“Thank you, Santiago,” the king said and went after the queen.
They found her wandering the castle corridors like she was lost. She had her fingers pressed to her head, her brow knit in pain. She was humming to herself, and every now and then she muttered the words of a song, something about stars.
“Bonbon, what are you doing?” the king asked. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere. Come back to the party.”
“I was only away for a day or so, wasn’t I?” she said, frowning. “But in some ways it feels longer than that. It feels like so much has happened that I can’t remember.”
“I told you. Much has happened,” the king said. “You were lost to me. I had to go to the ends of the earth to bring you back.”
“With the Aeternum,” she said, glancing at the place where the glowing stone now resided in the king’s chest. “You changed things?”
“Of course I did,” the king said. “Wouldn’t you do the same for me?”
She nodded. “Of course. Of course I would,” but she continued to frown. “My parents . . . can we save them? Bring them back?”
Santiago felt possessiveness flare up inside the king. She had been asking this every day since she’d come back, but the king was not keen on the idea. He had his own plans, and he was not eager to share his Bonbon with her parents.
But he smiled. “Of course, Bonbon,” he lied. “We will save them very soon, just as we’d always planned. But first, we must attend to other things. We can’t think only about those we want to save from the past. We must also think of those we must save in our future.”
“The boy, the one I saw on the ship?”
“Yes, our son.”
“Annie said he was my son. He said he was my son, but he said you weren’t his father. He said he had another father.”
The king stiffened. Santiago felt his self-assurance diminish ever so slightly. He raised one eyebrow. “Do you want him to have another father?”
“No, no, of course not,” the queen said. “I’m just so confused . . . I feel like I have a fog in my brain.” She rubbed at her head again.
“Of course, you’re confused. Think of all you’ve been through. Listen, Bonbon, there are forces at work, evil people who are trying to break us apart. We must fight it! We must fight to stay together! Do you agree?”
The Hudson woman nodded. “How do we fight it?”
“We must go and get our son. To complete all our happiness, to lock our eternal destiny in place, we must claim him before someone else does.”
“Where will we find him?”
“In Colombia. In Ciudad Perdida. Our son told me himself that we had to go and find him there. If we didn’t, then all would be lost. Now come back to the party. Your subjects are waiting for their queen.”
They began walking together back to the ballroom, but Santiago hissed at the king so he held back.
“What is it, Santiago?” the king said impatiently.
Bad plan. No Mateo.
“For the last time, Santiago, Mateo—Marius Quine—is on our side!”
Bad plan, Santiago repeated. Mateo evil.
“This is the only way. Making him our son is the only way to complete my eternal destiny! Without him everything falls apart!”
Mateo bad. Hudson woman bad. Discard.
He shouldn’t have said that. Santiago wasn’t sure if it was referring to her as “Hudson woman” or the fact that he called her bad, but it triggered something in the king. He lunged at Santiago and snatched him up by the tail. He wriggled and screeched.
Down! Santiago down! Mean king!
“Yes, perhaps I am a mean king.” The king pressed a finger to Santiago’s stomach, and then he pulled that shimmering cloth from inside of him. Santiago was instantly paralyzed.
“I’m sorry it has to come to this,” said the king. “You’ve been a faithful companion, but I won’t have a rat getting in the way of my eternal happiness, so I’m afraid it’s time for you go.”
He pulled out one of those burning sticks. Santiago felt himself unraveling. His senses began to fade, and his lovely sentient thoughts. And his hunger, that bottomless pit, miraculously closed itself up. What a relief! All of him seemed to be unraveling into sweet oblivion. The only thing that remained was his hatred. He clung to it with every fiber of his being. Whatever fibers remained. He hated that Hudson. He hated Brocco and Wiley and the evil swans. He hated the whole world and everyone and everything in it.
But mostly he hated King Vincent.
31The Final Glitch
June 1, 2006
Ciudad Perdida, Colombia
Matt landed Blossom on a grassy terrace surrounded by lush green mountains and jungle. As he pulled himself back together, Blossom appeared in her bus form. She revved her engine and honked her horn, announcing their arrival. Everyone pulled back together.
“Oof,” Ruby said as she slammed into a seat.
“So weird,” Corey said, shivering a little as his body re-formed.
Everyone shook their limbs and checked to make sure they were all there. Matt looked around, counting the passengers—Corey, Ruby, Jia, Gaga, Haha, Uncle Chuck . . .
“Where’s Marta?” Jia said, looking around the bus.
Matt checked the back, but she wasn’t there. He knew she’d been with them through their travels. He’d felt her, and he’d felt someone else too. Another time tapestry, or maybe two even, that had been blown up by the dynamite at some point. Matt thought he’d pulled them through, but now he wondered if maybe they’d gotten lost somewhere along the journey. Had he dropped them? Were they lost in that web of time and space?
Something fell from the roof of Blossom and hit the ground. They heard an oof and a loud groan.
“What was that?” Gaga asked.
Corey pressed his face against the window. “Uh . . . it looked like a person just fell off the car.”
And then a small pair of pale legs dangled over the windshield.
“What
