Outsider, pt 4

"Sit, Charlie, sit!" The king gestured magnanimously towards a chair. Charlie noticed that every time Braggart moved, he aimed to embrace a whole room, take a single step from one city to another, or shrug off the weight of the world. From a certain point of view, maybe to mere mortals, Braggart looked patently ridiculous, but Changelings could see the real force behind those grandiose gestures. Although the king often adopted a gentle fatherly persona and seemed to laugh off most disputes, Charlie wouldn't want to get on his bad side. It was the eyes. They reminded Charlie of a shark's eyes, and it chilled every bone in his body when Braggart smiled.

Braggart smiled. They were in his office at Fishmonger Joe's, a company that according to Tara supplied most of the restaurants in Harmon with fish and seafood. Apparently, the Spring court wasn't the only organization Braggart headed. Charlie sat down next to Tara, and Braggart took his seat behind the desk.

"So, Charlie, how is the court treating you so far? I hear you were quite a hit with the poetry crowd."

"Well... Yeah, that was nice, meeting some people. Also, Rita helped me a bit with my powers - er - contracts."

"Oh? She's a teacher now? That's quite impressive. What did you learn?"

"I have some kind of luck contract?"

"Hearth."

"Yeah, that's what she called it. And I can fix things. Rita said she'd never seen that before."

"I'm not surprised, you're talking about the Artifice contract. That's something the Wizened are particularly proficient in, and you're the only one in Harmon as of yet."

"Wizened?"

"Charlie, you bear all the marks of being one of the Wizened. I'm sure you can figure out how they earned their name?"

He didn't need to be reminded. On the way to the meeting, Charlie had tried to avoid looking into any reflective surface. His weathered and jagged parody of a face looked more like a mask someone had grafted onto his skin. He knew he would probably get used to it in time, but a small part of him was sure that his real face must still be under there somewhere.

"Yeah, I seem to have spent a lot of time in... Arcadia."

"Actually, many Wizened lead a long and fruitful life after their escape. I'm sure you have most of your life ahead of you, Charlie."

"So what are the Wizened? I mean, is it an actual group or a- a race or something?"

"It's more a category. Depending on how we led our lives in Arcadia, and depending on who brought us there, we all adopted different seemings. That's really just another way of saying we all look different. I share certain traits with animals. I'm of the Beast seeming. Tara is one of the Fairest."

Charlie turned to look at her, but when Tara's unwavering gaze pierced his, he had to turn away. He settled on her shoes again. He was almost certain now that no matter what clothes she was wearing, she always wore the same soft pair of shoes. He'd only noticed today because they clashed rather severely with her police uniform.

"So, Charlie, we have a project for you," the king announced. "People have been disappearing at a disquieting rate in the Hedge. We need to know how and preferably why, and to learn that we need a base of operations there. We need you to build that base."

"Like a house? That's- I've never been involved in anything like that. I don't know anything about construction."

"I'm sure you can manage. If there's anything you need to know, there's always the library."

"They use the internet for that now," Tara interjected.

"Of course, how silly of me, ha ha." Braggart laughed, but then his face turned abruptly serious. "Charlie. I realize all of this is new to you, and you're probably confused. You might not trust us, and that's fine, that's what pledges and oaths are for. But you know I wouldn't ask this of you if it wasn't a serious situation, you understand that, right? Our friends are disappearing, they may even be dead by now." He glanced at Tara, then looked back into Charlie's eyes. "Do you think you can help us?"

"Does it- The house has to be in the Hedge?"

"Yes, this sort of thing is usually called a Hollow, a sort of sanctuary for Changelings in the Hedge."

Charlie sighed. "Er... I suppose I could try. It shouldn't be impossible. Plenty of people build houses without any sort of education."

"That's the spirit! Of course, you'll have all the help you need. And I think you'll find that your newfound talents will come in handy as well."

"Oh." Charlie rubbed his chin. "Can it be a wooden house?"

"Whatever you think is best."

"Then, er, could Rita help? She has a way with trees and wood."

"See? That's smart thinking, that's exactly why I chose you for this job! Of course she can join your team. In fact, I think she'll be thrilled!"

The next day, Charlie found himself standing in an abandoned playground with four other people. Tara was there, making sure that everyone had what they needed. Rita was talking too much as usual. The other two he thought he recognized vaguely from the party. One was made of stone and several heads taller than anyone Charlie had ever known. The other was short, with gaunt features and long arms. All of them were wearing backpacks with tools and other items Tara thought they might need. Charlie's backpack had extra bullets for his gun. How Tara had found them or was even sure they'd fit he had no idea. In the backpacks were also envelopes with a wax seal depicting a pair of antlers.

Tara turned to face them all.

"Open the envelope. Read the pledge to yourself. If we all agree to the terms, we'll read it aloud together."

Charlie opened his envelope and read through the text. At first, he started skimming, as reading a license agreement for a new piece of software, but realizing the gravity of the situation, he stopped and reread it carefully. It seemed reasonable. Looking up, he nodded to Tara, who looked from face to face, tallying up the votes. Finally, she nodded, and they started intoning the pledge together.

"I swear, on my allegiance to the Spring Court, I shall aid in the creation of a Hollow, and during this undertaking, but no longer than a year and a day, to protect my fellow Hollow makers, from the dangers of the Hedge, and not let any harm befall them, whether by my own action or inaction. Together, our swords shall be sharper, our arrows fly true, and the Hollow we build shall stand for ages to come. This I swear, and this I hold true, for fear of judgement of the Fates."

As the last word passed over his tongue, Charlie was filled with an intense sensation that boiled his blood, turned his skin to ice and set his heart racing. For a brief moment, the world seemed to be spinning too fast, and everything around him seemed brighter and bigger. Then the feeling subsided, withdrawing its tendrils from his veins and nerves, rolling itself into a tiny ball that settled somewhere between his throat and chest. The world seemed to have settled back into normality. They all exchanged sombre looks mixed with relief. They could fully trust each other now. Tara cleared her throat.

"Turner. Can you go in ahead of us, please?"

The small man nodded and shuffled forward to an old playhouse, the once cheerful paint on its walls now flaking around the tiny windows. Charlie glanced at Tara, who was watching Turner open the door to the small house. Inside it was filled with rotten debris. Turner carefully held out his hand to an exposed nail in the door jamb, and then pricked his finger on it. Then he closed the door and stood motionless for a second before opening it again and stepping through.

Charlie drew a sharp breath. He had half expected the door opening up to something else, but the sight on the other side was too strange to comprehend. At first he thought there were tree trunks stacked on top of each other inside the house, but then he saw that they weren't really touching. It was a forest where all the trees grew sideways.

When he passed through the opening, Turner had put his right foot next to the nail in the jamb and turned 90 degrees. Now he was walking away from them with his feet firmly planted on what looked like a vertical drop. Turner had literally earned his name. Charlie started giggling at the thought, but stopped himself upon catching a stern look from Tara.

A while later, Turner came back and poked his head through the door.

"Looks clear, come on. Watch your step."

Rita and Tara went through, both of them doing a half-crawl through the doorway to keep their balance rather than mimicking Turner's mid-step gravity switch. Charlie followed suit, feeling his internal organs rearranging as down became left and right became down. He was still lying on the ground fighting the urge to throw up when the stone man threw his backpack through the door and proceeded to squeeze himself through. Seen from within the Hedge, the doorway lay down on its side, leaning against a boulder. The wooden frame groaned as their giant friend fought to join them. It looked like the stone was giving birth.

"Aw shit." He was finally through, and Turner had closed the door behind him.

"What?"

"Look." The stone man pulled out a rusty nail that had been lodged between two stone plates in his abdomen. Turner's face fell.

"Not your fault, Cale. We won't be going through there anytime soon though."

"Wait, you mean we can't go back through?" Charlie asked.

"That's what I said."

"Why didn't we use the big gateway, the path Rita and er- Gertude and I used a couple of days ago?"

"Precisely because we used it a couple of days ago," Turner replied. "We can't go through the same way too often, or they'll track us. Besides, the plan was never to go back the same way, for exactly the same reason. Sure, it would have been good to have this gate in an emergency, but I guess you can't have everything."

Charlie's heart sank. They didn't have an escape route. If someone, or something, stood between them and the path out of the Hedge, they'd be trapped.