Out of the Pages

Chapter 1

 

Roland half-fell into his apartment and flung himself onto the sofa, growling.

His roommate, Andrew, raised an eyebrow. “Rough day?”

Roland groaned. “You remember Mrs. Cavanaugh? The one with all the kids who always lets them run wild? Well, today the youngest decided to stick a shovel into the loo. Of course the safety filters didn’t accept it, so he started twisting it around. Managed to scratch up the glyphs pretty good.”

Andrew winced. “What broke?”

“Flow direction.” Roland grimaced at the memory. “As soon as I pulled that shovel out, the entire contents of the building’s sanitation reservoir started spewing out of the loo. By the time I got the emergency shutdown artifact out of my bag and activated, the entire room was coated. Except for the bits I was protecting with my body, of course.”

“Delightful. She let you clean up, I hope?”

“Yeah, fortunately—or possibly out of necessity, given the size of that family—she’d sprung for a top-class cleaning spell. Detects and removes any sort of bodily waste anywhere in the room. Took half an hour to run, but it got us clean.” He paused. “I still feel disgusting, though.”

“I bet.”

Roland sat up abruptly. “But that’s enough of that. Did I tell you I got my project to work?” With a slightly manic grin, he bounced off the sofa and ran to his room.

Andrew turned back to the dinner he had been attempting to eat, ignoring the thuds and muffled curses from the direction of Roland’s room.

A moment later, Roland emerged again, bearing a tray full of what appeared to be potatoes with metal objects sticking out of them. Balancing the tray on one hand, he slapped the light glyph on the wall with the other, shutting off the overhead lights.

“Hey!”

Ignoring Andrew’s protest, he slid the tray onto the dining room table. Something unseen fell off the far side with a crash.

Andrew sighed. “Is this going to take long? I need to get to bed early tonight. We got some bigwigs from Court coming in tomorrow, and the boss wants everyone looking their best.”

Roland fumbled with something unseen. “Almost…got it… There!”

In the darkness, a short length of fine wire began to glow dimly.

Roland couldn’t help grinning widely. “Look at that! What do you think?”

“Okay, it’s glowing. So what?” The light wasn’t strong enough to illuminate Andrew’s skeptical expression, but Roland knew his roomie well enough to picture it.

“Don’t you see? I made light, without magic!”

There was silence for a moment from Andrew’s end of the table. Then he clapped once. In response, power blazed through the light spell overhead, illuminating the room and washing out the flickering filament Roland was holding.

Andrew crossed his arms. “Mine’s brighter.”

Roland’s shoulders slumped. He carefully put down the wires he was holding. “Yeah. I guess it’s really not that impressive. It’s just… I was hoping to have something to show at this year’s Terracon.”

Andrew sighed. Uncrossing his arms, he leaned forward. “I’m sorry, man. I shouldn’t have done that. All the work you put into this”—he eyed the jumble of wires and vegetables occupying the tray—“this experiment, the least I could have done was listen.” He paused. “So… light without magic, eh? How does it work?”

Roland’s eyes lit up. “Well, you see—”

Andrew chuckled and held up a hand. “Never mind. Let’s try something else. What is Terracon, and why would they be interested in root vegetables?”

“Well… Have you heard of the Terraverse?”

“I don’t think so. Should I have?”

Roland sat up straighter. “Terraverse is the biggest shared literary universe in existence. Thousands of authors have contributed to it over the centuries, expanding and adding details to the setting. Of course every author has their own preferred genres and stories and whatnot, but the Terraverse is so big, you can really do whatever you want, and it will fit in somewhere.”

“So what’s so special about this universe? Why not just write about our own?”

“Because the Terraverse”—Roland lowered his voice—“has no magic.”

Andrew stared at him blankly. “No magic? But how do the people there… you know, do anything?”

“That’s just it! They’ve had to come up with alternate, nonmagical ways to do everything we can do with magic.” Roland gestured at the mess in front of him. “This? This was a demonstration of a thing called ‘electricity’, which they use everywhere to power many of the things we use magic for.” He sobered abruptly. “Of course, they have the infrastructure to create and use it on a large scale, not this… this makeshift kiddie stuff. Here, any specialized components you need have to be custom-designed, which takes money.”

Andrew tilted his head to the side, musing, “No magic…”

Roland rubbed his hands together. “So that’s the Terraverse. And Terracon, of course, is a convention dedicated to all things Terra. You can dress up as your favorite character, go to writing workshops, discuss and debate your favorite stories, go to the vendor hall for Terra-themed artwork, visit the tech hall to see Terra-inspired magicless inventions—that’s what I was hoping to do—get books signed by your favorite authors… oh, basically anything and everything fans could dream of is there. And of course there are panels devoted to all the major genres.”

Andrew had been listening with a rather bewildered expression. “Genres?”

“Yeah, of course all the different authors have different interests, so their works have different flavors depending on what they’re into. One of my favorites is techfic—that’s short for ‘technology fiction’. It focuses on the scientific details of how exactly everything works in a world with no magic. There are more story-focused genres: politific, romancefic, explorefic, spyfic, and my all-time favorite, warfic. The boundaries between them can be fuzzy; for example, there can be a lot of overlap between politific and warfic. Sometimes you have to look carefully at the overarching storyline to distinguish between them. So you see—“

Andrew raised his hands, shaking his head. “You’ve lost me, I’m afraid. I hope you have fun at your con, though.” Shoving the last bite of food in his mouth, he stood and took his plate to the dish cleanser, then turned to go to his room.

Left alone in the dining room, Roland carefully gathered up his project to take back to his own room. Next time. Next time for sure. I’ll be able to afford a real battery and things, and I’ll make… I’ll make… something that will impress them all.

Welcome to Purgastory

The little boy materialized in front of the saloon with a slight popping noise. His jeans and faded red T-shirt were torn and dirty, a smear of blood ran down from his nose and covered his upper lip, his hands were up in front of him in a pair of clumsy fists, and his face was contorted into a grimace somewhere between defiance, elation, and terror. He was ten, but frequently mistaken for eight or even younger.

His expression faded into pure confusion as he took in his surroundings. He stood next to a crossroads where at least half a dozen dusty dirt roads met in a snarl of confusion before heading in all different directions. A handful of rough wooden signposts attempted to impose order on the chaos, but between the arrows that rarely pointed in the direction of anything remotely resembling a road and the paint that was in most cases faded to near invisibility, they largely failed. The terrain was straight out of a Western: endless rolling plains covered in scrub brush, with an occasional tumbleweed blowing by.

The only building to be seen was the saloon behind him, also straight out of a Western. A pair of swinging wooden doors, flanked by windows currently covered by rough-hewn shutters, marked the entrance to a low building made of rough wooden planks. Out front, a set of low steps led to a bare, dusty porch. Flickering orange light shone out around the doors and through the cracks in the shutters. Above the door, someone had painted the word “PERDITION” in incongruously cheery, bright yellow paint.

For what felt like several minutes, the boy could do nothing but blink at this spectacle. Finally, gathering his wits, he picked up a bright-green backpack adorned with the face of the Hulk and trudged up the steps.

As he approached, the noise of conversation and laughter from the interior grew louder, then stopped abruptly the moment he hesitantly pushed one door open just wide enough for him to slip through. A bewildering variety of faces and costumes confronted him, from pistol-toting cowboys to elegant ladies in ballgowns to haughty-looking elves to exotic, many-limbed aliens. He froze, unable to move, his heart pounding as if to beat its way out of his chest.

A deep feminine voice broke the silence, announcing, “A newcomer! This round’s on the house!”

Amidst a sudden chorus of cheers, roars, and less identifiable noises, everyone turned back to what they had been doing, and the boy’s heartbeat slowed slightly. A moment later, the same voice drawled, “I’m Lucy, and this is my bar. And who might you be?”

He turned to see a reassuringly human woman staring down at him, arms crossed. Her bare arms and leather vest alike were covered with a network of old scars, testifying to years of experience with the long sword with the plain, leather-wrapped hilt that she wore slung at her side. Her medium-length auburn hair was pulled back in a ponytail, revealing an aristocratic face with high-arching brows and cheekbones that would have looked quite elegant if it weren’t for the nose that had obviously been broken repeatedly.

“I-I-I’m Willy,” the little boy finally managed to stammer. “Wh-where am I?”

“Perdition, of course. Didn’t you see the sign?” She tilted her head in the direction of the doors. “C’mon, let me grab you a drink, and I’ll give you the full speech.”

She disappeared behind the bar for a moment, coming up with a glass of amber liquid before striding across the room, Willy stumbling along in her wake. In a quiet back corner he hadn’t noticed before among the profusion of tables, as varied and bizarre as the patrons, was a child-sized table made of a large tree stump, surrounded by low stools. Lucy deposited the glass in front of one such stool before taking a seat on the floor on the opposite side of the table.

Willy half-fell onto the indicated stool, dropping his backpack carelessly on the floor next to him. He took a cautious sniff of the liquid in the glass, then downed half of it at once when it proved to be nothing more alarming than apple juice.

Lucy began briskly, “To answer the question you’d intended to ask, this is the world of Purgastory. Everyone here is a character from one story or another who refused to do what their author wanted and has been exiled to reconsider and try to earn their way back. Now there’s a bunch of terms people around here will use, so pay attention, because I’m only going to explain them once.

“First is your straw scene—as in the one that broke the camel’s back. That’s the scene where your misbehavior finally exasperated your author enough to exile you. By the looks of you, I’m guessing your straw scene was a fight of some sort?”

Willy nodded. “Moe was being a bully again. He keeps making fun of my name, and I keep asking him to stop, but he—”

Lucy held up a hand to stem the growing tirade. “So what were you supposed to do? You felt like there was a little voice in you telling you to do something, right?”

“Yeah, it…” He reddened, looking down at his hands, which were twisting nervously in his lap. “It wanted me to…to give up, let Moe beat me up. There was this…this older kid always hanging around the edges, and the voice told me to just…wait for him to save me?” He straightened, lifting his chin defiantly. “But I’m no coward! I fought him, and I got in a few good licks too, before—” He deflated again. “Before I ended up here.”

Lucy nodded in satisfaction. “Yeah, that would do it, alright. Sounds like you were an extra, whose only purpose was for the protagonist to rescue you, to advance the plot who knows how. Maybe you’d crop up in a few more scenes, maybe you’d just be a one-scene wonder, maybe…”

Willy had been slumping deeper with every word she said, and his nose was now in danger of bumping into his glass. “So I’m a nobody.”

“Yup, that’s about the size of it.” Despite her blunt words, her tone was gentle. Noting the boy’s downcast expression, she quickly moved on. “Now me, I was an innkeeper, and happy with it—the cheerful atmosphere, the constant flow of new people, the stories they told—until one day some weirdo came in and tried to tell me all this nonsense about how I was a long-lost descendant of some royal, and it was my fate to go on a great quest to blah blah blah. I don’t know any more details; it was about then that I shot him.”

Willy gasped. “You just shot him?!”

“What can I say, I was feeling cantankerous that day. Anyhow, that was my straw scene. Now, what else…?” She paused for a moment. “Oh yes! Echoes. You remember I said we have the chance to earn our way back to our own stories? Well, echoes are how we do it. Every so often, we get a chance to relive our straw scene, but do it right this time—or at least the author’s definition of ‘right’.” She snorted. “How it works is, your shadows—mindless images of the other people who were involved in your scene—appear out of nowhere and act out their roles again exactly the way they did in the first place, and if your performance this time around pleases your author, you’ll be taken back into the story to continue as if nothing had happened. Or so we assume; none of us has ever actually been taken back and returned.”

Willy had been gazing at her intently, drinking in every word. Suddenly he drew back in alarm. “That means I’ll have to fight Moe again, doesn’t it?”

“Over and over, I’m afraid. Unless you want to give in and just let him beat you up.”

The panic in his eyes faded, to be replaced by determination. “Never.”

Lucy gave him an approving nod. “The good thing is, echoes come up less and less frequently over time. Eventually, the author will give up on you entirely, and you’ll stop getting them at all. You just have to hang on for a few decades until then, and you’ll be fine.”

His determination was starting to fade into panic again. “But—”

“Tell you what. There’s some folks here who might be able to help. C’mon, I’ll introduce you to them.”

Once again, Willy was swept up in her wake as she strode through the bar, stopping occasionally to introduce him to some of her regulars.

A tall, dark, handsome man with roguish good looks and an easygoing smile: “This is Jack. He was a romantic lead until he found himself more interested in his rival than in the girl they were both supposed to be pursuing.”

Jack winked, giving the pair of them—well, mostly Lucy—a devastating grin.

“He actually enjoys his echoes, unlike most people.”

Jack added, “Absolutely! When I see those baby-blue eyes of his—”

“Yes, thank you, Jack.” Lucy cut him off, glancing pointedly at the young boy accompanying her, and moved on to a blonde dressed in a gauzy, lacy white confection, whose every feature shone with ethereal beauty.

“This is Lynette. She’s an Ophelia-type character who decided it was silly to drown herself over a boy. Her shadow is somewhat unusual; it takes the form of a lake that spontaneously appears around her.”

Lynette beamed cheerfully and pulled out an odd contraption that was slung on a strap across her back. It looked somewhat like a gas mask without the goggles, a fearsome leather-and-metal construction that, when she strapped it across her mouth, covered the entire lower half of her face and emitted ominous wheezes and gurgles with every breath.

“Shphtwh glrm—” At Willy’s look of incomprehension, she pulled the mask off and tried again. “A mad scientist made this for me! It lets me breathe underwater. Isn’t it great?”

Her enthusiasm was infectious, and Willy found himself smiling with her.

Lucy nodded to the girl sitting next to her. “Howdy, Rose. Have you decided what you’d like to drink yet?”

The teenager, wearing a plain gray sweatshirt and jeans, peeked up timidly through her eyelashes. “N-no, I…”

“Are you going to decide anytime soon, or will you be leaving instead?” A spark of mischief shone in Lucy’s eyes.

Rose’s gaze darted from side to side, like a cornered mouse looking for an escape. “I-I-I…”

“It’s all right, dear.” Lynette stroked her arm reassuringly while glaring at Lucy. “She’s just teasing you. Take as long as you’d like.”

Lucy finally took pity on Willy, who’d been watching their exchange with wide eyes. “Rose here is crippled by indecision. As you may have noticed. Her story arc in her original story was intended to make her more decisive, but it failed. In her straw scene, she was supposed to finally make an important decision, but she still hesitated until it was too late.”

“And now the poor thing can’t even decide if she wants to stay here in Purgastory or go back.” Lynette gave her a friendly smile. “It’s okay. You know we’re all here for you.” In response to Lucy’s not-quite-hidden snort of derision, she added, “At least, most of us are.”

The innkeeper opened her mouth, then thought better of saying anything and simply shook her head and moved on.

They stopped at another small table, where a boy not much older than Willy greeted them with a cocky grin. He was dressed in ragged, cast-off bits of gentlemen’s clothing, complete with an old-fashioned stovepipe hat.

“Hey, newcomer. I’m Charlie. My author made me a blatant ripoff of Dickens’ Artful Dodger.”

“So what’s your…” Willy began hesitantly.

“I can’t stand stealing. My ma raised me right, I’ll have you know!”

His expression was so indignant that Willy burst out laughing.

“So what can I do you for?”

Lucy stepped in. “His echo is a fight.” She nodded at his battered clothing. “I was thinking you might be able to teach him something about hand-to-hand combat, so he can handle it a bit better next time.”

“Right you are, ma’am! Stick with me, and I’ll teach you everything you need to know.” He stuck out his hand with a reassuringly confident smile.

Willy gripped it without hesitation and shook it firmly. In that moment, surrounded by new friends, he made his decision: he would never go back.

Seven: Prologue

Feet pounding, heart racing, breath coming in quick pants, Bianca ran.

She was glad she’d found the old mining road. The trails nearer town had become busy of late. Hard to get in a proper, satisfying run when she was constantly having to dodge other hikers and the occasional biker. But here, she had the whole road to herself. There was nothing but her, the wind in her ears, the road under her feet.

Today she’d dressed in primary colors. A red headband held back her short black hair. She wore a royal-blue T-shirt and sunny yellow running shorts. Her friend had made fun of the outfit, but Bianca enjoyed the bright colors.

She paused for a moment to get her breath, bending over with hands on her knees. Suddenly her heart nearly leaped out of her chest as she felt a hand in her hair, grabbing a fistful. She jerked upright, scarcely noticing the pain as the strands ripped from her scalp.

Standing in front of her was a dwarf wearing a purple dunce hat and oversized, patched green robe. A strand of drool hung from his slack mouth, and his beady eyes were dull.

Oblivious to her gaze, he reached with clumsy fingers to pat the black strands clutched in his other fist. In a low, hoarse voice, he muttered, “Pretty hair. Pretty princess. Pretty...” His voice trailed off into unintelligible mumbling.

Bianca took a step back, then another. Once she was certain he wasn’t going to follow, she whirled to run – only to nearly run into another dwarf standing directly behind her.

Face red with fury, he yelled, “Watch where you’re going! You nearly ran me over, you—”

A hand clapped over his mouth muffled the rest of his rant. The newcomer, a third dwarf, smiled at her. “Don’t mind Grumpy. He can be a bit quick-tempered at times.”

This dwarf wore blue pants, and a brown vest over his patched orange shirt. His pointy hat was orange as well. He beamed genially, like a favorite grandpa. Yet as Bianca looked into his eyes, the smile seemed to change, becoming less friendly and more maniacal. The twinkle in his eyes seemed more like a spark of madness.

A memory sparked in Bianca’s mind. She glanced around the circle of dwarves gathering around her. “The Glass Coffin Gang,” she breathed.

The smiling dwarf doffed his hat. “Happy at your service,” he confirmed cheerfully.

“And Grumpy.” She glanced at the still-fuming dwarf beside him.

The muttering of “Pretty princess...” behind her became audible again for a moment. Bianca found herself reluctant to look at – “Dopey,” she recalled.

A loud sneeze on her left drew her attention. The sneeze was followed by a wet, racking cough. The dwarf – Sneezy – spat a wad of phlegm of an unhealthy greenish color on the ground. Bianca felt a tickle begin in her own sinuses in sympathy.

Hastily averting her eyes, she turned to the dwarf next to him. This one carried a large black bag. This must be Doc. Grinning at her, he remarked, “Your heart rate is pretty elevated. Blood pressure’s probably through the roof. That’s not healthy for you, you know. But don’t worry” – he pulled a gleaming scalpel from his bag and stroked it – “we can take care of that for you.”

Bianca felt a scream building in her throat as she backed away. When a small hand politely tapped her shoulderblade, she shrieked at the top of her lungs. She whipped around. Facing her was yet another dwarf, this one slouched and listing to one side. His head sagged against one shoulder, and his eyes were closed. Sleepy. He was evidently the one who’d touched her, yet he didn’t even seem to be awake.

Something niggled at the back of Bianca’s brain. She forced herself to think through the panic. Her gaze flicked around the circle, and her lips moved as she silently counted to herself. One, two, three, four, five, six...weren’t there supposed to be seven of them?

A low chuckle sounded in her ear. “Don’t worry, Princess, I’m right here.”

She whirled around. But there was no one there.

The voice continued from directly behind her. “Bashful, at your service. Oh, don’t bother with that” – evidently in response to her continued spinning as she tried to see who was talking – “it’s not time for us to meet face to face. But don’t worry. You’ll see me eventually.” Unseen fingers traced her spine. “When it’s time for you to die.”

Bianca gasped.

A different voice chuckled. Happy stepped forward, rubbing his hands together. “And now that we’ve all been introduced, I vote that we adjourn to somewhere more...comfortable. Sleepy?”

Sleepy slouched forward. Suddenly his eyes popped open.

Bianca couldn’t tell what color his eyes were. Something about them spoke of immense depths, of endless eons. She unconsciously leaned forward, trying to get a better view of those fathomless eyes.

A moment later, her unconscious body slumped to the ground. The dwarves stepped forward as one.

Parodies

(To "Teen Angel")

One fateful day, the TARDIS lost, we got stuck in the past.

We found some DVDs and left a message meant to last.

Stone angels, you should fear them;

Stone angels, if you see them,

Just don’t blink or look away,

Or they’ll send you to the past to stay.

The Angels have the phone box and they’ll try to get inside,

To steal its timey-wimey power, and they’ll not be denied.

 (chorus)

It’s up to you to save us all, dear Sally Sparrow true;

Just give the TARDIS this CD, and she’ll know what to do.

(To "Rockin' Robin")

They roam through the alleys all night long,

Smacking and a-bopping and a-righting all wrong.

All the dirty crooks out on the street

Fear to face the Robin and meet defeat.

Bats and Robin.

Well, go, Batman, Robin, gonna stop a lot of crime tonight.

See how Poison Ivy, see Ra’s al Ghul,

See how Mr. Freeze even loses his cool.

There goes the Joker and Harley Quinn

No matter how they try, they will never win.

(chorus)

The dark and gloomy Batman in the Batcave’s night

Took an acrobat and taught him how to fight.

Then when he was ready, how that Robin flew –

He catnapped Catwoman and the Penguin too!