Mabel and Teek's Excellent Adventure

(July 4, 2014)

Chapter 6

By way of explanation, Teek said, "Uh," and scrooched down lower beneath the down-filled quilted comforter. The girl—a dark-skinned young woman, really, probably nineteen or twenty—rose with the lithe grace of a gazelle, put her hands together palm to palm, and bowed toward Mabel. With a serene expression and huge brown doe eyes that Mabel simultaneously envied and yearned to stick her thumbs in, she said, "Greetings, O stranger! I have humbly tried to make this one feel more at ease—"

"Fashion tip," Mabel said. "If your basic outfit is a thong and two pasties, you might as well leave off the see-through jacket and harem pants. What is that material anyway, voile?"

"Erm, yes," the woman said, spreading the outsides of the balloon-like harem pants. A thin gold chain ran round her bare midriff. She was barefoot, though she wore gold anklets that were attached by more thin gold chains to gold rings around her big toes, which were not really big but impossibly cute. They were a delicate shade of blue (the voile jacket and harem pants, not her toes), but her indelicate shade of tan glowed right through the thin material. "Woven by magic in a lost oasis on a night of no moon by—"

"I'm Mabel," Mabel said, cutting off the runway description. "And that is my boyfriend, T.K. And what are you doing in bed with him?"

"Oh. Um. My name, O stranger Mabel, is Scheherazade—"

"Doesn't sound American to me," Mabel said, frowning. "Homeland Security got you on any kind of list?"

She looked puzzled, in an intolerably cute way. "Ah—these words sound foreign to my humble ears, O Mabel. I comforted the one you call Teek—"

"We didn't do anything!" Teek said from beneath the covers. "She just told me stories!"

"My stories!" Scheherazade said with a winning smile. A cute winning smile. Mabel thought, My God, she's even worse than Pacifica at her worst! Almost singing instead of speaking, Scheherazade did a few dance moves as she said, "O friends, doth not the dreary hour fly more fleetly when someone speaks the words of a story? Though they be but humble, I have in my heart a stately stock of stories! Telling them is my specialty!"

Mabel looked dubiously at her breasts, revealed by the transparent voile as round and firm and rosy as pomegranates, and her slender, smooth thighs. "Yeah, among other things, I bet," she said. "OK, she-hulk or whatever you said, I'm here, so you're relieved of duty. Scat!"

"Oh, but I could tell you a story," Scheherazade said, settling down on the rug in a lotus pose. "Once on a time, a great sultan was mightily puzzled over how much he should levy in taxes so that each would pay a fair share—"

"Don't tell the one about the camels again!" Teek wailed. "It makes no sense and it goes on, like, forever!"

Mabel tested the grappling hook line. "Here you go. Get up. Stand up! Now climb up. Go. While you still have all your teeth and hair."

Reluctantly, Scheherazade rose, bowed, and with surprising agility climbed up the rope, pulled herself over the edge of the round hatch—giving them a rather spectacular rear view in doing so—and then stood and waved goodbye. "Farewell, my friends, until the night brings a new moon—"

"The old one was plenty fat enough!" Mabel yelled back, and the girl made a huffing sound and then left them. Mabel turned to Teek. "Get out of that bed, Mister!"

Teek pulled the cover up over his face. "Can't!"

Mabel strode to the bed and grabbed the edge of the coverlet. "Why not?"

Teek clutched it harder. "They took my clothes!"

Mabel let go of the coverlet. "Who took your clothes?"

"The guards who threw me in here! They were weird little guys. Goblins, I think. They were all short and fat and smelled funny!"

"And they dumped you in the hole and that tramp was down here just waiting for you, huh? Like a trap-door spider!"

Teek's head popped out again. His glasses sat askew on his nose. "No, she came in later. A genie dropped her off because she said she felt sorry for the Goblin King's prisoners and wanted to cheer me up. So she sat on the bed and told stories. That's all she did, I swear! And the stories—they were awful!"

Mabel herself sat on the edge of the bed and reached out to straighten his glasses. "Horror stories, huh?"

"Uh—no. Thanks. Politics, sociology, and economics. She spent thirty minutes lecturing me about what a vizier is, how vital a vizier is to a sultan, what deep knowledge they have, how intelligent and cunning they can be, and why they're all villains and not to be trusted."

"Yeah," Mabel said skeptically. "I'll bet it was just a matter of time before she started to say, 'Oh, my, it's so cold in here! Would you mind if I slipped under the cover just to . . . warm up?'"

"Don't use that sexy voice!" Teek pleaded.

She turned on the bed to face him. "Why, don't you—oh! Oh, I see."

"How?" Teek asked, frantically fluffing the coverlet.

"No, I mean I understand. Sweaty and awkward, right? Where did the guards take your clothes?"

"I don't know! They just stripped me and shoved me through the hole and I landed on the bed! I'm lucky they left me my glasses! When Scheherazade showed up, I barely had time to jump under the covers!"

"Heh. 'Barely.'"

"Mabel! Don't joke! I need help!"

"All right, all right, don't have a cow."

"I was—what was that?" He stared at her in a baffled way.

Mabel had hopped off the bed and started to tug down the sheets of red and yellow satin that hung on the walls. "Hm? Oh, a boy I met a couple of years ago used to say that. Bart, I think his name was. We went for a walk on the Mystery Trail. Weird kid. Just a minute."

She perched on the foot of the bed and reached inside her sweater. From somewhere—hammerspace, she supposed—she produced the little sewing kit she always carried. The scissors were little better than toy-sized, but she kept them wickedly sharp, and in a couple of minutes she had cut out a simple pair of breeches—red front, yellow back—that were sort of like pajamas, as well as a tunic (yellow front, red back). She threaded a needle and started to stitch furiously.

"What are you doing?"

"Making you some clothes!"

"Out of that? I'll look ridiculous!"

"Yeah, as opposed to wandering around the castle bare-assed."

"Mabel!"

"Don't worry about it!" Mabel snapped. "We're in this pocket fantasy thingy, anyhow. And from the way the people here dress, I think you'll probably fit in better than you would in T-shirt and jeans. Here, try these on while I finish the shirt. Sleeves have to be cuffed. No buttons, though, so that speeds things up. It's a pullover."

Teek floundered around under the covers and then said, "They're on. Sort of."

"Stand up and let me see."

He did. The pants were baggy and too big in the waist.

"I'll have to take two darts," Mabel said. "Also, I'll sew on some loops. I'll cut the braid off the coverlet and you can use that like a belt." She snipped off the thread, re-threaded the needle, and said, "Stand here with your back to me."

Teek did, shifting his weight from foot to foot.

"Stand still!" She pulled the material taut. "Teek, you got a nice butt."

"Mabel!"

"I just took a little peek down the back. OK, now, real still." Her needle flew. "That's one . . . now over here . . . OK, how's that?"

Teek still held onto the waistband. "I don't think they'll stay up, but the waist is snugger."

"Take 'em off and I'll cut and sew on the belt loops."

"Mabel!"

"For crying out loud! Do you think I'm gonna assault you at a time like this? We have to find Little Soos!"

Reluctantly, Teek shucked the pants down and stood with his back to Mabel, crouched over. "Boys can be so ridiculous," she muttered as she rapidly sewed. "That's six, that'll do. Here you go, put them back on and I'll make the belt. Well, turn around!"

He did, still hunkered over, both hands hiding his—what did the drawbridge guy call it? His precioussss.

"I'll look away!" Mabel said. She had pulled the coverlet off the bed, and she bent over it, snipping with the scissors. The braid, sort of a golden chenille rope, came off in one piece. "Here. Run this through the loops and tie it."

Teek wound up clad in what did look like gaudy pajamas. And he was barefoot. "OK," Mabel said. "That'll do for now. First chance we get, we'll knock out a guard and steal his shoes."

"They wouldn't fit!"

"You've read as much fantasy as I have," she snapped. "They always fit!"

A few minutes later and a couple of floors higher, she asked, "Do they fit?"

"Uh—yeah, they do," Teek said. "Is he—you hit him pretty hard—is the guard—"

"He's resting," she said firmly. "Let's go."

They climbed spiral stairs and straight stairs and ladders and finally emerged on a round balcony high on the tallest of the towers. "Spectacular view," Mabel said, leaning on the round railing. The mountains, forests, and bluffs stretched as far as they could see. Had the sky been clear and blue instead of black-smudged yellow, it would have made a good postcard photo.

"Yeah," Teek murmured, shyly touching her shoulder. "Uh, Mabel? I—I want to—oh, heck!"

To her surprise, he grabbed her, turned her around, and kissed her hard—

Better than Mermando! Lots better than Trey! Mmm! Darn it, I did a foot pop! Oh, well. . . .

When they broke apart, she said, "Wow! That was great, but—down, boy! We don't have time right now."

He was smiling but also looked on the verge of tears. "Oh, Mabel! I just feel so—I've always been kind of a loner—but from the first time I saw you, well. you know. Mabel, I lo—like you! A lot. I mean. . . .uh, you're the coolest girl I know!"

"Yeah," Mabel said, ruffling his hair and smiling into his eyes. "But right now we have to find somebody who can tell us where the baby is. There'll be time enough for you to tell me all about it after we get home. And I do expect you to tell me all about it!"

The two of them returned to the interior and searched for another way up—because, Teek said, the baby was always hidden in the tallest tower. "See, I think I've figured it out," he told her. "At least partly. Instead of being controlled by physics, the reality here is controlled by narrative conventions."

"I went to a convention once," Mabel said in a distracted tone. "Comic-Con."

"No, I meant—whoa, what? Really, no fooling? San Diego, you mean? Cool!"

"Yeah, it was pretty cool. We won a prize for dressing like ourselves. Haven't we been in this room before?"

They stopped and looked around. They stood in a vaulted, roundish room—not circular, but its walls had many angles. The floor could not be called an octagon, nor even an icosagon (well, it could be, but that would be incorrect terminology), but whatever else it might be, it certainly was a many, many angled polygon. A fireplace—no fire in it, but so wide and tall that they could both have stood upright inside it—was a major feature. Love seats and chairs stood around the walls, and a chandelier high overhead gave light. On one wall a mirror—oddly shaped, a truncated oval with a flat bottom—as tall as Mabel hung about waist-high.

"Got it," Teek said. "Let's try this."

He walked to the mirror and said, "Mirror, mirror, on the wall, uh, answer when you hear my call!"

Bright varicolored lights flickered in the dim mirror, like the wonderful and hugely expensive under-the-sea effects in computer-generated films involving fish searching for other fish. Then a voice said, "Em fo hsiw uoy od tahw?"

"Huh?" Teek asked.

"Mirror talk," Mabel said. "It comes out reversed. Let me." She walked up to the mirror and said loudly, "Um . . . ta ybab taht erehw?"

The mirror flickered. "I didn't quite get that."

"I asked you where the baby is!" Mabel snapped.

"Well, you don't have to be snippy! That's no reflection on you, sorry, I've had a bad millennium. What babe?"

"The babe with the power!" Teek said.

"Shut up!" Mabel snapped. "I mean Soos Ramirez, the baby that got pulled into this crazy dimension through a whackadoodle yellow crystal ball and who's probably being held by the Goblin King somewhere in this castle!" She strode to the fireplace and grabbed a solid steel poker. Then she walked purposefully back to the mirror, tapping the end of it in her hand with deliberate menace. "Spill it, pal. You know I can make you crack!"

"All right, all right," the mirror said. "You're on the right track. This is the central tower, and there is a baby-sized prison chamber in the tip top of the tower, but it is inaccessible. I mean, you can take the elevator to the hundred and third floor, but the place you want is on the hundred and fourth, and there's no stairway, ladder, elevator, or any other mundane means of getting up to it—access is only through magic."

"Where's the elevator, and what floor are we on now?"

"Out the door past the fireplace, second door on the right, and you're on 97."

"Thanks! We're close! Come on, Teek!"

The teens hurried out.

The mirror murmured to itself, "What horrible people. Boy dressed nicely, though." And it fell back to its reflections on life, the universe, and everything.

—To be continued