A Fortress of Pebbles

Aissaba and Tassadu tried walking backwards – ascending in reverse until their muscles burned, then descending twice as far. No matter how far they traveled, though, only stairs greeted them.

Tassadu tried making a mark with his talon in the concrete wall, trying to prove that they were going in circles. But they never saw it again.

He tried smashing one of the orange lights – spraying glass and blood across the concrete. The light went out, leaving the ground atwinkle with shards. He took the bulb and pulled on it, trying to inspect its wiring. It crumbled into glass dust in his hand, however, and whatever wiring lay behind it vanished like a shy worm.

“Stop it,” said Aissaba, trying to inspect the wound on his knuckle.

“This makes no sense,” he insisted, for the millionth time. “Only the Master of Virtue should be able to create a place like this.”

***

Cassandra and Orion told the Masters all they knew – that their parents had often warned them of the Fortress, that they had seemed to know that a recruitment day would eventually come, that they’d been sent to school on a bus that had almost crashed.

“The rest you know,” said Cassandra.

“We weren’t allowed to read Grandpa’s book,” said Orion, looking hungrily in the direction from which the pebbles usually arrived. He had almost acquired a full dozen.

“Have you seen this man?” said the Master of Mind, pushing a paper across the table. “His name is Styxx.”

Cassandra shook her head. Orion took the paper and peered very closely, as if by sheer effort he might create whatever memories the Masters were looking for. But he gave up with a sigh and shook his head, too.

“Tell us about the book,” said the Master of Language. “Did your grandfather write it?”

“He wrote the notes in the margins," said Orion. "Right, Cassie?”

He never called her Cassie – no one did. He was lounging in the chair, one arm thrown over its back, his other hand caressing his pebbles – like he was some kind of CEO and she was his secretary. It was starting to piss her off. She clinched her toes so hard around her secret pebble that her foot began to cramp, smiling politely all the while.

“I’ve only caught glimpses of the pages,” said Cassandra. “But it’s been in the family for a long time. Um, can we talk about the fact that Aissaba and Tassadu are trapped? Shouldn’t we be, like, rescuing them?”

“This morning,” said the Master of Language, “we were tracking their location within your residence. Then, suddenly, just as they descended the stairwell to your grandfather’s bunker, we lost them. Presently…” He held a pebble to his forehead as if to double check. “...their location is infinitely far away, which is impossible – unless they have stepped out of normal space.”

(Blink: Aissaba and Tassadu were walking backwards down the stairs again, Tassadu attempting to turn in circles as he did so.)

“So…” said Cassandra. “...can you take us home?”

“We’ve already sent two scribes after them,” said the Master of Language. “They are now infinitely far away as well.” Cassandra couldn’t tell if he was telling the truth, but he drummed his fingertips on the table, as if expecting the two of them to come up with a solution.

“I could try rolling food and water down the stairs to them,” suggested Cassandra.

She did not receive a pebble for this, but from the way the Masters of Language and Mind glanced at each other – she gathered that it wasn’t a terrible idea. On the heels of this, she deduced that if they could roll food down to them, then the idea that two scribes had been sent after them was dubious. They would be there by now. Yet Cassandra could plainly see, with each blink, that Aissaba and Tassadu were alone.

This triggered yet another realization: The Masters probably didn’t know about the blinks.

“Is there anything Aissaba and Tassadu could do from where they are?” asked Cassandra. “Like if we rolled a message down to them, could we tell them how to get out?”

Orion gave an exaggerated eye roll but his sass evaporated the moment he saw that the Masters were giving the idea some consideration. The Master of Mind chuckled as he pushed a pebble to Cassandra.

It felt too good. Not just the pebble, but the way she could see Orion going red from the corner of her eye. “Can I go to the bathroom?” he said, which only amplified the glow in her heart. He always needed to pee when he got uncomfortable. And, come on! He should be uncomfortable at a time like this. It was good for him.

“When you get home,” said the Master of Language, “do not enter the stairwell, and do not tell your parents about it, but yes… you could tell them in writing that such spatial bubbles have limited volume.” When he received only blank looks, he clarified: “If they can place enough distance between them, then at least one of them will escape.”

The Master of Mind scratched his triangular mustache. “They’re too codependent to think of it themselves. But they need to split up.”

***

Aissaba stopped, heart pounding.

“What is it?” said Tassadu. “Are you okay?”

He didn’t know. His blink-link with Orion wasn’t as strong as hers. There were tears in her eyes and a pebble in her throat before she could say anything. It was probably for the best because the silence gave her time to realize that one of them would need to go up, and the other down. And they would probably fight over who did what.

“Nothing,” she said, managing to calm herself. The concrete prison suddenly didn’t seem so bad. Nowhere with Tassadu could be that bad. “Let’s just sit together for a bit.”