Pretty and Blink

Chapter Eighteen (Spring, 2037)

(4.5k words, ~15 min read)

Blink had held fast to Pretty out of terror as they sank with a crash through the mirror. Pretty’s grip on Marshall slipped as he and Blink exited instantaneously out of another mirror. The gun, emptied of its ammunition, jostled loose from Pretty’s pants and landed next to them without a bounce.

The high-pitched echoing chorus of broken glass faded as it danced across the floor. The two Astronomers whumped together and released their handhold to catch themselves.

“Ohhhh, fuck, I think we made it,” Pretty said, holding his stomach. “I… knocked the fucking wind… out of me, fuck.” The two boys were under a white sheet which was covering the mirror.

Blink straightened his glasses. He was still surprised they made it through that run through the woods. He pulled down the sheet and looked around the room. “Who was that guy? Where are the others? Did that guy take them? What just happened? What was that?”

“Fuck if I know…” Pretty picked up the gun as both boys scanned the room. There was an old canopied bed, covered in white sheets as well. All of the furniture in the room was covered.

“Holy shit… I don’t know. Where are we?” Pretty’s hands returned to his stomach as his ears popped. “Did your ears just pop? What the hell is going on?”

“Yeah.” Blink slapped his head which felt pressurized. He started breathing deeply.

“Marshall?” Pretty called. “Myles? Mariah? We have a lot of ‘M’ names, don’t we?” Pretty and Blink looked back at the mirror and waited to see if anyone else was coming through.

“Where are they?” Blink said.

Pretty tucked the gun into his pants again and let his backpack slide off his shoulder. He removed the walkie as Blink picked himself up. “Shit,” Pretty said, “walkie’s dead.”

They walked cautiously to the window and moved the transparent curtains aside. Outside was a grassy area, not a forest. And it was daytime. And not too far off, there was a cliff with some other kid in a rain poncho standing on a platform on the edge.

“You think that’s one of the Astronomers?”

Without a word, Pretty and Blink began trying to leave the house. “How do we get out of here?” Blink asked. “Golly, there is so much happening right now.”

The Astronomers continued bumbling around the hallways and finally found a balcony that led to a staircase which emptied into the front lobby. They exited the mansion and stepped out into the crisp air.

“Fuck.” Pretty put his hands on his knees. “I am super lightheaded after walking down those stairs. Where the hell did Myles send us?”

“Let’s go ask him, unless that’s Marshall or something.” Blink pointed to the kid on the cliff about a football field away.

The boys were quiet for about five minutes, trying to catch their elusive breath. Those five minutes were simply confusing. Then they began walking toward the boy. When they were about fifty feet from him, Pretty’s heart sank because he didn’t recognize any of this boy’s features. “Hey,” Pretty called.

The boy’s head turned in surprise, the poncho on his shoulders crinkled with the movement, and Pretty realized it was a girl. “Oh, I thought you were a boy.” Her haircut was short and ugly, her shoulders were slumped, and her face was thin like she didn’t eat much.

“What are you doing here now? Why aren’t you helping push?” She asked.

“What?” 

“Help us push. Who are you, anyway?”

“…Pretty… and this is Blink.” Pretty pointed to himself and Blink.

“Your name is Pretty? Does the Shepherd know? I feel like he wouldn’t have named you that.”

“Who the fuck is the Shepherd? Named me? Where are we?”

“We’re on the Stone Compass. When did you get here? How did you get here and why aren’t you working? We’re supposed to be moving back and we haven’t changed direction yet. We’re trying to port at Stablefield soon.”

“What in the heavenly and hellish fucking fuck are you talking about? Seriously, are we dreaming?” Pretty looked and Blink and then slapped Blink on the arm.

“Ow, what was that for?” Blink swung at him, but Pretty mostly dodged the slap.

“Okay, so we’re awake. What is this place? We just crashed through a mirror in that mansion.”

“You went into one of the mansions?” The girl said.

“We wound up in there, yes. Are we really high up?”

“We’re not too high since it’s the summer,” The girl said.

“I think we’re confused still,” Blink interrupted. “That made no sense.”

“I’m Sandy and I don’t meet new people much.”

“What are you doing next to this cliff? Pretend we don’t know a thing about wherever this is,” Pretty said.

“I’m moving this boat. I’m a minder working for the Shepherd. If I wasn’t a minder, I would be fed to the novis or sold in a market,” Sandy said.

“There are novis here?! Myles said we would be safe!”

Sandy nodded. “You really don’t know anything about this place? Almost every mansion has at least one novis in it. The Shepherd usually puts two in each so they can breed. One male and one female. And he lets them travel as they please. His novis are very sought-after.”

“Sought-after by who? Who the fuck wants a novis around?” Pretty asked.

“The Shepherd has lots of buyers.”

“Again, who is this Shepherd guy?” Pretty asked.

“The Shepherd owns this boat. Do you know anything?”

“No!” Blink said, frustrated. “We really don’t!”

“Do you know what a ‘boat’ is?”

“Maybe?” Blink said. “I feel like I might not, now that you ask me.”

“A boat is a rock that is small enough to be controlled,” Sandy said.

“Okay… now I’m questioning my knowledge… what’s a rock? To you?” Pretty said slowly.

“It’s land floating above the earth’s core,” Sandy said with concern.

Pretty thought about that and then looked over the Ledge. “Okay… so down there… you’re saying this piece of land isn’t attached to the rest of the world? It’s floating around?”

Sandy pointed to their right. “Look past the Big House to the horizon. You see that other dark cloud over there?”

“Yeah,” Pretty said.

“That’s the Great Hook. At least, we think; we won’t know for sure until we can read the flags. It’s like we’re chasing actual seafaring boats around hoping on our best guesses. All of the floating landmasses don’t have a set movement point especially since many of them have minders like me to move them around. You said you arrived here by… mirror?”

“All of the land on this planet is floating?” Blink clarified.

“If you really did come from another planet or time, does your world not have its land suspended above the ocean below?”

“Fuck no! It’s still 2000, right?” Pretty said.

“The last I heard, it was the year 2037 here. Which would make you time travelers? I’ve only heard about them from the other minders. The Shepherd also keeps a prophet around just to help out and make sure we aren’t going to be caught by surprise and to keep the novis in check.”

“Floating planet, Blink. We’re on a fucking floating planet,” Prety laughed. “Myles said it would be a cold place… so I guess this makes sense. Oh, shit… do you think the others landed here in a different house?”

“Shouldn’t we check?” Blink said. Both boys turned around.

“Hey!” Sandy started following them. 

They didn’t make it far before both boys started heaving breaths. “Being up high is fucking ridiculous.”

Sandy stopped alongside them. Pretty and Blink put their hands on their knees and caught their breath as she spoke: “What fraises are you? Evidently, neither of you are hangers… well, do you even know what a fraiser is?”

“Kinda. Pretend like we don’t,” Pretty said.

“I’m guessing neither of you know what your fraises are?”

“Nope,” Blink said. “There’s more than one?”

“There are four different kinds,” Sandy said.

“Myles and Mariah are prophets,” Pretty mentioned.

“Who are they?”

“A couple of our friends that we traveled with.”

The three started walking around checking each of the houses, not daring to go inside now that they knew there were novis inside. All of the mansions were different, but all were from roughly the same time-period: old. Antique. They checked twenty-three of the houses by yelling at them and receiving no answer. On occasion, a novis would appear at a doorway and lose interest after a few seconds.

“Well, if they did show up at one of these houses, they would have left it by now and probably looked for us. How many houses are here?” Pretty asked.

“The Shepherd has thirty-one mansions he has collected over the years,” Sandy said. “Three are empty right now and a few have left and never returned. That’s the risk of letting them run free; sometimes they settle somewhere or they get killed by either other monsters or sometimes humans.”

“Where is the Shepherd now?”

“I don’t know; somewhere on the boat, but once he finds you, he’ll probably imprison you if you’re a minder or feed you to a novis if you aren’t.”

“Let’s hope we’re both minders, whatever the flying fuck those are,” Pretty said.

“They can move rocks with their minds. Practiced minders like me can shape metal too,” Sandy said.

“You can move rocks with your mind?” Blink said, stopping.

“Yeah,” Sandy said, grinning with a mouthful of crooked but white teeth. “You want to see it?” 

“Yeah,” Blink said.

Sandy looked at the ground. “Okay, let me find a rock.” 

Pretty and Blink instinctively started looking for pebbles as well. After a full minute of fruitless searching, Sandy stood back up and said: “Whatever, watch this.” And pointed to a part of the ground.

It rippled, the grass under it shifting like a wave, and it launched up, a rolling cylinder of dirt that crumbled on its way up and fell back down.

“HOLY SHIT!” Pretty fell backward in shock and Blink stood agape, arms dangling in front of him like pendulums.

“It’s too loose. Rocks are so much easier. Moving dirt is like trying to throw water,” Sandy said. 

“Minders can do that?”

“That’s why they’re used for steering boats around. We’re docking in Stablefield so we can pick up an extremely powerful one named Coh. I don’t know anything else about him, but that’s what the Shepherd told us. He found out that when you tell your workers what you’re doing, the plan falls into place quicker. He might also sell some of us, but not me or either of my friends.”

“Sell some of you? You ever think about just… breaking off a piece of your own rock and floating away?”

“I’ve thought about it. I don’t have anywhere to go. A group of minders did that a while ago and the Shepherd learned either to have them love the place here, or give them copper jewelry so they wouldn’t try. He also wrapped a good portion of the bottom of this boat with metal so it’s pretty difficult to break this rock apart. And lastly, the Shepherd is a Staffbearer.”

“That sounds really suspicious, calling yourself a ‘Staffbearer’… he’s probably going to wonder how we got here. We gotta hide,” Pretty said.

“There’s nowhere to hide on this rock from him,” Sandy said. There is only one place of refuge where we all stay, including the Shepherd, though you could always stay in one of the empty mansions.” She grinned at that last part.

“What’s funny about that last idea? It’s a good one.” 

“Only an idiot would stay in an empty mansion. It’s almost safer to try your luck in a mansion with a novis already inside. At least you’d know what you were up against.”

“What’s in an empty mansion?”

“Nobody really knows. It’s just that whoever tries staying in one for a night or even a few hours either disappears or is found dead in a million different ways,” Sandy said.

“What? You’re kidding! Fuck,” Pretty said, feeling dismally unprepared. “What do we do?”

“How should I know?” Sandy shrugged. “It really doesn’t matter since he has Auric and probably knows you’re here already anyway. I need to get back and push this rock along.” 

“How long until we get to Stablefield?” Blink said. “And what’s ‘Auric’?”

“A day or two depending on the weather and how hard we push,” Sandy answered. “Auric is the staff’s name.”

“Okay, we can stick it out for that long, right?” Pretty said to Blink. “The Shepherd won’t kill us or whatever in that time, right? What can we do for two days?”

Sandy shrugged as she walked back to the Ledge near the mansion they had crashed through. She sat down and wrapped her blanket poncho around her again and sat as if fixed to the ground.

Pretty said, “We’re just a little lost and weirded out by this whole situation. We thought we could adapt maybe, but this whole thing is just freaking us the fuck out.”

“If you really are from where you say you are, yeah, if I were you, I’d be freaked out too,” Sandy said from the ground. “What do you want from me?”

“Our fraise things haven’t appeared if they’re supposed to appear at all. And once we get to Stablefield, how are we going to get into Stablefield?”

“It’s really not my problem, kid.”

“Sandy, c’mon, this is from one kid to another. Hey,” Pretty had an idea, “how about a chance at getting into our club? We’re the Astronomers and we could let you in?”

“I don’t think you understand. I don’t have a reason to care about any of what you have.”

“Motherfucker…” Blink muttered.

“What’d you call me?”

“I said ‘motherfucker’,” Blink said louder.

“We want her to like us, dipshit.” Pretty batted him over the head.

Blink’s glasses fell off of his face. “Oh, shit, don’t do that. Don’t let those fall off of the cliff. Edge,” Blink said as Sandy picked them up and handed them back to him.

“Thanks,” Blink said. “We really need help. Can you help us?”

“I don’t know why I would,” Sandy said.

“Sandy, don’t you want to not be imprisoned on this tub?” Pretty asked.

“I’m not imprisoned here. This is my home.”

“You said you have friends?”

“Yeah.”

“What about family?”

“I don’t know who my family is. I was kidnapped as a baby and sold. It’s interesting… they protect a lot of kids from rape now because mentally damaged fraisers don’t operate as well as ones who are treated well. And they don’t have as strong a fraise.”

Blink and Pretty shut up at that comment. Was rape that common out here?

“Fuck, man.” Pretty scratched his head.

“How does the Shepherd already know we’re here?” Blink said.

Sandy started, “He’s an old man, but he took some weird drug and suddenly knew all about the universe and novis and stuff and started collecting them. Then he started selling them and getting even stronger with his sixth-sense. He talks a lot about his third eye and the ‘hidden realm’ or ‘hidden world’ that we don’t see that is all around us. I think he’s weird, but he takes care of us aside from when he trades us or feeds the useless ones to the novis. Oh, and watch out for Pet; he’ll grab you. I think it’s asleep, but usually you’re able to see it from wherever you are on this rock.”

“So he’s like an old prophet. Myles is a prophet and he can like… predict the future or something. He’s not good at it, but he saved our lives with it. And Mariah too,” Pretty said.

“He’s not a prophet in that way, but he’s smart and can sense things quite well. He says he sees sound and emotion and all of the things you aren’t able to see. He also remembers things perfectly; he doesn’t forget anything. So he knows a lot of people in Stablefield and visits the strong, smart ones and avoid the stupid, weak ones.”

“We still need to find our friends,” Pretty said. “The Shepherd doesn’t sound too bad, so do you think he’d help us find our friends?”

Sandy shrugged. “Probably not. He’d just get Pet to capture you and then he would sell you.”

“Okay… what is Pet? Or who?” Blink said.

“You’ll see him eventually. He’s like a really tall man with these black, beady eyes like a bird, which makes sense because he also has a beak. And he’s got long arms and fingers, but short legs. He uses his arms to run and grab, but when he just wants to walk, he lets his legs do the work and reaches around with his hands.”

“That sounds so fucked up, damn,” Pretty said.

“The Shepherd bought it before he bought me,” Sandy said. “Pet has been on the Stone Compass longer than any fraiser on here now.”

“You were bought? Were you raped before you were bought?” Blink asked quite honestly and innocently.

“Dude, what the fuck?” Pretty slapped Blink on the arm again.

“No, I wasn’t, thank you,” Sandy answered anyway.

“Sorry, he’s an idiot.”

“I noticed,” Sandy said.

“Fuck off,” Blink said to nobody.

“Oh, look, there’s Pet. The Shepherd probably sensed you and asked Pet to pick you up since Pet is heading directly for us.”

“Holy mother of FUCKER,” Pretty said as he and Blink turned around and saw what ‘Pet’ really was.

It was a spindly creature swinging along the ground on its hands in an estranged gallop. It threw its body forward with its arms, landed on its stubby legs and put its arms forward for the next step. There was a beak attached to a bald head with beady black eyes that didn’t look in a particular direction, so it had a full field of vision. The whole complicated creature appeared as some accursed beast with long, clawed fingers. At its tallest, its head was nearly twenty feet in the air.

Pretty wrestled his pistol from his pants and remembered he had emptied all 15 bullets on the novis. He looked up at the towering and approaching sticklike creature and said, “Well, shit.”

Pretty and Blink broke into a run, screaming again as the thing bore down on them in its hopping movement. Secretly, the Leader felt like an absolute badass running with a gun in one hand, similar to what he was doing in the dark Winton woods less than fifteen minutes ago.

“Holy shit, holy shit holyshit holyshitholsyshitsholyshit!” Blink said as he followed Pretty, throwing a glance over his shoulder every few steps.

Pretty didn’t look behind him as he heard Blink’s voice yell nearby and then grow slightly distant and scream in terror: “FUUUUUuuuuck!”

Pretty felt strange, meaty sticks wrap around his waist as he was noiselessly lifted off of his feet and kicked in small grunts, trying to break free from Pet’s grip. “Let me go, you fucker- oh,” Pretty said as Pet brought the Leader to its beaked face.

“Hi, fuckface; put me down.” Pretty struggled on that last word since the grip seemed to force all of the air from his lungs. Pet seemed to consider Pretty for a few seconds before calmly walking off with the boys, like an antique dealer with a vase in each hand, watching his steps carefully.

“Pretty! Help me!” Blink gasped to the Leader. 

“Just— hang on!” Pretty winced as he tried to pry the shockingly strong spidery fingers that gripped his waist horribly.

The walk seemed to last forever since Pet’s legs were short. Pet’s arms were longer than the entire length of its body which stood about twelve feet tall. His hands alone were over two feet long, almost completely around the boys’ waists.

Finally, they reached a building which they assumed was what Sandy was talking about when she mentioned the Big House. It was an old ski-lodge. Neither Pretty nor Blink had visited a ski-lodge before, but as natives of Pennsylvania they knew what one looked like. There was even a pole where the old lift had risen and most of the concrete front was still there. On that pole flew two large flags. One had the upper half colored white and the bottom half colored red.

Pet put them down on the front deck of the lodge and then put his hands on the ground. Using his arms, he leaped to the roof of the lodge and peered down at them with soulless eyes, like a plucked vulture from a lab studying human hybrids.

Pretty and Blink, already winded from the dramatic elevation change, nearly blacked out from the trip and slowly rose to their feet. They failed to notice the man on the deck until they were standing.

Pretty caught his breath and looked up at the man. His skin was dark, he wore a long coat that the wind toyed with, and on his feet were thick boots. His dressing reminded Blink of a monk. The man’s head was bald, but he had a white beard to contrast his skin. His eyes looked sad from experience, as if he’d lived three lifetimes. In his hand was a staff with an amber chunk on the tip.

“Wh… wh-” Pretty said as he rose, hands on his hips where Pet had grabbed him. “Nice little henchman you got.” He pointed at the eerie figure on the roof with his handgun.

“I am the Shepherd and welcome to my boat. I almost never have to ask this, but: Who are you?” The man’s voice rolled out of his voice with an assertive annoyance that made you fearfully want to listen and obey.

“Pretty Lewis, and this is Blink Mayer.”

“And you’re fraisers that somehow landed on my boat?”

“We jumped through a mirror,” Pretty explained.

“That explains nothing to me even if it is the truth,” The man said. “Elaborate on this mirror.”

“Well, our other friends that aren’t with us, Myles and the others… they were with us…” Pretty was still catching his breath and impressed that the guy didn’t seem intimidated by the gun at all. “Sheesh… we’re high up. We came from the past I assume and crashed out of this mirror. We… shattered through a mirror in Winton, Pennsylvania… and wound up here.”

“That is the truth,” The man said as if he had to assure himself. “Incredible. Mirrors…you broke one of my mirrors?”

“It was in one of the mansions,” Pretty said.

“Are either of you minders?”

“We don’t know yet.”

“You mean to say you aren’t fraisers?”

“Not yet I don’t think. Myles said we were all fraisers, but not yet? Maybe we gotta wait until we’re accumulated… what’s the word? Fuck it, I don’t know. Used to the air.” Pretty gestured all around them.

“You’ll likely be traded at Stablefield,” The man said and held out his hand. “The gun.”

Pretty pointed it at the Shepherd. “No way.”

The Shepherd’s face remained calm. “It isn’t loaded and you don’t seem to have any way to reload it. And when holding a gun, you keep your finger off of the trigger until you’re ready to shoot.”

“What if I am ready to shoot?”

“You’ve been tapping the trigger since we began talking. You’re a novice gunman, now give it to me, who knows what to do with it, or I will take it with force.” There was almost a parental edge to his voice, feigning that he was offering a choice at all. Pretty slapped the empty gun into the man’s hand with a defiant glare. The Shepherd started to walk away and as he did, he pointed at the boys with the amber chunk and said: “Pet! Cage.”

Pet rose from the rooftop and grabbed the boys again. This time it hurt even worse as Pet swung them around its body and brought them along to the ‘cages’ the Shepherd had spoken about.

They were made of wood and were just large spindles sticking straight up out of the ground. The tops of the cages were covered with spindles as well, but Pet put down Blink and opened them. He placed Pretty in one and Blink in an adjoining one.

Neither boy said a word as they were left in these and watched Pet locked the cages up, stuck its hands to the floor, and swung away. Pretty put his hands around the wooden bars. At least it wasn’t freezing metal. 

After a long pause, Blink said, “Pretty, what just happened?” He sat down against the bars with a hand on his forehead.

Pretty didn’t answer as he slumped against the bars to the floor. What the hell? His wide eyes found Blink who was looking at his own surroundings. There was only dead or dying grass around and underneath them. To their backs was a structure on the edge of the landmass. If they considered the direction they were headed, it would have been the front of the boat. Behind them was the Great House. 

“I don’t know what just happened, man.” Pretty heaved several more breaths.

Blink made himself comfortable. He didn’t know what he was going to do or when they would get out. “They can’t keep us in here forever.”

Pretty took off his backpack and removed the walkie. He tried powering it on, but it didn’t work. “Fucking walkies aren’t working either. FUCK!” He slammed it back into his bag and rifled through the rest of the contents. “And he took my gun too?! Nothing in here that will help us contact the others. How the hell are we gonna find them?”

“If they even survived,” Blink pointed out.

“They did. Myles said we would all be okay and Myles Willis will be called a liar over my dead body,” Pretty said, clutching his backpack to his chest.

The boys sat in their opposite cells, waiting, watching clouds and other small landmasses roll by like traffic. Both Astronomers were terribly thirsty.