Crap Kingdom (24 page)

He rolled away to the left and watched the Executive Orb go shooting by, exiting perfectly through the rocky mouth of the Vortex. It worked! It actually worked! He had
done
something!

As the Orb went by, Tom saw a shattered spot on its surface, an outline, like when a cartoon character runs fast through a wall, leaving a brick silhouette of their tortured form. He looked back toward the big circular hole in the wall where the Orb once nested and saw a figure in Vapornaut armor framed by the night sky, all jets blazing on full: King Doondredge.

It was dark in here now that the light given off by the Orb was burning in some other world. Tom couldn’t see if Doondredge was coming after him or trying to fly in the other direction and escape. Either option was unacceptable. He willed his suit to fly at his enemy. It became very clear a moment later that the king was headed right at him, thrusters on full, aided by the Vortex’s suction. He was coming at Tom fast.

Tom went to roll left again. Doondredge missed him, but wheeled around, leaving a sparking arc in his wake, and punched Tom in the side of the head. Tom was thankful for the helmet for one half second, until his head hit the inside of the helmet. Why didn’t they pad these things? Then he was grateful for the helmet again two seconds later when automatic healing mist made the side of his head feel better.

Doondredge was fighting his way back to Tom through midair. All Tom could think was,
He’s not supposed to be in here. The Vortex: he’s supposed to be in there.

Tom held up the gauntlet of his left hand to block another punch. He could punch back, right? He was wearing strength-equalizing super-armor, after all. He swung at Doondredge’s head. It ended up being more of an openhanded slap that bounced harmlessly off his enemy’s helmet. Doondredge looked at him now with more confusion than anger. They were in a midair battle to the death. Why was his enemy slapping him?

With his opponent shocked by his lame tactics, Tom took the opportunity to do something even lamer. He reached out with the glove that no longer had fingertips and poked Doondredge in the eye. Hard. He left his fingers there. Doondredge swatted his hand away. Tom could see him scream in pain but he couldn’t hear it over the wind. He saw blood droplets get sucked away into the abyss. Had he just gouged an eye? Was that how that worked? Doondredge gritted his teeth and floated back a foot or two. Then he punched Tom square in his exposed face.

It seemed like absolutely everything that had happened in his life recently plunged Tom into a pit of blackness, but somehow, the punch didn’t. He kind of wished it had, though. His nose now was a blood geyser that would have made the elementary school nurse call in an exorcist. The red stuff was leaking away in a straight line, water-droplets-on-the-space-shuttle style, into the Vortex, chasing Doondredge’s eye blood. His enemy was nowhere to be seen.

He felt someone pawing at his back. Tom tried to flip around but he couldn’t. Doondredge was behind him, holding him, and Tom could feel his hands clanging around on the back of his armor. Not hitting. Just working.

Tom started to feel flecks of something hitting him in the face. He looked toward the hole where the Orb had once been. Its edges were fraying, flying off toward the Vortex, sending little shards of kingdom past Doondredge and Tom and into the next world. Tom had no choice but to watch as this happened; he still couldn’t turn around. Then the hole was eclipsed by a white moon that was very bright and very close and actually not a moon at all but the Wall, uncoupled from the nameless kingdom, resized by Kyle, carried by Kyle. Kyle was flying. He wore no armor. Just jeans and sneakers and his Drama Department T-shirt. Tom found that he was not jealous that Kyle could fly. Tom found he was proud.

Kyle was bearing the Wall from underneath, Atlas style. He swung his legs over the edge of the hole as he passed through. He glided out over the chasm, holding the big pearl of a protection spell. Hopefully it had the strength to hold back a Vortex that now wanted everything in this world to come through it, even if it had to tear it all apart. Kyle would have to place it just so over the Vortex’s mouth. It was energy and wouldn’t just move there by itself the way the Orb had.

Suddenly Tom could turn around. Doondredge had let him go after seeing Kyle and becoming absolutely hypnotized with hate. Doondredge hovered, his jets burning steadily, and raised his right arm, pointing his fist at Kyle. Things on his fist began to grow and change and whir and spark. His armored hand was taking on a new shape.

Tom had an opening. How should he use it? Doondredge had seemed to be looking for something on the back of Tom’s armor. What if Tom looked for the same thing on the back of Doondredge’s? Tom flew around behind him. Doondredge looked back and smirked, as if telling Tom he could do his worst, he was in no way afraid of a slapping, eye-gouging patsy. He refocused on Kyle, who was now halfway over the chasm.

Tom had no idea what he was looking for. Some sort of off switch? He should’ve just punched him square in the face. But what if it had ended up being another slap? No, what he really should have done is just caught the Elgg before it could wake him; then the bastard would already be in the Vortex with the rest of his cronies. He pounded on the back of Doondredge’s armor. Nothing. There was no button. No switch, no panel. There was
nothing
. He pounded harder. He reared back. He punched.

The armor cracked at the small of Doondredge’s back. He had punched through the diamond or the crystal or whatever it was and gas was leaking out all around his hand. Doondredge’s armor’s jets sputtered and died. Kyle was almost at the Vortex mouth. Chunks of crystal were flying everywhere. It would tear the kingdom apart if Kyle didn’t cap it soon.

Tom ripped his gauntlet out of Doondredge’s back. The king started to fall to the chasm bottom, then was caught by the riptide of world-wind and sucked toward the Vortex. Tom saw that Doondredge’s armored hand had changed fully. It was no longer a fist. It was sharp. Something ignited on the king’s wrist, and the sharp projectile was launched, leaving a bare hand behind.

Doondredge tumbled and disappeared into the Vortex, but the projectile flew away from him in the opposite direction. It was a fist-sized missile, and it was headed straight for Kyle.

Tom’s brain commanded the armor to fly as fast as possible. Faster, even. The missile was arcing, fighting the Vortex wind, and Tom was catching up to it. It was closing on Kyle.
A hundred meters,
Tom thought. Why did he always try to judge distances? He didn’t even know how many feet were in a meter.

Could he catch it? Yes, he could. But not with his hands.

Tom didn’t think. He just flew up between his friend and the missile that wanted to kill his friend.

The missile’s path was a straight line, Tom’s path had been a curved one, and the lines intersected right at the chest of Tom’s armor.

And then the missile went through the armor.

And then Tom was in a blackness more complete than the one he experienced when Kyle had teleported them into the throne room, more complete than the void, more complete than any blackness he could have imagined when he was in second grade, lying in bed under Pokémon sheets.

And then he wasn’t anywhere.

Tom heard a voice he recognized.

“He’s alive! Kyle, you’re a genius, my son!”

It was a voice he recognized but he’d never heard it use that tone before, so he almost didn’t recognize it. It was the king of Crap Kingdom, and when Tom opened his eyes, Kyle’s face was close to his, and the king’s was farther away, and the king was clapping and smiling and hooting.

“Welcome back,” Kyle said to Tom.

“Thanks, Kilroy,” Tom said.

“Kilroy,” the king said, “who in the blazes is Kilroy?”

“It’s what Tom used to call me in like sixth grade,” Kyle said.

“Tom? He’s
Tom
?” the king said. “No, this was not the agreement. When I authorized you to use the spell, I did not authorize the reviving of
Tom
, I authorized the reviving of J!”

“Jason?” Tom said. He couldn’t help himself. “He’s gone.”

“What do—how do you know about—what do you mean?” the king said.

Tom sat up. They were in the throne room of the castle in Crap Kingdom. Shattered Vapornaut armor lay piled to one side. Tom was still wearing the black T-shirt. It had a rip in the center, but his torso was miraculously unharmed. He was sure that it had been harmed, and then Kyle had made it not that way.

“I was in the void during the mission,” Tom said, “and I met this . . . soul, I guess, and he’s, like, soul-neighbors with J—with Jason. And he told me all about him. And then all of the sudden I was in the middle of the Ghelm kingdom, and I’d been injured, or my body had, and J was gone and I was there instead.”

“Impossible!” the king said. “He’s lying. He’s merely trying to take credit for J’s actions.”

“Then how would I know what happened after that? Because I got in some armor and I flew out and—”

“
Sorcery!
The same way you know these things about J. Ghelm sorcery. And I will not hear any more of it.”

“Listen, I don’t know why I ended up back in my body,” Tom said. “I don’t know if it was an accident I ended up there or if J got hurt so he figured he would rather spend the rest of my life on Earth in my body instead of dying there, for real, in the Ghelm kingdom—”

“And that,” the king said, “is blasphemy. You came from Earth to betray and sow doubt. Jason came here to teach and heal. Kyle is the same way.”

“Wait,” Kyle said. “J’s from Earth?”

“England, I think, judging from when I heard that voice recording in his laboratory,” Tom said. “Is that why you talk that way?” he asked the king.

“We spent every waking moment together,” the king said. “Regardless of his origins, for you to besmirch his legacy is a greater crime than anything you have yet done. You will be sent back to Earth at once and you will never show your face here again, on pain of death. Kyle, send him back at once.”

“No, he didn’t—”

“Kyle, send him back at once, or you may as well go with him and never return.”

“You’re being unreasonable!”

“I only believed,” the king said, “in one person, ever. We were a warlike people, cynical because we had to be that way to survive. A stranger came out of a lake and changed our way of life. We began to soften. And when that stranger was tempted away from us, instead of buckling, he used it as an opportunity to free us from tyranny and fear forever. He was offered the All-Worlds in exchange for betraying us. Instead, he defended us, a pitiful race concerned only with our own day-to-day existence. He gave his life attempting to free us. When the Ghelm king had finished torturing him and killed him because he would not give away the secrets that would have compromised our safety, and the safety of the All-Worlds, he brought J’s body back here and dropped it outside the Wall to torment us. I attempted to use a spell J had only toyed with and never tried. A resurrection spell. We are congenitally limited in our magical abilities, I more than any of us. It was a misfire. It may have redirected the lake portal from which Jason emerged, but it did not bring back my friend.”

“It sort of worked,” Tom said. “It pulled him up into the void. If you hadn’t done that much, he wouldn’t have been in there, and he never would have been pulled out and into me on Earth, and you never would have gotten to talk to him again yesterday.”

“I would rather we had never met again,” the king said. “It only makes me feel worse now that he is gone once again. There is nothing worse than false hope. I have said that all along. I have stretched my limited affections to my boy Kyle, and they go no further, forever. I have learned, and briefly forgotten, and had to relearn the value of low expectations.”

“But Tom saved my life!” Kyle said.

“If this is true, he did so as a sort of dumb meat blocking mechanism. While you saved his infinitely more worthless life by stitching together impossible magic. That says everything about how different you are from each other.”

Tom looked at Kyle.

“Tom,” the king said, “You. Can. Never. Come. Back.”

“How can you—” Kyle said.

“Kyle,” Tom said. “It’s all right.”

“Can we at least have a minute?” Kyle asked.

“I will return, and it will just be you,” the king said. He got up from his throne and walked out of the room. Gark went to follow him.

“Good-bye, Tim,” Gark said.

“Tom,” Tom said.

“I know,” Gark said. He smiled sadly and left. Kyle and Tom were alone.

“When you came back,” Kyle said, “I wanted it to be you.”

“Thanks for bringing me back,” Tom said. “I’m so sorry about everything.”

“I’m sorry he’s a dick,” Kyle said.

“You know,” Tom said, “you have a dad at home on Earth.”

Unlike just about everything Tom ever said, this was something that had not rattled around in his head for thirty seconds to a minute before he actually said it. It came out of his mouth the second it came into his head. Of all the things he’d been jealous about, he hadn’t even realized he was jealous of the fact that Kyle got to go home every day after school and see both a mom and a dad. But maybe feeling things he wasn’t proud of hadn’t been all of the problem. Maybe not telling anyone about them had been a part of it, too.