Plot Twist Challenge: "The Elite Trek"-- Joseph Leskey

The Elite Trek

by Joseph Leskey

(Plot Twist: Going on a Quest—But they’re dead)

It wasn’t at all my fault. Nobody could say it was. It was the fault of my parent’s son. You see, he was stupid enough to make a promise.

One fine cloudy day when I was still alive, I woke up to the sound of Mum smashing down the frying pan on the kitchen stove. Uncle Hugh gave her that frying pan for an anniversary present and she hated it. When Mum hates something, you hear about it—she may not look very intimidating usually, but I wouldn’t be that surprised if I saw her hamstring a mammoth with a soup ladle.

In our house, we follow—or rather, did follow—a very structured routine. I was fully intending to continue in this way for many years, believe me. Like I said, none of this is my fault. Everything was going fine. I got out of bed after waiting about three minutes. I yawned loudly, shuffling out of my room to bang on my siblings’ door—none of this was my sister’s fault either; I must give credit where credit is due and the credit belongs entirely to my idiot brother. After banging again for maximum effect, I got ready for the day. You probably don’t need step by step details for that.

As I said, everything was going fine.

Then I went down to breakfast. It consisted of very spicy fried eggs, almost burnt bacon, and an almost unbelievable amount of biscuits. Still, everything was fine. I ate a biscuit, Mum entered the room, I told her how the biscuit was the best she ever made, she smiled and offered me the jelly, and I reached for another biscuit. All exactly according to pattern. Then my sister Emily came in, looking more lively than one should in a dark blue bathrobe and said, “Morning, Mum, Benedict.”

Yep, that’s me: Benedict Percy Huss. I’m fine with Benedict, but Percy takes some getting used to. It’s not me, if you know what I mean. Don’t tell Mum that I said that.

Well, Emily began to gulp down eggs with terrible fervency. And then enter the culprit. The guilty one. The imbecile who ruined us all. The foolish oaf. Okay, I’m still actually kind of fond of him. He is my cute little sixteen-year-old brother after all, even if he is a dummy. He did have nine years until his brain matured, after all. So we can forgive him. I have, as a matter of fact; forgive and forget, that’s the way.

My brother likes to arrive with a bang, quite literally, though at that time he was mostly focusing on more and more enormous amounts of multicolored smoke. He was a dabbling magician, you see. Do your family a favor and never become one. So, anyway, down the stairs came billowing pink smoke.

“It’s red, it’s red, it’s red!” shouted Percy (Dad loves that name) in an embarrassed yell. Percy has had an extreme aversion to both pink and orange ever since our rather spiteful cousin locked him in her parent’s basement. Even as he shouted, it changed suddenly into lime green.

“Why can’t I manage dark colors?” he moaned. His figure burst through the smoke, glowing pale yellow, and he sat on his chair, fell forward onto his plate to bury his face in his arms, and dispelled his special effects.

In case you are wondering, this is still routine.

Percy hates eggs, only likes biscuits in soup, and he likes to think that he’s vegetarian, so he got his own plate of waffles most mornings. I don’t get the appeal of burying your face in waffles, but, well, that’s Percy.

As he moped, I ate an eighth biscuit, shoveled down the last of my eggs, and began to savor my bacon. Emily was cheerily saying something about American politics when the unthinkable happened. Our entire orderly life was destroyed.

Somebody knocked on the back door.

Now, it could have been Dad, but I knew for a fact that he was making healing potions in his little laboratory in the next room. Very pale blue smoke was issuing from the door, which is always an infallible indicator. He would have been coming out in a few minutes to jovially tell us how poorly we all looked, ask us if we felt alright, and then assign us to fetching him different ingredients. Fetching ingredients for potions is a really fun job. It’s intensely dangerous sometimes, but it’s very relaxing, and if you’re fetching for your Dad and he’s a very respectable potion maker, and you get to live at home and eat your mother’s cooking around the clock, it really beats any other occupation to the dust.

So, no, the knock on the back door wasn’t Dad. Even if it was, it would be unexpected, but this was entirely abnormal. The person knocked again. Our frozen expressions, I suppose, were quite hilarious.  Percy was looking confusedly at a random bookshelf, holding a smoking piece of waffle that he had magically incinerated as he jumped, Emily stared towards the door, a look of abject incredulity stuck on her face, and I realized that a piece of bacon was stuck in my throat and I wasn’t breathing, so I started coughing.

Mum looked shocked for a bit and then went to answer the door, stuffing a butter knife into her apron pocket. The person knocked a third time, booming, “Open in the name of the king!”

“Oh, bother,” muttered Mum, unlocking the door. It was opened to reveal a very stern looking soldier with an eyepatch, a severely damaged ear, and a grizzled beard that looked like something very large had taken a bite out of it.

“Ma’am,” he said, tipping his ancient, dirty hat. “The King has chosen your offspring for the Elite Trek.”

“Has he now?” growled Mum, her face white.

“Yes’m, he has. Here are the orders.”

Mum’s eyes narrowed. The soldier shifted on his feet. “It’s a great honor, Ma’am,” he said imploringly.

“Yeah, right!” yelled Emily. “It’s about as great a—”

“Shut it,” hissed Mum at her, before whipping back to the soldier. “Alright. Give me those.” She seized the envelope the soldier was holding and slammed the door in his face, roaring, “And g’day to you!”

“G’day, Ma’am,” returned the soldier through the door.

Mum breathed and slowly revolved. She stared at us icily. We all gulped.

“Well, Benedict. Read it to your siblings,” she said as nicely as she could. I always have to read official things. I suppose I have the best voice for it.

“His royal majesty, King Fred the First of Mageikhora,” I began theatrically, “to his reputable subjects, Jacob and Claire Huss, respecting their most esteemed and worthy offspring who still dwell within their abode as their wards under our courtly laws, especially concerning the potential service which they can do us as the current selected for the biannual compulsory service rendered to our fair country which has become known and officially established as the Elite Trek.

“Whereas it does please our royal person to select and send forth from among our noble vassals a company in order to find and procure for us the legendary claw of the lobster Anord of the Celts, and whereas the tail has been famously found within two hundred leagues of our native land, thus proving that the selfsame lobster has repaired from the original resting place of said lobster, and whereas out of our own royal treasury shall proceed to each adventurer selected by our noble highness the amount of twenty-three kilograms of gold or its equivalent in some form of legal tender, and whereas, if said adventurer or adventurers should be lastingly indisposed, the same payment shall be made good unto the family of said adventurer or adventurers, and whereas any adventurer who should present the claw of Anord of the Celts shall be granted sovereignty under the king over any two regions of their choice, excepting our own royal city, therefore do we, King Fred the First of Mageikhora, hereby issue hereunto this command unto the recipient of this communication: that said recipient’s offspring who are also of an age greater than thirteen, excepting those which are faint in body or mind, shall go forth and complete the Elite Trek to the best of their ability, starting in no more than eight days, doing nothing to thwart the passage of the claw of Anord of the Celts to our royal majesty, understanding that any attempt to counter this command shall result in imprisonment for all members of their family for the remainder of their parents’ or parent’s life, and it is to this effect that we, our noble highness, do subscribe this letter and place upon it our kingly seal on this fourteenth of August, in the year of discovery, eight and threescore.

“Signed, King Fred I of Mageikhora.”

“Amazing,” said Emily.

“Water,” I croaked. My mouth never could bear talking too long. Mum brought me a drink and I downed it in three large gulps, almost choking myself.

A thin, white hand that had a faintly glowing fingernail seized the paper from me. “This is really too bad,” said Dad. I jumped.

“Well, we all know what this means,” hissed Mum.

“Goodbye mine existence,” moaned Percy.

Mum shook herself. “Eat up. There’s no need to think about such things now.” Of course, this was true, but not very practical. I am sure, at that moment, we all thought of nothing else, except maybe Dad, who was sheepishly trying to remove the luminescence from his fingernail. You see, at its most basic level, the Elite Trek is presumedly death. You go on this Elite Trek and you don’t come back. So, really, you need some short explanation. Short story: sixty-eight years ago, one hundred and twelve people found themselves on a strange volcanic island. Also sixty-eight years ago, twelve people stumbled upon what they called a temple—I’d call it a cave with an ancient bookshelf in it—and discovered a rather less than extensive trove of lore. Apparently, we landed in a magical place. Yeah, most of everybody just had a good laugh at this, but some went looking for fairies. Failing to find anything, these fantasists moped for a solid two years. Then this guy called Fred found the first magical thing: a simple little stone. You know what he did with it? He ate it whole as soon as he felt the tingling in his fingers. It worked too. He felt young, energized, and he got himself superhuman strength. Pretty soon he had a bunch of fans, then he was the king. In the meantime, some true scholars began deciphering the implications of the lore and came up with the way to make potions. Everybody else started advanced studies into farming the native, very fertile land. And hunting, of course. Then, twelve years ago, this really wise guy found a door hidden in a cliff and crushed his hand in it. His wife came along to find him and discovered by walking through the door an old scroll written in Latin that told of the lobster Anord. Some scholarly brothers almost instantly made the connection between this lobster and the giant magical tail that some people had found on an expedition, which felt magical and matched the description of Anord’s tail exactly. Ever since then, twice a year, the king has been forcibly issuing a quest to waltz through the dread pass of Outbound, which I personally think is a stupid name, and exit the Island to find the single, very powerful claw of that Anord fellow.

I finished my breakfast and waited as Percy finished his, looking pale. Emily’s stomach suffers highly in the presence of nerves, so she was eating a piece of bacon with annoyingly small nibbles. Dad and Mum stared at us anxiously.

When Percy finally finished his food and Emily pushed hers back with a hopeless sigh, I said, me always being the practical one, “Well, better get it over with.” Emily burst into unconsolable sobs. Percy swayed dangerously and put his head back unto his plate. Dad nodded unhappily and Mum grimly stared at the wall.

“Right,” I said uncomfortably. “Look, everybody, we might just get lucky and survive. After all, we have a magician in the family and there’s only like two of them in the whole country.” Not that this was good luck of course, but I didn’t mention that. The magician in our family was currently slumping farther and farther down the table.

“Twenty-three times the Elite Trek has been observed,” wailed Emily. “Nobody ever came back!”

“Now, now,” said Dad, gulping, “only two years ago, the femur of somebody was carried into Farmington by flood. Experts think it was one of the adventurers. But I guess a femur isn’t really a person,” he concluded lamely.

Emily didn’t stop crying. Percy slid off the table and fell roughly to the floor. Long story short, it was a long morning.

That afternoon found most of us sitting in the living room, slowly discussing. Dad, who prided himself in his packing skills, was upstairs shoving things into bags.

By the way, when I said we were slowly discussing, I meant that Mum was giving last-minute directives and I was nodding and saying encouraging sentences. And yes, I did mean last-minute; in Mageikhora, people know how to move. And you’ve got to keep the king happy. Therefore, we were to leave that very evening.

While Mum and I discussed, Emily and Percy sat side by side in their respective stupors, which were broken only when Mum finally addressed Percy. “And Percy dear, you won’t waste your magic on trivial things, will you?”

“Not too much, Mum,” snuffled Percy defeatedly, compulsively burning one of his hairs.

“And you will use it as much as you can to make sure you all don’t die?”

“Yes, mum.” He spoke those fateful words.

“Good boy.” Mum patted his knee and fell silent. We all stared at the floor, thinking morbid thoughts in my case. After about five minutes, Mum sighed and got up to prepare us some food. Percy went to pretend he was helping. Emily suddenly had the brilliant idea to make cookies and proceeded in forwarding that endeavor. She was suddenly fairly happy again. For the remainder of the afternoon, I sat in the living room, grouching inwardly and reading two pages of an encyclopedia for children, stopping only to drink a glass of digestive acceleration potion that Dad brought me. I was miserable. In fact, I was wallowing in self-pity, but we won’t go too far into that. Surprisingly enough, I barely thought about the fact that I’d probably be dead in two days. Then, after about fourteen lifetimes, the sun started to go down and everybody converged in the living room and somberly ate a cookie. Then we began to grasp reality.

“The time for denial is over,” said Emily stiffly.

“Yup,” I supplied.

Mum started smiling very widely, which meant that she was actually about to burst into tears. Dad kept blowing his nose.

“WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE!” screamed Percy in multiple voices that came from all over the room. We all jumped. The was enough for Mum. She fell backwards into a very accommodating chair and began heaving huge sobs. Dad gritted his teeth and whispered loudly. “Erm, Claire, do you think I should bring out some happiness potions…what’s that? Well…uh…” He nervously drummed his fingers on the back of the chair.

“Now,” he said timidly, “Ben, Emily, Percy, I expect you all to be good. Um, well, what I mean to say…ugh. I don’t even know. I’d go with you, but I wouldn’t be allowed.”

“No more than three people at a time can enter that pass,” I said mechanically.

“Yeah, well,” said Emily, “we’d only die a bit sooner, so what’s the diffre-re—” She sniffed and sneezed. Her eyes looked very red.

“Blimey,” came Mum’s voice.

“Um, look,” I said, breathing deeply. “None of this is helping matters, so how about we just go…”

Mum shot up almost faster than the eye could see. “I’ll never see any of you again and you expect me to care if this is helping. Fine, go. Just go, before I…”

“Lose your marbles?” supplied Dad, laughing. Nobody got the joke.

“How’s this?” I said. “There’s just no way your smart, resourceful children can possibly die. So we’ll be strolling back in a week or two and nobody’s the worse for it!” Nobody was convinced, I think, but Mum nodded, and the next few minutes everybody was hugging and all that stuff, and then somehow we were standing in front of the open front door.

“Not. Going,” gritted out Percy.

“Bye!” I shouted, nicely bowling both my siblings over the threshold and slamming the door behind us. An abrupt exit, but I honestly had no idea what to do. Going on a quest is better than dying in prison, after all.

When I took stock of my surroundings, I was disappointed to see that it was completely dark. “Hey,” I said, “Perce?”

I heard a sigh and then a thump, and a dull gleam proceeded from Percy’s walking stick.

“Uh, right. Best foot forward then.” My best foot promptly went into a hole and I twisted it a bit, but I didn’t let my siblings know that, trying my best to make my stumbling unnoticeable. We marched along in silence to the road. Once we reached it, I indistinctly saw Percy pull out a tiny book.

“You’re reading?” I asked dully.

“No.” Percy slipped the book into his pocket. Within seconds, I sidled up to him and stole it. “The Darker Shade?” I asked. “Well, maybe that’s harmless enough, but then it is subtitled, A Practical Guide to Extraordinary Powers. Which actually altogether sounds somewhat suspicious. Who’s this Nathan Oswald guy?” But at that moment, the book whipped into Percy’s hand by magic and he glared at me reproachfully. “I’m just researching ways we can not die.”

“Hm. Well, be careful.”

“I am very careful,” said Percy sulkily.

“Ha,” I said. I never spoke a truer word.

Percy took the book back out. I saw a full-color picture of a hideous humanoid monster. “Whatever,” I thought.

Our trip on the road actually did not take longer than an hour. This was because we lived only about two kilometers from the pass. Outbound does not look inviting at the best of times. When we got there, however, it was worse than usual: there was a huge pine tree blocking the path.

“I guess we can turn around now?” asked Percy.

“No,” said Emily cheerfully enough. “We simply have to move the tree.”

“Or go around it,” I said intelligently. My plan, with only the minor difficulty of a few scratches, worked beautifully. But then things began to kind of get less enjoyable because we basically walked right into a giant spider. And I mean three, four feet long.

“What even?” gasped Emily.

“Okay, okay, okay, okay…” I continued saying that for quite some time, jerking spasmodically.

It was Percy who came to the rescue with a well-aimed flash of light that appeared to completely disintegrate the spider. So, yes, magicians are useful sometimes. They’re great at pest control.

“Okay,” said I, “I’m suddenly getting bad vibes. A giant spider already? Seriously.”

“Hear, hear,” said Percy weakly.

“Shall we go on?” inquired Emily.

“So, where exactly are we going?” Percy wondered as we resumed the stupid Trek.

“It’s simple,” I said. “We get to the end of this pass, which has been survived many times, incidentally, so there’s something nice, and then we don’t go the well-traveled way.”

Percy nodded. We continued walking. There’s something about walking at night that makes you feel oddly wide awake until you realize that you are dropping where you stand. Percy, of course, reached the latter point first and literally sank down to the ground mid-step.

“Are you alright?” I asked.

“Ti—” He yawned with great gusto. “Tired.” He yawned again.

“We don’t have time to be tired,” I said, sitting down. “It’s…wow, I am exhausted. G’night.” I promptly prepared to doze.

“Is this really the best spot?” asked Emily, looking upwards.

“Go away,” I moaned and fell asleep.

I was whipping through trees, tearing leaf from branch and branch from trunk, sending huge flocks of birds scattering. There was a flood behind me. Mum was standing on the water, yelling, “Remember your rubbers, Em!” The flood had almost reached me. I looked around for my siblings but saw only huge spiders running beside me on their hind legs. The water was on me. I was drowning, blood thundered in my ears. I gasped and jerked upwards and was totally wet. My sleeping spot had become a waterfall overnight as rainwater roared down the cliff. Lightning flashed overhead and thunder rumbled almost immediately. I crawled, sopping wet, towards Percy, who was happily sleeping in a little purple bubble of energy. Only the slightest amount of water was falling onto this, where it rolled harmlessly to the ground. I barraged his bubble with heavy blows. After a while, he came awake and his shield went down.

“Wha’d’ya’wan’,” he groaned.

I splashed an arm at him. “Dry me off. Quickly now.”

“Wha’?” He blinked, trying to focus on my arm. He waved his hand heavily, engulfed my arm in flame, and fell back asleep.

“Wake up, you idiot!” I hollered, running back to the waterfall. The word “idiot” echoed loudly. I threw my arm back into the water and sighed in relief as the fire was extinguished. “Hey!” I suddenly exclaimed. “Why is there a metal bracelet on my arm? Percy?”

Percy mumbled quietly and then spoke up and said, “Put it there earlier. Keep you alive. Go back to sleep. Now stop all that magic…how am I supposed to…wait a minute.” Percy was by my side in a matter of seconds, both hands in the water, screaming his head off.

“Thanks for the comforting sound of human voice,” I said dourly, carefully placing my hands over whatever was left of my ears.

He went on screaming until he finally pulled his now shiny red hands out to reveal a blue, glowing ball of stationary light or something. “Ta-da!” he said.

“What?” I said.

“I think that wherever this water came from is the place we have to look.”

“Really? But we’re supposed to go to the end of this path.”

“Nonsense,” said Percy, “I’m the only magician to ever look for the claw and I say we go up.”

I looked at the sheer side of the mountain. “Up, you say?”

“I say up.”

“How are you at making things float?”

“Okay.”

“How are you at making us float?”

“I’d kill us.”

“So…we’ve got to climb?”

“Yep.”

“Why couldn’t you have practiced using your magic usefully?” I asked.

“Now that’s not quite fair, because—say, where’s Em?”

“I don’t know. She probably went off to look for a better place to sleep.”

“We need to find her,” said Percy urgently. “Now.” He started off at a run.

“I mean, yeah, but let’s think a little first…what’s the—big—hurry?” I gasped.

“Well, I…” Percy slowed for a second and turned a bit red. “I bound our life forces together temporarily.”

“Full stop!” I yelled, coming to an abrupt halt. “You did what?”

“Well, these bracelets pool our life forces. This way I could protect everyone and we could share essential strength. And also I could do something if worse comes to worse. But…”

“Take this thing off of me.” I began to rip at the bracelet to no avail.

“That’s the problem. I’ve tried, but…”

“You mean you can’t?”

Percy looked very uncomfortable. “Well, no. It turns out that somehow our life forces got stuck.”

“Stuck?”

“Yeah, but no real need to worry—they’ll unstick when we die.”

“Yay. I’m happy now.”

“I don’t need sarcasm right now,” Percy said grumpily. “See, the problem is—if Emily dies, so do we…”

“What?”

“I mean, not really die, as such—it’s more of a, um, forcible displacement, I guess you’d call it?”

“What are you even talking about?”

“Let’s just find Emmy,” suggested Percy.

We walked on in silence until we were suddenly ambushed by a formidable-looking footpad. My hand flew towards my pack, hoping to find a potion to throw at him. He grabbed my hand and threw me over his head. Something popped in my wrist with considerable pain, but whatever it was stayed intact, so yay for that, I suppose. Percy sent a worthy arc of orange light at him, but the man brought out a small round shield and blocked it. Then he whipped a cudgel from his back and hurdled at Percy, when suddenly something very strange happened.

It was all Percy’s fault.

I saw the world shatter and I was falling right through the galaxy. I could see everything—but I can’t remember any details, so don’t bother asking. Then I felt a significant pull, like a very strong wind, vacuuming me through space at alarming rates. Suddenly, I saw Earth below me and I plummeted towards an ocean, suddenly arriving back at where I started.

“What was that all about?” I asked grouchily. I felt extremely light headed. The footpad was nowhere to be seen, but his cudgel lay on the ground near my brother, who was suspiciously transparent.

“What?” I demanded, looking down at myself. I was suspiciously transparent too. And my feet were positioned somewhere inside my body, which lay upon the ground, looking rather unhealthy.

 “You. Complete. Idiot!” I yelled once I had calmed my temper. “Mum says not to let us die, so you turn us into GHOSTS?”

“Hey,” said Percy. “At least you have your senses still. That was very difficult to work into there.”

“Speaking of which, why do I see myself as transparent? I thought a ghost would see itself normally and everything else…”

“I told you, I have a system in place for maintaining your old senses. But don’t panic, because none of this is permanent.” Percy reached down to where his staff lay and jabbed three fingers into the bulb at the top of it. Nothing happened.

“Oh no,” said Percy.

“There’s no sudden lights or noises,” I said.

“Nope.”

“Were doomed to one of those living deaths.”

“Yep.”

“You deserve this, brother.” What I did next was completely acceptable, because Percy was only two years younger than me and I didn’t even expect it to work. I swung a mighty punch at his stomach. An explosion of light emitted from where my fist connected and Percy went soaring backwards several meters.

“Whoa,” I said.

“That was amazing,” said Percy. He leaped at me and we traded numerous buffets and uppercuts and hooks and all the rest of it. Being a ghost, I’ll admit, is rather freeing. No pain. No need to breathe. No need to even blink. One annoying thing for a while was that when I did blink, I kept right on seeing, but that soon resolved through careful training after I found out I could restrain my inputs. Unfortunately, Percy seemed to have neglected the senses of taste and smell, and touch was just a weird feeling.

Suddenly Percy stared behind us. I whipped around—it’s much easier to do when you’re a ghost—and saw a stone wall.

“Wait,” I said, “wasn’t there a path there only a minute ago?”

“Yep,” said Percy grimly. “I forgot. Those rings we always wear on our fingers—”

“They allow us to enter the island,” I finished blankly. “Incidentally, I think this quest is more trouble than it’s worth.”

“And we haven’t even started yet.”

“You know, being a ghost actually kind of suits you.”

“It does? Let’s go find Em.”

“Oh, yeah,” I said, “she’s gotten killed. Right. This is not fun.” Percy and I both began half marching, half gliding down the path, yelling, “Emmy!” repeatedly. There’s just this certain sense of freedom that comes with being a ghost, I’m telling you. We came across another giant spider as we were going along and we just laughed and walked through it. It was one confused arachnid.

We finally found Emily at exactly the moment that she jumped down into our midst. Sure enough, she was a ghost too.

“Emily,” I said formally, “it is most pleasurable to see you again.”

“I just died,” said Emily. She sounded a bit shocked.

“Eh, you’ll get over it,” I told her halfheartedly.

“And now I’m a ghost.”

“Percy’s fault,” I said instantly.

“Hey!” said Percy. Then, “How did you die, anyway?”

“It was really stupid,” replied Emily. “I was just looking about, and then I slipped on wet rock, and that’s about the last thing I remember.”

“Um, guys,” said Percy, suddenly urgent again, “can we stop acting like we’ve died—because I told Mum I’d make sure we wouldn’t and we aren’t truly dead after all—I mean, look at us; would you really call this dead?”

“We’re not very conventionally alive either,” said Emily.

“Please?” begged Percy.

“Fine,” I said, “Let us continue on our quest in a very alive fashion. We shall leave our packs behind, along with food, potions, and tools, seeing as we don’t need them anymore, even though we are still very much alive, and we…”

“Let’s just get going,” said Percy. “Nothing else for it. Now, how do we get up there?” He looked at the sheer mountain wall and then glided toward it, quickly crawling upwards.

“How are you doing that?” I shouted.

“It’s easy.”

“You look like you’re wading vertically through rock.”

“Exactly.”

“Sometimes I do wonder,” I said, propelling myself at the rock and attempting to swim through it. By the time I figured it out, Emily had already mastered it and was going upwards at extreme speeds. Apparently, I wasn’t an expert at being a ghost. We reached the top without too much difficulty and joined Percy at the side of a small pool of water.

“Let’s find the source,” he said, walking quickly alongside it.

After a couple minutes, I felt compelled to announce, “I want a cookie.” At that moment, we heard the pleasant voice of a gentleman behind us say, “Excuse me, but did you mention the food of kings and emperors?”

We turned around. There was a man with a large white beard and mustache, a very large, ruddy nose, and a beaming, slightly gapped smile. He was sitting next to a large bonfire which definitely wasn’t there just a minute before. It didn’t make any smoke.

“Hello,” I said. “Where’d you come from?”

“Hehehehe,” the man laughed. It would have seemed fake, but something about the wrinkles near his eyes dispelled any idea tending in that direction. “I’m not telling that, my lad.”

We stared at each other for a while.

“You’re not the first to come through here,” he said. “But you’re the first ghosts. And the first to come on this shorter path. Many travel long before they arrive here to die.”

“Yeah, well, we’re already dead.”

“That will be a benefit.” The man picked up a can. “Can I offer you a small cappuccino?”

“We have no bodies to drink it with,” said Emily.

“I know, I know. Well, let’s go off.” The man kicked a huge amount of earth over his fire, tied his can unto his back, wiped his hands on his vest, pulled out a cane from a sheath at his side, and pointed towards a steep slope that looked very far away. “That is the lightning-fast way to your destination if you are still alive.”

“It doesn’t look like much,” I said.

“No. Alive humans do not return from there.”

“Oh, well, that’s very speedy,” I said sarcastically.

“Indeed. Unfortunately for you, you shall have to face the true horror. Fall down there and you will find what you seek.”

“But, sir,” said Percy, “I felt the claw in the water. Nothing else could feel that strong. Shouldn’t it be that way?”

“Ah,” said the man. “You didn’t feel the claw. I washed my clothes last night because it was raining. You probably felt the residue. Go that way and you will find what you seek.” He turned away.

“Well,” said Emily, “goodbye then.” We started off towards the incline. We had barely gone five meters, when we heard, “Beware, though. Vicious things happen when you touch it.” When we turned around, he was gone.

“Weird bloke,” I muttered. “Well, let’s get a move on.”

Our destination wasn’t as far away as it looked and we reached it by sometime very early in the morning. It turned out that the slope was hiding what could be described as a big hole in the mountain that led down to blackness.

“Well,” I said, “ghost bodies to the rescue.” And I jumped. Being a ghost and jumping into a seemingly bottomless pit is an amazing feeling; it makes you feel arcane and powerful, like you are just about to smite down an army with one blow. Of course, I couldn’t even if I wanted to, but it’s the thought that counts. After a bit, though, it became somewhat boring, because there all three of us were, Percy and Em slightly above my head, slowly drifting through the air. I don’t understand why, but it takes a really long time to fall when you are a ghost. Percy insisted that I was doing it wrong and he could fall to the bottom in seconds, but he didn’t want to leave us behind.

By the time we reached the bottom, it was very dark.  Apparently, our ghostly selves glowed a bit, though, and Percy was able to become a radiant beacon. It turned out that we had landed on water and that water apparently counted as solid enough to “hold” our “weight,” because we were standing on it.

“Looks as though we’re going to have to go under the water,” said Emily.

“It does rather, doesn’t it?” I said. “It would make sense to find a lobster’s claw under water, anyhow, even if it does belong to a lobster that’s been dead these hundreds of years.”

A new difficulty soon arose by way of the fact that we could not sink into the water, no matter how hard we tried.

“Unfortunately,” said Percy, “I can’t control this, because I lost my magic.”

Silence.

“Well, I hope everybody else is enjoying themselves,” I said, “but I’m certainly not. How in the stupid world are we supposed to go into there.” I smashed a fist at the water, where it plunged in for several centimeters and then stopped. “I think you should have designed this whole thing better,” I said, turning angrily at Percy.

“I can’t do anything about it now!”

“And that’s another thing. Why didn’t you…”

“Hey, shut up and look over here,” said Emily. I glared in the direction of her voice and saw her on her ghostly hands and spectral knees, peering down into the water.

“What?” I shouted.

“There’s a ship down here.”

I promptly stuck my head in the water. “So there is.”

“It’s kind of glowing.”

“Figures.”

“Wow, we’re stupid!” Percy suddenly exclaimed.

“Speak for yourself,” I retorted.

“The physical bounds of our ghostly selves are based on our living experience; therefore…” He sounded like he thought we ought to know what he was going to say.

“Therefore?” I asked impatiently. I was getting pretty grumpy by this point, in case you couldn’t tell.

“We’ve got to panic, of course! Because, while we were still alive…”

“Don’t say that,” said Emily. “It sounds weird.”

“Our conception of the buoyancy of water was based upon our confidence in our ability to swim.” Percy sounded all too enthusiastic. “Therefore, when we panic, we drown! But we’re already dead, so we just sink.”

“Okay. How do we panic?”

“Um,” said Percy, “like this.” He started flailing. “Help me! Help me! I’m going down. Somebody save me. Wow, this is much harder when there’s no water splashing about.” He stuck his head in the water and kicked his legs up, windmilling his arms. “Help!” he gurgled, and sank.

“Okay,” announced I, “that was all too easy.” I started at the glowing writhing mass that was my brother as he shot down at unbelievable speeds. Very quickly, we were left practically without light.

“And how are we supposed to panic?” I asked. “We’re too sensible. Emily?” Emily, of course, was gone. I could see her descending to the depths, looking positively in danger of her life as she staged her panic. Unfortunately, I knew better than all that, so there I was, standing on the water in nearly complete darkness, completely unable to escape up or down. I sat down and suddenly realized how funny the thing was. I must have laughed off and on for ten minutes. Then I noticed a very small spot of light far away to my left. Seeing as I wasn’t really worried about my siblings (because they were dead, so what could go wrong?), I floated as quickly as I could in that direction. The light grew brighter and brighter, and then I saw a hole, then the sky, plain as could be, and then I was hurtling out of the mountain at a side I had never seen before. As soon as my altitude started decreasing, I floated leisurely down towards a bit of a valley.

“Right,” I said aloud as I watched the hole slowly disappear from sight. “I didn’t mean to go this far away.” And then it happened. I glanced down and experienced absolutely petrifying horror. The valley I was looking at disappeared. Instead, I saw sand, huge amounts of sand. Behind me, the mountain was gone. Water lapped in the distance. I had somehow gotten myself to the oceanside. And then the most awful thing of all: an Outsider was staring up at me from the ground, pointing one of those camera things at me. No, multiple Outsiders. They looked completely interested in my appearance. I employed the universal wave.

When I finally landed, everybody came close to peer at me.

“Is it a balloon?” a nice elderly fellow asked.

“I am most certainly not,” I scoffed, offended. Everybody gasped.

A kid about my own age—everyone’s a kid when you’re a ghost—approached me and bellowed, “What is the weather in New Orleans?”

“How am I supposed to know?” I said coolly. I think I had heard of New Orleans before, but the current weather of it was a bit beyond my knowledge.

“Well, that’s useful,” sulked the kid. “Hey, I know. What’s this?” He pushed out his arm.

“Your arm? Now look, did anybody see how I got here?”

“Yeah, you floated down from the sky,” said somebody.

“Yeah, well what’s important is: what’s this?” The kid held a shell in my face.

“Look, I don’t have time for this.”

“Well, you’re not very useful, are you?” The kid walked up and stuck his hand into my chest. “It’s a ghost!!!!!!!” He yelled, his hand still wriggling about somewhere inside my ribcage. He looked at me in terror.

“You just noticed?” I asked, stepping backwards. “I must be less transparent than I thought.”

The collective scream that then happened was deafening. There was a mad stampede and four people ran away for all they were worth, still screeching ear-piercingly. The guy who had put his hand inside of me collected himself and followed them. Everyone else stayed, staring at me unashamedly.

“Boo,” I said. They all jumped. I sighed. “Now, look, everyone, it is true that I am a ghost, but I have little to do with you and you have little to do with me, so would you please return to your business and I’ll return to mine.”

“And what’s your business?” demanded a sweet old lady.

“Oh, I’m looking for a lobster’s remains.”

“Like a claw or something, dear?” She knew I would say yes. I said yes.

“That’s interesting, dear. My dear little husband Percy just found a lobster claw last month. A very unique specimen, he said it was.”

“Ah.”

“That’s right. It’s in the water near our house. Percy is very superstitious. He wouldn’t let anyone touch it.” She laughed significantly.

“I’ll have a look at it, if you don’t mind,” I said politely, all the time thinking, “If that Anord’s claw is just floating around near a beech, I’m going to give that kindly old gentleman a piece of my mind.” The more sensible part of me told me that this was all going too smoothly, but I didn’t care—not much can bother a ghost. Okay, that’s an overstatement, but you get the point.

I followed the old woman as she led me towards one of the very nearby huts. Everybody seemed to think it was their business to follow us.

“Darlings,” said the woman, “the right to privacy is a universally acknowledged human right.” The way she said it made a person rather uncomfortable. Everybody squirmed and pretended they had just been randomly walking in our direction.

“You all are very calm in the presence of a ghost,” I commented.

“You need to be a little scarier, dear,” she replied. “Right now, you look like a hoax to the common eye.”

“I do not! What kind of hoax… I mean…”

“Just you watch. Nobody likes to be proven silly and, if they hold to their story, they will be. That’s our house just there. You’ll observe down there a small enclosure. The claw is in it.”

“Okay. Thanks. Now, would y…”

“No, you can take it. It is what you’re after, after all.”

“Thank you.” It suddenly occurred to me that I wouldn’t be able to take it, seeing as I was an incorporeal entity. But, figuring there was no point in worrying about that, I marched right down and peered at the enclosure, which was closed. “Brilliant,” I thought, “I can’t even look at the thing.”

It has often been said—at least by my grandfather—that in an extremely trying circumstance, the human brain would come up with a solution in less than thirty seconds. I haven’t always observed this to be true, but, at that moment, the solution came to me. Of course, at that moment, I didn’t have a brain—which I still don’t get how that works—and the only reason the solution came to me is because a dog barked. I quickly looked around and saw it just a very short distance away.

“Ha!” I said brightly. “When in doubt, become friends with a dog. Here, doggy, doggy, doggy, here little pooch. Here tiny little canine. Come to this poor ol’ novice ghost over here. NO! I’m over here. That’s right. That’s right. Good dog!” The dog, which was some sort of mutt, approached me quickly, wagging her tail. She sniffed at me, whined, sniffed again, whined some more, stuck her nose into my leg, jumped back and stared at me, head tilted and ears pinned back. Obviously, she didn’t know what to think.

“Now listen, doggie,” I said slowly, “I need you to lift that lid there. Can you do that?”

The dog jumped up and pranced excitedly, tongue lolling. She did not lift the lid.

“I should have known better to try and reason with a dog,” I huffed. “I was logical. I was concise. Ugh! I’ll have you know…oh. Wow, I’m dumb.” The wonderfully excellent little doggy had very abruptly overturned the lid, looking at me with reproach. I gave her an apologetic glance and looked at the revealed, very normal lobster claw, which was actually rather damaged.

“That’s not it,” I declared.

“No,” said a familiar voice behind me. The pleasant gentleman from the mountain was sitting on the sand next to a cheerful bonfire. The hut that the old woman had shown me just minutes ago was gone, as was she. I immediately grew suspicious. So did the fine specimen of man’s best friend beside me. I didn’t whine like she did, though.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“What are you?” asked the fellow jovially. “I thought I told you…”

“Yes, well, I discovered I can’t sink through water, so exit any chance of…”

“No. You still have the chance, but not for long. It’s been fun watching you, by the way, learning how humans work these days. It’s been a long time.” He smacked his lips hungrily and looked at me. “It’s just as well you couldn’t drink that cappuccino,” he added irrelevantly. “It might not have agreed with you.”

“No, it might not,” I agreed, laughing. “Cracked,” I said to myself, “completely cracked.”

“The claw’s pretty badly cracked,” he said in an offhand sort of way. “You wonder why anyone would value such a thing?”

“No idea,” I said, uncomfortably aware of his saying, “cracked.”

“Well, in that…” But suddenly he stopped, staring at me. His appearance wavered strangely and he seemed almost to be melting. “The claw…” But his voice went muffled and my vision blurred to darkness. It was slowly returning, but I suddenly had a severe case of brain fog. I opened my eyes to a blur of color but perceived practically nothing. I struggled for what seemed like years with figuring out which memory went where, until finally, I heard a voice say, “Ah! That’s the ticket.” A man’s voice, I figured out after a while, and then I realized that it wasn’t just any man’s voice; it was Dad’s. “Well,” I thought weakly, “I knew this was a bad dream.” I exerted extreme strength and rolled over, immediately feeling a sharp pain in my side. I jerked away and the pain subsided. I was on the ground and I was feeling it. I blinked and tried to remember how to use my eyes properly. There was Dad’s face. “What happened?” I tried mumbling.

“Shh!” said Dad. “Nothing a little potion won’t fix. Here, try this.” He spilled something in my mouth and I coughed and swallowed involuntarily. Almost immediately, my state of being was improved. My vision and thoughts both cleared.

“Am I alive?” I asked.

“You’d better believe it,” Dad exclaimed, sounding rather falsely happy.

“And Emily, Percy? This was all Percy’s fault, incidentally.”

“Percy’s over there. He’s recovering all right, but he fell asleep. After I treated you two, I went to find Emily, but well…”

“Dead?” I asked wearily. Honestly, it didn’t matter much to me if she was or not, because I had just been a ghost myself, but it would definitely be bothersome to Mum and Dad.

“I cannot conclusively say,” said Dad delicately. “The, um, well, rather obvious and, uh… I think an animal dragged her off.” He coughed a gurgling sentimental cough.

“What? That’s grotesque. Can’t we go rescue her or something?”

“Ha,” said Dad flatly.

“Well, don’t worry. Percy turned us all into ghosts or something like that. She’ll be hovering around somewhere.” I didn’t mention that it was somewhere in the very bowels of the mountain; that might not have been taken well.

“What did Percy do?” yawned Percy’s voice.

“Everything,” I said, looking over at him, “but I forgive you, seeing as I am no longer a ghost.”

“You really were a ghost?” asked Dad.

“Yes. You…”

“There’s no time,” said Percy urgently. “Ben, that old man we met—he is the Claw!”

“What?” said Dad and I simultaneously.

“No, really. I’m really sorry about this, truly I am, but it must be done.”

“What?” I asked again. Dad looked nervous.

“Don’t you feel it?” asked Percy. “the lobster Anord took ahold of us while Dad somehow brought us back to life. He’s now free.”

“Where?” I asked. I have to admit, I was getting a majorly bad feeling.

“Well, let’s put it this way: if you and I were at a museum of Anord’s physical forms, we’d be exhibits B and C.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. So this is going to require very careful precision.”

“I don’t like the sound of that.”

“Okay, okay. Anord’s waking up.” Percy’s eyes went glassy and he jerked spasmodically, before lifting up his staff and pointing at me, scrambling at his feet.

“Hey!” I exclaimed. “Watch it. You look almost as if…” Suddenly, I was flying backwards with a horribly familiar feeling. Sure enough, my body was still in front of me, collapsing limply. “Ugh,” I said. “I’m not too fond of you at the moment.”

“Shh.”

“This had better be good.”

My body jerked. In an instant, it was standing, pointing at Percy. He was hurled backwards into a large rock projection with an unprecedented magical blast. Immediately following this, a veritable geyser of bones shot out of the ground, all too soon transforming into a skeletal army that stood perfectly still in first-rate formation.

“You humans really are useless,” said my voice.

“You’re using me pretty well at the moment,” I said grumpily. “Watch what you do with that body. I spent eighteen years and some perfecting it.” My body’s mouth grinned nastily and my left hand reached over and efficiently snapped my right hand out of place.

“I had to give you ideas. I just had to give you ideas,” I moaned. Then I was struck by a brand new, shiny idea. “But you’ll keep my head intact because you need that.” Lobsters must not be that bright. Anord took my body over to a tall rock projection and with terrible speed, smashed my head into it. The sound was the worst thing I’ve ever heard. My body never moved of its own accord again. It was a nice body—while it lasted—but you can’t have everything in life. The very short-lived skeletal army fell apart immediately, spreading bones everywhere.

I quickly found Dad sitting against a bush, looking bewildered, and then I glided over to Percy. He looked pretty dazed, so I walked through him and that seemed to wake him up a bit.

“Thanks for forcing me to commit indirect aggravated battery on what happened to be my favorite cellular machine that ever I owned.”

“Hey,” said Percy, still dazed, “no worries. Now let me at him—need to kill’m.”

“No, I just told…”

“He’s still stuck in the bracelet.”

“Say, shouldn’t we drag him off to court or something instead?”

“Too dangerous.”

“Actually, killing him might count as thwarting the passage of the claw to his majesty the king.”

“We could use a fake.”

“The king might execute us.”

“I’ll bring him down. Nathan Oswald says that most dark wizards start out by bringing somebody down.”

“Um…you’re not planning to be one of them, are you?”

“Too late for anything else,” he said, gesturing at me.

“Right,” I drawled. “Well, do what you think is best, then. If a lobster has to go, it has to go.”

“Poetic justice,” murmured Percy. He flicked his hand and the bracelet flew off what was once my arm into his hand. He gripped it tightly and markings on it began to glow.

“I suppose my body will decay now,” I pondered gloomily.

“Yep, autolysis is already kicking in. Fresh stage right now,” Percy said absently. “Your inner chemicals and organisms will have done wonders in just a couple days, if we leave you. Pallor mortis should be gruesomely obvious very soon, what with that terrible head wound. It will also speed…”

“I don’t suppose there’s any chance of recovery.”

“Ha,” said Percy. There was a sudden bang as the bracelet broke in two with a flash, and the earth shook, causing small avalanches. Percy and Dad both fell down. Poor Dad had just gotten himself back up. The earthquake did not affect me at all.

“Well that’s over and done with,” said Percy gaily. “We can go home now. We’ll have to find Emily first, though.”

“I’m here!” shouted a voice from high above us. “I just can’t quite figure out how to get down.” We all looked up.

“But you have a body,” I sputtered.

“Yeah, I woke up and a hermit lady was throwing enchantments at me. They were the prettiest things ever—why aren’t your enchantments that pretty, Percy?”

It was Percy’s turn to sputter. I’m better at sputtering than Percy, for the record. “Enchantments aren’t meant to be pretty,” he sputtered feebly, “they’re meant to be useful.”

“Well, can you use one of your useful enchantments and get me down from here?”

“Top-hole idea,” stated Dad.

“Okay,” said Percy. He threw a highly aesthetic pattern of blue light at her and she floated off the cliff and downwards.

“That looked pretty good,” she admitted. Percy looked very pleased with himself. But before you start thinking he was a great and wise mage of untold power, look at me. I personally think that he callously abandoned my miserable case without a thought. Good thing I’m forgiving.

“Look,” said Percy to me, a trifle apologetically, “it’s a little bit my fault that you don’t have a body.”

“You might say that.”

“So I’ll take these bracelets and make something that you can wear. These bracelets are now the things keeping you in this world, I suppose.”

“Charming,” I said.

“It’s kind of a funny thought,” laughed Dad. No other person in our family ever did share Dad’s sense of humor.

“I can put telekinetic powers into the thing I make for you,” he said tentatively.

“Okay,” I said, “now that sounds nice.”

“And…I’ll dispose of your body with your method of choosing—how’s that?”

“Oh, fine enough for now, I suppose.”

“Goody. Do you want it repaired and preservation enchantments to be placed on it? Or not repaired with preservation enchantments—I could do that, but it would look some kind of ugly. Or I could just incinerate it.”

“That’s the one.”

“Oh. That’s easy.” A quick blast of fire later and my cremation was complete. “Say!” said Percy, his expression lighting up. “I’ll make a synthetic diamond out of your ashes and use that to make an amulet to bind your existence to!”

“That sounds weird,” I said.

“It’ll be great,” Percy assured me.

A few minutes later, we were walking home, my ashes in a pouch attached to Percy’s belt. I was planning to use this time to meditate on how unfair it was that I was the only one left a ghost, but I never got a chance, because everybody was telling their stories. Dad went first, telling how he had trailed us from the very start and how he had seen Percy and I suddenly fall down dead.

“I was very startled,” he said. “I didn’t know what could possibly have caused it, but I administered potions to you directly. It kept your bodies intact, but I couldn’t get any response for a long while, which was very strange. Then, like I said, I went looking for you, Emily, but I found only a rather messy trail of blood, so I assumed a mountain lion or something was snacking on you. Luckily, that doesn’t seem to have been the case.”

Then I told them my short escapade on the beach, and then Percy and Emily took up the most interesting tale of all, mainly because it included pirates.

“We sank down a long way,” began Percy, stating the obvious.

“Pretty soon, we realized that you weren’t able to,” said Emily to me. I humphed.

Percy went on, “We came down to that glowing ship and it turns out that it belongs to a ghost. He was a pirate, mild-mannered as can be now. Anyway, he shouted at us immediately, saying, ‘Fly out of here like yer in-laws are chasing yer.’ So I guess it’s true that pirates say yer instead of your.”

“It’s the same thing,” I said, “continue.”

“And we said we wouldn’t,” said Emily, “because we had to find the claw of Anord. He said we were ruddy idiots, we asked why, and he told us a tale.”

“Yeah,” said Percy, his eyes wide. “He once had a crew, but they came upon this ‘drowning’ man and he—the drowning man—told them to land on an island, which was a portal to here, and all his—the pirate’s—crew were lured by the man down into that pit, but he—the pirate—was suspicious right from the off, so he wasn’t lured.”

“You’re telling the tale too fast,” complained Emily.

Percy glared at her. “So then he never saw his crew again, until a bunch of zombie crewmen—which the old pirate described with very colorful language, let me tell you—jumped out of the pit one day and sort of slew the old fellow. But he was determined to make sure nobody else shared this fate, so he came back as a ghost—not sure how he did that, actually—and there he is.”

“So, when did the crab get here?” I asked.

“It was always here,” replied Percy. “The pirate speculates that it had those ‘ancient records’ written to lure people to it. It feeds on life, he says. Or it did.”

“So that excellent old man was the Claw?”

“Yup.”

“Wow.”

“We will have to do something about the king,” said Dad, chewing his lip.

“Bah,” said Percy. “We’ll take him out.”

“Diplomatically,” I amended.

“I’ll find a loophole in that command,” said Emily, “just you watch.”

We got home at about suppertime, so we ate supper. Mum fussed over our appearances (especially mine, of course), hugged us all—she’s not too bad at hugging a ghost. Emily did, in fact, proclaim us fulfilled in our duties, citing the fact that “claw” wasn’t capitalized, thus referring to the claw that the king thought existed, and that we had done nothing to thwart its passage to the king, seeing as it didn’t actually exist. She also noted that we had completed the Elite Trek to the best of our ability, so we were all satisfied. A messenger from the king eventually came knocking to see why we hadn’t brought the claw and she repeated the story and her findings to him, also giving him a pretty good speech about unalienable human rights. The messenger wholeheartedly agreed with her and promised to take great pains to try to convince the king. It seemed to work, for we didn’t get in trouble, and we each received half of the reward we were supposed to get, although some of it was in gift cards.

Percy made me a diamond and metallic amulet with tiny enchantments carved all over it, so now I’m able to do telekinesis, which, admittedly, is very fun. He also released a few boundaries, so I have extraordinary sensory ability. That’s enjoyable too. And everybody for miles around thinks I’ve automatically become extremely intelligent since I’m dead, so I’m a paid consultant, which is sometimes fun. So I’m not too badly off, except I can’t eat, which is more sorrowful a thing than you know. And the fact remains: it’s all Percy’s fault.