Erik was observing with an unusual amount of interest, as he made another mark on his arm and wound the dial back.
John capped the pen and looked up with a sheepish smile. “Hey, what’s up?” If it was anything about counting the days before David came back — or, really, any association between David and the tally marks at all — they were going to need some more time with the teapot before bed. Erik hated David; when he remembered things, he made plans.
“What’s the deal with that timer?” Erik asked. He snickered. “Or did you tell me already and I forgot?”
John winced, but caught it, and tried to remake his smile from memory. “Um, not so much that I told you, I don’t think. It’s because of something that happened a while back and I suppose we don’t talk about it… I don’t like to upset you.”
“Oh, well, then nevermind,” Erik said with a wave. “I’ll just look at my pictures instead!” He began to leaf through the pile of calendars on the desk.
“Wait, wait. No…” John stopped him with a hand, pained. “Sometimes I get upset about all the stuff I’m taking away from you. This is something that could hurt you later if you don’t remember it…”
“Oh, then you’d better write it down,” Erik replied. He pulled out the desk drawer, and lay his hand on a pad of sticky notes.
“I can’t,” John said. “Because if someone else saw it we could get in big trouble. We had to…” He shook his head. “Do you even remember the room with the boat?”
“The ducks are an improvement,” Erik said. This was a line John had fed to him, perhaps forty or fifty times by now. Erik had once been quite upset about losing the room with the boat, and at a time when being upset could’ve killed him.
John sighed. “We have the room with the ducks because I screwed up.”
“Sweet!” Erik said, admiring the ducks.
“No, not ‘sweet.’” John tugged him away from the painting by the hand. “Can we sit and talk? And try to be serious?”
Erik sat in the desk chair and leaned back with a grin. “I’ll give it a shot.”
John leaned against the desk itself, arms folded, pensive. “I need to know if this information is hiding somewhere in your brain. And if it’s not, I need to try to get it in there. For… For later.”
“For when we’re all done saving the world?”
“For when you are,” John said. “Do you remember being sick?”
“Sure! You’re helping me.”
“No,” John said weakly. “Not like that…”
◆◇◆
David had just finished producing yet another passport stamp, and he was running Erik’s mouth about some pointless thing while they worked out what they were going to do with his “free time.” Something about techno music and synco music and he bet he could wire up some synthetic drums if he had the materials and the time, and then they could…
But he trailed off with a frown, and Erik’s hand drifted to his metal socket, rubbing absently. “This isn’t right. Johnny…?” Then he, or Erik… Maybe both of them, or neither. Maybe the fever was already running the show. The body in the chair arched backwards with a gasp. Both hands came up, as if in shock, and he began to tremble.
“David?” John caught him by the shoulders and the shaking only grew worse. “Stop! What’re you…” Erik’s body felt like a furnace, even through the shirt, and the fabric was grey with sweat under the arms. “Damn it, David…”
David often got distracted and forgot to provide Erik with the necessities of life — food, water, bathroom breaks and similar. But he’d barely been there for half an hour! What could Erik possibly be missing that would mess him up this bad?
All the tension let go at once and Erik slumped against him, grey eye closed and metal eye showing the blank gold back. “Bathroom, John,” he muttered. “Please…”
Well, that seemed to be at least a partial answer. “Erik?” John asked cautiously. He’d never known David to bugger off like that, no matter how inconvenient Erik was being.
Erik brought his head up and looked at him, glazed and desperate. “Please.”
“Okay. Yeah. Here we go.” John helped him up. It wasn’t far. He got Erik situated and politely removed himself to the opposite side of the closed door.
Food poisoning, he thought. What did he eat that I didn’t? He shook his head. That didn’t matter. The gift shop in the lobby would have stomach medicine. And juice, or soda… He’d go as soon as he could get Erik out of the bathroom and tucked into bed. He didn’t like to order room service, the front desk barely understood him.
He was scouring the phrasebook for what “stomach medicine” or “club soda” might look like, when he heard the distinct sound of vomiting and peeked back into the bathroom.
Erik was still sitting on the toilet. He’d puked in the wastebasket. John thought that was a pretty clever solution, all things considered. He knocked on the door frame and asked, “Okay?”
“No,” Erik managed, without looking up.
“It’s okay. Just… Just get it out of your system.”
Erik groaned and threw up again.
John closed the door and returned to the phrasebook, now looking for “doctor.” He found it easily, just after “bathroom” and “taxi” on the first page, and shook his head. Erik had papers and plausibility, but he wasn’t supposed to be here. They couldn’t invite a stranger in to poke at him and ask questions.
He pawed through the desk drawers and discovered the sheet of smart paper, glowing faintly. He held it up with a laugh. “I didn’t throw this one away!” No one answered, but it didn’t matter. He found a pen and wrote: Do we have Dr. in Cinovec?
A moment later he added: It’s John and Erik.
And then: Erik v. sick. Need Dr.
The response faded into view below his last words, one letter at a time: Ketchup26.
“What?” he demanded of the paper, shaking it. The words remained. He smoothed the glowing sheet out on the desk and was about to write “what” when more words appeared: Babe, need callsign. We’re Ketchup26.
Hang on, he wrote, instead. He began dumping out desk drawers. He had to have that somewhere!
After he had no idea how long, he discovered a likely suspect on an errant sticky note: May ‘86! Ketchup26 — free to speak. Daffodil19 — coerced. Mockingbird16 — free to speak. Salt24 — coerced.
“Oh, that’s clever of us,” he said with a laugh. “Wow. I really should remember stuff like that! When did we start…”
He heard the sound of a toilet flushing (hopeful) and then a shuddery thud followed by a series of smaller thuds (terrifying).
Erik had fallen backwards into the bathtub. He was visible only from the knees down. One shoe had come off and his heels were drumming the side of the tub, a senseless rhythm like a tree branch banging the window in the middle of the night.
“No-no-no,” John said. He dove past the curtain and tried to hold the boy still. “Stop. Stop. Please stop. Erik, are you hearing me? Please stop!”
He was struggling to remove his belt, heeding some half-remembered advice on how to keep epileptics from swallowing their tongues, when Erik finally did stop. His hands went limp and struck the porcelain surface of the tub, then stilled. His metal eye spun and settled askew, focused somewhere near the soap dish. The grey one was closed.
“Erik, are you alive?” John cried.
“Tired,” Erik said softly. He curled onto his side and rested his cheek against the porcelain. “Cool. Sleep now.”
“No-no-no, please don’t sleep now!” He tried to drag Erik upright, but he just didn’t have the leverage or the manoeuvrability. He clambered out of the tub, skidded on the tile, and ran for the desk — he could see the smart paper and the pen. “Stay with me, Erik! Don’t go into the light!”
Mockingbird16, he scrawled. Erik just had SEIZURE. HELP NOW!
He scrambled back towards the bathroom without waiting for a reply. Halfway there, he executed a rapid U-turn, and snagged the teapot and the cheatsheet of Invisibles out of the black bag.
John dropped painfully to his knees on the tile, trying to read two pieces of paper at once and understanding neither. “Are you with me, Erik?”
“The spoon should be on the bathroom window,” Erik said, muffled against the tub.
Ketchup26, faded into view on the smart paper. Looking for help near you. Need more info. Other symptoms? What happened?
John set that one aside. He’d get back to them. They’d understand. “Erik, I’m going to help you call someone. You need a healer. Look…” He cast about for a good place to set the teapot and decided to just put it in the tub by Erik’s head. “Here, you don’t have to sit up, just look.”
Erik managed to get his eye open. The metal one was still having a look at the soap dish.
“Please focus,” John said. His voice cracked, so he cleared his throat and tried again, calmer and quieter, “Please focus. I need you to get us Beauty. Make a deal for sleep. Here…” He wrote Beauty, for sleep on the back of the cheat sheet. With a shudder — he wasn’t used to it yet — he put two fingers on Erik’s metal eye and rolled it forward so it could read the writing. “You see?”
“Mm-hm,” Erik managed, blinking slowly.
“You understand?”
“Mm-hm. Beauty. Sleep.”
“Yes. Great. Perfect.” John took a deep breath and blew it out. “Okay. Go.”
Erik’s grey eye rolled closed. The metal one stayed right where it was, focused.
A split second later, Erik gasped, tensed up, and began to shake again.
“No!” John dropped the cheat sheet and knocked the teapot aside. “Shit-shit-shit! Oh, shit! Oh, gods, please stop doing that. Please stop…”
“…want Hyacinth,” Erik muttered, when the shaking ceased. “Feel sick.”
“Erik, what about Beauty?” John said. “Did you get to the place where the gods are?”
“Won’t come,” Erik said. He sobbed. “Don’t like me anymore.” He was crying without any tears. “I’m sorry I can’t help anymore. Can I go home now? Please, so tired…”
“Erik, you need water.” There were paper cups by the sink. He filled one and climbed into the tub with it. “Here. Here. Drink. Shhh, please just try to drink. That’s okay.” Without much hope, he asked, “Is that better?”
“Feel sick,” Erik said.
“I know. I’m trying to get help for you.” John collected the smart paper and wrote: High fever. Erik was holding David, lost him or he left. Can’t call anyone to help him, says they won’t come. Threw up. Crying but no tears. Barely making sense. Keeps shaking. Can’t leave him. Need help now.
It took only an instant for the reply to fade in: Keep him cool. Put him in bathtub, THEN fill with cold water. DON’T THROW HIM IN. Fewer shocks, fewer shakes. More info to come, check back soon…
“Oh, how convenient!” John cried. He put the stopper in the drain and turned on the cold tap… after which point he remembered he needed to sit Erik up somehow so he wouldn’t drown. He wrapped both arms around Erik’s middle and dragged him to the tap-free end of the tub, then he didn’t know what to do. He needed his arms back and the ability to get up and move around!
“Oh, yeah, yeah,” he muttered. “Put the guy having seizures in the bathtub with water, that’s a great place for him! No downsides! You morons…”
He finally — it was a good thing he knew some magic! — hardstuck the back of Erik’s shirt to the wall of the tub. After carefully letting go, it seemed like that would hold, and wasn’t disquieting enough to induce more shaking.
Erik lifted his hand out of about two inches of water and examined the palm with exhausted disinterest. “Wet.”
“Yes, it’s a new thing we’re trying!” John said. “Cold bath with clothes on! It’s, uh, a laundry fad! Which is a real thing I read about in a magazine or something…” He picked up the smart paper, hoping for some of that information he was promised.
What he found was: Group consensus — this happens to people who can call lots of gods + hold them a long time. God fire/fever. Broken brain puts body in overdrive. Back soon w/ more info…
Erik is SCREWED. Needs Auntie Enora or he’ll DIE. We’re working on a chain, but you’re on your own until we can figure out how to get her to you. Must keep him calm + quiet + COOL. Give ice water if he’ll take it, but most important CALM, QUIET, COOL. I’m sorry, John. Keep checking for more info. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can…
“Oh, gods,” John said — very calm, very quiet, and cold. Not cool. Freezing, ice-cold, like someone had punted him out of the window and into the hard, stubborn spring snow seven storeys below. Afraid now to even move, he tried to smile. “Okay, hon. Just gonna get you some ice, so you can have some nice cold water to drink. I’ll be right nearby with the phone if you need me. Just… however near I can stretch the cord, okay?”
The cord reached almost to the bathroom doorway, so he sat there on the floor and tried to make himself understood to room service and the front desk, and just the hotel full of clueless foreigners in general.
Okay, he was the clueless foreigner, but he didn’t have the headspace for cultural sensitivity at the moment. He went full Marselline moche and ended up screaming into the receiver with his incomprehensible accent, “Led! Led! Led! This is your stupid language! The clear stuff on the ground outside! Barafa! No? Well, I thought I might as well try! Send someone up here and I will draw it on a piece of paper! If you don’t get me ice right now, I will never tip anyone in this entire fucking country ever again! No tips! You understand that? No tips!”
He missed the cradle when he tried to hang up, but he got it on the third try. Then he crawled back into the bathroom to check Erik.
Erik did not react well to multilingual screaming, even if it was in the next room and not directed at him. Fortunately, John had a shiny teapot and the ability to do some light mind control. They did the list, to which John added some extra instructions about remaining calm, not minding the bathtub, and getting rest. By the time the concierge — who either had the most authority or the best grasp of Anglais — showed up with an ice bucket, Erik was almost asleep.
“Bin! Here!” the uniformed man explained, indicating the ice bucket which came with the room. It was on a tray on the dresser, next to the coffee maker, electric kettle, and hazardous-looking hotplate. “Mashina! There!” He pointed out the open door towards the hall. “Self! Serve!”
John yanked the full bucket away from him and set it aside. “Yes, that’s all well and good, but my friend is trapped in the bathtub, very ill, and if I leave him to fill this bucket myself, when I come back he may be dead. We need him to help us blow things up and resist your tyrannical government, and I’m rather attached to him, so you’re just going to have to put up with me for the time being.”
The man bowed. “Please. Slow.”
“If it were possible for me to get any of that across, you would call the police, or possibly your local insane asylum, so just forget it.” John offered an unknown amount of folding money to make up for the total lack of comprehension. “Thanks for the led!” He saluted. “Have a nice day!”
The man pocketed the money with a smile, bowed, “Nice day!” and departed.
He didn’t know how long it took. The glowing sheet of paper gave him occasional updates in the vein of “still working on it,” and responses indicating they understood the situation and he just had to keep Erik as calm, quiet and cool as possible — lest he exhaust himself to death.
If they couldn’t find someone who could hold Auntie Enora and some way to get that person to the Hotel Korolevskiy in Cinovec within the next few hours, Erik was going to exhaust himself to death anyway, so it really was a matter of doing one’s best in a horrible situation. Not that that made it any easier.
It grew dark outside. He had begun dumping buckets of ice into the tub itself — even though that upset Erik and set off more shaking. There didn’t seem to be any way to prevent Erik from getting upset and shaking — even the list and the teapot didn’t work anymore.
Erik was no longer in contact with reality on any level. He spoke to people who weren’t there, not even Invisibles who might be there. He addressed John as Milo, or Hyacinth. He begged Maggie to come back with the grape soda. He said he didn’t want to be sick in the basement. He said he wanted to go home. He burned and shuddered. He cried out, but with less and less strength.
It was hardly a whisper when he said, “No. Can’t. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, Erik,” John replied, without much hope.
“Okay,” Erik said with a sob. “Try.” He lifted his head and focused on John. “Auntie Enora is there.” He tilted his head towards the corner, by the sink.
“Auntie Enora?” John shot to his feet. “Can she help us?” He addressed the corner by the sink, “Can you help us? Please! We need…”
“Please, so hard,” Erik said faintly. “Talking…”
John closed his mouth. He crouched beside the tub again, waiting for whatever else might come.
“‘He needs a doctor, Mister John,’” Erik said. He winced and turned his face to the wall. “No more, no…” His hands came up and he began to shake again.
John held him until it ceased, then he wandered back to the phone.
“Ice?” asked the tinny voice on the other end.
“No,” John said numbly. “Doctor. Doktor. Please.”
That… was a mistake. With hindsight, an obvious mistake. At the time, he’d weighed divine will as a little more important than keeping a low profile. He’d been told Erik would die without medicine from Auntie Enora, but also that he needed to keep Erik alive until they could work out how to get him that medicine. Doctors were better at keeping people alive than convenience store owners and part-time terrorists! Right?
The hotel had one on staff, although he was already in his pyjamas. With the help of the concierge, he managed to get it across that John and Erik had done something illegal, and he would have to notify the police.
“No! I have papers!” John insisted. He pulled the whole drawer out of the desk and held up the folder with Erik’s fake passport and Registry certificate. According to both, he was low-powered, untrained, harmless, and exempt from labelling due to a metal allergy (trauma-induced, see photos). “See? Everything in order! No magic! Absolute Zero!” Several empty containers, which John poured down the sink on a regular basis, were in the drawer as well.
Apart from being high-powered, well-trained, dangerous, and allergy-free, Erik was magic-enabled twenty-four/seven. He’d tried Azee only once, when it first came out, over four years ago. He had an instant, five-hour panic attack and never tried it again.
“Magic make sick,” the concierge translated. “No magic, no sick. Must politsiya. Sorry!” He addressed the doctor with rapid words that John could not decipher, even with the phrasebook.
The doctor nodded.
The concierge signed John two pleased thumbs up. “Okay! He zhdet… zhdet…” He pointed to the watch on his wrist. “Tomorrow! Man die, he die…” He drew a finger across his own throat. “Schkkrt! Die soon! We brosim…” He mimed tossing a largish object, two-handed. “Body, Potok Reka. Reka?” He pointed out the window.
“The river?” John guessed queasily.
“Potok River!” said the concierge. “Yes! Body go ‘river.’ You go ‘way. Then we politsiya.” He mimed dialing a phone. “No mess for hotel! No mess for you! Okay?”
“What time?” John said. “Please? What…” He paged through the phrasebook with a shaking hand. “Kotoryy seychas chas? Tomorrow. Politsiya.”
The concierge tapped his watch again. “Afternoon? PM? Teatime! Okay?”
“Okay,” John said. “Thank you.”
The concierge mimed a phone again. “He die, you call, we help. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Need help pack?”
“No, thank you.”
“More ice?”
“No, not at the moment.”
“Okay!”
After a moment of blank staring, John remembered he was required to tip again. He gave a random bill to the doctor and to the concierge, and shut the door behind them when they left.
When he staggered back into the bathroom to retrieve the smart paper and let everyone know what an idiot he’d been, he found a new message waiting for him: You need to get a cute animal right now. Something you can fit in the room and pet. John? You there? *beep* We have help, but you need a cute animal. Pls respond! *beep* *beep*
While he was madly searching for the pen (it was in his shirt pocket) another “beep” formed on the page and sounded out loud. He didn’t know how he’d missed the other three. Just too distracted by the impending disaster, he guessed.
He wrote: Here! Cute animal??
Sending Greg, but need reason. Then Enora. You get animal, describe for us. OK?
OK! he replied, with a double underline.
He grabbed up the phone.
“Ice?”
“No!” he cried. “Cat!”
“Prostite?”
“Uh… Uh…” He juggled the phone and the phrasebook, dropping each in turn. “Koshka! Cute koshka! Baby koshka! Ma-malen’kiy koshka!”
“For… eat?” the female voice on the line said doubtfully.
“I’m not going to eat a cat! Why would I eat a cat? What is wrong with this backwards-ass country? Get some stereotypes that make sense!” He clapped a hand over his mouth and shut his eyes. Erik didn’t like it when he got loud.
“Is the concierge there, please?” he said tightly. “I’ll wait.” A few minutes later he said, very calmly, “Hello. I’m sad my friend is dying and I’d like a cat to pet. A kitten, if you have one. Cute. Nice-looking. Aesthetically-pleasing. I don’t even care. I’ll make it work. Cat. Understand?” He breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank you. Please hurry. I tip well.”
Half an hour later, a bellhop with scratches on his hands delivered a snarling hat box. John tipped another random bill, closed the door and — perhaps unwisely — opened the lid. An orangish blur vaulted out and crammed itself in the small space under the bed.
Pressed flat to the floor, with nothing but a keychain penlight, John did his best to render a description on the paper: Orange. Stripey. Green eyes. Pink nose. Missing left ear. V. angry. Cat? Wolverine? Don’t know Prokovian animals. Will that do?
Hang on, materialized on the paper.
“Did… Did you just pee?” John inquired of the mystery animal. “Hey. Don’t… Don’t pee…”
It hissed at him. He swore he saw sparks fly out of its mouth.
“I’m very sorry. Pee all you want. Good… Good… creature. Nice baby.”
YES, appeared on the paper, with an underline.
There was a tearing sound and a gust of wind. In the bathroom, Erik cried out. John scrambled to his feet.
A beaming purple man in peasant garb was standing in the middle of the room. “Gde moya lyubimaya?” he cried.
John paused. Briefly. “Uh. Hi.”
“Oh! Anglais!” said the man. “Very good!” He bowed.
John detected an accent, not a Prokovian accent, and decided he didn’t care. “Pardon me, my friend is dying.” He scurried past and nudged the bathroom door closed behind him, to muffle any further upsetting noises.
“Oh, how awful!” the man said. “Is your poor friend a kitty?”
“Um, no,” John called back, carefully. “The kitty is under the bed. Please, I’m very busy!”
“Zdravstvuy, moye solnyshko!” the man said, presumably to the cat. Or whatever it was. “Aww! Rybka! Rad vstreche! What cute little toes you have! What’s that? A box?”
There was a tap on the bathroom door.
“Oh, gods, not now,” John whispered. Erik was still gasping and trembling.
“Pardon me? So sorry for your friend, little man, but we only put kitties in a box that has plenty of air holes and room to stand up and turn around! And preferably with a toy-toy! Ye-esss! Sweet baby girl! Oh, I know what you’d like… How about some paté? Yum-yums!”
“Okay, Erik,” John said softly. “I’m so sorry. It’s okay. This is totally insane, but I think it actually is going to be okay. Just a little while longer…”
Erik slumped forward, held up only by the shirt. He gave a little sob, nothing like words, and didn’t try to lift his head.
“It’s okay…”
The bathroom door popped open and nudged John in the back.
“Oprostite,” said the purple man. He bowed again. He was holding the orange, stripey mystery beast against him with one arm. It was purring. “I’m almost out of time. My little sunshine says she will give you another chance, but no more nasty boxes, and lots of cuddles and scratchies under the chin, yes?”
“Okay,” John said.
The man patted John on the head. “There, there. Perhaps your poor friend will see you at the rainbow bridge! Here’s a candy for you.” He produced a chocolate bar out of thin air, like a sleight-of-hand gag. “And one for your friend, in case he lives!” He tipped back his head and laughed. “Oh, well. Best of luck!” He lifted the mystery beast over his head and waggled her gently. “Be a good girl, little sunshine!”
The man’s expression melted from glee into horror. He staggered backwards with a cry. The animal hissed at him, sparking, then scuttled back under the bed.
“Govno,” he muttered, leaning heavily against the door frame. He shook his head. “Ah… Ah… Apology.” This person, apparently the original occupant, did have a Prokovian accent. “Two… Two moment. Please.”
John nodded. “Are you sure you can do this?”
The man nodded too. “Da. Yes. I get breath. Okay.” He knelt on the floor, clasped his hands, and closed his eyes.
John crossed all his fingers, and his arms, too, for good measure. “Come on…”
“Mister John, I am so sorry about that son of a bitch who calls himself a doctor.”
Boom! Another accent! John thought. Three in less than thirty minutes! Wow! He laughed and dropped his head, ashamed. “I-I’m sorry too. I’m just really glad to see you, Auntie Enora.”
She pulled a pack of cigarettes out of the man’s coat pocket and lit one up. “I’ll ask you for coffee if I have time, Mister John, but we must be quick. The medicine’s the important thing. Water will do, but you have to put it in something. The tub is in use and the sink isn’t enough. I won’t even consider that.” The man gestured to the toilet.
John kept laughing, couldn’t help laughing. “I have about a million ice buckets, ma’am. Will that do?”
The man nodded with a smile. “Very well, Mister John. You fill them up, I’ll see to Erik.”
Auntie Enora worked fast. She took out Erik’s metal eye (“Let’s not bother his poor brain any more than we have to…”), calmed him down, gave him medicine and sent him to sleep. She wrote instructions for John on a regular piece of paper (“I know you have too many papers already, Mister John, but you really mustn’t lose this one.”), then produced a list of further supplies for the front desk to provide, which John had to assume would be legible to someone Prokovian.
He stopped her before she could hand it to him. “Ma’am, I don’t know if you know this, but Erik and I, and this nice gentleman who you are riding, need to get out of here before 4 o’clock tomorrow afternoon, assuming Prokovians take their tea about when I do. I have no idea how far we’ll have to go to be safe, or how we’ll get there. Is there anything you’d like to add to that list for the trip?”
She shook the man’s head. “I’ve done my best, Mister John. You’ll have bottles for the medicine, an electric blanket for Erik, and a warm coat if you’re headed someplace without an outlet. I’ve left instructions for the best way to move him, and a few more things you might need. I’m afraid I can’t stay long enough to give you a chance for a rest. If I don’t get gone from Mister Matvey soon, he won’t be in any shape to go with you. I can’t mend Erik nearly enough for you to move him safely, but it’s better to take the risk than let him get shut up in jail.
“Now, I wrote this down, because I know you’re tired,” she added. “But I’ll tell you too — just in case you do lose my instructions somewhere along the line.” She scolded, using the man’s finger, “No matter what happens, you don’t let that boy call anyone else for at least a month, and you mind him from now on. If you get in trouble on your way out of here, he can’t help you. And later, when he can, he needs time to recover after every god he holds, even someone small like Violet. Keep track of it. Don’t push him to hurt himself this way ever again, you need him.”
She sighed. “I believe in what you’re doing, I want to help, and I don’t want to lose any of you. I can’t fix this awful situation. All I can give you is a chance. I’m very sorry, Mister John.”
“It’s more hope than I’ve had all day, ma’am,” John said with a weary smile. “May I hug you? Is that all right by… Mis-Mister Matvey?”
“Oh, I imagine he won’t mind it from you,” Auntie Enora replied. “Quickly, now.”
They hugged, quickly. “Mister Matvey” took him by the shoulders and set him back.
“Now, when that fever breaks,” said Auntie Enora, “you get him out of the tub and straight into bed under the electric blanket. Let him rest as much as he can. I’m going to lie Mister Matvey down on the rollaway — I’m sorry, you probably won’t have any time to use it yourself. You be careful, child. Oh.” She produced a roll of bills from Matvey’s other coat pocket, opposite the cigarettes. “And don’t be afraid to buy yourself as much help as you can, all right?”
“Thank you so much, ma’am,” John said. He accepted the money and pocketed it without counting. He had no idea what it was worth, anyway.
“Child, that’s from your Rainbow Alliance,” she said gently. “So you want to be thankin’ yourself and your friends for trying to do the right thing. And I thank you too. Now you get someone up here to take that list, I’ve got to let Mister Matvey go. Be brave, Mister John,” she added, over Matvey’s shoulder. “This will be hard, but I do believe you’ll pull through.”
Shortly after John dispensed with the list (and a few more random bills) the helpful purple gentleman shuddered back to life with a groan.
“Oh, geez, can I get you anything?” John said. “Can you talk? Are you okay?”
“Please,” said the man in the rollaway bed. “Anglais… Not good.”
John referred, once again, to the phrasebook. Page one. “Kak dela?”
Matvey puzzled over that for a moment. “Oh. Yes. I… okay. Ah… bed. Sleep. Not now.” He waved a hand, shooing that away. “Boy okay?”
“No, but we’ll get him there,” John replied. “Um. Okay soon,” he amended, more slowly. “If you need sleep, sleep now. We have to go soon, I don’t know where.”
“Oh, I have… whatsis…” He struggled onto his side and dug a hand into one of his coat pockets. “Most excellent fake Rainbow Alliance papers!” he declared, showing a stamped passport.
John regarded the forgery with a snicker. David might very well have done it himself. “Hey, not bad.”
“Excellent,” Matvey said firmly. He propped himself up on one elbow and offered a hand. “Handshake, please, weird Marselline politik. Okay?”
John shook the hand.
“Now, see family.” He pulled the photo out of the same pocket that held the passport. It had been laminated with a spell, but the edges were still fuzzy and curled from much fingering. “I am proud papa! Five!” He held up the fingers of one hand.
John regarded the photo with a wince. “Are they okay?”
Matvey indicated the woman, and three of the children, including the baby and the teenaged girl holding the baby, “Okay, okay, okay, okay.” And, lastly, two boys who looked close in age, around ten and twelve, “Maybe.”
“I’m sorry,” John said.
“Maybe is maybe,” Matvey said. “Not no, politik.” He pocketed the photo and the passport again. “I sleep. You mind boy and do miracles, yes?”
“It’s more like necessities. I’d say ‘necessities.’”
“Miracle can be necessity,” Matvey said. “I think.”
John collected the smart paper — which he had still managed not to lose! There were several messages requesting an update as soon as he found the time. He explained the situation as clearly and apologetically as possible. Erik wasn’t dying anymore, but they needed to bug out ASAP or they were all going to end up in a gulag. Did anyone have any ideas?
Do you still have the cat? the ghostly handwriting asked him.
No way in hell that’s a cat, he replied. But yes.
Then don’t worry, babe, his friend with the linked paper said. We can get you as much help as you need. ASAP!
◆◇◆
Erik considered quietly for a time.
Three more dings until David, he thought. He didn’t know why it mattered, but he wanted to know. And he didn’t want John to know he knew. Like… A game! Just for fun. He smiled at John. Yeah. I’m just playin’ with ya. No big deal.
“Okay, but the ducks are, like, objectively better,” he said. “They have personality. Who cares about a dumb boat?”
John sighed. “Yeah. I’m gonna hafta put something about that in the list. ‘Be extra careful and give yourself plenty of time to rest up between gods, or you’ll die, and Auntie Enora will alter John into a stranger next time she sees him.’ Something like that. Kinda sneak it in there so you have it.” He mimed tossing a basketball, with the basket being in the vicinity of Erik’s head.
“Two points, right at the buzzer,” Erik replied with a smile. He frowned. “But seriously, never put me in a bathtub with ice again, it sucks.”
“And that is why we have a timer,” John said.
