32.
Odd One Out
A peculiar magic held sway over the Alabaster Icelands.
For generations, and long before any people of Poetry or Prose called Hisui home, the northernmost part of the island lay frozen. Layers of smooth, clear ice coated cliffs and tundra shrubs. Deep, glacial valleys howled with the bitterest of winds. And the glaciers themselves, some ancient time ago, had decided to quit rumbling and retreating to the north altogether. A lazy giant no one could name had left them to sink in the waste, and so forever they remained.
It was a bleak region. Mostly dark. All the same shade of white-or-gray — bluish, if one was creative. The silence was known to birth stubborn souls and mend weak minds. And like the rest of the whole accursed island, the Alabaster Icelands had lain in drought for weeks on end — without a novel snowflake to be seen.
In the widest part, where the snow was only a foot or so deep, there rose up a vast and solitary ice block. It looked somewhat like an acorn — with its pointy bit stuck in the ground and its smooth, slippery sides widening out as they ascended. Its top surface was completely flat — except for where a "stem" of ice jutted up twenty feet further.
And it was on top of that "stem" that a little girl sat with her chin in her mittens and a green fur ushanka on her head, swinging her legs and staring dejectedly down at all there was below her — which was not a lot.
"If an 8-year-old girl amply dressed for temperatures between 30 and 10 degrees above 0 and with no urgent agenda has been stranded upon Lord Avalugg's Legacy for a segment of 7 hours, 36 minutes and 22 seconds," she mumbled, "adding to the 2 days, 19 hours, 44 minutes and 58 seconds she spent up there last time, plus the interim of counting all that time, plus the interim of calculating…"
The girl stopped kicking for a moment. Two thick green braids hung stiff and frozen beneath her fur cap, and she kneaded them thoughtfully as she sought an answer. Soon her eyes lit up, and she clapped her mittens, delighted.
"Then it shall be a sum of 3 days, 6 hours, 25 minutes and 11 seconds, plus the 8 seconds taken to state the sum!" she announced to no one, and then pushed herself off the jutting piece of ice to land on the flat-topped ice block and etch several numbers into the smoothest place she could find with a rusty ice pick. The sound of her earnest scraping hid the sudden whoosh as a figure appeared behind her, and it was only at the sound of its gasp that she turned and jumped in surprise.
A pale old man had fallen to his knobbly knees near the edge of the ice block. He was hardly dressed for the weather, and he shivered and sputtered and grumbled in his throat when he saw he was not alone.
"Who are you?" the young girl asked, stomping over in her boots and taking a good look at what was below — which was not a lot, she thought — but geezers didn't usually appear out of nowhere.
"I'm G…Ginter," he sputtered with cold. "Odd question, but do you have anything to eat?"
The little girl stood tall and grinned. "Well, didn't you know that 7 8 9? Sweet 5431 hasn't got any 9s, so I'm afraid you'll have to look elsewhere."
Ginter cocked his head. "Have you got any 3s?" he asked, gripping his bony shoulders within the thinness of his torn gray shirt.
"Perhaps," said the little girl, patting the pouches strapped around her chest. "I suppose it's just as rational to say that 6 8 4, but out of sequence it doesn't sound as appetizing."
The old man grimaced and suddenly vanished again, and she was left with the slippery patch of ice where he'd been. She took her ice pick and etched a large 1.
"If 1 old man named Ginter with 8 little scars on his face and 63 wrinkles in his forehead were to appear suddenly in the Alabaster Icelands with nothing in his stomach and a terrible tremor and no coat and a cough, then how long should he expect to live? Oh, drat! I didn't get a look at his footwear!"
She puzzled on it anyway, and a few minutes later Ginter appeared suddenly again — this time not alone. A much younger and grim-looking woman accompanied him — breathing heavily and glaring daggers and at least having the tact to wear a jacket and leggings out in the cold. In the woman's arms was a sick-looking Abra, its eyes squeezed tightly shut and its pointed tail drooping.
"So many factors," the little girl cheered, whirling around and clapping her mittens. "Tell me, are you hungry as well?"
"Famished," growled the woman. "Who are you?"
"Sweet 5431 is pleased to meet you!" said the girl.
Ginter nudged his companion. "Just go with it," he rasped.
"No," said the grim woman. "Look at her tunic. She's Diamond Clan."
"Of course I'm diamonD claN," scoffed the girl. She knelt down and scratched out the numbers 5431 in the ice, and then below them the letters S A B I.
"The Sekki said I had to spell my name like this, with letters, because he said there are twice as many letters in the alphabet as there are digits 1-10, and so it takes longer to memorize them. Which of course is dead wrong. 10 isn't a digit. It's made up of 1 and 0."
"And everything between?" Ginter questioned, intrigued.
"Dead right, coot. Infinity emerges between 1 and 0, I argued. Infinite room for imagination. But The Sekki said people shouldn't be called by numbers. It's rude and distasteful and dehumanizing and lots of other time-wasting words."
The old man gave her a critical blue stare, like lightning upon the deepest, darkest ocean.
"Now, you're the first Clansman I've met here who didn't go on and on about words," he remarked.
And sabI stood taller. "Dead right. And that's why I was banished. Well, not banished entirely. I had a vision when I was young — that time could be spent infinitely counting instead of speaking. That numbers were infinitely more versatile than words, because the true value of things would remain even after human language failed. The stars would subtract themselves. The universe would get hotter — or colder."
"Colder. Absolute zero. The universe will die in motionless ice," Cyllene put in, and Ginter looked at her warily.
sabI went on:
"It was I who even calculated my people's own foolish destiny: Even if The Sekki of the diamonD claN spends his entire life taking as long as possible to speak, then the modicum of his substance and the grandiosity of his volume shall surely cancel each other out, and he will have said nothing at all. That's when the pearL clan will ruin us — because for what little they say, they at least place value in every word.
"And so if we're to be productive as well as prolonged, then we must turn to the world of valuable numbers! Instead of saying things, we count things. We can count the hairs on a Ponyta's back. We can count pounds of clay dug out of the marsh. Counting is the most tedious and time-consuming pastime of all, and yet it yields! Why, picture this: We can count the grains of sand on the beach in the Cobalt Coastlands. It will take several lifetimes to know them all, and surely we will need a few recounts, just to be sure, and surely Almighty Sinnoh will be impressed if we can accomplish it and begin to count something else! I told the elders in their tent that when I become Sekki, I'll prove it!"
She paused, gripping her ice pick in her mitten and blowing a white steam out from both nostrils. Thunder rumbled over the peak of Mount Coronet, and the air shifted — warmer than it should've been this far north, then immediately blistering cold. The girl kneeled, then scraped out the letters until they were nothing but snowflakes blown carelessly away off into the crimson dark.
"Only a boy can be The Sekki. The now irrelevant cabronuS' youngest son — that pig-head, dare I say his name adamaN. He banished 'irrational' 5431 here — only giving me the respect of one who's seen a vision from Sinnoh. I look after Lord Braviary, and count stars and snowflakes… At least, I did until that hole opened up and I had to start counting how many Pokémon come by to pick Warden gaeriC's bones."
She held a mitten to her brow, and with the other pointed to the distant gleam of a skeleton half-buried in the snow.
Luckily he two strangers seemed not to be listening to any of this exposition. The grim-faced woman looked around her, bare feet slipping on the ice until Ginter caught her and helped her away from the edge.
"Abra's powers are returning," Ginter muttered.
"It's still pale," she argued. "And Space keeps bending. I can feel it. It's like the world is a cushion and someone keeps squeezing and wrinkling it from outside. Abra can't see where it's supposed to be going when it teleports."
"Now that is something to puzzle about!" the little girl announced. She took a second ice pick out of a satchel and pressed it into the woman's hand.
"What is the distance from whence you teleported, and the temperature of that place, and the altitude, and what was your attitude, (both definitions,) and how much do you weigh? You can etch all the numbers into the ice here. There's plenty of space to perform calculations, and when we run out of space we only need wait until a chill wind erodes the ice away and erases everything."
The grim woman glared. "There isn't time."
"There could be time," Ginter said, nudging her and for a moment looking very grim himself. "Time can bend as well. You know that, don't you?"
"Just go with it," she bit back.
"Cyllene—"
"We'll talk about it later."
"CYLLENE, GET DOWN!"
There came a flash of blinding gold, and out of the sky swooped a raptor as tall as a man, with flaming feathers on its forehead and claws that could rend steel. At the speed of the wind it coasted along the ice and then shot off into the red-tinged darkness, snowflakes tumbling off its mighty wings and falling as rain below.
Cyllene seemed to curl into herself. Ginter wiped his beard with a wrinkled, clammy hand and then turned to the little girl again.
"We've been through a terrible ordeal, and we'd really appreciate if you could direct us to the safest place you know. Cyllene is delirious and we're both starving. For real food, not imaginary numbers."
sabI gasped. "IMAGINARY!? So you've heard of imaginary numbers!? How delightful! No one I know wants to talk about them! The square root of negative pi, for instance!"
"A square serving of peanut butter silk pie would be glorious," Ginter grunted. "And a dozen vanilla éclairs."
For as stubborn as she looked, Cyllene really did appear delirious, and hearing this conversation she slumped forward onto her side, with Abra still tightly gripping her.
"We… should not have quelled Sneasler. Something is angry. It's… GET OUT OF MY HEAD!'
Lord Braviary screamed as he circled back around, golden wings bright enough to illuminate the whole of the snowy waste.
"Oh, drat. Is she a sleepwalker?" sabI asked, coming near. "Lord Braviary is quite merciless. He plucks out eyes and slurps down livers."
Ginter, shivering as he was, worked to cover Cyllene's body with his own. "The magic chain she wears can protect her," he said. "She slept fine just an hour ago when we took a short rest. But even if her body doesn't move, I think she's still having nightmares. She… I almost got killed by whatever the hell Ingo is, and then we watched a girl get gored."
sabI nodded, looking terribly too wise for someone her age. Her green eyes almost glowed in the dark while Braviary circled and screamed above, confused on whether or not to dive down and attack.
"You're dead smart to have escaped Ingo. He's a vile, ageless creature from beyond the realm of timE. I told Lord Electrode's Warden to do something about him, but he's too much of a coward."
"Well, Ingo's dead now. Cyllene killed him with her magic."
"I hope that's the case," said sabI. "I wouldn't mind something irrational removing that monster from our midst."
"She also managed to revive the girl who was killed, but now she's even sicker than Cyllene. My Luxio guards her somewhere in the Crimson Mirelands. That's where we managed to teleport last time."
"calabA might be able to help you then. She knows about all kinds of remedies. But she's old as the hills and a tough egg to crack, and if you tell her you killed another pearL claN Warden, she won't be very happy."
"Thanks," said Ginter. "We'll try to find her. Cyllene, did you hear that? Abra can teleport us back to the Mirelands, and…"
Cyllene wasn't listening. Her stomach suddenly let out a loud growl. The veins in her hands were glowing like lava, then writhing and swelling as the flesh around them began to pulse.
"You're changing!" the old man realized.
sabI opened her mouth to add something, but was immediately silenced. A bolt of red light burst upward like a firework and exploded when it struck Braviary straight on in the breast. The bird screamed and thrashed, flapping an icy whirlwind that cascaded off the top of the ice block like a curtain of bloodied silver.
Cyllene gritted her teeth. Her left arm was wrapped tightly in circles of chain, and her right gripped it further up the length. Far up in the sky, it had become tangled in the raptor's feathers. It dripped and squelched and shimmied to bind the bird's wings to his sides, then snaked ever upward, until it was curling around the delicate gray-downed neck.
"DON'T!" sabI cried. "That's my LORD!"
Cyllene tugged downward as Braviary struggled to keep himself aloft. His aura burned ever hotter, and the ice they were standing on began to ripple and melt into warm, slushy puddles.
The little girl screeched. All the wisdom in her had vanished, and tears were sliding in rivers down her cheeks. "YOU'RE KILLING HIM! HE'S IN SO MUCH PAIN ALREADY AND YOU'RE KILLING HIM!"
She took out a flute and played the Tremolo of Nobles. Braviary thrashed. His feathers surged with Psychic power, and the ice melted faster, cracking beneath their feet.
"Cyllene, be gentle," Ginter warned.
"The ChɅin does whɅteVer it wɅnts," she rasped in a voice of deep cunning, barely flinching when a drop of blood fell and splattered all over her chin and neck. "If you know how to control its powers better, then tell me."
"How would I know!?"
She shivered and shrugged her shoulders, which seemed to be now too small for the jacket to contain. Her whole body convulsed. Her eyes glittered as red as the bloody snare above her.
"I FOUND IT IN YOUR PɅCK! IN THE POCKET OF YOUR DINGY OLD JɅCKET! ɅRE YOU TELLING ME IT SNUCK IN THERE ɅLL ON ITS OWN!?"
Her sleeves then began to ripple. Fabric stretched and strained, and Cyllene whined in her throat as solid muscle split one perfect seam. Her hands trembled and bubbled and crackled as they grew, fingers stretching and strengthening. The Red Chain reacted. Its links grew larger — easier to handle.
She gave one incredible tug, and Lord Braviary was flung from sky to snow in seconds. He landed with the sound of water bursting and sank into a puddle made instantly by his own fiendish heat.
Deep in the Alabaster Icelands, the great bird's limp body steamed. His glow of frenzy had diminished, and where the instrument had bitten his skin was bare and pinkish — shadows of chain-link scarring him in rings. He twittered weakly. The glowing feathers of his forehead flared bright purplish-blue, then faded.
"He won't kill anyone else," Cyllene sputtered. The red light slowly leaked from her eyes, and the Chain retreated into a small, rusted bracelet around her wrist.
Yet something wasn't right. She quickly pushed herself up until she was sitting, then started to panic once more. Her arms were bloated, looking like the swollen, firm biceps of a man. Her hands were huge, nails dirty and cracked, veins still twisting just under the skin. She patted along herself, almost choking with fright until Ginter grabbed her hand.
And she slapped him with the other, using all the curses of the future she knew.
"Next time let's ask permission," the old man was saying.
"We didn't have to ask Ingo's permission," Cyllene seethed, tears mixing with the mess on her face and running eerily red down her cheeks. "I'm just trying to feel something when I've never felt anything before. I want to know how bad things can get. I want to watch the world burn, or freeze, like in my dreams. I'll fight to feel this power in my body, even if it kills me."
The slush and ice shook beneath them. Ginter reacted before Cyllene could. His scars were itching, and a wild pleasure was building in his chest.
"Cyllene, that little girl's got a livewire up her sleeve. If you can feel Space bending, then I can feel ten thousand volts of pain that just charged up."
"I hope it kills you."
"You need to eat something now."
Something growled. It crackled. From far below, the snow stiffened into the shapes of a current coursing through them. sabI leapt off the edge, falling through darkness and gripping her ushanka, until she landed quite safely on the back of a twin-tailed, grinning yellow ape.
"Electivire," Ginter whispered, seeing the creature's beady red eyes gleam in the darkness. "I had one once. A long time ago. He was my ace. My trump card. His power never failed me.
The little girl — little Warden — raised both mittened hands, and Electivire's twin tails aimed up straight at Cyllene's chest. It hummed and ground its teeth, and a ripple of static pulsed through the ice. Rumbling and sparking and building and building up…
Cyllene was in a daze, but Ginter knew the strength of lightning. As soon as he felt the static in his toes, he inhaled and threw himself forward, gripping tight around Abra's tail. Snakes of lightning danced before his eyes.
"Get us out of here," he barked at the creature.
And once again, Space bent.
it is late; it's almost 11...
~N~
I read The Phantom Tollbooth just to understand how to write math jokes. (Excellent book, by the way. Almost as good as Howl's Moving Castle.)
Published by scrivenernoodz on FFN and AO3 March 3rd, 2024. Please don't repost. Please do review!
