Story Thieves (9 page)

“THAT IS NOT WHAT I WANT TO
KNOW 
!” the Magister roared, and the lights in the room dimmed as his entire presence grew. He seemed to gather ahold of himself, though, and everything lit back up to normal a moment later. His voice was once again measured as he continued. “I want to know
how
they know what they write. Can this man see into my world?”

Bethany stared at him. “I don't honestly know,” she said in a quiet voice.

The Magister's eyes grew hard. “Because if he cannot see into my world, but instead my world sprang from his head in some way, that would mean my entire life, as well as the lives of everyone and everything I hold dear, have all been a lie. Made up. A
fiction
.”

Bethany swallowed hard again, but didn't say anything.

“I can remember back thousands of years, Bethany,” the Magister said. “I remember my childhood, when the original magic-users first built the great cities of Magisteria. I remember the first time I met Sylvia, the love of my life. I remember centuries upon centuries of magical study. And my children. I watched them grow and age and have children of their own. I remember the school I once taught in, before the Quanterians destroyed it and put my planet under martial law, outlawing all
magic. I remember those whom a mad doctor has imprisoned just for living their lives the way they wished, with magic.” He leaned forward. “My power kept me alive for all this time while others, dear friends and loved ones, passed away. It did so because I knew I had purpose, a reason to keep living in spite of time. So you might imagine how it would feel if, in reality, my entire existence amounts to nothing more than
six adventure books for children
.”

“Seven, in a week or so,” Bethany said, her voice barely above a croak.

“If you won't answer my question, you give me little choice but to find out the truth another way,” the Magister said, his voice dangerously low. “I used my Fog of Truth spell on your friend and did not yet have a chance to relearn it, but there are other methods.”

“I . . . I really don't know!” Bethany said. “I swear, I don't! I know some authors say they hear their characters' voices in their heads, like they're talking to them—”

“Their characters?” the Magister said softly.

“The people they're writing about, that's all I meant! And if that's true, then they couldn't just make them up, you don't just hear voices. I mean, some people do, but they've got mental
diseases, and authors probably don't have that kind of mental disease. I mean, they could, but—”

“I see that we'll have to do this another way,” the Magister said. “Come.”

He stood up and gestured. Invisible hands yanked Bethany out of her seat and carried her along behind the Magister as he strode back to the double doors.

Outside the library was some sort of large entryway, with marble floors and stark-white columns. Two people stood in the middle of the entryway, right in front of a large staircase: one younger, wearing some kind of black cloak, with twin wands in what looked like holsters at his waist, and the other middle-aged in jeans and a sweater, his eyes filled with terror as ropelike snakes wrapped and unwrapped themselves around his arms and legs, holding him in place.

“The girl has not been as much of a help as I'd hoped,” the Magister said. “So we'll have to try a different way to find out the truth.”

“Please,
no
,” the middle-aged man said. “I told you, I don't—”

The Magister gave him a look, and the man's mouth disappeared right off his face.

“Magi, we don't need to do this,” the boy in the black cloak said, not seeming too happy himself. “Honestly, I get it. I nearly gave up entirely when I found out I was a clone. I thought my whole life had been a lie. But I learned that it didn't matter, because who you are isn't about where you come from, but about what you make of yourself.
You
taught me that! What does it change if—”

“Everything,”
the Magister said. He gestured, and the middle-aged man rose into the air, a paper and a pen appearing in the author's hands. The Magister stepped to the man's side and nodded at the items. “Now, Jonathan Porterhouse, we shall perform a small experiment, just like the Quanterians. You are going to describe me, the me you see before you, on paper. However, change one aspect of my clothing. A simple shift in color, perhaps.”

Jonathan Porterhouse's nostrils flared as he frantically struggled for breath without his mouth, his eyes wide.

“What is this going to prove?” Bethany asked, her voice barely louder than a whisper.

“If nothing happens, then we'll know that these so-called writers have no control over us, or our world,” the Magister
said, turning to Bethany. “However, if my clothing does change based on the description that he writes . . .”

His eyes darkened, as did the room again. Somewhere lightning crashed, and Bethany didn't think it was from a storm. “Then we will have a problem.”

B
ORING!” Owen shouted into the white blankness all around him. “This is so boring! Why can't something just happen already!”

He sighed and tried to bang his head against the nonexistent wall behind him. Nothing existed in this place, apparently. Not walls, not hunger, not time, and
definitely
not entertainment.

Or
Dr. Verity for that matter. Which was weird. Shouldn't he have been here too? Had he broken out? And if so, why hadn't he left some sort of instructions so Owen could do the same thing? Being evil was one thing, but that was just inconsiderate.

“Still boring!” he shouted to no one. “Bethany, where
are
you? If you're off having fun with Kiel and the Magister without me, I'm never going to forgive you!”

Bethany, having fun? Okay, that wasn't likely, but given that she hadn't come back yet, she had to be doing
something
exciting with them. Assuming she was okay. Since they'd basically kidnapped her, the Magister and Kiel. After she'd been knocked out.

Owen frowned, suddenly worried. What if they stole her power, or banished her to a horrible dimension of just audiobooks or something? Or worse, what if they forced her to jump into stories to talk to all the cool characters? That'd make her crazy!

Nah, she had to be okay. The girl could grab aliens from Mars out of books if she had to. What was going to stop her? An old man and his awesome, incredibly cool teenage apprentice? No way. She was fine. She had to be.

When Bethany rudely didn't respond or come get him out of this nowhere nonprison he'd been trapped in, Owen banged his head a few more times, then tried walking around again.

The problem with walking into nothingness is that you honestly had no idea if you were getting anywhere. For all he knew, he'd walked ten miles and found just as much boring as the spot he'd left. He collapsed from boredom against the ground, and conveniently found another wall to bang his head against. Or the same one. Maybe the ground had just moved underneath his feet like a treadmill.

Would he grow old in here, until he looked like the Magister with a huge beard? Would his fingernails grow out like that guy in
Guinness World Records
? Could Bethany jump into
that
book and hang out with Fingernail Guy? . . . That'd be weird.

Was he missing his birthday? Had he already missed it? For all Owen knew, he'd been sitting here for years! Think of the presents he'd missed. Birthdays
and
Christmas!

“Let me out of here!”
he shouted.

Nobody answered.

It was time to give up. There was nothing else to do, literally. Here he was, trapped in a book, but outside the book, and—wait a second.

If he was really still in the book somehow, maybe he could jump forward in the story, like books did when a chapter ended. It'd be like fast-forwarding time, chapter after chapter, until Bethany came back to find him. That was brilliant!

Except, how did you end a chapter?

Owen thought back to all the books he knew, and what he could remember about the ends of chapters. Most seemed to stop on some kind of ironic one-liner, or a cliffhanger. Cliffhangers would be a bit tough in here, with no cliffs to hang off of, but maybe he could trick the book into chaptering by
saying something horribly ironic, and then waiting for it to (
surprise! 
) happen.

“Now would be a
horrible
time for someone to show up out of nowhere to come rescue me!” he said, then paused to see if it worked.

Time didn't jump forward, and no one showed up out of nowhere to rescue him.

This may not have been as good an idea as he'd hoped.

“You know what'd be funny? If Dr. Verity came back and kidnapped me! Who'd expect
that 
!”

Nothing.

“I'd really hate if I fell asleep and it turned out this was all just a dream. . . .”

Nope.

“This seems like the most secure prison
ever
! NO ONE could break in here!”

Was that a sound? . . . Nope. Nope it wasn't.

Owen growled in frustration, then just started screaming various things. “Chapter Twelve! Chapter Thirty-Two! Chapter Seventy-Five, The Boy Who Was Rescued from the Boring Prison!”

Nothing happened.

“If anyone ever reads this,” he said to no one, “I hope they find out just how dumb it was to jump into a book. Apparently, you just get thrown into jail and left to rot. Don't do it. Let me be a lesson. At least my life will have meant something!”

He paused to see if
that
had done anything, but no.

“Seriously, can NOBODY hear me?” he shouted.

“I can hear you,” said someone. Out of nowhere stepped a person with no features, just a blank face and body, like an undressed mannequin. “And you can call me Nobody,” the creepy no-faced person said.

Owen blinked. Now
that
would be the perfect place for a new chap—

—
ter. Except of course, there wasn't one.

“Who are you?” Owen asked Nobody. “And why would I call you Nobody, when clearly you're
somebody 
? Not that you look like somebody, actually. You mostly look like an unpainted action figure.”

“You talk quite a bit when you're nervous, don't you,” Nobody said.

“My mom tells me that it's charming,” Owen said, trying to sound indignant. “But you didn't answer my question.”

“That's right, I didn't. You don't belong here, so I'm here to take you home.”

“Why do you not have a face? Or anything else?” Owen backed away slowly. “Traditionally, when someone looks either evil or faceless, it means they
are
evil, and faceless, or they're a misunderstood good guy. How misunderstood would you say you are?”

“If you'd be more comfortable,” Nobody said, “I can look a bit more . . . normal.” With that, his body began to sprout clothing, hair, fingernails, and everything else one naturally took for granted when looking at a regular person. Two green eyes popped out right around where they should be, and the face split to grow lips and teeth and such. Not a moment later, a handsome, middle-aged man with bronze-colored hair stood in front of him, raising a now-existing eyebrow. “Better?”

“It would have been if I hadn't just seen it sprout out of your body,” Owen said. “But that's fine. You can still rescue me.”

The man's mouth curled up in a half smile. “I usually go formless when traveling between stories. It's easier that way. You wouldn't want to show up on an alien lizard planet looking human, after all.” He gestured for Owen to follow him, then began to walk off.

“Wait, you travel between stories?” Owen shouted after him. “So you're half-fictional too?”

The man stopped abruptly and turned around, giving Owen a knowing look. “No, I'm not. I didn't realize she'd shared so much with you.”

“She? Bethany? You know her?” Wait a second. Was this man actually her
father
? Had he really just found Bethany's father for
her? What were the odds? Unless this was some kind of twist, and he actually wasn't her father, and everything he said was just to throw Owen off?

Or maybe he was
way
overthinking all of this.

The man smiled again, just slightly. “Let's be off. It's not safe out here, between stories. You can get pretty lost, and many never find their way back to the story they're from. You're lucky to have survived so long. Though I suppose that's because you aren't, strictly speaking, from a story. As far as you know, at least.”

Huh. Cryptic. Classic trickster character. Those were always Owen's favorites, and that meant something interesting was happening. And right now, interesting was infinitely better than the boringness of the white, blank nothing. Plus, if this really could be Bethany's dad, Owen had to find out for sure. “So how'd you find me? You're not from the Kiel Gnomenfoot books, or I'd remember you.”

“That's right,” Nobody said. “But I'll have to take you back there first, to get you home.”

“How? How can you get me home if you're not like Bethany?” Bam. Subtle.

Nobody just gave him the same half smile. “There are other ways to travel between the worlds. Now come on.”

What did
that
mean? And why wouldn't he just say who he was?

“From what I could tell, two main characters just disappeared out of the book,” Nobody continued, not looking back at Owen anymore as he quickened his pace, so Owen hurried to catch up. “If the last Kiel Gnomenfoot book were to come out right now, missing Kiel Gnomenfoot, questions would be raised. Questions no one should be asking just yet. That means someone needs to bring those two back.”