“André!” I shouted. There was no ladder down the hole, and the sides had little smooth bumps on them. I wasn’t sure at all that those would work well as steps for climbing. I should have brought a rope.
Yes. And I should have brought a helicopter, too.
My arms felt like bars of lead, but I needed to find a way down and back up. I was frustrated that I couldn’t actually talk to Squeak. It would have been nice if he could have said, “Be sure to bring rope, because André is stuck in a sixty-foot hole.”
“Just hang on, André. I’m going to get you out of there.” I could turn myself into a rock climber with, like, pick-axe hands or something. I wondered if giving myself another boost of strength would work. I pulled out my pen—
One of the nubs on the side of the hole became a red hand, rose up, and grabbed my ankle.
“Hey!”
Squeak became a flash and gnawed on the hand a dozen times in a second, and it let go. But another one launched up and grabbed my other ankle, then a third one grabbed the one Squeak had just freed. They yanked and I went over the edge with a squeak.
And a Squeak.
The hands were like the Shake and Bake in Azure City, except they were lava red, and they pushed us down instead of helping us up. Thankfully, they weren’t hot. Squeak tried to get them to let me go, but even he wasn’t quick enough to bite them all, and there were a hundred of them all around us now, growing out of the walls.
I struggled, trying to climb, but it was impossible to climb something that kept pushing me down. I grabbed one hand and pulled, but it grabbed me back, then handed my arm down to the next hand, which tugged me farther down.
The reddish light above became a smaller and smaller circle as I was forced downward. The heat was immense, like we were being shoved into an oven. It was stifling. I could barely breathe.
The hands brought me to the bottom. André lay crumpled there, drenched in sweat, his black curls plastered against his head. He was thin as a bag of sticks. His white shirt was dingy with dirt and sweat, and his black pants were torn in the knees. He had no shoes. His breathing was low and shallow, but he was breathing. The hands retreated into the wall and vanished.
“André,” I said. “We’re here. We’re going to get you out.”
“Squeak,” said Squeak.
His eyelids fluttered, and I felt a wash of relief. He was alive. He looked up at me and smiled weakly. “Ha . . .” he whispered. “I knew . . . you were coming.” His voice sounded like dry paper.
“Of course I did, I wouldn’t leave you here—”
“Because the walls shook,” he said weakly in his Honduran accent. “And then there were cracks.”
“Yeah,” I whispered, forcing a smile. He was trying to make jokes, but I wanted to cry. He was so shriveled and weak.
His head lolled back. “I could not beat the hands. I tried, but it is too narrow. I transformed into a Flimflam and unfurled my wings. But no matter how I flew, they could always grab me. I tried . . . to paint them away, but more would grow. It is quite a cunning trap. But no match . . . for you.”
“Um, yeah. No match for me. Have you out in a second.”
He laughed, and it sounded like my great-grandfather coughing. “You . . .” he said, “. . . are a bad liar.”
“Okay, fine. I didn’t figure out the hands.”
“You will.” He leaned his head against me and closed his eyes, as though he had spent the little strength he had.
I paused, then I hugged him, closing my eyes. “You bet your foxy ears I will. You just hang on,” I whispered, a catch in my throat. “You’re going to be okay.”
I let him go and opened my story sight, and the origin of the hands unfolded in front of me.
This hole had been made by Agatha to imprison Vella. When Agatha tried to consume the Wishing World in fire the first time, Vella had stopped her. When Agatha tried the second time, Vella came again, but this time, Agatha tricked her and shoved her down this hole, trapping her without the spinner or the hourglass. Vella might have died here, except something happened. Flicker was born.
The two parts of Connie’s personality fought, and their battle raged throughout the caverns under the volcano. Flicker was strong, but Agatha was stronger. Finally, Flicker had to run, and she ran here to find Vella and enlist her as an ally. She came to this place, which had no throne at the time, and jumped into the hole. Flicker told the hands that she was Agatha and ordered them to reverse their efforts. Because she was, in a sense, the other half of Agatha, the hands believed her, and carried Vella and Flicker up and out.
Together, Vella and Flicker defeated Agatha and locked her away behind the giant steel door that I had destroyed.
I opened my eyes and smiled. I was getting the hang of this.
I pulled out my pen and wrote: I will seem like Agatha to all red hands.
I willed the message to go into myself and the walls of the prison. The golden glow rippled out, and the hands shot out of the wall all at once. Each touched fingers to thumb and pointed at me like a thousand sock puppets without socks.
“Wow,” I said.
They “looked” at each other in confusion.
“I mean, cleanse. Bad bad people. Witches and things.” I put an arm firmly around André. “You ready?”
He nodded weakly. How long had Jimmy kept him down here?
“Take us out,” I commanded.
The hands lifted us up. They pushed on our feet, our legs, our backs, and our butts, and gave us to the next set of hands, all the way to the top. Now if you haven’t had the unique experience of a hundred disembodied hands grabbing you all over the place and lifting you up out of a pit, I wholeheartedly recommend it.
Except no. I don’t. It’s totally weird.
In moments, the hands brought us to the top and pushed us gently onto the throne. The hands retreated, sinking back into the walls of the hole, becoming little red bumps again. The throne swiveled back, covering the prison.
I slumped against the throne in relief. The air up here was a cool breeze compared to down in the hole.
André’s eyelids flickered, and I hugged him. “I got you,” I said. “I got you back.”
“Lorelei,” André murmured. “I am sorry. That I was weak. We would not be here if I had not . . . When Jimmy made his offer, I should have come to you. I knew that he was not good, but . . . my Flimflams. I thought if I could just see them again, I could . . . But now they are all dead. My fault.”
“Don’t say that. We’ll find your Flimflams.”
He shook his head. “I could not stop him. He meant to kill me, but the Watchdog came. I fled into the Kaleidoscope Forest. I meant to come back for my Flimflams, but Vella Wren found me. She said that you must—”
“The hourglass. Yes. Do you have it?”
He nodded. “I do. And Vella?”
“She is . . . gone,” I said.
He nodded at that as well, and he didn’t seem surprised.
“Did you know? That Jimmy killed her?”
“Did you . . . defeat Jimmy?” André answered my question with a question.
“It’s on my list. I have a long list. We also have Agatha, and I think she needs stopping first.”
“Who is . . . ?” He shook his head. “Never mind. We must hurry.”
A spot glowed on André’s chest, visible beneath his shirt. It became the outline of an hourglass the size of a house key. The glowing hourglass slid across his shoulder and down his arm. It slid underneath his skin to the palm of his hand, where it surfaced and became an actual little hourglass.
“Holey moley,” I whispered.
“This,” he said, “is for you.”