Chapter Twelve: Containment

Clumsy opened his eyes, and it was impossibly bright – sunny. The sun was bearing down on him. No ceiling to block it out. He certainly wasn't in his room. Had he really fallen asleep, right there on the forest floor? How long had he been sleeping for?

Brainy was sitting upright nearby, staring straight ahead. He turned slowly and looked at Clumsy as the accident-prone smurf got into a sitting position. The normally talkative smurf didn't say anything, expression blank.

He could see Vanity too, next to Brainy but with some space between them. The same amount of distance separating Brainy and Clumsy, it looked like, with Brainy sitting right in the middle.

"Clumsy? Oh, you're awake!" Vanity said, speaking loud enough to bridge the distance between them.

There were markings on the ground.

"Did you get any sleep, Vanity?" Clumsy called back.

"Yeah. I did. Easy to do without that mirror."

Clumsy noticed then that he did still have Vanity's mirror. "Oh, yeah! Did Roesia fix things up for ya, like ya wanted?"

Vanity looked away from him. "Well… No. But as long as you have that mirror… I can't see anything." Clumsy couldn't tell what he meant by that. He still seemed to be able to see well enough.

"What're ya doin' all the way over there, anyway?"

"I would stay there if I were you."

Brainy had spoken without warning, before Clumsy had even had the chance to get up, as he was about to. Almost like he could see into Clumsy's mind.

"Oh, don't come over Clumsy, don't come over," Vanity warned him, "we're trapped."

Clumsy couldn't see any cages anywhere. "Well, gee! You could'a told me that first!"

Vanity continued, "can you feel it, that coercive force keeping you in place? The markings on the ground, they're… magically binding. That's what Roesia said when she was explaining it earlier… you can't step outside of your circle. Or rather… you shouldn't."

Clumsy sat down. He didn't like the sound of that. Now that Vanity mentioned it, he could feel something keeping him in place, a force that he sensed would react very badly if he tried to move elsewhere.

"Roesia did this… so she wasn't any kinda friend after all…" for all the humans that turned out to be good and kind, there were so many more that came into their lives only to let them down, one after the other. "Where is she?" Clumsy looked about.

"I don't know," Vanity said grimly, "but I'm sure she'll be back soon."

"Is anyone gonna tell me a little somethin' about what this is all about?" Clumsy looked between Brainy and Vanity.

"Roesia has the ability to see into everything about someone… and she gave Brainy and I the same power. But really, I don't know what this," Vanity gestured to the markings on the ground, "is about, it's just as new to me."

Everything about someone? So Vanity, and Brainy, had seen into him? He didn't quite know what to make of that…

Was there anything more important than time itself? Its very fabric was essential to all of reality. The things that she could do… If she just had some control over it. She'd trade her insight for that chance in a heartbeat.

The game of hide and go seek had flipped over on its head. It was now the rest of the village that searched everywhere, calling out for Brainy, Vanity, and now Clumsy, but they were nowhere to be found. They must be pretty good at this game.

Why Clumsy? Was Clumsy "it" now, too? Baby would just have to wait and find out.

Papa Smurf hadn't even stopped to eat breakfast. Ever since he'd gotten out of bed that morning and discovered there were smurfs missing, searching for them had been his only focus.

"I'm going to go see Roesia," Baby heard Papa tell Grandpa, "perhaps she knows something about this." His tone had a decidedly suspicious note to it.

There was a little bit of back and forth, as nearby smurfs insisted for Papa not to go on his own – but nor did Papa want anyone to accompany him. Finally, he relented and allowed Hefty to come along to go to Roesia directly, along with sending a handful of smurfs off to scour other parts of the forest.

So Papa's lab stood empty, as Papa left the village. In all this confusion, Baby was going relatively unnoticed. Perhaps he should take advantage of this… He jumped up, caught hold of the outside windowsill, and pulled himself up to try and get a look at the inside of the laboratory. He wondered what Papa had been doing in there lately, instead of spending more time with him.

Baby wasn't really allowed in the lab, because it was too "dangerous". He ESPECIALLY wasn't allowed to go in there on his own – not even the grown-up smurfs were supposed to do that.

But oh, it beckoned to him all the more because of that! He could just go inside quickly now, while everyone else was distracted.

So he did. It was simple, just to open and close a door, and then he was inside.

As he looked around, he could see a great big pot of icky-looking black goo sitting on the floor just by the table. It looked like it would be really fun to play in… He reached in his arm, pulled it out again, and now it was completely covered in the stuff which dripped only very slowly.

Wow!

Kind of a little bit like… paint! But thicker. Would Painter ever be able to make use of this stuff, maybe to paint an especially lumpy night sky? That would be funny.

Paint… Baby remembered that bad dream he had recently, with the glowing paint. This stuff was kind of like the opposite, wasn't it? If only he'd been able to have it during that dream – he would have blended perfectly into the night and would never be found.

It wasn't night now, but the goo felt good, cool to the touch. He wanted to play in the goo, so he would. There was no one here to stop him. He'd never seen any of the grown-ups playing in goo before, and when would a chance like this come along again? He needed to make the most of it.

"Come on Grouchy, why don't ya lighten up a little?" Jokey said cheerily, "I'm sure Clumsy, Vanity and Brainy will turn up soon!"

At that, Grouchy began to glow, he actually began to glow, and Jokey's jaw dropped. "When I said "lighten up", I didn't mean- hey!"

"I hate lightening up!" Grouchy exclaimed as some invisible force seemed to pull him across the room.

"W-what's smurfing on?" Jokey cried as he began to follow. He was glowing too! "Help!" he called out, as he and Grouchy began to be taken further and further away.

"Oh, my smurfness!" Tailor cried, dumbfounded as he saw several glowing smurfs rapidly beginning to be spirited across and out of the village, some even being lifted up into the air. Woolly tried earnestly to grab hold of Smurfette's arm, but he was only pulled along with her, it was too fast, and then he collided directly with Handy's house and she slipped away too.

And then, just as quickly as the odd phenomenon had begun, the group of afflicted smurfs were out of sight. A strange silence settled over the smurfs still standing safely within the village, who had been forced to watch helplessly as the glowing smurfs had slipped out of their reach. The air – the tension in the atmosphere – began seeming so very thick and heavy. No one knew what to say.

How many were there that had just been seemingly taken away? Where had they gone? Off into the forest, that much was clear. But where, exactly? And why? What had just happened?

Papa Smurf was still off in the forest, hoping to find out where Brainy, Vanity and Clumsy had gone, and so he was not here to tell them what they needed to do. But they couldn't just stay here and ignore the oddity that had just occurred.

A great sense of unease dawned on Dreamy as he looked around. This felt… familiar. The smurfs that he was surrounded by right now… the smurfs who seemingly were gone…

Some of the smurfs were now discussing that they couldn't all leave the village at once, so it would probably be best for two or three of them to go off into the forest and fetch Papa, and keep their eyes out for any sign of Brainy, Clumsy, Vanity… and now, all of the other smurfs that were gone too.

Some of the smurfs had already been sent out into the forest by Papa earlier to search for the three smurfs that had been found missing when they woke up, but right now, they had no clue that there were now even more smurfs they needed to be looking for…!

What a mess. At this rate, it looked like the village was going to continually fragment, merely sending out more and more search parties as more and more smurfs went missing if the situation were to compound any further.

As the discussion about who should go find Papa went on, Dreamy was hardly listening. Couldn't anyone tell? Was he just thinking too deeply into it? The familiarity he was reading into this situation was sickening, and perhaps it was irrational of him to feel this way – they were fine. The other smurfs were fine. They couldn't be sure what had happened to them, but they must simply be off in the forest somewhere, easily found, and it was going to be fine.

He had to tell himself that this was different. That it wasn't the same as before.

END OF PART ONE, "INSIGHT". The next chapter will mark the beginning of PART TWO.