out the forms and wire it, which will take about five days. If we need a rescue, Mr. Levitt insists that, as long as we are located on the coast and have not teleported to the other side of the planet, he can get to us within forty-eight hours… But only once he has wrested control of the boat from the automation. He has no idea how long that will take, but he is trying.”
Incongruously, Maggie was grinning. “Plan B? Are we doing Plan B? Plan B is flexible, we can go back to Plan A at any time! Plan B, right?”
“We are doing Plan B,” the General began. “But…”
“If Erik jumps off the boat,” Mordecai began.
“I can catch him,” Maggie snapped. “He lost me because he ran off, and he can’t do that on water. He’s not a god!”
Mordecai sputtered. “Yes he is!”
Maggie flung a gesture. “Well, that one can’t run on water either!”
“Dear,” Ann began.
The bathroom door popped open and Erik emerged, dragging Hyacinth by the hand like a kitten on a leash. “Come on. Come on. The light’s better out here, and of course everybody wants to see you!”
“I hate you,” said a low, obscured mutter.
He lifted the pocket camera. “Smile anyway! Or that squinchy face will follow you all the way home. You’ll have to make it for every last fascist who says ‘papers, please.’”
“I am never going to stop making it,” said Hyacinth.
Erik stepped back and revealed her new look to the whole room, heading cheerfully for the table. “What if I give you a chocolate…?”
David’s idealized Hyacinth was sheathed in black satin and sequins, with glittering tassels and silver highlights. She had a figure any flapper would kill for, straight up and down like a steel girder, accentuated by three layers of long fringe and three tiered strands of pearls, the lowest of which hung down to her waist. The silk stockings were sheer, smoky black, impeccably rolled beneath rouged knees. The heels were black patent leather, with ankle straps that fastened with a pearl button. The hair was shiny, and smooth, and surmounted by a gleaming black headband with a huge fake black rose and a dyed ostrich feather.
She had an air of a wicked spinster aunt who fucks. She only needed a cigarette holder, a Cosmopolitan in a stemmed glass, and an expression that said she was enjoying this even slightly.
She glared at them all, giving the impression that lighting was about to shoot out of her kohl-lined eyes, and soon after, her whole body would burst into flames.
Or maybe just the offending outfit.
Nobody dared laugh. Ann judiciously stopped smiling.
“Mm?” Erik held up a piece of candy, as if trying to get a dog to sit up for a treat. He put the camera to his metal eye. “Say ‘dark chocolate sea salt caramel’?”
She did not.
“Oh, fine.” He snapped a few flash photos, pocketing each print as it emerged. “Could you move your head a bit so you don’t look quite so much like a forgery, dear?” He wound up moving for her, bobbing side-to-side to give her some three-dimensional motion. “That’s the one! Don’t you look lovely!” He showed it to her.
She peered into his eyes. “Erik? Step away from the window.” She brought the heel of her shiny shoe down on his toes.
David just laughed.
Mordecai yelped. “Don’t do that! You could break something!”
“Oh, dear!” David laid Erik’s hand across his brow. “Oh, I think she has!” He limped theatrically towards the sofa. “Oh! They’ll have your license for this, doctor! Oh! Ah!”
“I’m not wearing this shit,” she said. She whipped off the ridiculous headband and replaced it with her goggles, ruining her impeccable coiffure in the process. “I said you could dress me, I didn’t say I’d wear it. You know that, don’t you? I will become a militant nudist just to spite you!”
David gasped and clutched a hand to Erik’s chest. “You mean you’d endanger your whole family’s wellbeing by making a scene, just to get back at me?”
“Yes!” she snapped, before anybody else could protest.
Erik beamed. “You are my greatest creation. Here.” He handed her a modest stack of wrapped parcels. They had been piled near the sofa with the other supplies, all of them purchased at a steep discount — free — due to David’s god powers. “That was for me. This is for you.”
She didn’t take them.
David clicked his rental tongue. “Honestly. You’ll be happy with them. I promise.” He grinned. “Bet you a million sinqs.”
“You don’t have a million sinqs.”
He waved a careless hand. “Well, I’ll just order some dissolute aristocrat to give you some of his, then, shan’t I?”
She considered him with narrowed eyes. His smile didn’t falter in the least. She snatched the parcels and stamped back into the bathroom.
A few moments later, there was a muffled shriek from behind the closed door. But Erik shooed everyone away. “She’s just being overdramatic.” He winked. “No idea where she gets it from.”
David walked Erik back to the sofa and picked up another parcel, “I have the perfect little outfit for you, too, Maggie, darling. Do try it on while I’m here!” He clasped Erik’s hands. “It’s so fun dressing a human being who’s human-shaped. Fashion designers hate you. They can’t bear a woman with any flesh at all, to speak of. Women with curves are worth looking at. Too distracting! They just want sort of an animate clothes hanger, like Hyacinth, but taller. You’re a delight!”
Maggie stared at him, open-mouthed. She closed it and rattled her head. “Are you hitting on me, you Invisible shitstain?”
He smiled. “I’ll be a wingman, if you prefer. Shall I be Erik’s wingman?”
She shuddered. “Fuck no. And I’m not taking anything off until you leave.” She preemptively covered her pyjama-clad chest. “And don’t come back and perv on me when I can’t see you!”
“Only one way to be sure,” David said temptingly. He offered the parcel again. “You can see me now!”
Five minutes later, Maggie emerged from behind an ornate room divider, in a purple dress with a plaid print on the skirt and a matching scarf belt that gave the illusion her waistline was level with her hips. It had pockets, and spaghetti straps that could be worn over a collared shirt, as David had provided, or a T-shirt, or nothing at all. The distressed denim leggings that came with it had thready holes in both knees. There was also a black overshirt with pearl buttons and a pearl necklace in one of its pockets, which she had stubbornly decided not to wear.
She had at least eight pockets total, six of them at convenient hip height, all of them ready to stow small stolen items or — after some alterations — larger ones.
“Alright,” she said. “It is, in fact, perfect. Thank you.” She narrowed her eyes. “I know you swiped everything you need to know about me out of Erik’s memory and this does not improve my opinion of you in the least.”
David laughed. “I do try, that’s all. I try. I’ll keep trying. General D’Iver!” he sang out, offering another wrapped parcel.
“No.”
He aped theatrical dismay, exchanging it for paternal condescension in an instant. “Come now. You’re all done with the ring and they’re not ready to start on the map, so…”
“I’m busy,” said the General, glowering.
“You’re just standing there,” said David, blinking, “glaring at me like a hungry tiger.”
“I am busy.”
He waggled the parcel playfully. “Only one way to know for sure I’m not peeping at you while you’re naked!”
“I will know,” said the General.
“Uh.” He faltered and drew back. “Can you…?” He peered at her. “What, exactly, is the nature of those magic glasses…?”
“If you ever get anywhere near me or my daughter while we are dressing, the next time you occupy Erik’s body for your amusement, I will know, Mr. Valentine.”
Maggie grinned at him, showing far too many teeth, and offered a single nod of confirmation.
Ann and Mordecai likewise looked uncomfortable and terrified, respectively — and a muffled voice in the bathroom shrieked, “What the hell is wrong with you?” but that was irrelevant.
“Ah. Ah-heh.” He adjusted Erik’s shirt collar and swung away, far, far away. He lit on the violin in its case and picked it up. “Oh! You’re in need of some financial assistance, aren’t you? Every artist deserves a pension!” He flicked open the latches. “Why don’t I just fix this lovely violin so people are compelled to give however much money they have on them whenever he plays? That ought to last until… What?”
Now they were all glaring at him.
“That happened already,” Maggie said tightly. “What are you trying to pull?”
“What?” David clicked Erik’s tongue and rolled his eyes — the metal one did the full three-sixty, like Erik knew how to do. “Oh, fine. I’ll go back and do it earlier, then, shall I?”
The intensity of the glares increased across the board.
“What? Now what?”
“You can time travel?” Maggie said. “Is that what you’re telling us?”
Erik shooed a hand. “Time is just another place to me, dear girl. I’m supposed to wait until someone opens a door, but I’m figuring out how to DIY it.” He shrugged. “I say that because that’s what I remember here. When I go back, I’ll know everything, all at once. I must have figured it out at some point.”
Nope, still glaring. Every last one of them. Mordecai looked a bit more appraising, but not exactly friendly.
Erik planted a hand on his hip. “Oh. Now what?”
“It’s bullshit!” said Maggie. “You sprang that out of Erik’s memory and you’re taking credit for some other jackass god’s idea. No one here is going to play with you.” She glanced suspiciously towards Mordecai, who seemed like he might have a question or two. “No one. So just…”
The bathroom door swung open so fast it hit the wall and bounced back. Hyacinth vaulted out and grabbed David’s borrowed body by its shredded coat lapels. She was wearing something blue, and white, with black canvas shoes underneath, but it was hard to tell anything else while she was throttling David and Erik. “Why did you buy me this? What is the matter with you? Is this a prank? A dare? Did you soak this in some kind of potion that’s going to turn me bisexual? Or into a frog? A bisexual frog? Well?”
“I… I thought you’d like it?” he said, nonplussed
She tore at her hair and stamped her feet in utter silence on the luxurious carpet. “I do like it!”
She was wearing a set of light blue denim overalls with plastic buttons up the sides and rolled cuffs at the ankles. The shirt beneath it was a simple white henley with raglan sleeves.
She whipped a soft cap with a flat crown and a short bill out of the back pocket. “Look at this goddamn hat! It’s got a woolly lining around the band that feels like a fluffy cloud and it fits my goggles perfectly!” She jammed it on her head and spun it backwards, furious. “You don’t buy me things I like, you jackass! You buy me things you like! I’m not one of your little ‘pets’ — I have no respect for you, I never will, I’m stuck with you anyway, and you know that! What happened to you?”
“Well, I…” He flung a delicate gesture over Erik’s shoulder. “I died, somewhat. Briefly. You were very nice to me while I was doing that, as I recall.” He sighed and slumped helplessly, with a self-conscious smile. In that instant, he did look quite a lot like Erik. “I feel a bit guilty. I mean, look at the state of you. It’s all my fault, obviously, and I want to do something to make up for it. You don’t even have my money, darling.”
“I didn’t want your money.”
He waved a hand in front of Erik’s face, as if fanning away smoke. “I didn’t want it, either, but someone was going to get it and I thought you’d at least waste it on something fun. Anyway, I briefly thought you hated me.” He beamed. “So I ran off straight away to improve myself! I almost ruined Hell trying to repent of my sins.” He preened. “I was too much for them.”
She nodded, with arms folded across her breast and a smirk. “Oh. Uh-huh.”
Maggie swatted her, which had no effect on the smirk. “Don’t encourage him. He was just trying to get us to believe he’s a time traveller.”
Hyacinth cackled, which did not improve matters.
Erik refocused on her, with David-like avidity and flair. “Why doesn’t anyone ever believe me, Alice? I tell the truth sometimes. For heaven’s sake, I’m noncorporeal and immortal. Why shouldn’t I be a time traveller, eh?”
“You want moral reasons or logical ones?” she said.
Maggie growled and stamped away. “He’s all done being useful!” she informed the spectacular view from the window. “You know that, don’t you? We’ve got the passports and we can finish with the pictures ourselves. He’s wasting our time and Erik’s!”
David sniffed and tossed Erik’s head. “Logical ones. Obviously.”
“If you could time travel, history would not look anywhere near as sane as it does.”
He pouted. “Is it my fault I can’t do anything unless someone lets me in?” He shooed a hand. “I’m working on it, but you’ll never notice. It’s all retroactive. I’ll have you know Sappho and I had a very long chat and invented being lesbians together — because there is a god,” he laid Erik’s hand on his chest, “and he loves you and wants you to be fabulous.”
Hyacinth broke down — laughing, then crying — and collapsed on the sofa. Ann and Mordecai plunked down beside her. Ann offered tissues, but Hyacinth didn’t take them. She sniffled and wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “Oh, damn it. I’m sorry. I never thought I’d have to deal with this ever again. I’m not used to it.”
Erik leaned down solicitously and rested his hands on his knees. “You really don’t hate me?”
“No.” He offered her one of Ann’s tissues, and this time she took it. “You bother the hell out of me, but I never could hate you.”
He straightened and stabbed the air with a finger. “Well, I’m going to go straight back to Hell and earn myself a redemption! You deserve it!” He turned and wandered off towards the table. “Although, the boy did promise me champagne and chocolates…” He winced at the vase of roses and turned away from it, leaning against the table while he ate.
Mordecai approached him carefully, with the violin in its case. “Mr. Valentine?”
“Yes?”
“If you did fix it, or you can… Could you fix it so people don’t give more money than they can afford?”
Erik scowled. “What? Oh…” He set down the champagne glass and took the violin. “How the hell am I supposed to do that? People have no judgment, they have no idea what they can afford, and the richest ones are stingier than anyone! Ugh.” He sighed and raked back Erik’s hair with a hand. “A progressive tax? You want an income-related progressive tax? You like that sort of thing?”
Mordecai nodded warily. “On the violin, not… not on the rest of the world. I mean, if we’re going to have one on the rest of the world, we ought to do it ourselves. Please.”
“Listen.” Erik held up the violin and shook it scoldingly. “Rich people are pigs and cattle and you should eat them. I have done my best to make your violin as fair as you like…”
“Thank you.”
Erik scoffed. “Oh, please. You don’t believe me for a minute. And you’re going to spend your whole lovely trip home whining about not wanting to use it, in case it’s not fair. I can’t change that about you, I’m just annoyed. You shouldn’t even be trying to play fair, they’re not. Greedy livestock, they’ll eat until they burst.”
Mordecai just nodded. Ann protested, perhaps unwisely, “Aren’t you, um… Weren’t you rich, dear?”
David pulled Erik’s face into a truly hideous smile. “I stole it. All of it. I killed for it. A slaughter. That is the only ethical way to get any money at all — and then you ought to spend it as fast as you can.”
“‘Money is bullshit,’” Hyacinth said with a grin.
Erik set the violin back in its case and toasted her with the champagne. “Money is bullshit. It’s only good for buying things that have real value. Like fun.” He smiled and toasted all of them. “And devotion!” He glanced over his shoulder at Maggie, who still appeared less than delighted. “I do try. One must try. Ah.” He set down the glass. “But I’ll be nice. This time. Ta!”
Erik staggered and caught himself on the edge of the table, blinking and shaking his head. “Bleh.” He stuck out his tongue. “Bleh. Bleh. That was a vanilla creme. Dark chocolate. Bleh.” He took a swig from the bottle of champagne. He blinked at it. “That’s not bad, but it’s not as good as it is for him.”
They were all glaring at him.
“Erik?” Hyacinth said suspiciously.
“What?” he said. “Oh.” He sighed. “Okay, now that he fooled all of you, I have no idea how I can prove I’m not him.”
Maggie spread her arms. “This dress looks terrible, actually. That guy has no taste. I hate it.”
Erik cackled. “And Elton John sucks! We good?” He opened his arms for a hug.
She did, stiffly at first, but she softened when he put his arms around her. She looked up with a smile. “Yeah, this is you.”
They all gathered around him and most joined the hug — the General abstained, from a reasonable distance. There were many compliments and reassurances. Hyacinth insisted four or five times that she wasn’t sad, and she loved seeing him again, until Erik finally cut her off and warned, “He is over there, listening, right now, and if he smiles any wider, it’s going to meet at the back and the top of his head will fall off.”
She glanced in that direction and offered a shrug, and a smile. “Let him.”
“Hang on.” He shooed a hand at her. “He’s talking.” He cringed. “I don’t want it. Because it’s probably gonna give me cancer or something. No…” He backed off, then groaned and slumped with a sigh. “I have been involuntarily blessed, I have no idea if he actually did anything, and he says he’s gonna follow us all the way home and make sure we have fun.”
“Oh, gods,” said Mordecai.
Maggie looked ashen and the General sighed.
“He is a dear,” Ann said, smiling.
“You said you were going straight to Hell!” Hyacinth hollered. “You ass!”
Erik was shaking his head. “He says he’ll do that too. And he’s gone.” He glanced from side to side. “I think.” He caught sight of himself in the window glass and cringed.
David had put him in distressed black denim leggings that perfectly offset the distressed black velvet coat. At first glance, he didn’t hate it…
And that felt like an ice cube dropped down the back of his shirt.
“He didn’t even take off the T-shirt.” He brushed at the black writing, which Maggie had affixed with a charm so it wouldn’t smudge. “He didn’t hate the T-shirt — I need another flower.” He swerved back to the table and broke the bloom off one of the roses. “And some stains…”
“Dear one…” Mordecai scurried over just in time to catch some of the splashback as Erik poured champagne down the front of his T-shirt.
“Does this look too classy?” Erik said desperately. “Can you tell it’s expensive? Don’t we have anything other than roses? Agh!” He’d just noticed the writing on the palm of his hand — like a label or a name tag! He licked it and rubbed the ink on the edge of his shirt, but that didn’t fade it much. “I am not David Valentine… I need a haircut!”
“We’ll work something out,” the gentleman in the new tan suit said soothingly. “Wait…” He staggered back a pace. Erik was approaching with a pair of scissors, liberated from a cup on the desk.
He offered them, point first. “At least get the back! I can never get it even in the back!”
“Oh, gods.” Mordecai took the scissors with relief. “All right, all right…”
The General snapped fingers above her head. “Pardon me. If anyone in the room is willing to be sensible, I require relevant information. As I was saying — before I became further distracted — I was busy trying to discern whether your father was yelling at Mr. Levitt or me, and I do not know what Plan B is.”
“Oh!” Maggie handed over a postcard map of Anatolia, purchased at the gift shop downstairs. It was scratched with multiple pencil marks and one definitive trail of black ink. “We had time to work out the whole route, we just need to buy the tickets. And if we want…”
The General peered at the map. She pinched her thumb, index and middle fingers together, then spread them apart. Twice.
Maggie blinked. Maybe the text on the map was too small to read, but the shape of the thing was obvious, and that big black ink trail should’ve been even more obvious against the pale blue sea.
“Farsia?” yelped the General.
Maggie snickered. Oh. That was it. Like a double-take. “It’s the most efficient way.”
“It is not. The most efficient way, via boat, is to take river barges through Piastana and Gundaland, arriving in San Rosille via the Arles or the Bristol Sea. Why are we going to Farsia?”
“Milo wants to see Farsia,” Ann said softly.
The General turned with a scowl. “We are not on vacation!”
Maggie slid in between them. “‘Efficient’ doesn’t always mean ‘short,’ Mom. Dad can pick us up at any point along this route, not just when we get to the Bristol Sea…”
“I doubt,” said the General.
“And,” Maggie overrode her, “if he can’t, they don’t hate people like Erik in Farsia. I am one-hundred-percent positive that Farsia is not complicit with Prokovia’s… hatred of people like Erik and Em. This is a matter of history, politics, and demographics. If Erik flips out in Farsia, or Zanzamin, they will definitely help him instead of shoot him. I can’t say that for Piastana or Gundaland.”
The General dropped her face into her hands with a groan. She didn’t even bother to push up her glasses.
Maggie grinned. She strode right past Erik and Mordecai, who were having a desperate discussion about the mechanics of “layering” — “Just try it! I literally do not care how it looks! I have a hat!” — and clasped Ann’s hands. “Tell Milo we’re going to Farsia!”
◆◆◆
The jagged, rocky coast and similar jagged islands had been an entire mountain range a double handful of lifetimes ago. A little slave rebellion in the far south had closed off one sea route, so the enterprising silk aficionados in Xin and Farsia opened another one — and damn the environmental consequences.
The human cost of drownings, famines, diseases, wars and refugees had long since ceased — pretty much. It wasn’t bad for commerce, in the long run. They weren’t wrong about that.
And look at all these brilliant, beautiful green islands! Fit for both human and tourist habitation! Where only the hardiest of mountain-climbers would have dared to go before! And, even then, only if they had a few unlikeable teammates along for a snack!
Adjacent to the floating dock, there was a boardwalk with shops and a short pier with coin operated binoculars. Hyacinth’s displaced household — harried, disorganized and late as always — had time for neither.
Fortunately, the boat was still there, with porters loading up the cargo. It was a flat-bottomed barge, well suited to navigating the Silk Strait but, Maggie knew, slow and frustrating once it reached the sea on either end.
Erik’s family had quite a lot of cargo themselves: games, books, a portable radio/cassette-player with headphones, and full wardrobes, all of it contained in tasteful, matching luggage, with the address of the Neuestal in Zadrakarta firmly written on every tag. As for Erik himself, well…
He had finally deigned to put the coat back on, assured that David had been visibly annoyed at the damage to its tailoring. Before that, he’d been insisting he was not cold, while shivering in his stained T-shirt, the crooked top hat, his new chopped and distressed hairstyle, and a set of floral surf shorts he’d seen on the discount rack in a store window. He needed those cheap, unfashionable shorts now. He didn’t want anything David had picked out for him.
Thus, they were running a bit late and had no time for any other shopping.
Erik detoured on the way to the dock, without warning. It turned out he wanted a large white daisy he’d noticed in a planter box. Maggie grabbed it for him and dragged him away by the hand.
“Don’t flip out on me, man, okay?” she said quickly. “You do not look anything like David, I know this is you. You actually are going to be fine this time — this is just a day trip and I’m not letting you out of my sight. We’ll be in Farsia for dinner, and you can buy all the new funny T-shirts you want. We can stay on deck the whole time and there will be no windows at…”
He’d stopped walking. When she looked back, he was scowling at her. “Yeah, Mags. Thanks. That fell right outta my brain. Couldja tell me again? I don’t feel broken enough yet.”
She grinned, shamefaced. “Heh. Sorry.”
He sighed and slumped. “No. You’re right. You have reasons. Oh!” A burly man bearing a stack of crates had just bumped into him — a burly yellow man, with close-shaved white hair.
Erik broke into a huge, relieved grin. “Hey, frere!” But the man narrowed his eyes with a frown.
A pink gentleman with longer hair and a burlap sack slung over one shoulder dodged in between them. He offered Erik a smile. “Anglais? Marsellia?”
Maggie snickered. Once again, their brand of crazy had an obvious nationality.
Erik nodded, rather more subdued.
The pink man clapped him on the back with a huge hand. “Bon voyage!” He addressed his yellow friend in a lower voice, scoldingly, in Iliodarian.
Maggie leaned in and whispered in Erik’s ear, “He says you’re just glad to be getting out of this fucked up country.”
Erik beamed. “Couldja tell him he’s right?”
Maggie saluted. “¡Claro que sí!”
