“Well, Lulu. You’re back in nice, safe Walla Walla. So nice they named it twice.”
The Witch winked at Lulu. Thanksgiving dinner had been a totally weird experience, what with nobody questioning her about Reggie, or where she’d been, or even why the Witch was making the mashed potatoes.
“Things are back like they were, or mostly so, since you went and made your brother disappear. Luckily, since nobody remembers him because of his disappearance during a time travel event, it doesn’t seem to have caused much of a stir.” The Witch cocked her wicked eyebrow and Lulu was struck with a sensation she’d never known before. “I guess I’ll be getting back to my magical adventures through the multiverse.” She raised her striped wand above her head.
“Wait.” Lulu felt compelled to say something, though she had no idea what to say. All she knew was that she didn’t want the Witch to leave and for things to back to being boring, which was, by comparison to Lulu’s adventure in Sugarland, an understatement in describing Walla Walla. “I, uh…” a flash of motion to her left, and then to the right derailed her to-be-awkward next comment, “what?”
“You’re articulate as usual.” The Witch whirled around toward Lulu, her cross expression registering surprise as she did. Her cross. Expression. Somehow. Mirrored.
“There’s something here. In the house.” Lulu glanced around the dining room which had just been cleared after the Thanksgiving feast.
“As I have just discovered. That speedy little nuisance is the Jackalope and apparently he managed to follow us through the time warp.” The Witch knit her significant brows and studied Lulu.
“What are we going to do?”
“We? We are not doing anything. I’ll just zap it back. You go back to being a boring brat and I go back to being the glorious sorcerous sensation that scintillates the galaxy.”
“No way. I don’t want to go back to being Walla Walla normal.”
“Too bad, brat. Now beat it. I’ll locate that thing and zap it silly. Hasta la never.” She raised the striped wand again, but as she prepared to follow her sinister parting remark with a shower of sparks, Jonas emerged from the living room.
“I’m great, I’m great, I’m really quite first rate.”
He was ranting a litany of his marvels and skipping about finding shiny surfaces, at which he would stop and catch a look at his reflection. The level of stupidity was not entirely out of character for Jonas, but the idiotic rhyme scheme made clear what had transpired.
“Look at me, look at me,
I’m every possibility,
a marvel in every way,
the winner every day.
Sol shines on me with jealousy
because I am so Elvisy…”
The Witch stepped back aghast as Jonas spoke the name of her old friend, even as he droned on, oblivious.
It was clear to Lulu that Jonas was about to bite the dust or something like that as the Witch, eyes wide with fury, turned fully to face him, wand aloft.
“That is the last straw, Jonas. You’re finished.”
“It’s not Jonas.” Lulu jumped between the Wicked Witch of West Texas. “Please. Don’t kill him.” Even as Lulu said this, she felt it was probably pointless to protest, but, given that the supremely irritating Jonas was her dad, she felt obliged to say a bit of something.
“I know it’s not, Lulu. Now move so I can send that Jackalope back to Sugarland and leave you to fossilize in Walla Walla.”
“What will happen to my dad?”
“The good thing about his perfect mediocrity is that it leaves him mostly undamagable. You won’t be able to tell the difference. Now let’s get on with this.”
The Witch raised her wand.
“What’s that?” Lulu pointed at the apparition which has materialized just behind the Witch and rather superimposed over the credenza.
The Witch turned to look at the specter, wand still aloft.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake. We’ve got a bit of a time travel accident containment field problem. I blame you, Lulu.”
“Why me?” She looked at the ghostly figure, who seemed quite familiar, like her banished brother, actually. He was jumping around like a monkey.
“Well, looks like you’re coming with me,” the Witch said. “Unless you wish to remain in this anomalous splinter universe created by too many paradoxes colliding in the mythosphere.”
“What? You’re kidnapping me again?”
“You really have a flair for the dramatic. Anyway, I have other things to do, so if you’re going to be that way, I’ll be off.”
“Wait, my dad.” Jonas was hopping away.
“I’m very very amazingly cute,
My observations are so astute.
Me, me, me, greatest of all time,
If I were pie, I’d be key lime.
Best of the best, worst of the bad,
You can’t beat me, don’t be mad.
“Now that I’ve seen the apparition in the dining room, I’m afraid the situation is worse than I initially suspected. Not that it matters. I have bigger fish to fry.”
As the Witch spoke these words a fish swam between them as if there were water.
“See?” The Witch pointed toward the passing salmon. “This has given me a good deal of data to consider, so I will trouble you no longer, my dear niece.” She smiled sweetly. It was chilling.
“What am I going to do?” Lulu asked. “You can’t leave me trapped in this insane realm.”
“Not to worry, Lulu, it will probably begin to de-stabilize in a very short time and it will all disintegrate.”
“Where will that leave me?”
“Not my problem.”
Lulu stammered but couldn’t form any words.
“Well, I very kindly offered you a life of interesting magical hijinks, but you aren’t interested, so maybe staying here and having a bit of a home study course would suit you fine. I do think you have proven to have quite an aptitude, and…”
“Herb the Battle Unicorn?” Lulu could barely believe her eyes.
“Yes, it would appear so. As I was saying, you do seem to have some aptitude. Nobody’s ever made it through Sugarland. You have no idea the danger you were in. Had you not done exactly as you did, you’d be statuary right now. Or maybe an ingredient for creme brulee.”
Suddenly the apparition of Reggie lunged at her and her dad leapt onto the dining room table in a single bound, brandishing his mirror. The mirror zapped a reflecto beam and in an instant Reggie was gone. Lulu breathed a sigh of relief.
“This could get entertaining. Family movies, you know.” The Witch drew a crystal from her bag, the wand now having apparently disappeared into it. “It’s from Prada, Marfa,” the Witch said patting her chain mail mini clutch. “Alien technology.”
The bag was the size of a deck of cards and yet contained all kinds of wicked parafernalia. Suddenly, Lulu wanted a bag like that. Really wanted one.
“Focus, Lulu. I was saying that if you survive this, I’m sure you’ll make a splendid apprentice with all you have learned. That’s a pretty slim possibility, if I’m being honest, but I really don’t…”
“There are more,” Lulu gasped. The apparition of Reggie had reappeared as a double, and then as soon as she got her words out, the doubles doubled. Now there were four transparent Reggies screaming and rolling around in a frenzied ball of rage on the floor. They were kicking and gouging and this time they had long tails.
“Okay, I’m going to have to get going before they see you. I will check back at some point to see if this quantum bubble still exists and…”
“Wonderful is my name just the same,
I’m so wonderful I must exclaim,
I have a very shiny car and a guitar
I drank a very expensive drink in a bar.
Everybody says I’m a super-star,
I ate more pizza than a tzar.
Amazing is what I am. In a can.
With some lox. On a box. With a Fox.”
“This is perfectly ludicrous.” The Witch held the crystal. “I’m so pleased.”
Just then Ann walked in.
“Lulu. You’re grounded for the rest of your life. Now get your stuff and take it to the garage. That’s where you have to stay now that there’s a chupacabra trapped in your room.” She pointed toward the door to the garage. “Get going. I’m locking the door behind you because you’re never coming out.”
She’d seemed so normal at dinner.
“Auntie dear, do you think I might come along with you?” Lulu was now officially worried.
“Get in the garage,” Ann screeched, red faced. Her eyes were bulging with fury, “or I’ll have your head.”
“I have a big old garden hose,
My nozzle so strong it grows and grows,” Jonas crooned, droningly.
He shot the rolling ball of Reggie monkeys with the mirror ray and they disappeared.
“Get in the garage with the damned snakes,” Ann bellowed.
“Oh, this is really jumping off, Lulu. I’d not want to deprive you of your loving family. I’ll just leave this crystal here to record the rest of it and I’ll be running along. I’m sure whatever becomes of you, it will prove informative, at least. It’s been nice knowing you, particularly since you did so better than expected in the Sugarland challenge. No matter though.” She drew her wand from the tiny bag at her waist.
“You’ve destroyed Walla Walla and now you’re going to leave me here? You’re the most evil creature in the universe.”
“First of all, Walla Walla, in some dimension, is just fine. What happened is that because you traveled through time— you’re idea, by the way, because you were trying to hide the truth from your parents— and the reason for that, I’ll remind you, was that you obliviated your brother intentionally, but also because, apparently, you had already conceived of transforming your brother into a monkey, and also because all of this occurred in other dimensional space, which admittedly you didn’t know, you created a perfect cluster of ridiculous events that made the new set of competing magical conditions incompatible with the reality you left in Walla Walla. You simply fractured off this alternate version of Walla Walla which was created when you attempted to travel back to your original Walla Walla.”
“I can’t believe that actually makes sense to me. Also, everything that followed you kidnapping me and my brother was really your fault.”
“Of course it was. But I could see that your talents were wasted in the halcyon stupor of your Walla Walla somnambulation so I decided to rescue you.”
“You kidnapped me and made me go through a life or death ordeal, which I barely survived and my brother didn’t. How is that a rescue?”
“It was a rescue from boredom. Boredom is usually coincidental with extreme safety, so rescuing you from boredom was always going to be less safe than where you were. Also, rescuing you at all meant that you would have to be worthy of rescue and to be worthy of rescue you have to survive an ordeal. If you can’t do the ordeal, it’s a failed rescue mission. You get repurposed as sugar. Your brother was about to become a serial killer, and he’s now changed form to such an extent that he will never now do such a thing.”
“You’re insane. And evil.”
“You know better. You know about the things your brother had done in secret, for instance, which was why you kept him under control in Sugarland. I will add that the fact that you kept him under control in Sugarland was vital to your survival, but you already knew he was a problem and was going to get worse. You proved as much.”
Lulu was dumbfounded. Reggie really was bad in ways that nobody knew about or would even believe. Her parents thought he was capable of nothing but good, and they were exactly wrong. Only Lulu had ever known about his misdeeds.
“How did you know?” Lulu asked.
“Time travel.”
“How’s that?”
“Not how you think,” the Witch explained, “but because of the very nature of the magical events that occurred. When analyzing the specific magical patterns, I see certain nodes of intentional causality. Several open currents interacted to create a specific set of outcomes and each of those was the result of an intention. So, clearly you can see how obvious it all is.”
Lulu had become so entranced in the conversation that she hadn’t noticed when the Witch had done it, but she’d apparently put a pause on the action of all of the Reggie-monkeys and Jonas and Ann.
“Yes. I did freeze-frame it so we could have a polite conversation. Would you like some tea?”
Lulu looked around her. There was a motionless melee in progress. Reggie’s soccer trophy was poised in mid-flight cranium-ward at Jonas who was mid-step in a jig and jingle on the dining table above a mess of monkey madness as Ann was captured mid-shriek. The idea of having tea in midst of a freeze-framed ruckus was appealing beyond resistance.
“Could we have mini-cupcakes with cream filling?” Lulu suffered, here, a twinge of mis-giving remembering the entire kidnapping debacle, though she was still intrigued by the new developments and the Witch had a point in that Walla Walla wasn’t going to be quite the same and even if it were, it wasn’t so appealing as she’d made out in the context of having been kidnapped. Anyhow, she reasoned, she was both hungry and in a very bad situation vis a vis reality and her family life, so a new chapter was in order. She could see only one page to turn in this storybook.
The Witch waved her wand and an entire high tea appeared on the dining table with frozen Jonas as the centerpiece. There were little sandwiches and many types of cakes. There were even mini-cupcakes. Lulu selected one and bit in. It was the most delectable thing she’d ever experienced, a filling of honeydew and milk of paradise, so exotic, yet oddly familiar. The Witch picked up the tea pot and poured.
“Those have always been your favorite.”
“My favorite?”
“On your few brief visits to Sugarland. You’d think of them as dreams if you remember at all.”
The memory of a series of dreams came clapping into her skull; her brain rang with the tingling trill of rapid realizations.
“Let’s sit and discuss.” She waved her wand again and there appeared some enchanted birds in cartoon trees twittering a lovely song right there in the dining room where roses sprouted for real from the wall paper. The tea was jasmine.
“Reggie was not your brother.”
“I already know that.”
“He was an evil cyborg placed in your family by a dark magician in an attempt to stop you from becoming a weirdo and fulfilling your destiny. Bob’s main job was to undermine his many attempts to sabotage you.”
“I didn’t know that. But it does explain quite a bit.”
“I know. I also had an evil cyborg brother who is now a narcissistic hare.”
Lulu paused for a moment to let this sink in while helping herself to a couple more cupcakes.
“My dad was a robot?”
“Yes, and he was just like Reggie, but I managed to sneak him a potion which I thought would end his makers’ ability to control him. It worked in the sense that he could no longer carry out the evil deeds his overlords intended, but it didn’t make him a real person. He’s still, well, him, unfortunately. There was no helping that.”
“Dark magician, cyborgs? I need and explanation.”
“A full explanation is going to take a while. You don’t know enough yet to understand most of the explanation anyway. Don’t expect me to waste time explaining things to you because your job is to figure things out. The only way you’ll ever understand any of it is to figure it out yourself.”
“How am I supposed to do that if you won’t tell me things?”
“I’ll tell you things. I’ve already told you plenty. I’m just not going to explain things you aren’t capable of understanding and I’m also not going to engage in the folly of creating explanations for things that are not explainable.”
The thing you should keep in mind is that every piece and player in this story has more than one identity, more than one function, and more than one meaning. This story,” the Witch pointed upward at the crystal, the same one which she had announced was a recording device earlier, which was floating above their heads, just over the lemon bars, “is being written into the rhizome, which is multi-dimensional. The strands of it shall expand as it lives on.”
“Written?” Lulu studied the sparkling dark translucent object where it hung aloft. It was the shape of a serpent head with ruby-glow eyes.
“That’s one of the many sensory inputs of The Mesusa Recodex, which is connected to the main Hall of Records. It can, therefore, access any information one cares to ask for.”
“So it can tell me everything right now?”
“No. Again, you aren’t yet capable of understanding everything. The framework for everything must be built piece by piece, and only then can you arrange knowledge in such a way that it makes sense. So far, though, I have some hope for you. I’ve met worse dullards to be sure.”
“How dare you call me a dullard. I’m not going to talk to you any more because you’re just mean.”
“Suit yourself, dullard. I really don’t care one way or the other, so, as I said before, I’ll just pop on out of here and leave you to your family. The crystal can remain here so I can enjoy the show at some later date.”
“Wait.”
“I don’t have the patience for a side-kick, I’m afraid. Your whiney mewling over self-esteem issues alone is more than I can deal with. I’m ready to zap on outta this nut hatch.”
“Take me with you.”
“Well, I don’t know.”
“I’ll be helpful. Let me prove it.”
“Fine. You did pass your initiatory death challenge. I doubt you’ll survive the war on vampires, but we shall see.”
“Vampires aren’t real.” Lulu snapped, though she instantly regretted the statement. If there was one thing she should know by now, it was that all sorts of things she’d been told her entire life were imaginary were turning out to be anything but.
“Try telling a vampire that. For the record the creature will agree with you until it has you in its grip and is feeding, but you’ll find out. That’s why your vampire fighting career is likely to be short.”
“Well, then how do I fight vampires?”
“You’ll have to figure it out. This might help.” The Witch extracted an object from her sparkling black bag. It was the Magical Ruby Bling Ring.
(Control: Something reappears with altered significance. (Meteorite).)
