I limped down the path to the Radio, forgetting it would have likely just popped out near wherever I happened to be yelling for it. I’d broken a leg once, and ribs several times. This was like that pain but not mine. I wasn’t wounded. I didn’t have a broken leg! My neck was fine, I could feel it with my hand! I was fine!
But it hurt. I’d been hurt. Almost as if I’d fallen a long way, and landed badly, but survived…
The Radio was playing a mournful song as I staggered into the clearing it seemed to favor, the one with a big black stone it could cover with its vines.
“Radio! I need to talk to her!”
“That was Glen Gray and the Casa Loma Orchestra with ‘I Cried For You.’ Owen knew that Mandy the Undine was unavailable at this time–”
“Don’t give me that!” I pointed at the speaker, jabbing its golden cloth. “None of your vintage dumbassery today, Radio, enough already–”
All the Radio’s flowers snapped shut at once. Old-movie orchestral music boomed, rocking me back. It was sweeping, lots of strings implying motion, action, dynamism.
“We fly, soaring across the Shallow Sea, past the numerous populated islands in the Wolf Archipelago! Away from the Feast of Fools and its safe harbor! Into the blue, through the fluffy clouds, far into the bleak skies of the north! The sea is deep and cold here, slate-gray and flecked with ice! What would drive someone to such a place?”
“Down, down! We plunge into the icy ocean, past incurious sea beasts with many eyes and fins, past the cephalopod poets who end their days here, past the thriving colonies of silicate intelligences! Down, deep! DEEPER! WHO IS HERE IN THIS FRIGID DARKNESS?”
“Take it easy, Radio...”
“TOO LATE! Having insisted on violating the rules, Owen knew this was inevitable, and yet perhaps could make use of dearly-bought knowledge. Wait! What’s this we see? A chunk of black ice, shiny and faceted, with knife-edge spikes, blades and hooks by the dozens, sharp and strong! None of the deep-sea denizens DAAAARE approach! Do WE dare?”
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
I swallowed. This felt like an invasion of privacy, no doubt about it. But it also felt like trying to pry someone out of a cage in the dark. “Do it.”
“THAT’S MY BOY! We approach the terrifying sculpture hanging motionless in the dark. We pass carefully through the horrific walls, the defenses that would mutilate any intruder, any who would harm the dweller in this place. And there.”
The pain in my neck and leg abruptly ceased. It was like being able to breathe again, like setting down a heavy burden. I could think a little more clearly. “Radio, you said rules. Rules, when you break your rules…”
“There in the dark, we finally discover the broken body of Mandy Nakahara. Not the Undine. This is the girl who was publicly mocked by Harrigan father and son, who sang her song as she fell:”
Now the voices from the Radio, shyly, reluctantly singing, the voices of young people forced to sing a song they didn’t know well and didn’t want to sing at all, some were sobbing:
Oh, Mandy
Well, you came and you gave without taking
But I sent you away
Oh, Mandy
Mandy like the song. I tear escaped my eye. It was red.
The Radio was bleeding too. A crack was growing in the stone base of it. The vines were drying, withering, the flowers puffing into smoke. Red blood seeped from the speaker, the light on the tuning window flickered, went out.
The rules.
Hot pain, a tremblingly violent headache. Blood from my eyes and nostrils. I was on the ground, facing the ruin of the Radio, my head in the grass.
I heard thrashing in the bushes. Schmendrick? Gary?
“I don’t need rescuing, Owen!” She sounded furious. “You can just mind your own business, can’t you? Everything’s fine, you jackass! I DON’T NEED RESCUING, IDIOT! Oh my god–” And her voice faded as she ran for help, calling to Schmendrick, Cassie, Gary, anyone.
She’d gotten here pretty fast. I wondered, as I blacked out, if she’d been too angry to put clothes on in the Mandy Tent, or…
