Epithet erased, p.6
Epithet Erased, page 6
. . . What?
Did that actually just happen?
“Now!” said the wizard, removing his hand from Phoenica and pointing it towards the others, “. . . Who else wants to be friends?”
Molly and Trixie both took a step back in unison, dragging Feenie along with them like a ragdoll.
“F-Feenie? Are you okay?” Molly stammered.
“Why, she’s more than okay!” the wizard grinned. “She has a new friend! Me! Rick Shades! Wizard extraordinaire!”
“What’d you do to her!?” Trixie demanded.
“Why, nothing at all! She just helped me regain a little bit of my magic!” He lifted his finger and it crackled with black lightning, making a noise like static from an old television set. It was the same inky string of magic Molly had briefly spotted before, but larger this time. More erratic and wild. “After all! That’s what friends are for!”
“Did you steal her magic away?” Molly frowned.
“I had magic to steal?” Phoenica blinked. “So I AM a magical girl? Magical girl confirmed?!”
“Oh no, no! Nothing like that! Seeing as we are bosom companions, I suppose I can tell you how this works! My epithet . . . is ☆SOULMATES!☆” A crackle of black lightning echoed behind him to accentuate his reveal.
“Oh goodness!” Phoenica blushed. “We’re soulmates now?”
“Yeeees!”
“My! And here I spent my entire evening working late into the night decorating that new marriage binder for the museum Sheep Boy! . . . Oh well. If it’s a wizard husband that fate hands me, then a wizard husband I shall have!” Trixie wrinkled her nose and stuck out her tongue.
“Feenie, ew. He’s like forty.”
“Haha okay WOW and also OUCH,” Rick said. “First of all, I am a dashing young guppy of but twenty years. SECOND, my power has nothing to do with romantic soulmates! It simply means that I keep my mates in my soul. I carry my friends with me in my heart . . . literally. Here! Let me show you! Phoenica . . . my BEST surface friend. Tell me, what can you do?”
“Hmm . . .” Feenie tapped her chin in thought.
Molly leaned in to whisper. “Feenie! Don’t tell him stuff about you! Remember what Ztreet Smartz for Kidz taught us!”
“But Ztreet Smartz only warned us about ztrangers! Mr. Rick is no ztranger. He’s my zfriend! We lightninged about it!”
“YES!!! I AM A FRIEND!!!” Rick screamed. “TRUST ME!!!”
“Okay!” Feenie smiled. “Well. I don’t mean to brag, but I am quite adept at schoolwork.”
“Schoolwork! Yesssss!” He leaned over to them. “What is that?”
Molly tilted her head like a puppy. “You don’t know what schoolwork is?”
“Lucky . . .” Trixie grumbled. Phoenica opened her backpack and produced some of that night's homework along with an erasable pen. She handed them to Rick.
“Like these! This is language arts homework. There are a number of example sentences here. You’re supposed to circle all the words with spelling or grammar mistakes!”
“Ah, yes . . . schoolwork. On my own this challenge for ‘sev-enth grad-ers’ may prove too much for me . . . but with the power of
☆SOULMATES☆ anything is possible!”
A staticy noise filled the air. Black, glowing light leaked out from behind the heart-shaped patch on Rick’s jacket and a matching black heart appeared on Phoenica’s chest. Rick's eyes blanked out and roared with an unholy fire. He picked up the pen and—as if in a trance—began writing with a knowledge that was not his own . . .
“‘I before E . . . except after C . . . or when sounding like ‘A’ as in NEIGHBOR or WEIGH’!” He cackled maniacally. A terrible, roaring cackle! “AHHH HA HA HA HA HAAA! Yes . . . YEEEES!”
The homework was utterly defeated.
It never stood a chance.
“Wait a moment,” Phoenica gasped, “You’re using someone else’s knowledge to do your homework? That’s . . . that’s cheating!”
“It’s not cheating. You’re helping me! Whatever my friends can do,
I can do! That’s the power of friendship.” He said the word “friendship” as though it were a poison that he had slipped in someone’s else’s drink.
“No!” she protested. “If you are indeed a cheater-cheater-pumpkin-eater, Rick Shades, then I am afraid that I . . . I cannot be friends with you!”
“WHAT?! NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!”
Thunder clapped and roared! The black string that bound Phoenica and Rick by the heart appeared again. It quivered . . . and then shattered like so many pieces of glass. Rick fell to his knees, shaking like a wet puppy. “My . . . my knowledge! . . . It’s . . . it’s gone . . .”
“Wait.” Trixie lowered her eyelid. “Your weakness is people not being friends with you?” Rick began to cry big dumb tears into the sand.
“Aww . . .” Molly said. “He’s a loser.”
Trixie squinted. “I think we should throw this one back in the ocean.”
“P-please!” weeped certified weenie Rick Shades, “I can’t go back . . . I used to have so many friends. . . . I used to be so POWERFUL! But now . . . now I’m NOTHING. . . I’m just a poor wizard with no magic left to his name. . . .”
“Oh, you poor dear!” Feenie appeared at his side and patted his back. Tears were as contagious as a yawn for Phoenica and they were streaming down her cheeks in instant waterfalls. “If you promise me that you will reform your pumpkin-eating ways, then I would be honored to be your friend Rick Shades.”
“Phoenica!” he cried, “My oldest and dearest companion! Thank you! I promise to never cheat on homework for a 7th grader again!”
“That’s all I wanted to hear!”
They both wept like idiots and hugged as a black spear re-pierced their hearts, forging their bond anew. Rick stood up and dusted the sand off of his dirty hobo pants. “Now! Are either of you two feeling generous enough to be frien-erous?” Trixie hissed at him like an alley cat. “Come now, don’t be that way! I’ve told you all about my powers, so why don’t you tell me all of yours? In explicit detail!”
“Well,” Phoenica offered, “Only one of us has an epithet—”
“—and we’re not going to tell you who it is,” Molly interrupted, using her powers to mute Feenie before she could ruin everything.
“Hmm!” Rick grinned. “No matter! I plan to be friends with all of you, soon enough. Ah ha ha ha ha . . . AHHHH HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!” His head snapped from maniacal cackle to pleasant chat mid-sentence. “Anyways, you said something about a ‘Winner’?”
“Huh?”
“A winner! Win! Winning! Something about winning! That’s what you said when I first woke up! Let me prove my worth to you guys! Prove that I’m friend-worthy! Who won something? I bet I could win it better then they did. I’m very good at winning. Then you will think I’m cool.”
“I think you might need some punch-ups on your friendship speeches,” Molly said.
“‘Winning’. . .?” Trixie squinted, trying to figure out what this weirdo was talking about. “. . . Oh, you mean the prizes. We were putting these nudibranchs that washed up on shore back in the water. Whoever finds the weirdest thing and saves the most nudibranchs wins a treat.”
“A TREAT!?” Rick’s eyes widened like a dog hearing someone opening a bag of kibble. “Excellent! I have not eaten in days!”
“Days?” asked the trio, all at once.
“Yes!”
“Ohhh gosh,” Molly fumbled through her pockets, “Lemme see if I have some granola bars or something . . .” They all rummaged through their stuff, but nobody had any snacks. Molly juggled the little green tube of apple-flavored lip balm in her hands and Rick pointed to it.
“What is that? Is that the treat?”
“Huh? Oh. Uh. Yeah. This was the prize. I don’t think you’re supposed to eat it though.” Molly turned to Trixie. “You can’t eat lip gloss, right?”
“Uhhh . . . I mean, it’s candy-flavored. Maybe you can eat it? I dunno, I might be a potion-ologist but I’m no candies-doctor.” Molly turned back to see Rick sprinting around the beach. He was scooping up armfuls of nudibranchs and tossing them back in the water at speeds even Trixie wasn’t able to match. He was as gentle as possible with the nudibranchs, but he was clearly in a huge hurry. After a minute he returned to the girls.
“I have saved 60 of them! Do I win? Am I the winner? Do I get the winner's treat?”
“Uh. So. Again, this is lip balm.”
“Wow! Feeding me a bomb! Wow! Okay! Okay!!!” Rick shuddered with visible worry. Molly removed the cap and screwed the lip balm out to show him.
“No, a balm. Balm. With an L. It’s like lip stuff that you put on your lips.”
“WOW, AMAZING! THANK YOU!” Rick shouted, leaning forward and biting into the lip balm like it was a popsicle. “MMM! BAD!” He was crying again.
“UHH. NO. NO. DON’T SWALLOW THAT.”
“IT IS TOO LATE.”
“UHH. UHHHHHHHHH.” All four of them began shaking in fear. Was lip balm poisonous?! They had no idea! Phoenica began hurriedly searching for the answer on her phone. Trixie was looking for literally ANYTHING in her backpack to eat, but all she had was some lint and her goopy purple potion.
“Is that a drink?” Rick asked. “I have also had nothing to drink for the last three days. Except for salt water! On a related note: I think I may be dying!”
“HhhhHHH. Okay! Okay!!!” Trixie sputtered. “So this . . . has lemonade in it? But it’s also got hot sauce. And has been sitting in my backpack for three days.”
“I don’t know what any of those things are and I will trust your judgement implicitly!” Rick smiled, reaching for the potion with all the self-awareness of a dog about to swallow a brownie.
“No!” the Neo Trio shouted.
Trixie snagged the bottle back. “That’s a potion of Go Away!”
“Ah! I see! So the pink one is a witch! Glad you warned me! Wouldn’t want my insides to go away, now would I? HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!” He started a big belly laugh that fired out in bursts, like cannon rounds. It was energetic but entirely mirthless and more than a little off putting. He stopped laughing very suddenly like a puppet who’s puppeteer had severed the strings.
“Listen to me. We are friends, correct?”
“M-Maybe?” Molly answered hesitantly.
“Wonderful! In that case, please, my new friends . . .
. . . Do not let me die.”
Rick Shades fell face-down on the ground and passed out, resuming his state as an unconscious body on the beach. The nudibranchs flocked to his side to turn him into a hat while the three little girls ran around like chickens, trying their best not to have a full-blown panic attack.
2
Vincent Murder
Naven sat quietly at a small plastic table in the corner of the Blyndeff Toy Emporium, tapping his finger in time with the toy cuckoo clock on the wall. It had been almost a half an hour since the chauffeur had dropped him off and he was getting worried. It wasn’t like the girls to be late. He looked around the toy store again.
Dusty yellow light streamed through the poster-smacked front windows and dyed the store in early shades of evening. The shop was small, but it was filled with an incredible selection of strange and wonderful things. There were name-brand products of course—some from Naven’s own company, even—but most of the shelves were lined with custom-made, one-of-a-kind items dreamed up by Molly’s father. Massive toy battleships, intricate dollhouses, complex puppets that danced and sang. A whole plastic menagerie.
That said, even with all the ticking gadgets and bright colors, something about the store felt quiet and still. So quiet that someone walking through the front door might assume that the place was closed and they weren’t supposed to be inside. Browsing the shelves felt a bit like walking through a painting that someone else had left on an easel. At first glance it was picturesque, but there was one glaring strangeness about it:
A sphere.
A big, white, circular blotch of paint that someone had spilled onto the artwork. Behind the cash register was a giant pearl, floating uncomfortably in midair like a pupil-less eyeball.
Naven heard a tiny rattling sound from the back of the room.
A young, meek-looking man with spectacles wandered out from the far aisle of the store. He briefly made eye contact with Naven and then quickly looked away, ducking back behind the shelf. The boy had grabbed a small pack of trading cards right after entering the store and spent the last ten minutes waiting around while aimlessly wandering the shelves. It was obvious that he was killing time hoping that some employee might finally come out to the register and help him check out. Or at least explain what was up with the sphere. Naven decided to throw him a bone.
“I can ring you up, if you’re ready?”
“O-oh!” the boy started. “Yeah, that’d be great. S-sorry . . . I wasn’t sure if you worked here or not.”
Naven smiled. “I don’t usually work the register. I run classes here in the afternoons.”
“Classes?”
“Interpersonal communication. Oh, speech classes,” he clarified. “They’re casual, so I don’t have to wear a uniform or anything.”
The boy looked him up and down. Even without a uniform, Naven seemed to fit in anyways. His colorful sweater vest and shoulder cape were as bright as a pair of green stained-glass windows and his easy smile looked like something you might see drawn onto a harlequin doll. Naven clicked away at the brightly-colored keys of the novelty toy register. They sang with individual music notes like a toy piano.
“One pack of Horizontal Pilot Command cards. That’ll be $6.50.” Naven reached out a hand for the money and popped open the register with a melodic ding! “That’s a pretty popular game these days.”
“Yeah . . . Do you play?”
Naven shook his head. He mentioned that some of his friends played it though, and that he’d been thinking about giving it a shot. The customer said he should. The boy recommended Naven a few good starter decks and mentioned there was a big tournament coming up. Naven said he’d heard about that and that he would be sure to check it out.
The boy left the store in high spirits. The social awkwardness creeping on his shoulders just a few moments ago had melted away to nothing. He’d been hoping to see a friend of his who worked there, but the trip had been worth it for the conversation. What a nice man! So nice that he’d completely forgotten to ask about the giant sphere hovering behind the counter.
As Naven watched him go, his smile faded.
. . . Why aren’t they back yet?
Suddenly, the giant pearl behind Naven began to ripple and roil as Lorelai Blyndeff poked her head out of it. Every time Naven saw her she was decked out in a new costume. Today she was wearing a lilac witch’s hat adorned with bunny ears and a cotton ball on the top like a rabbit tail. It was very cute! But it definitely wasn’t part of the standard store uniform that she was supposed to be wearing for her afternoon shift.
She crossed her arms. “What’s with all the noise?”
“You missed a customer,” Naven said. “I had to ring him up for you.”
“That’s fine!” she scoffed. “As long as you’re here, it’s not a problem, right? Nobody even comes into this stupid store anyways. Now keep it down! I’m trying to play!” She disappeared back into the dream bubble like a child diving under the surface of a pool.
Naven frowned. He wasn’t sure that he’d be able to fulfill her request. Speech classes do tend to be fairly vocal. He’d planned a fun activity for today . . . Or at least, he thought it was fun! His students would each pick a song that they liked and then then speak it aloud without the melody, as though the lyrics were normal words in a conversation. The exercise was designed to help them explore different inflections and to think about different ways to utilize sentence structure. It was likely to make a fair bit of noise.
That is, if his students ever showed up.
Naven checked his phone. No new messages.
Molly, ever the little secretary, had sent him an email this morning to let Naven know she and her friends would be going to the beach and that they might be a little late coming back depending on the bus schedule. Even so, it was 20 minutes past their start time. That was concerning.
What Lorelai said wasn’t entirely wrong. Not a lot of people came to the Blyndeff toy store. The building was located in the inner city in a fairly rough neighborhood. An average parent wouldn’t be too keen on bringing their kids to this part of town just so they could browse a collection of expensive toys. It was a bad location, but it was the only place the Blyndeffs could afford to move to after their first store burned down two years prior.
Just as Naven started to assume the worst, the shopkeeper’s bell jingled again. His three students walked in through the door, carrying . . .
. . . a body?!
Well. He had to admit, if something criminal had happened on their way home he certainly wasn’t expecting the perpetrators to be the trio of twelve-year-old girls.
“Naven! Naven, we need your help!” Molly called. The teacher rushed over as they carried Rick’s body to the corner of the room. They gently laid him down on top of one of thoses carpets with a top-down view of a city printed on it. Molly ran off to the back of the store to fetch Rick some water.
“Girls? Girls, what happened?”
Trixie and Feenie began squawking at him simultaneously, telling completely different accounts of what had happened on the beach. It was hard to untangle the story through their squabbling, but Naven spoke fluent squabble and seemed to get a sense for it immediately. He leaned over to get a look at the man on the floor to check if he was still breathing.
Naven’s eyebrows raised when he saw Rick’s face. He put his hand on his chin and stared with a complicated expression. The girls couldn’t quite read what it was. Maybe they should’ve paid more attention in his interpersonal communication classes.
“What’s wrong?” Feenie asked.
“Besides the body part,” Trixie clarified.
