THE SKIN OF Dave’s new hand was slick and reflective, covered with slithering rainbows, like gasoline floating on dark water. To say nothing of the extra finger …
I spotted the differences a good second ahead of Dave and had time to look up and watch his expression as he realized what had happened. It made my heart hurt as he went from the beginnings of melting into a puddle of relief to openmouthed horror.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA…”
“Dave.”
“… AAAAAAAAAAAAAA…”
“DAVE!”
“… AAAAAAAAAAAAAA…”
“DAVID HOWARD HARRIS! You stop that screaming this instant!”
“… AAAAAAAAAAAAAA…”
That’s when the hand slapped him.
“… AAAAAAAH!”
Dave paused, probably more because he was out of air for screaming than anything. But he didn’t start right up again, which was hopeful. “I…” He drew a couple of gasping breaths. “That wasn’t cool, was it?”
“Maybe not,” I replied. “But I can’t say I’d have handled it any better. I … uh, this is a delicate question, but I have to ask. Did you slap yourself? Or was that … the hand?”
“I … I’m not sure.” Dave held the hand up so he could look at it more closely, flexing each of the fingers and the thumb in turn. “I don’t think it was me, but the…” He took a deep breath. “But I felt it on both ends. This palm stings as much as my cheek.”
He looked at his new hand wonderingly and closed it into a tight fist. “From the inside, it feels like it’s all me.” He pressed the palm to his cheek. “Feels pretty much the same from the outside as well. I wish I had my other hand free so I could…”
Dave’s voice trailed off as his right hand reached down to the place where the granite ball encased his left. Touching a point on the ball with all six finger- and thumb-tips, he flicked them apart in the kind of gesture you might use to expand a window on a touch screen. In response, the gap around his wrist suddenly opened wide and he was able to pull his other hand loose.
He immediately used his left hand to seize his right wrist right above the place where human skin met … whatever. “Okay, that definitely wasn’t me.” His words came out a full octave higher than normal. “Nope. Not me at all. Welllllll, not brain me, anyway. Because, I could totally feel it. I could feel all of it.”
The way he said “all” sounded distinctly odd. “All of what, exactly?”
“Everything! I could feel the tug as my hand pulled my arm down to the ball. I could feel the stone against my fingers. I could feel the pulse of *garble* that released the … Wait a second, did I just say *garble*?”
I nodded as much as my neck band would allow. “Yeah, you did. I mean, I don’t recognize the word or the language, or anything, but whatever you said the first time, you definitely repeated it. I … There’s no good way to say this, but whatever that word was, it didn’t even sound … well, human.”
Dave’s expression had gone deathly still, and he spoke now with a positively eerie calm. “Excellent. That’s good to know. I’m glad. Really. I thought I might be hearing things—well, or speaking them—or maybe going like my dad, but nope, I’m possessed. That’s really much better. I think I might go back to screaming here in a minute if that’s all right with you.”
“Sure, go ahead, I’ll wait.” I had an idea.
Seconds ticked past. Finally, Dave said, “Wait for what?”
“You to finish screaming.”
“Huh? Would you care to explain that?”
I shrugged. “Well, obviously, you can’t go on screaming forever. At some point you’ll have to quit freaking and get back to dealing. Just like I did when I started speaking fire tongue. You’re my best friend. Least I can do is wait it out. I mean”—and here I tugged at my bonds—“it’s not like I’m going anywhere this side of you getting your shit together.”
“That’s cold!”
“It worked, didn’t it?”
“Say what now?” Dave looked confused.
“You’re thinking again instead of panicking.” He blinked at me, so I continued. “I asked myself how Sparx deals with me when I’m flipping out about magic.”
“And?”
I grinned. “He keeps poking at me until I’m too irritated to do anything but argue with him. I figured it might work on you, too.”
“You’re a jerk, Munroe. You know that, right?”
I nodded. “A smug jerk, even. Just like my bunny buddy. Now, if you’re done with the freak-out for a bit, let’s talk this through. Because I’ve got an idea.”
Dave glared at me. “You’re still a jerk, but I’m listening.”
“Well, for starters, I think your magic did exactly what you asked the powers for.”
“Your lips are moving, but you’re not making any sense.” Dave stuck his right hand out and waved it back and forth. “Does this look like my freaking hand, Kalvan?!? Does it?!?”
I shook my head. “No, but you didn’t ask for the powers to give you your hand back. You asked them to help you open the door you needed.”
“That’s nonsen … oh.” Dave glanced at his now-freed left hand. “You’re thinking if I’d gotten my hand back, it’d still be stuck in a ball of rock and we’d be back at square zero.”
“Pretty much, yeah. Am I wrong?”
Dave bit his lip. “No, I don’t think you are. But what about my real hand? I can’t feel it anymore. Am I ever going to see it again?”
“I don’t know. Magic is weird and about half the time it doesn’t do what you want it to even when it solves your problem. Maybe you can get it back later, but I sure wouldn’t count on it.”
Dave held the six-fingered hand up in front of his face and flexed the fingers. “This isn’t going to be easy to explain to Mom. To say nothing of what it’s going to do to my glove budget.”
It wasn’t much of a joke, but it made me think Dave might get through this. “You may also want to keep one wary eye out for anyone named Inigo Montoya.”
That got an actual laugh. “Good point. I guess I should try this thing on my feet next.”
“Probably. You might want to see if you can do it more as yourself this time. Tanya is always saying you need to control your magic and not let it control you.”
“Okay. I want to do this right. Or, at least, better than you’ve been doing it … which actually shouldn’t be too hard if what I hear from Sparx is true.”
“Thin ice, man, thin ice.”
“Says the guy who’s stuck in that chair till I decide to cut him loose.”
“All right, I’ll let it slide. This time.”
Dave leaned forward and placed his fingertips on the ball holding his right foot. Then, with a look of careful concentration, he flicked them open. There was a sharp BANG and shards of granite flew everywhere. One particularly nasty piece nailed my jaw hard enough to make my eyes water, but there was nothing I could do about it, and I was more worried about Dave anyway. He’d been much closer to the blast and now a huge cloud of dust blocked my view of him.
“Dave! Are you all right?”
There was a sharp cough. “Yeah, fine. Nothing big hit me.” Another couple of coughs. “Well, except for all the dust. I think I might be starting an asthma attack.” He coughed some more. “Yeah. My asthma definitely hates this, and my inhaler is in the pocket of my jeans.” That last bit came out a little panicky.
“I don’t suppose the delvers brought them along and left them in here with us?” I asked hopefully. Talking made the spot where the stone had struck my jaw feel like it was on fire.
Dave just coughed in response. When he finished, there was a wheezing undertone to his breathing. Not good, and there was nothing I could do about it. The dust settled, but that didn’t seem to help. Dave was looking distinctly purple around the lips. More coughing, more wheezing.
Then, “Wait a second…” Dave’s voice came out weak and raspy. “Asthma is *wheeze* basically airways closing. Maybe I can *wheeze* open them up again…”
I realized what he was about to try. “Dave, that might not be such a good idea.” Again, speaking aggravated the pain in my jaw.
“Better than *wheeze* suffocating.” He closed his otherworldly hand into a fist, looked briefly skyward, then slammed himself in the chest. For what seemed like forever, nothing happened. Then Dave let out one sharp hacking cough and drew in a long shivery breath that sounded deep and clean. “Booyah!”
“I take it that worked?”
“Holy hogrockets, but that feels better. I don’t think I’ve ever been able to breathe this well in my whole life. Hang on.” He bent to the other stone ball and did the point-and-flick routine. This time the ball split neatly in half, freeing his foot. “Still not what I was shooting for, but no explosion this time. That’s a plus, right?” He stood and limped toward me.
“Yeah. The one that went bang didn’t do me any favors.” The burning sensation on my jawline hadn’t gotten any better with time, though I’d mostly been able to push it aside while I focused on Dave.
Dave’s eyes suddenly widened. “Oh man, I am so sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll be fine.” A lie—if anything, it was getting worse.
He leaned in close. “Dude, you do realize that you’ve got a two-inch-long shard of granite sticking out of your face.”
“I do?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh.” I swiveled my eyes as far to the right as I could, trying to get a look at the stone. No luck. “That’d explain why it hurts so much. Am I bleeding?”
“Barely at all, but I expect that’s going to change rather a lot once I pull that thing out of there.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” I asked, rather weakly.
“Well, it’s kind of a cool look as piercings go, but if we have to do any running away, you really don’t want to have it stuck there ready to bang into something.”
“Fair enough. Why don’t you pull it now, before you work on these steel bands.”
“Why?” Dave looked puzzled.
“Because if it hurts half as much coming out as it did going in, I’d probably punch you if I had a hand free.”
“Good point.” He chuckled, then his eyes went far away. “Hmmm, you know…”
“‘Hmmm’ what?” I didn’t like the sound of that hmmm. Not at all.
“Got an idea.” Before I could argue with him, he reached up with his new hand, took the stone firmly between his fingers, and yanked.
“Son-of-a-sonic…” I trailed off as I realized it hadn’t hurt nearly as much as I expected. I felt blood trickling down my neck, but there didn’t seem to be a lot of it. “What did you just do?”
“Magic!” Dave grinned that amazing grin I hadn’t seen in weeks. “Apparently I can exert some control over how much of an opening I leave behind, too. Who knew?”
“You magicked my jaw?”
“Kind of, yeah. I’m pretty sure I can’t do closings, but I focused really hard on making the hole I left behind as small as possible. Then, when I pulled out the stone, I could feel the magic doing something. Since you’re bleeding a lot less than I figured you would, Ima call that a win. Here, you want the souvenir?” He held out the jagged piece of granite—it looked a bit like the spear point that had melted into my hand when I did the Dragon’s Wings.
“Dave!”
“Oh, right. You’re still locked up. Hang on a tick while I see if I can’t get you out of there.”
“Please don’t blow anything up while you’re doing it. I like having all my bits attached.”
“Yeah, smart boy, so did I. I’ll see what I can do.”
The right cuff left a band of blisters across my wrist as it heated sharply before falling to the floor with a clank. “OW!”
“Sorry about that, man. I’ll try something different on this next one.” The left cuff got very cold, but not quite cold enough to leave a frost burn. “Okay, so maybe that’s not it, either.”
Both of the bands across my ankles tightened somewhat before coming free—the right one hard enough to bruise. That left only my neck. I braced myself for the worst as Dave slipped two fingers between the steel and my skin. A moment later, with the faintest of pops, like a soap bubble bursting, I was free. Dave started to extend his new right hand to help me up, then froze halfway through the gesture.
I’ll admit it; that hand scared me. But I could see his heart in his eyes and I reached up to catch his hand before he could pull away or be hurt by my fear. “Thanks, Dave, you’re a lifesaver.”
The skin felt cool against my own, and unnaturally smooth—like the surface of a Teflon frying pan. It did have some of the give of flesh and it felt … I don’t know … alive? Real? Not quite human, but not like a human-made thing, either. I wanted to make sure he knew we were still good, so I squeezed his hand between both of my own.
“I’m sorry, Dave. This never would have happened if I hadn’t dragged you into my magical hassles. I owe you—”
Dave cut me off sharply. “No, you don’t. This is on me. You didn’t drag me into anything. I jumped in with both feet because my best friend was in trouble, and I’d do it again tomorrow even if I knew this was coming.” He pulled his alien hand free and held it up between us. “I chose to ask for magic, and this is what the universe gave me. I may have some problems with the details, but I’ll deal. You got that?”
“Yes, but—”
“No buts. No backs. No secret guilt. I’ve got magic now. It’s weird magic, and kind of scary. But how boring would it be if I just got a second helping of the same stuff you have?”
“You’re sure?”
Dave nodded. “I’m sure.”
“Then let’s go bust Sparx out.”
That turned out to be easier said than done. When Dave reached his otherworldly hand toward Sparx’s glass prison, it hesitated, then started to shake—halting some inches from the surface.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, while Sparx flicked his ears back and forth impatiently.
“I’m not sure, but I think the hand doesn’t know what to do with this one. Give me a second.” Dave leaned in and pressed his forehead and both palms against the tank.
Several minutes ticked past while my impatience built. There was no way to know when or if the delvers might come back. We desperately needed to get Sparx free and move on to the next step in our escape. Finally, Dave pulled back and shook his head.
“I don’t think I can do it. The whole thing feels like one single piece to my new powers. The water is somehow part of what’s holding the stone up. I can sense that if I open a hole in the tank and it starts to drain, the stone will shatter the tank and crush Sparx. If I do anything to move the stone, it will unbalance the load, the tank will break and Sparx gets squished. If I open up the globe, it will change the pressure in the tank and BAM!” Dave smacked his fist into the palm of his human hand.
“We can’t just leave him there!”
Dave winced. “I know, but I’ve got nothing. Compared to this”—he tapped the tank—“the stuff they had us bound up with was like breaking out of a paper bag.”
Sparx had canted his ears forward as though he was trying to hear us. When he caught my eye, he tapped his right ear with a paw as if to say, “Tell me.” I pointed at Dave’s hand and then at the tank and made an opening gesture. Then I mimed the stone dropping, shook my head, and spread my hands wide in the classic I’m-stuck pose.
Sparx nodded, then pointed at Dave before drawing a circle in the air. Next, he put his paw through the imaginary circle and made a chopping-it-off motion. Finally, he mimed the circle again and pretended to climb through it. His meaning was pretty clear, but I didn’t like it.
Dave clearly didn’t, either. “No way! First, I’m not sure I can get one precisely located enough for him to climb through. Second, I have no control over where those things go. What if I accidentally make a door into some kind of hell?” He shook his head emphatically at Sparx.
The hare responded with a nod that was just as emphatic. Then he touched his chest and pointed at the bubble beneath his feet, before pointing to the stone above him and making a squishing motion.
“He’s got a point, Dave. If he stays here, he’s in constant danger of being crushed. We have to get him out.”
Before Dave could respond, Sparx waved his paws to catch our attention. Then he drew a circle in the air, looked through it, and shook his head. Another. Another shake of the head. A third. This time he nodded.
“I suppose he’s right.” Dave sighed. “If it looks like the gate leads to a bad place, he doesn’t have to go through it. I guess I can give it a try.”
Dave closed his eyes and began to visibly concentrate. As he did so, the six-fingered hand made a series of small complicated gestures, seemingly of its own accord. A few seconds later, a circle opened inside the globe that held Sparx. The hare leaned forward and looked through before hopping back away from the gateway as far as his small prison would allow and shaking his head violently.
I touched Dave on the shoulder. “That’s a bad one; let it go.”
Sparx didn’t leap away from the next one, but he did shake his head. He did the same for the three that followed. By then, beads of sweat had broken out along Dave’s brow line and it was obvious he was fading.
“I don’t know how many more of these I can manage.” He used the shoulder of his dress to dab away some of the sweat. “Hitting the mark for location is brutal, and even without that, I can feel something go out of me with each gate I open.” But then he braced up, took a deep breath, and tried again.
Disaster.
The edge of the circle touched the surface of the sphere that held the hare. In the first instant, water started to jet in through the hole thus created. In the next, cracks spread across the surface of the sphere. Without even looking to see where the gateway went, Sparx leaped forward through it, vanishing as the globe imploded. I barely had time to register that before the walls of the tank bulged suddenly outward.
I threw my arm up to cover my face as the tank burst into a million pieces, sending water and shards of glass everywhere, while the gigantic stone block plunged toward the floor like the biggest hammer the world had ever seen. Sparks flew as stone met stone, igniting the too-rich air in a giant burst of flame.
BOOOOOOOOOOM!