The Thinker’s Head is a Cage

Boring, boring, boring. How boring eternity can be. Well, it feels like eternity. The Divination Chicks are always nattering on about how actually time is moving very quickly in here while outside it shambles along like those zombies over on Monster Row at the top of the Hill of Disquietude in the center of the Forest of Nightmares. Outside. Ha. What a load of fairy dust. It'll be a while yet, but it won't last forever, they say. We aren't infinite. And the philosophers, those old fogeys, practically nod their heads off their necks. Yes, yes. Of course, of course. Relativity. Perception. Mortality. Blah-da-dee, blah-da-da. I hate those guys.

A few days ago—or weeks? It's hard to say; the sun and moon aren't always predictable or even present—I went for a stroll in the Cloudy Kingdom and found myself in conversation with a bear, a little, fuzzy, stuffed one (I don't know why, did I mention I am bored?) about all this and he said, “Mortality is better than winking out of existence when the Thinker forgets about you, like those poor dodos and platypuses. And gryphons. And lemurs. And Baal. And Pokey...”

“Okay, okay,” I said. “Enough.” But he carried on with horseshoe crabs and Megavolt and harpies and whatnot, so I said, “Hey, didn't there used to be more of you living here? Like a green guy? And some pink ones?” And then the little blue bear swiveled his head, observing the barren plains and the empty castle. The wind whistled through the desolate forest, and he began to cry, wispy cotton tears that climbed down his face. What? I've got to get my kicks where I can these days. And besides, he shut up, didn't he?

Plus, he was wrong. Nothing's ever lost here, not really, not permanently. The last time I was looking for that lout that lives in the Fortress of Isolation, I saw a platypus scuttling across the surface of a frozen lake. I know that’s ludicrous, that smart aleck Darwin is always telling me so, but I saw what I saw, and since when does anything make sense around here? Stupid Darwin with his logic and his sketches and his finches. He already knows everything there is to know about those screechy birds. I wish he would cut it out. The next time I see him, I'm going to transform into a finch, fly up behind him, and peck him in the back of the head.

See? This is my point. I’ve sunken to jabbing scrawny nerds for entertainment. Winking in and out of existence must be better than this. First you’re here, then someplace else, then back here again. And even if you don't remember the someplace else or even here when you return, at least the trip ate some time. Which is more than us freaks stuck here—vampires and jackal-headed men and women with fishtails for legs and sentient, chattering teeth—can hope for. We sit around, dangling our feet over piers, scuffing our shoes in the dirt, staring listlessly at the changeable sky that used to be such a wonder and now is not—Oh, is it stormy today? Blue? Orange-pinwheeled? Purple-speckled with neon polka dots? Oh good, because I haven't seen every single thing it can do ten thousand and fifty-three times before—languishing. 

And what character am I in this circus, you might ask? I have many names, but none are truly mine. I am too old and primordial for titles. I am older than names, older than shapes, older than faces. I am older than thought. What I’m saying is, I don’t have a name. But you may call me Hob; everyone else does. 

Yes, Hob, master of subtlety, subterfuge, selfishness, and self-gain. And I am so, so bored. Why should I bother anymore? I have set Midas loose upon the denizens of this realm, tricked everyone out of all he touched, returned it, and won it again. I have survived a werewolf's bite and escaped its monthly curse. I have seen the face of Medusa. I have held the Holy Grail. I have ridden Pegasus, Black Beauty, a unicorn, and the Flying Dutchman. I have eaten at the tables of gods. I have stood at the center of El Dorado. I have visited Hell and shaken Lucifer's beautiful hand. I have won, stolen, created, and happened upon trinkets small and large: Mjölnir, Rapunzel's hair, Neptune's trident, the Pink Panther, pocket watches, time machines, sneakers, seashells. I have played a game of chess with Loki that ended in a stalemate. I have seen a witch fly a broom across a harvest moon. I have made the Fates answer more than three questions. I have jousted in chain mail. I have lain with Eve (and also Adam), but who hasn't? What is the point of one more conquest, small or big? Everything there is to do, I've done it. Everything there is to have, I've had it. Boring, boring, boring swindling has become. Boring, I say. Not impossible. I’m not, as Xerxes claims, losing my touch. 

That is how I felt until I reached for the Grail one morning, and my fingers slid right through the cup. Then I was not so bored. Then I was a bit, what you might call, apprehensive. Poof, ok. Fading, no. And to be honest, I never thought it would happen to me. 

________________________

So I went to see the Witch. The Wicked Witch. Of the West. There are also witches in the north, east, and south, though I don’t like to visit them. The one in the east runs the same party trick over and over again. “The girl dropped a house on me! Can you believe the girl dropped a house on me?” she screams as that exact thing happens and happens and happens ad nauseum. Literally, I have vomited from the repetition. Her shins are like candy-cane striped worms wriggling under the foundation. 

The southern and northern witches are even worse. Their lands are hazy and unfinished, like sketches. Breathing the air near their castles makes you feel forgetful. The Divination Chicks say that is because the Thinker remembers them only vaguely. Hooey, I say. There is no Thinker. This is the real world. No child’s outside dreaming me. But even if you could make it past the brain fog, the southern and northern witches are good, so they’re insufferable.

It’s a pain getting past the Witch’s menagerie—the underfed wolves, the killer bees, the eye-pecking crows, the sad, ever-serving Winkies, and the monkeys, flapping listless wings to keep aloft. Transformation is the key, but you’ve got to be careful how you do it. It’s like that batty old woman who swallowed the spider to catch the fly. The wolves snap at the bees and the crows pluck the bees out of the sky and the Winkies spear the crows and the monkeys bash the Winkies’ heads with rocks dropped from the sky. All around, a crow is the safest bet. The Winkies aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed, and their aim is terrible.

I alight on a parapet. People expect the witch’s castle to be a ruin or a dark, ugly thing, but it’s beautiful, so long as you like yellow. It’s very, very yellow. Many yellows. The yellow of the sun. The yellow of gold. The yellow of dandelions and lion scruff. Yellow, yellow, yellow. 

The witch is on the walkway, snagging slugs off the stones and placing them into a basket looped over her arm. I hop along next to her, straightening feathers. A few spears skewered closer than I expected.

The witch—whom I call Westie because she’s never given me, or anyone else, her proper name—pauses at the tower entrance. She turns her long face toward me, the corners of her one, dark eye crinkled. 

“Coming inside, Master Hob?” she asks then disappears through the door, leaving it cracked behind her. 

“How did you know it was me?” I ask after I have flown down the stairs and reverted to my two-legged form. Those narrow, spiral steps are treacherous. I’ve tumbled more than once. Best to fly. Westie is standing with her back to me, stirring a gilded cauldron that’s just beginning to bubble.

“Your eyes, of course,” she says.

“Come on. Pull the other,” I say, settling into a three-legged stool. “A crow’s eyes are nothing like a man’s.” 

She shrugs and tosses a slug into the cauldron. The boiling liquid sizzles and spits. “Your eyes are always your own.”

“Don’t give me any of that ‘windows to the soul’ jibber jabber. I get enough of it from Cicero.” The legs of my yellowwood stool are uneven as is the yellow carpet beneath. I shift, and the stool teeters.

“As you wish, Master Hob.” 

“Come on. Look.”

Westie swivels her head too far around, like an owl, and I cycle my eyes. Brown, blue, green, gray, black, red, yellow, violet, orange. Wide, narrow, droopy, almond, slanted. Human-sphered, bug-compounded, cat-slitted. She pops a slug into her mouth and chews. She wipes a bit of guts with a red-tipped finger.

“Impressive. Does it tickle your face?”

I glare with Hob’s eyes. Westie’s so hard to please. “No.”

“Hmph. Transformations make me itch. I can do a bat, though. Would you like to see?”

I ignore this. She’s mocking me for using magic like a party trick. The argument is well-trodden. But how else did she expect me to get past her pets? “Admit it, it’s because you’re magic, right?”

“Magic recognizes magic, it’s true,” Westie says, covering the cauldron and seating herself at a table beneath a window across the room. She pulls a looking glass from a fold of her robe and places it on the table before her. “But it is also true that whatever you are, you are always yourself.”

“Oh, whatever. I have a problem I need your help with.”

From some other pleat of her frock, a cloth emerges. “Yes,” she says, “I know.” She rubs the fabric across the glass, polishing its dull surface. 

I hop off the stool, bringing its uneven legs down with a thunk, and sit across from the witch. It seems only polite considering I’m about to ask her a favor. She blinks at me, then continues polishing.

“You see,” I say, rubbing the back of my neck. “All this disappearing blather, like the platypuses and the stuffed bears, you know I’ve always thought it was hogwash. Except. Well. Lately, I've been feeling a little...airy.” 

“Yes,” Westie says. “I know.” My mouth drops open. I was expecting a grander reaction: surprise, cynicism, threats of being thrown into the cauldron for disturbing her peace with nonsense. Something. A fly buzzes by, and I close my trap fast. You never know who or what the flies are around here. “Oh, for Hades’ sake, Hob. Look at yourself.”

I look. The grain of the table is visible through my wrist. So is the saffron and sulfur-colored cushion beneath my thighs. Things may have advanced a little more than I’ve wanted to admit. “Alright,” I say. “Aren’t you worried?” About herself, I mean. I’m not delusional. No one, not even Westie, who gets few other visitors, would miss me. In fact, Westie would gain from my disappearance. She’s not tricksy, but she’s scary. She is as feared as I am dreaded. She’d be running the place in no time without me. 

“No,” she says, snatching the fly out of the air. It wriggles between her index finger and thumb. She plucks the wings and drops them into a pocket, and then she curls her tongue around the creature. “I know a few tricks. Also,” she says around her possibly still-living morsel, “I’ve got a plan.”

“Do you?” I ask, swallowing my nausea. Westie makes even me uncomfortable. 

“Yes, I’m going to help you. But first,” she says, laying aside the cloth and waving her hands theatrically above the crystal slab, “allow me to show you the problem.”

I lean forward, intrigued. Inside the glass, purple fog churns and then burns away. A girl stands in the center of the ball, smiling like a toothpaste model, arms stretched above her head, dancing. Or maybe it’s a boy. Or neither. Or both. It’s hard to tell. The hair is short and tousled. The body is thin and lithe. The lips are pink and coy and inviting. I raise an eyebrow. 

“The kid next door is making me disappear?”

“Well, yes and no,” she says, leaning back. She pauses. “Forgive me, Master Hob, for I know your feelings on this matter, but let us pretend, for a moment, that the Thinker is real.”

“Alright,” I say, crossing my arms. “Let us pretend they are, knowing, the both of us, that they’re not. Because we’re not idiots.”  

“Certainly,” she says. “Let us imagine a child bursts into creation, a beautiful, perfect baby, whose parents have dreamed of this cherub for years. That’s usually the way of it. Everything the child experiences, every sound, every sight, every scent, is imprinted on their quick-fattening brain. There is inside the babe’s head, as there is inside everyone’s, even yours, Master Hob, a shadow universe, full of all the ideas forceful enough to leave an impression.”

Westie knows I hate this talk, this philosophical mumbo jumbo that suggests I’m not real, nothing is real, we’re all just phantoms batting around some stupid kid’s head, that the kid is also just a dream bouncing around someone else’s noggin. It’s infinite, like a mirror reflected in a mirror forever or everlasting nesting dolls. There’s no end. Who’s the real person? The originator? How could anyone know? And how could it matter? I bite my tongue until blood oozes, metallic, onto my gums.

“Let us pretend that all these years, our whole existence, have been the halcyon days of childhood. The moppet has loved heroes and feared villains and rocked in the thrall of stories. But now,” Westie says, gesturing at the glass where the kid’s hair floats around their ears, meticulously styled to appear effortless, “childhood turns to adolescence. Desire grows and everything else fades, slowly and inevitably.” Westie pops another slug between her lips. I clench my fingers around my biceps, and they pass right through the skin. I close my eyes. I grind my teeth.

“What,” I ask, “is your plan?”

Westie’s plan is to escape. The Thinker’s head is a cage, and when you’re serving a life sentence in a prison built on a sinking island, you don’t wait for the sharks; you spring the joint. Oh sure, sounds simple. But according to her theory, which I don’t believe, I’d be trying to escape the universe and pop over into the next one. And who’s to say the journey would end there? How many galactic fences would I need to hop before I hit reality?

Nonsensical hooey aside, she’s asking me to go farther than anyone’s ever traveled. Past the Hill of Disquietude, past the Wood of Futility. Farther than the Cloudy Kingdom or the Fortress of Isolation. She’s asking me to cross the Sea of Unmaking—that frothing, storm-howling, typhoon-ridden, riptide-riddled beast that has swallowed merfolk and Nessie and krakens, and all sorts of creatures adapted for the water—and seek an exit on the other side, if there’s even another side and not just an infinite ocean of terror that wraps around the world. “What’s your role in this plan?”

Westie’s hand slithers into her billowing sleeve and reemerges gripping a vial. She uncorks the gray liquid, and a smell like melting tar permeates the air. “Drink,” she says. 

“No thanks. But you go ahead if you’re feeling parched.”

Westie rolls her eye. “Cal-le, ig-ge, o-e,” she says, legs jiggling beneath the table. The glass and the teenybopper bopping inside turn hazy, like a mirage. Westie passes a hand through the wisps. They scatter and reform like fog. Then she drips three drops from the vial over the mist. The mirror snaps back into solidity, the backing hefty and opaque, the glass impenetrable once again. Westie flicks one of her claw-like nails against it to prove her point. Ping, ping, ping.

I try not to eye the vial too desperately. “What’s the catch?”          

“A small thing, really,” Westie says. Another vial descends from her sleeve. There is a vibrant, yellow mist inside. “You must take both vials. When you find the way out, uncork the yellow one. Do this, and you may have the other. That is all I ask.” 

“And what’ll happen when I open it?”

“I will appear, and we’ll leave the cage of this child’s brain together.”

Now you might think, doesn’t everyone know not to make a deal with the devil, or Hob, as the case may be? But they all think I’m weak, washed up, burnt out, finished, fading, caput. Westie clearly believes I’m too desperate for betrayal. Well, more’s the pity for her. I’ll take her vials, make myself strong and solid, and not open the yellow one at all. Or I’ll tip it into the Sea of Unmaking and watch her melt into oblivion. That will teach her to underestimate me. 

“Deal,” I say, shaking her dry, wrinkled hand with a smirk and ignoring the matching, shark-like twist of Westie’s fly-sucking, slug-gnashing mouth. 

________________________

After Westie’s, I prepare. First I gulp three drops of her rancid potion, three drops only, no more, no less, wasting none of the liquid. It makes me feel as sturdy as concrete. For a moment, flexing my fingers, I think, why bother with this escaping nonsense? But the potion is only a temporary fix. Its volume isn’t infinite. And I don’t yet know how often I’ll have to take it. No, best get on with the plan. 

For a map, I go to Magellan, a pompous dude with striped balloon sleeves and a silly hat who lives on a Spanish galleon in the middle of the Tranquil Lagoon. I transform into a flying fish and flop onto his deck. I ask for his map of the world. He gapes. I slap my tail on the polished wood, relishing the solid smack, and repeat myself. To be fair, fish throats aren’t conducive to speech. I may be hard to understand. 

“Hob? Of course, of course. Who else? Ha. But my world map? No, no,” he says. “Far too valuable, hombre.”

“Aren’t you Portuguese?” I ask.

There is an awkward moment. The galleon bobs gently on the lagoon’s weak rippling waves. Mag’s face scrunches and clouds, befuddled, then cross. His beard twitches as he clenches his jaw.

“Homen? Yes, homen. You pick up things working for those Spaniards, you know? But nevertheless, my answer is no. There’s nothing, nothing you could offer me to change my mind, so don’t even try it, Hobgoblin.”

I let the insult slide. “I plan to cross the Sea of Unmaking,” I say. There’s another stretch of silence. The galleon shimmers and wavers as if trying to make itself more Portuguese and less Spanish, as if embarrassed at having been caught making such a silly mistake. Is there really a Thinker out there, their maturing mind becoming increasingly concerned with rationality? I don’t want to believe it. I look up. The sky is a normal, mundane blue, and I realize it has been for ages. 

“Oh? Well, why didn’t you say?” Mag opens a trunk. Doubloons and gems tumble out and roll across the deck as he rummages in its cavernous belly. He emerges cradling a rolled piece of parchment wrapped in leather. “Here,” he says. “Free. On the house. I hope you have a wonderous trip.

“Thanks,” I mutter dryly, tucking the parchment under a fin. I could have tricked him. I could have. But sometimes the truth is its own trick. Mag is so eager to have me out of his hair, he gives me an immeasurable treasure for no cost at all. I’d bet all my Midas-gilded trinkets that the others will be the same. I’m not wrong.

Galileo gifts me his nicest telescope. Noah builds me a new arc. Eve and Adam sneak into their old garden and pile up sacks of illicit fruits for me. Old Mac in his mud-splattered overalls corrals chickens, pigs, and cows enough to feed an army. The Captain brews and delivers barrels of sweet, strong rum. Insect Hank, who’s not an insect, but can make himself small like one, helps me shrink everything down to pocket size, so I can store it until I need it. The Divination Chicks read my future without bartering for payment. 

The sparkly, glitter-eyed one says, “Adventure.”

The boots-laced-tight one says, “Folly.”

The skeletal-faced one says, “Death.” 

Predictable and boring, I ignore them all, as usual.

________________________

If I wanted to know how to get from Gelatin Castle to Peanut Butter Cup House, Mag’s map would be the document to use. But—hand-drawn and lacking scale—it's not that helpful for finding the sea. The ocean is on the map, but he’s drawn it—as I feared—surrounding the whole of the world, equidistant in all directions from the center of the sole island. So I choose a direction and walk. 

As I leave my neighborhood and stroll past the next and the next, everyone—subaqueous tentacle monsters, bulbous-headed green aliens, harpies, undead twins in Easter dresses, Alexander (you know, “The Great”)—just everyone, waves, and smiles, and wishes me a pleasant journey. It’s no less than I expected. It’s no less than I deserve. And yet it stings to know there’s not a single person or creature in this realm that doesn’t wish me dead. Oh, well. They’ll all fade to nothing soon enough. 

The journey is boring. Three turns of the Sun bring me beyond the reach of civilization (or is it the Thinker’s imagination?). The landscape flattens and declutters into a barrenness that reminds me of the other witches’ lands. There is nothing, just dirt and sky—blue and cloudless.

I do not need to eat and drink, and for days I don’t consume anything but Westie’s potion, three drops at sunrise, hoping to hasten my trip. But as I continue, Robin Hood arrow straight, careful not to deviate from my chosen path, monotony sets in, and I peel miniaturized fruit and munch its sweet flesh just for something to do. I grow less regimented about the potion, too, having lost track of time (the moon follows the sun follows the moon, but always yellow and silver, perfectly round and identical, so there is no meaningful way to mark the passing of the days). Simultaneously, I become nervous about stretching the potion for however long it will take me to find the sea. I spend a day as a falcon, for peregrine wings are much faster than Hob’s knobby old legs, but transforming drains my magic and forces me to take an extra dose of potion. So now, instead, I walk and take two drops, or even one, when I start to see the dirt clearly through the flesh of my toes.

I feel like a wraith, haunting a wasteland. I think sometimes that I see other wisps shimmering in the distance. Maybe this is where all things go when they fade. But I dare not waste time changing course to check. Maybe this will be my fate. Maybe I will run out of potion and float in one spot forever, like a partially deflated balloon, too immaterial to propel myself forward.

________________________

The ocean, when it comes, comes out of nowhere. I don’t smell salt water or the musk of seaweed from afar. I don’t hear waves roaring or lapping from a distance. I don’t see the hulking mass of liquid roiling from miles out. It’s just there, surf sloshing around my ankles, where a moment before there was nothing. 

I step back onto dry land. The Sea of Unmaking is like something from another world. The waves are beautiful, shot through with gem tones. The waves are terrifying, looming tall as tsunamis, roiling like sea serpents, and crashing into each other like frenzied Kaiju. If I thought I could cross the wasteland again on the remains of Westie’s potion, I’d turn back. 

Instead, I pull Eve and Adam’s miniaturized ship from my pocket and place it into the water with shaking hands. The tide whips it away before I can touch Insect Hank’s biggerizing chip to the hull. I dive after it, panicked. This is not the way my stories usually go. I am usually smoother. More in control. Fortunately, there’s no smug Darwin around to give me grief about it. 

The frigid water sloshes through one side of me and out the other, chilling me worse than that time I hoodwinked Santa out of one of his reindeer up at the North Pole. I haven’t seen Santa in quite a while. But then, teenyboppers have no need of him, do they? A chill ripples down my spine, and I’m so barely physical I can’t make any headway through the water. Yet the waves batter me about the head like I’m going toe-to-toe with a kangaroo. It takes enchanting myself a mermaid tail to catch up to the arc and slap the disc to its keel. The ship explodes to its true size, and I attempt to scamper up its side while being hammered by bits of water that feel like nails shooting through me before I finally shift into a gull and fly-flop my way over the stern and onto the deck. I crash there, exhausted, clutching a mast as the wild tips and tilts of the boat threaten to toss me overboard until a bolt of lightning crackles down from the black sky. At that point, I figure the whole thing’s a lost cause. Clearly Westie wanted me out of the way or dead, and she’s gotten her wish. I crawl to the hatch and tumble below deck, waiting for the ship to smash into a thousand pieces. When that doesn’t happen, I unshrink the Captain’s rum and drink until I pass out.

________________________

Time gets weird after that. Weirder. I sleep and drink and chew the flesh of innumerable sweet and juicy apples, piling their cores in dark corners so thickly a field of saplings would surely grow if there were even a dusting of soil wedged somewhere between the pine boards. Mostly, I sleep. My body weakens and thins, but I fear touching the dregs of Westie’s slate potion in case I make it across the sea, reach the end of the world, find a door, and am too spectral to push it open. It’s all hooey, most likely. I will die here, just waste away to nothing, surrounded by cobwebs and the scent of fermenting fruit. No tricks to play. No one to play them on. But on the off chance that the superstitions are true, I withhold. 

Sometimes I’m woken by nightmare noises. The masts snap and crack as they splinter, and the broken pieces pound down upon the planks above my head. The wind screeches and yowls, and the sails flap and tear in its grip. The waves slosh in a constant hiss, and creatures from the depths bellow to one another, their low keening reverberating through my ribs. But the masts don’t spear holes through my chest, and the wind doesn’t pry open the hull, and the sea doesn’t seep through the walls, and the beasts don’t smash through the keel and eat my heart. I am implausibly safe in my dank, dark hold, and I loathe every solitary minute of it. No audience, no witness, no point to this slow death. 

Why did I set out on this journey? Desperation? No, worse. Hope. The flame that never splutters out. The foolhardy belief that I could escape a fate no one else has dodged. And why should I not? How many times have I leapt without looking, only the barest scraps of a plan half-formed in my head, and it’s all come together in the end? So I sleep, a colorless, transparent outline of myself huddled against the floor, and wait, biding my time until something changes. 

________________________

And something does change, as is inevitable. The ship shudders to a gelatinous, squelching stop, every board shaking like that red, furry creature back on Oilseed Street when you tickle him. Apple cores skitter across the floor, tumble through me, and smack the opposite wall. I wait, watching the deck above for passing shadows, listening for the creak of footfalls upon wood. But there is nothing. The ship bobs innocuously upon a sea that feels tame, and nothing descends to kill me. 

I stand. Though I am as transparent as any ghost down in the Sematary, the rest, terror-riddled though it was, has done me good. I feel well. I feel strong. Magic pulses through me, someplace invisible and intangible. 

I climb the ladder, push open the hatch, and step onto the ruined deck. The sails are in tatters. The masts are crumpled and jagged. The grit of muddy salt and broken shells crunch beneath my feet as I make my way to the taffrail. And yet. The sky is a kaleidoscope of color. Blue mostly, with pink cotton candy clouds puffing across. Blood-red splashes dot the undersides of the floss as the sun slinks above the horizon. The sea around the ship is nearly flat. Little baby waves lap at its sides like the sandpaper tongues of kittens licking a petting hand. It’s not weird or wacky. It’s peaceful. Beautiful. I wonder if this is what the sea is always like on the other side of the wall of meat the bow is lodged in. 

For that is unmistakably what has stopped this ship. A tower of pulpy muscle clenched around the front of the boat that stretches wider than the horizon and rises beyond the oranging clouds. I withdraw from the beauty blooming around the stern and pick my way across the ocean-bottom detritus littering the deck to touch a spectral hand to the flesh of it. It is like caressing a slug or slicing open Chicken Little and palpating the raw, slimy poultry of her. Up this rubbery mush, so high as to only be barely visible, protrudes a white, mucilaginous orb crisscrossed with red threads. The back of an eyeball, I can’t help but think. 

I spend some time—as fish, as bird, as burrowing worm—exploring the barrier, searching for any way through, any hole or crack or crevasse, and then I perch in what’s left of the crow’s nest to consider the future. 

 Appear, I think, and Westie’s vial pops into existence in the palm of my hand. Not the real thing. An illusion. But an illusion so smooth and solid against my flesh as to be indistinguishable from the real thing. Such power. Can it be true, what the Divination Chicks have always said? Are we all just shadows cast upon a wall? And am I now drawing power through proximity to the flesh membrane that separates our world from the light of a real sun and the one who casts my shape?

I turn the vial this way and that. It catches the light, and it’s lovely, really, this yellow of Westie’s. Like a swirl of gold dust. What I should do is uncork the flask, tip it over into the sea, and watch Westie boil away to nothing. Or I should leave it right here, stoppered, and proceed forward alone because it is safer. In a battle between tricksy and evil, evil will always win. Westie will show up prepared, and she will be willing to go to lengths that I never will. I could never kill anyone. And if I leave the vial in the bowels of this ship, who will know that I made it to the edge of the world?

________________________

When I pour out the vial, I aim the golden dust at a dry patch on the deck. It spirals into the sky before it makes contact, of course, and coalesces into the familiar form of Westie. She has arrived as I knew she would: ready to fight. She perches atop her best broom, one fist clenched around the beast-summoning whistle hung from her neck, and her battle eyepatch cinched so tight the skin puckers around the strap. Her good eye roves up and down and through me, flicks to the wall of meat, and lands on the sack at my feet. I push off from the mast I’m leaned against, remove my hands slowly from my ghostly pockets, and wave. 

“Hiya,” I say.

“Hello, Hob,” she replies, the fingers of one hand still curled around the hunk of silver nestled in the hollow of her throat. The other hand is hidden within a bend of her voluminous robes, clutching who knows what. 

“Been a while. Nice to see you. I made it to the edge of the universe, and I brought you, as agreed. You’re welcome.”

“My thanks,” says Westie, not relaxing her hand. “What is in the bag?”

“Apples.” I kick the sack, and one of Eve and Adam’s never-rotting fruits goes skidding across the deck. 

“For what?”

“The journey,” I say, nodding at the hunk of flesh behind me. 

“You’ve scouted it then?”

“Mm-hm.”

“You’ve found a path?”

“Anywhere is possible with enough force, but through the eye’ll be easiest, I reckon.”

Westie’s eyebrows climb her forehead. “Have we a new convert to the School of the Thinker? You admit it? That we are inside a child’s head?” A smirk bursts through the seriousness of her face, proving her inability to resist a good gloat.

I rock back on my heels. “Well, I don’t know about that.”

“You believe there’s a gigantic eyeball lodged in a mass of flesh, but that the eye and the flesh are not part of a head?” The indignation sends Westie’s hands flying to her hips.

I grin and try to make it the grin of a sheep and not of a shark. I feel so myself. Magic races through my veins. Westie’s must be doing the same. “What can I say? I’m a skeptic.” Westie huffs. “Well,” I say. “Where is the mouth? Where is the nose? Where are the ears? Where’s the other eye? Huh?” 

Westie rolls her eye. “Far below and away. I’m going to scope out the eye.”

“Can’t you see it from here?”

“Indeed, but seeing tells me nothing about traveling through, does it Master Hob.”

I shrug. “If you say so. I’ll come with.”

Westie eyes me doubtfully. “Are you sure you can manage?”

Instead of answering, I sprout little, transparent cupid wings, toss my bag of apples over a shoulder, and flutter up to her. 

“Hmm,” she sniffs. “I’m surprised you can transmute matter in your condition. When did you stop taking the solidifying potion?”

“Ran out on the ocean,” I say. 

“Hmm,” she repeats as we ascend. 

________________________

When we reach the eye, Westie shoves her hand into the meat beneath it. At first, she makes no headway, but then she digs in the nails that tip her gnarled fingers. They are thick and textured and sharp, like the jagged edges of the cracked shells on the deck below, and they shred the flesh until her hand is sunk to the wrist. The wall shudders and bleeds, and Westie pulls her palm back crimson. “That’ll be slow going,” she muses, wiping her fingers against her saffron dress, leaving a bloody, smeared handprint against its brilliance. 

“S’what I thought as well,” I reply, throat burning with barely suppressed bile.

Westie sticks her hand into the eye itself. The outer membrane gives, and her hand disappears with a wet squelch. The eye jiggles and rolls. “Much easier,” she says. Her hand returns, wet and pink. “Though it’ll be easier yet if I am as you.” Her eye meets mine. She raises a hand slowly, then wiggles her fingers above her head. “Cal-le, ig-ge, o-e,” she murmurs, and she turns as misty as me. Such easy power. Surely, there is a real Westie out there, on the other side of this eyeball, and the one in here is leeching energy from her. Or maybe there is no real Westie or Hob. Maybe we’ve only ever been stories. Perhaps it’s just the world that’s realer. And how strong will we be when we enter it?

I wonder if Westie has been behind it all, me and the platypuses and everything else. Perhaps it’s been a long con, causing everything to disappear slowly until someone would be desperate enough to bring her here. But it’s irrelevant. She is here now. 

We stare at one another, Westie and I, likely calculating the same risks. Whoever enters the eye first has the opportunity to block the others’ entry; if they are able and if they are desiring. To proceed alone would give me an advantage as I have seen what lies ahead. To enter first and allow the other to follow means trudging through sludge with a target on your back. 

“Together?” I suggest. 

Westie’s gaze turns to the eye. Her uncovered pupil zips side to side, seeing who knows how far into its depths. “Yes,” she says. 

I pull one of insect Hank’s chips from a pocket and shrink down my bag of apples so that I can wedge it into the palm of one hand. Westie blinks at me but refrains from commenting on the inanity of lugging food through the eyeball. 

“Let’s go,” she says and shoves one immaterial, booted foot through. I hasten to follow. Next go the accompanying arms. There is a point, half in and half out of the thing, when I fear we will be stuck. I shut my eyes to the feral, irate terror rippling across Westie’s face, but then we are both sucked through the fibrous membrane into the dim, rust-tinted goo within. Westie rocks side to side with difficulty and murmurs something that is garbled by the gel. A beam of light winks into existence before us, but it fractures so eerily and ineffectively through the goop that she lets the spell dissipate, and the gloom descends again. She shrugs, and we embark.

Our spectral states make progress possible, but it’s still slow, like kicking hard for the surface of the ocean instead of digging through the dirt of a grave. It’s dark, and it’s difficult, and it’s creepy—I especially dislike the wiry, red string-like branches crisscrossing this way and that. I talk for distraction.

“So, how’ve you been?”

“What have you been up to?”

“Have you seen Darwin and those damn finches lately?”

“Do you ever hang with the other witches?”

“Is your power growing as we go along?” 

“When are you planning to kill me? When we get through? Before? After? Here? Up there?”

But it’s pointless. The sounds emanating from my mouth wobble weirdly through the goo, and Westie doesn’t bother attempting to decipher them. 

Eventually, we arrive at the spot I marked when exploring: a small patch of solidity where I tipped a drop from the shrunken vial that I never finished for fear of running out when I most needed it. I pause with my foot on the pebble, and Westie halts beside me. Her mouth opens and her hands spread wide, but slowly, slower, and then they stop entirely for I have smashed the tiny bag of apples in my hand as well as the vial and biggerizing chip stashed inside. And now the gel around Westie is solid as brick, and she can do nothing, for what good is a spell when you cannot move your tongue or lips to utter it? What use is a whistle you can’t blow? A potion you can’t reach? 

I don’t deceive myself that this prison will hold Westie forever. I morph into a sea serpent, and my muscular body whips swiftly through the eyeball gel. The serpent form is a diversion, something for Westie to hunt when she breaks free. Once I have passed beyond the range of her sight (if there is such a thing, with that telescoping orb), I drop form entirely because the Divination Chicks were right. I go on an adventure to someplace unexplored. And it is folly for I lack knowledge of what approaches. And it is death. This body, this me, must die. How could I live as an immaterial speck in a world of solid giants whose eyeballs can enclose me with leagues to spare?

But they were wrong, too. They said we are not infinite, but I, Hob, am infinite. I am not a being; I am a shadow, a wraith, an idea of trickery. I am a concept. And as I burst through a syrupy membrane and slosh into a watery chamber that sparkles with golden light, I know that I will not die, although the liquid feels as though it is flooding lungs that do not currently exist. No, I will not die. I cannot die. I am evolving. I am transcending. I am becoming what I always was. 

END