Owen sat at the front desk at the library, checking in books. Lots of Kiel Gnomenfoot books, for some reason. He flipped through one, and the fact that all the pages were empty seemed odd, but not odd enough to worry about.
Someone laid a book down on the desk to check out, and he looked up. It was Bethany, made out of chocolate.
“I can’t believe you did all this,” she told him, for once not sounding like she was yelling at him. Actually, she sounded almost impressed. “You played out Kiel’s story through the entire book, Owen. All the way to the end.”
It was a bit hard to talk for some reason, like his head was foggy in a non-truth-spell kind of way. “I’m so sorry, Bethany,” Owen told her. “I never should have done any of this. It’s all my fault. I don’t blame you for leaving me here to die. I deserve it.”
Bethany, who was now made of words instead of chocolate, almost laughed. “Leave you here to die? What are you talking about?”
“Kiel Gnomenfoot dies at the end of the book,” Owen told her sadly. “And right now, I’m Kiel Gnomenfoot. If I didn’t go through with it, all kinds of other people in the book would have suffered for it. I couldn’t do that to them. Because it was my fault Kiel wasn’t there. All my fault. Fiction is too dangerous. I’m going to leave it to you from now on.” He frowned. “Except I can’t, because I’m going to die. Aww.”
“Owen, where do you think you are?” Bethany started to say, then was interrupted by a boy wearing a sign that said KIEL GNOMENFOOT.
And he was wearing that sign because he was Kiel Gnomenfoot! Sometimes dreams were the best.
“I’m really proud of you,” dream Kiel said to Owen. “I don’t know you that well, Bowmen—”
“Owen,” Bethany said.
“But look at you. You’re a bigger hero than I am!”
“Keep it modest,” Bethany whispered to him.
“Never,” he whispered back with a wink.
She sighed, and turned from words into an almost normal-looking Bethany again. “Owen, it’s all over. Kiel and I beat the Magister. Everything’s okay out here.”
Owen looked at her blankly. “Why would you beat the Magister? At what, a game?”
Bethany looked at Kiel, who nodded. “That’s right, Owen,” the boy magician said. “We beat him at a game. That’s all it was. Maybe you should just go back to sleep.”
“Sleep?” Owen asked, looking around him at the library, which was now his bedroom. “Oooh, sleep would be nice. But when I wake up, I’m going to have a robot heart and then Dr. Verity is going to kill me, because my heart won’t work as a key.” He leaned forward conspiratorially. “I tricked him, Kiel. I had to give up my heart selflessly if it was going to open the vault. But I didn’t. I made him promise to save me with a new heart and then let me go. That was a selfish deal, since it saved me, so the heart key won’t work!” He frowned. “Which means he’s going to kill me when it doesn’t work. But at least I saved everyone from blowing up.”
Kiel grinned. “Sounds complicated, but I like it. Almost as good as one of my plans.”
Bethany put her hand on Owen’s chest. “Maybe we should have gotten him out before the whole robot heart thing?”
“I also got an input for computer chips, too,” Owen said, showing her the back of his neck.
Bethany’s eyes widened, and she dropped her head into her hands. Kiel smiled wider and patted her on the back. “It’ll be fine,” he told her. “We can cover that up with magic or something.”
“You don’t know any magic!”
“I bet he does,” Kiel said, pointing to Owen, who giggled happily at being pointed at by Kiel Gnomenfoot. Even if he did have to go back to playing Kiel and therefore dying.
“Sleep time?” Owen asked.
“Just about,” Kiel said. “Tell me one thing. What happened to Charm? She wasn’t in the hallway with you when we snuck you out.”
Owen’s smile faded. “She got hurt. She saved me when the Scientific Method exploded. She thought I was you, though. I like her lots.” He sniffed loudly. “I hope she’s okay after all of this.”
Kiel’s face clouded over. “Hurt? Where is she now?”
“Dr. Verity has her,” Owen said sadly. “Maybe if I don’t die right away, I can try to magic her away or something? I don’t know that spell, but I’ll still try.”
“You do that,” Kiel said. “Sleep now, Owen. I’ll take things from here.”
“Sleep now,” Owen said, and leaned back into his bed, a relaxed smile on his face.
As he started to close his eyes, Owen saw Kiel Gnomenfoot, Bethany, and some other random guy step away from his bed, which was now much bigger than it’d ever been, surrounded by curtains and marble and all kinds of rich things.
“Well, it’s time,” Kiel said from a short distance away now. “Take me back.”
“You can’t go back to just . . . die,” Bethany said, before turning to the random guy. “You. I rescued you from a truly insane horror book, which we will never speak of again, so you owe me. Do something about this!”
“I can’t!” the random guy said. “I set all of this up back in book two. Kiel was always meant to . . . um . . .”
“I know,” Kiel said. “I knew it was coming. Take me back, Bethany. It’s the only way to save everyone.”
Bethany paused, then nodded. She took Kiel’s hand, gave him a look, then threw her arms around him and hugged him close. Aww! Why did she get Kiel hugs? Then the two of them disappeared into a book.
A moment later, just as Owen started to fall asleep, Bethany came shooting out of the book and turned to the older man.
“I don’t care what you’ve set up,” Bethany said to him. “This is not happening. I’m not letting anything happen to him. To either of them!”
“You can’t change the story!” the older man said. “The books have already been published!”
“Doesn’t matter,” Bethany said. “Get ready to rewrite it.”
Wait . . . Bethany said that? Even in his dreamlike state, Owen couldn’t believe that.
“You and me,” Bethany said to the older man. “We’re going to fix this. You’re going to find a plot hole, and I’m going to use it.”
“But my book doesn’t have . . . Okay, there are a bunch, but—”
“Where’s the closest one to the end here?”
“Well, probably . . . this one.” He pointed to a page.
“Good. Watch over Owen. I’ll be right back. Oh, and just a real quick note for later—there’s a full-size version of the Magister’s tower on your lawn, so I’d just tell everyone they’re making a Kiel Gnomenfoot movie. Seems like the best excuse.”
“Wait, what?” the older man yelled.
But Bethany disappeared into a book, and Owen fell asleep. And thankfully, all he had were amazing dreams of Hogwarts letters telling him he’d just been named High King of Narnia, without a robot heart in sight.