“I had a good reason,” I said.
“I can hardly wonder what would be a good enough reason to be late to your job, particularly in times such as this.”
I hesitated. Ordinarily, I would not convey personal information to Domitar. “My parents seemed to have taken a turn for the worse at the Care,” I replied.
He bowed his head, something that surprised me. But his next words stunned me. “I think of them often, Vega. I pray at Steeples for their recovery. They were good Wugs. And may the Fates be kind to them.” When he raised his head, I saw something that was even more shocking than his words. There were tears in his eyes. Tears in Domitar’s eyes? We locked gazes for an instant before he turned and left.
I felt someone behind me. For an instant I thought it might be Krone come to take me to Valhall despite Morrigone’s assurances, but it was simply Dis Fidus.
“It’s time to go back to work, Vega,” he said quietly.
I nodded and returned to my workstation. As I passed Domitar’s office, I could see his silhouette. He was bent over his desk and, unless my ears were deceiving me, the tubby Wug was sobbing.
The rest of my slivers at Stacks that light went by in a sort of blur. I must have worked hard, because when the end-of-work bell rang, all the straps I had been given to finish lay coiled on the trolley with their edges sanded, their surfaces smooth as a baby whist’s skin and the requisite holes cut precisely as instructed in the parchment. I went to the locker room, changed into my other clothes and headed out.
Dis Fidus closed the doors behind me and I heard the lock turn. And that’s when I made up my mind. I was going back into Stacks. I remembered the vision of the fierce battle and the torrent of blood that had washed me away. I remembered the screaming Wug on the doorknob. I of course remembered the jabbits.
But what I most vividly recalled, as I plunged into the red abyss, were the images of my parents. I needed to find out what had happened to them. I would not find out the truth from the Care. Or Council. Wormwood was not what it seemed to be, this I was learning quite forcefully. It held secrets, secrets I was now determined to discover.
A sliver later, Dis Fidus came out from a side door and walked down a path away from me. A bit later, I saw Domitar emerge from the same door. I crouched down low in the tall grass. Harry Two copied me. Once Domitar was out of sight, I said to Harry Two, “Okay, I’ll be back. You stay here.”
I got up and started to walk away. Harry Two followed me. I put out a hand. “You stay here, I’ll be back.” I started to walk again. Once more he followed. “Harry Two,” I said. “You stay.”
He simply smiled and wagged his tail and followed. Finally, I gave it up as a bad job. It looked like we would do this together.
I accessed Stacks through the same door as before. Harry Two followed me in. I wasted no time and made right for the stairs. I did not want to be in here after dark. I hurried up the stairs with Harry Two right on my heels. I found the door the jabbits had knocked down. It was fully repaired. I opened it and went inside.
I could now see that what had toppled down on me and revealed the little door was a suit of armor. It was all righted and shiny now. I managed to move it aside, again exposing the little door. Harry Two started growling when he saw the screaming Wug on the doorknob, but I told him to be quiet and he obeyed instantly. I closed the door behind us. At the same time, I braced myself for a wall of blood hurtling at me. I had already planned to use Destin to get to my parents’ images in that abyss. And I did not intend on drowning Harry Two and myself in the process.
But there was no blood.
As I stood there, the cavernous walls disappeared and an enormous pit was revealed directly in front of me.
I felt woozy at this transformation. How could something that was right there no longer be there? How could one thing change into another thing? Stacks had clearly been something else many sessions ago. There was something in this place, some force that was absolutely foreign to me and every other Wug. Well, maybe not to Morrigone.
I looked at Harry Two. He was no longer smiling and his tail was not wagging. I touched his head and found that he felt cold. I touched my arm. It was as though all the blood had drained from me.
I squared my shoulders and stepped forward until I came to the edge of the pit. I stared down, unable to process what I was seeing. So stunning was it that I felt myself teeter on the edge. That’s when I felt Harry Two bite down on my cloak and pull me away from the edge before I might topple in.
I composed myself and once more drew close to the pit and stared down again. What I was looking at filled me with both anger and hopelessness. For what was down there were all the things that Wugs who had long labored at Stacks had made. The ones on the very top, I recognized as objects I had very recently finished: a silver candlestick and a pair of bronze cups. I sat down on the ground, my spinning head between my knees, my stomach suddenly lurching. I felt like I was losing my mind.
How could all these things have ended up here? I had always assumed they were being made for the Wugs who had ordered them. I could never afford any of these things, but other Wugs could. They were custom-made. They — Here, my idiotic thoughts broke off. They were made so they could be thrown into this pit right here. They had never left Stacks. All my work, my whole existence as a grown Wug, was in that pit.
Without thinking, I slammed my already-injured hand against the hard ground, then yelped in pain. I grabbed it with my other hand and squeezed, trying to stop the pain. But it only grew worse. What a git I was.
I bent down and, using my injured hand, I picked up a white stone lying on the floor next to the pit. I wanted to see if I could form a grip. I could, barely.
I glanced at Harry Two, who stared up at me with a helpless look, as though he could feel every painful thought of mine. He licked my hand and I absently patted his head.
I had come here looking for answers about my parents’ vanishing. Instead I had found that my whole working life was also a lie. The tilt of emotions was crushing, yet I fought against it. I had labored at Stacks, apparently, just for busy work and for no other reason. If so, why was it so important to keep us busy?
I stood. I was here. I had found this pit, but I needed to find more. Much more.
“Let’s go, Harry Two,” I said in a determined voice.
We marched around the pit and through a tunnel on the other side. It eventually opened into a vast cave.
I looked all around. There was no other tunnel out of here. There were just blank, rock-studded walls.
My frustration boiling up inside, I suddenly screamed, “I need answers. And I need them now!”
Immediately, a movement came from my left. I wheeled in that direction and called out, “Who’s there?” I blinked as a small orb of light glimmered from the part of the cave farthest from me. As I continued to stare, the orb grew and then transformed to a shadow. And then this shadow evolved into a small being holding a lantern. As it came forward and stopped in front of me, I looked down at it and it looked up at me.
“Who are you?” I asked in a quavering voice.
“Eon” came the response.
It had on a blue cloak and carried a brass-tipped wooden staff in its other hand. As the lantern light illuminated the thing calling itself Eon more clearly, I saw a small, wrinkled face that was distinctly male. His eyes were protuberant and took up a far greater proportion of his face than I was used to. His ears were tiny, and instead of being round, they were peaked at the top, like Harry Two’s. His hands were thick and plump and the fingers short and curved. He was barefoot. I could just see small toes poking from under his cloak.