Sato couldn’t help but feel her sorrow. It made him think of the days and weeks and months he’d spent bawling his eyes out after Jane killed his parents. Why did there have to be so much evil in the world? Why couldn’t people like Jane realize the pain they inflicted or understand the end results on everyday lives? How was it possible to have such a complete absence of compassion? He couldn’t possibly hate Jane any more than he already did, but he felt his rage and thirst for revenge spring up anew.
“We’ll find your sister,” he said, hoping the promise didn’t sound too empty. “We’ll find your whole family, and we’ll make Jane pay for whatever she’s done. It’s the only thing I live for now.”
Lisa looked at him, her eyes red and wet and surrounded by dark, hollow circles on her face. “Thanks.”
Something hummed deeply behind Sato, and he noticed Lisa look sharply over his shoulder, surprise transforming her face. The floor vibrated slightly as well.
He spun around to see what had happened.
Mothball was standing there, looking as surprised as Sato felt.
It took a minute or so for Tick to gather himself, remembering that he’d seen many strange things since receiving his very first letter from Master George and that this was just the next in a long line of oddities. He pushed away the shock he felt, ignoring the impossibility of what he saw before him. So a big oval of silver-blue light was talking to him with hundreds of different faces mouthing the words. Big deal. He had to respond.
“How do you know my name?” he asked, proud that the words came out with no squeaks or stutters.
When the entity responded, its face started out as a teenage girl with long hair but had morphed into an old man by the time the short phrase was finished. “We have been observing you and your Realitant friends.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” said a woman who changed into a man.
Tick was completely fascinated. “What are you? I mean . . . who are you?”
The glowing apparition was quiet for a moment, though the faces continued to change at the same rapid pace. Finally, a wise-looking, ancient woman appeared to speak the words, “They call us the Haunce.”
Chapter 27
Soulikens
The entity paused after revealing its name, as if it wanted Tick to respond. But Tick had questions buzzing around his head like flies swarming a light bulb, and he couldn’t settle on just one. So he sat there, slack-jawed and silent.
“Do not be afraid,” the many-faced apparition said. “We are as close a thing to a ghost as you will ever see, but we are much kinder than the storybooks make us out to be. It takes considerable effort to gather ourselves into something strong enough to appear visually to those still alive. We would never do it simply to scare someone. It would be ridiculous.”
If Tick had flies buzzing a moment earlier, now they had become an army of bees. A ghost? Appear visually to those still alive? What was this thing?
He decided to make a statement that encompassed all of his confusion in three short words. “I don’t understand.”
A smile appeared on a girl’s face, glowing silvery blue. When the face transformed into a middle-aged man, the smile was still there. “We would not expect you to. Sit and listen. We will explain.”
Tick had never heard a better idea in his life. He nodded his head emphatically.
“Good.” The Haunce’s orb of light expanded then retracted, as if it had taken a deep breath. The ever-changing faces spoke. “We are here because terrible things have happened in the Realities over the last few hours. When it became apparent that we must reveal ourselves, we chose you. The reason for that choice is something we may not have time to explain, but we shall see.”
Tick didn’t say anything, but he scrunched up his face in confusion, hoping the entity would change its mind. Whatever this ghostly visage was, why would it have chosen him of all people to appear to? Tick wanted to know the answer to that question very badly, but he forced himself to remain silent and listen intently as the Haunce continued speaking.
“We come to you now because enormous and catastrophic disturbances have shattered the barriers of the Realities. We know this because we are part of the barriers, interwoven into the Chi’karda that has served to bind the Realities together and build the wall to keep them apart. If we had not acted quickly, we might have been destroyed and the memories of billions upon billions of lives would have been obliterated. But we escaped before the worst of it happened.”
The Haunce paused, flashing three different faces before a weary-eyed man with a short-cropped beard appeared and spoke. “We never would have thought it possible that someone could harness, much less control, the dark matter as the woman named Mistress Jane has done. Even we do not understand its properties to the fullest. And yet, she has unleashed it, annihilating the bonds between the Realities and sending them to drift apart from one another. What she does not understand is that soon the fragmenting will begin. In every Reality. A human body cannot survive when separated into pieces; the Realities are no different. What she has done will lead to the end of everything as we know it. The end of existence.”
Tick felt a leprous lump growing in his belly. Although he didn’t understand the nitty-gritty details, not to mention any of the logistics or complex science of what the Haunce was describing, he was smart enough to connect the dots. Mistress Jane had said from the start that she was going to sever the Fifth Reality and destroy it. From what the Haunce had just said, Tick suspected Jane must have accidentally enacted her diabolical plan on every last Reality.
And then Tick had another thought, perhaps the worst thought to ever cross the pathways of his mind. What if he had done this? What if his little exercise in throwing a trickle of Chi’karda into the black tree, into the dark matter that made up the Blade of Shattered Hope, had somehow disrupted Jane’s plan? What if, by trying to help, he’d made it worse—infinitely worse? His more rational side had told him he wasn’t ready to try something so foolish. Why hadn’t he listened?
The lump inside him grew, filling his body with acid. He’d spent the last few months trying to ensure he never repeated anything like what he’d done in Chu’s mountain palace. But if he’d just helped destroy every last Reality, that made the fiasco with Chu’s Dark Infinity and Mistress Jane look like a food fight. Panic and worry consumed him.