The Children

Disclaimer: I forgot this in the first chapter, but I don't own Keys to the Kingdom. As if you didn't know that already.

Chapter 2: Something Out of Nothing

The Piper was only seven. He was inherently magical, as were all of the Family, but he didn't know any proper sorcery. He didn't know how to conjure things out of Nothing or how to transmute already existing objects into magical devices.

So he wanted to learn how. He took an elevator to the Academy in the Upper House and enquired at the reception desk, "Where can I learn how to conjure Something out of Nothing?"

The Denizen at the desk had to crane his neck to see over the table top and down to the Piper. He recognized him immediately, of course. The pipe, if anything, was clutched securely in the boy's hand.

"My, Piper Sir," said the Denizen, with a slight chuckle. He decided to humor the child, and leave it to those stuck-up Professors to send him away. He drew up the map of the school's departments. "That would be lab 5-17."

"5… 17?" said the Piper who did not know what that meant.

"Yes," said the Denizen. "That means the fifth floor, the room marked 17. Straight up those stairs over there, all five flights of them, and to your left. Or the elevator over there and to your right."

The Piper meekly chose the elevator and for a moment all that was to be heard in lobby was the ding of the elevator as it arrived and the ding of it again as it left. When it was clear that the Piper was no longer there, the Denizen stuffed a fist in his mouth and smothered a laugh.

Meanwhile, the boy had found the lab and had rattled the doorknob to see if it was open. It was not. It was locked from the inside. He wondered if anyone was in. There was a window pane in the top half of the door that was covered by blinds. Lines of light filtered through the slits.

The Piper made to knock, but the door opened before his hand met the wood. Someone came walking out.

"Excuse me!" said the Denizen in the door way as she nearly knocked into the Piper. She spotted the pipe first, then noticed the little boy attached to it. "May I help you?"

The Denizen had only said it only out of politeness. She was a steely type who was much too concentrated on her work to pay much attention to other things. Already, she was forgetting that the Piper was in front of her.

But the Piper answered, "yes" and helped her refocus on the boy. "Yes," said the Piper. "I would like to know how to conjure Something out of Nothing, please. I was told I could learn it here."

And here, clearly, was a breakdown in communications. The receptionist had sent the boy up to the lab to be turned away, while the people within the lab fully expected the receptionist to be the one to turn people away. In other words, the Denizen assumed that since the boy was here, it was okay for him to be here—which was certainly not the case.

"All right, all right," said the Denizen and she ushered the Piper into the room.

There were several other Denizens in the lab, all quite surprised to see their colleague back so soon. She explained the situation to them, her hand on the boy's shoulder so that they could see him clearly (he was easily dwarfed by the lab counters), and since much of the day's work was already done, they began to instruct the boy on the Creation of Something Out of Nothing.

"Well, you take your key…"

"My key?"

"Yes, your key. You have got one, haven't you? A magic amplifying device?"

As far as the Piper knew, he did not have a key. But something compelled him not to share that bit of information with these Denizens. He looked down at his hands, the pipe securely within them as it had always been. Perhaps…

"Yes, a key…" said the Piper.

"Well, you take your key, and rip a tiny (and we mean very tiny) hole in Reality. You rip it right into the Void, and out of the Void, you draw a little gobbet of Nothing—"

"A little gobbet? What if I want to make something big? Wouldn't I need a big gobbet?"

"Oh no, no. Just a little gobbet; that's good enough. You draw out a little gobbet of Nothing and—keeping in mind a strong picture of what you want—you shape the gobbet of Nothing into the image of what you had in mind. Then, presto! You'll have Something out of Nothing."

"Have you got that?" asked the first Denizen. "Would you like to try?"

He had not quite gotten that. The Piper tried to list the steps in his head: Take your key, shape the gobbet into—wait, you have to get the gobbet first and you do that by… by ripping Reality! With your Key and then…

But the first Denizen was already taking him into the middle of the room, gabbling on about how their research was about ripping holes into Reality. How small could a small hole be? That sort of thing, you know.

She left him in the middle of the room and went to join her fellow Denizens. They watched him expectantly.

"Don't be nervous," she said. "Just think of what you want and get it."

A most befuddled Piper stood there, his fingers slipping off the pipe. The whole lesson had flashed past, he had not had time to think up an image in his head. His mind went straight to Tom.

He put the pipe to his lips and began to play. Anything. At first they were just notes, but before long, they were gathering themselves up into Tom's favorite sea shanty. The Piper simply stood there, and let the music rush through his pipe and all over the room. If anything, it helped his nerves, because the playing itself was not accomplishing anything. No magic occurred; no Void. The Denizens looked at each other, slightly confused. Was something wrong?

Then the Piper turned his thoughts towards Nothing. He thought of a lack of everything, a gaping hole, a window into a darkness beyond his capacity to describe color. His pipe stopped turning out the sea shanty; it became a deep, dull sound.

Then there it was. Roughly the size of his fist, it existed near the bell of his pipe, about level to his waist. The Piper had not really expected that to happen; he had thought the image would remain securely within his head. But the hole was really, truly there. He could feel it sucking on the Reality around him, could feel it blocking up his ears, clamming his skin, drawing him in…

He stopped playing. The last note hung in the air like a desperate plea for him to keep playing. As it faded away, its protests fading to nothing, the hole yawned and was suddenly a rip the size of half the room.

The Denizens scrambled towards their various scientific instruments, trying to contain the breach before a Nithling could form. Somehow, someone managed to remember to save the Piper from falling into the Void. The hole was closed up in a matter of minutes and the inhabitants of the room were left to try and get their breath back. After which, they began to congratulate each other on a job well done.

"Your hypothesis worked," said one Denizen to the female Denizen the Piper had met first. In the flush of their success, they clean forgot about the Piper. And by then, he had already escaped the room, hobbled down the five flights of stairs, walked past the (sleeping) receptionist, and come out into the sunlight of the Upper House.