The Storyteller (24 page)

And …
Poof!

The potion worked. She instantly traveled to another world, where she found herself lying in a bathtub in a dirty tiled room. A man hovered over her, cursing and sweating.

“I love you, Candy,” he said.

She looked down at her body, which was shades of red and white and not quite complete. She wasn't really a person yet. He was building her. Out of candy canes. She tried to move, but nothing happened. She tried to speak, but her lips were too sticky.

For weeks, she lived in a body made of candy canes. It was a strange life. She sat on a couch and looked at people acting out plays on something called a TV. Meanwhile, the man nibbled on her arms and legs. After a while, so too did his wife. Luckily, it only hurt a little, but Sigrid worried what would happen if they ate all of her.

Before long, she was nothing more than a head, and that's when her lips finally came unstuck. She was able to speak, or to try to speak.

“Gur Ferm Griggid,” she said, though what she was trying to say was
I am Sigrid
. She hoped that if they understood she was an actual person, then maybe they'd help her out.

She said it over and over again, but it was of no use. They didn't understand. They simply argued with each other as saliva melted away what was left of Sigrid's candy cane face.

When she was nothing but a puddle, something happened.

Poof!

*   *   *

She was in another world, another body. Not home. A weird place. A place full of tubes. They looked like tentacles from sea creatures, and they were everywhere. An ocean of tubes, a landscape of tubes. Everywhere!

Again, Sigrid couldn't move. Or, to be more specific, she couldn't control her movements. Because this time she was in the body of a newborn baby. This time, when she tried to speak, only cries came out of her mouth.

She flailed and wailed upon the slippery surface of the tubes until a young girl spotted her. “Oh, you poor thing,” the girl said. “Who are you?”

Sigrid tried to say
I am Sigrid
, but only cries emerged.

“Oh, you poor thing,” the girl said again. “My name is Harriet, and while I'd love to take you with me, you'll be safer back in civilization.” Then Harriet ripped open one of the tubes and slipped the baby Sigrid inside.

“Good luck and Godspeed,” Harriet said.

Air blew through the tube and
whoosh
, Sigrid was transported all the way to a bedroom. She landed on a bed.

In the corner of the room, a girl was talking into the ends of other tubes. “Hello,” she kept saying. “It's Georgie. Talk to me, people. Talk to me.”

She didn't even notice the baby on her bed. Sigrid cried, but Georgie didn't turn around. She was too occupied with talking into the tubes. After a while, Sigrid felt thirsty. And then tired. And then …

Poof!

*   *   *

She entered another world, another life. Now she was a creature with six knuckles on her hands and five eyeballs, and she lived on another planet. In other words, she was an alien. Only this wasn't to be a brief visit. For many years she lived here, so long that she eventually accepted it as her permanent home.

When it rained on her planet, which was pretty much every day, it caused all the aliens, including Sigrid, to be angry. So angry, in fact, that they eventually decided to invade another planet, which was the source of all their anger. Clouds from the other planet had invaded their atmosphere and had rained negativity all over them.

Sigrid joined the mission to the other planet, which was treacherous indeed. They sent a fleet of spacecrafts, but only one made it the entire way. Luckily, it was the most important one. It was the one piloted by Sigrid and it contained a bomb that could destroy an entire solar system.

Sigrid landed her spacecraft in an overgrown field next to a house. Before they detonated the bomb, she and her copilot went inside the house to confirm that they had the right planet. They weren't sure what they were looking for, but in a bedroom, in a drawer, Sigrid found a strange object. Shiny. Metal. With a handle and a round tip. It appeared to be a weapon.

And on the bed, in the room, Sigrid discovered a skeleton.

Sigrid had lived for years in that alien body, with that alien mind and that alien language. So long, in fact, that she had almost forgotten who she really was. But not entirely.

For in that skeleton, she recognized the form of a human. Sigrid was a human. Deep down. Back in her original body, at least. And in that moment, in her alien body, she realized what was about to happen. She had come to her home planet, full of humans, and she had come to destroy it.

Instinctually, she lifted the weapon in her hand and pointed it at her copilot.

Bam!

Her copilot fell to the ground.

She screamed in triumph, “I am Sigrid!” but it must have sounded like nonsense to any human because she screamed it in her alien language.

Then she turned the weapon on herself and …

Poof!

*   *   *

She was now in the body of a joke. How can a joke have a body, you ask? All good jokes have a soul, and every soul needs a body in which to live, do they not?

They don't? Okay, can you suspend disbelief for a moment, at least? Thanks.

So yes, Sigrid was in the body of a joke. A dark and disturbing joke, in case you hadn't already guessed. It was a shameful existence, even though she was actually quite funny. She set about to change herself and embarked on a regimen of self-improvement.

It appeared to work, for all of a sudden, one random day, she became a respectable joke, a good old-fashioned knock-knock joke. She thought it was because of all the toil and sweat she had put into becoming respectable. But it was something else entirely. It was because of Opposite Day.

Stupid Opposite Day!

It made her respectable, but it stole her punch line. Without a punch line, she was nothing. She climbed onto the roof of a tavern and tried to shout
I am Sigrid
into the wind, but the words made no sense because she made no sense.

So she jumped off.

Poof!

*   *   *

She was a bird. A baby bird. In a nest in a tree. Waiting for her mother. She strained her neck to look out over the edge of the nest, and she fell.

She landed on the pavement right in front of a jogger. A woman named Justine Barlow.

Poof!

*   *   *

She was another baby bird. In another nest in another tree. Also waiting. Also straining. Also falling. Landing right in front of a jogger. You guessed it. Justine Barlow again.

Poof!

Poof!

Poof!

*   *   *

On and on this went. Sigrid kept on changing into baby birds and kept on ending up at the feet of this Justine Barlow person. Why? She didn't have a clue. She only knew that this was definitely not a preferable existence to life in the onyx tower.

I am Sigrid, I am Sigrid, I am Sigrid,
she kept trying to say, but she couldn't because she kept on ending up in the body of baby birds. And baby birds can't talk. Especially dead ones. She seemed doomed to life caught in a perpetual loop.

Until …

After thousands of
poofs
and thousands of baby birds, she emerged in the body of a hummingbird, buried beneath a pile of avian corpses.

Things had come full circle, in a weird way.

Sigrid the hummingbird dug herself out of the pile and hovered in front of Justine Barlow's face. She recognized the pain and confusion in Justine's eyes.

“What does it all mean?” Justine asked.

It was a question Sigrid had been asking herself constantly. Finally, she had the answer. Sigrid realized that the only place she belonged was home, in the onyx tower. The fortune she had in life was a fortune she needed to share. That's what it all meant. Be good. Be kind. Do whatever you can to help people. Be the best you that you can be.

Simple. Obvious. But true.

She hovered in front of Justine, telling herself,
I am Sigrid, I am Sigrid, I am Sigrid …

Until she ran out of energy and she crashed to the ground.

Poof!

*   *   *

This time she was finally home. She was Princess Sigrid again. The dose had only been a drop, but she had lived numerous lives that stretched out over hundreds of years. Back home in the onyx tower, not a second had passed since she had tried the Dorgon's potion.

It had been a harrowing and horrible experience, one she wasn't sure she wanted to repeat. So she hid the potion away in a hollowed-out book in her room and she vowed to make the best of her first life, her real life, her
solid
life. She didn't need to be someone else. She needed to use her power to make the world a better place.

From that moment on, she was kind and she was generous. Her resolution was to help people as much as she could.

Until one day, her parents decided she was being too kind and too generous and, without realizing it, they set into action a course of events that would rob their daughter of both her memory and her soul.

 

W
EDNESDAY
, 12/27/1989

MORNING

I gave you “Worlds Collide” because I can't give you Alistair's story yet, Stella. I hope you understand. Back when Alistair told me the story of Una and Banar, I knew it was just the tip of the Aquavania iceberg, but I had no idea how small a tip it was. I'd need to write an entire book to tell you what he told me last night. He did more than fill in the blanks. It was … epic.

Highlights? Will that be good enough for now, Stella?

We'll call Alistair's story
The Whisper
, and all I can say is that when he first went to Aquavania, he traveled among many worlds. From a land full of cavemen to an underground lair where an armor-clad boy named Hadrian commanded a battalion of tentacles. From a realm of ice, polar bears, and a penguin, to a space station full of monsters. From a school full of idiots, to … well, on and on and on, until he came to Thessaly. Only it wasn't the real Thessaly. It was a twisted version of our home, and he lived there for many years.

Charlie was in Aquavania. Fiona had been there too, once upon a time, until Charlie stuck a pen in her ear, sucked her soul into the pen, and poured her soul over his head like ink. Then Alistair did the same thing to Charlie. That's how he became the Riverman. Or, as he is sometimes known, the Whisper.

Um. Whoa?

Of course, Alistair filling in the blanks of his story inspired me to fill in the blanks of my stories. Which is why I gave you “Worlds Collide” instead. I wrote it in a whirlwind late last night, channeling that Aquavania magic, using Alistair's experiences to inspire Sigrid's. Like Alistair, Sigrid would travel from world to world. Like Alistair, she would confront skewed versions of reality. Like Alistair, she would struggle to know who she was. And like Alistair, she'd return home at the end as a new version of herself.

While I wrote, I thought about all the wild things Alistair said he saw in Aquavania and I realized that the coincidences between his journey and my various stories are so many that I can't even begin to mention them all.

Birds. Tubes. Towers. Clouds. Candy. Monsters. Schools. Stars. Oceans. And on and on and on.

Alistair says I get my inspiration from Aquavania, but it's almost as if the opposite has happened, as if Alistair has gotten his inspiration from me. If I didn't know any better, I'd think he'd been reading my …

Son. Of. A. Cricket!

 

T
HURSDAY
, 12/28/1989

AFTERNOON

Mandy met me at Hanlon Park this morning because I asked her to, because it felt like she was maybe the only person that I could talk to. You're great and all, Stella, but sometimes a girl needs friends who aren't made of wood pulp.

Next to the snowbanks by the basketball courts, we hugged for the first time in what felt like forever and I handed her a plastic bag with her brothers' walkie-talkies in it.

“Merry Christmas,” I said.

“Keep 'em,” she said. “Chad and Dan don't even know they're gone.”

She tried to hand them back, but I scuttled over the icy snow to the swings, sat down on one, and rocked back and forth a bit. “I don't need them anymore,” I told her. “Dorian Loomis left. And it's my brother who I should really be afraid of.”

“What'd he do?” she asked, unable to hide her glee. Then she put the bag down and hopped on the swing next to me.

“I have a diary,” I said. “I write about life and I write stories in it sometimes. It's private. I think he's been secretly reading it.”

Mandy leaned her head against the swing chain and her face went hangdog. “I'm sorry to hear that,” she said. “That sounds positively jerkish of him. But maybe he has a good reason.”

“I can't think of one,” I said. “He tells me these outrageous things. He gives me hope that Fiona and Charlie are still out there. He's picked me as a sucker because he knows I want to believe in magic.”

“I'm not sure I get what you're saying,” Mandy replied. “But consider yourself lucky. It must be nice to have the sort of mind that still believes in magic.”

“Magic doesn't solve anything,” I said. “Because eventually, you see the strings. At least if you're even a half-smart person.”

“You are a
whole
smart person, Keri Bear,” she said. “The smartest I know.”

“Not recently,” I said. “I saw all these coincidences in my life and I began to think they were magic. But coincidences are usually the sign of something else. Tricks. Alistair was tricking me.”

“How would he do that?”