This Isn't What It Looks Like (15 page)

“If you saw how comfortably the King’s dogs lie, you would lie down with them, too!” declared the Jester. “Their pillows are
very fine indeed. As for the royal fleas, they do not bite but merely scratch when you complain of itch. They are but servants
in miniature livery.”

Cass stifled a laugh. But Anastasia did not appear to be listening. With a last contemptuous look at the Jester, she swung
her hair around and left, leaving the cell door open.

“Let’s go!” whispered Cass.

“What? Oh. Yes,” answered the Jester, his eyes still focused on the spot where Anastasia had been standing. “I’m glad you’re
here. I thought maybe I’d imagined you after all.”

“No. I’m right here. In the flesh. Well, in the invisible flesh—”

She gave him a tug.

Outside their cell it was chaos.

Every door in the dungeon had been opened in the search for the captured bandits, and the cheers of
the escaping prisoners rang through the corridors so loudly, it sounded like they were in some kind of underground sports
stadium.

Cass hesitated before following the other prisoners out of the dungeon.

“Ugh. Those poor guys…”

All the prison guards had been thrown into the central cesspool. Mouths gagged, hands bound, they stood up to their shoulders
in muck, watching with mute rage.

The Jester chuckled. “Why the angry faces, gents? Are you not slugs in your native element? That smelly mud to you should
be mother’s milk!”

A few of the guards lunged toward him—only to slip deeper into the cesspool. From the looks in their eyes, the guards were
all thinking about what they would do with the Jester if they ever got their hands on him again. And they weren’t planning
to pat him on the back.

“C’mon—”

Cass clutched the Jester’s hand as they ran up the stone stairs and out into the moonlit night.

Just outside the exit, the bandits were waiting on horseback, a few riderless horses at the ready.

“Look—let’s get on that gray one over there!” whispered Cass, pointing to a horse standing by a wall a few feet away. The
horse whinnied invitingly.

The Jester hesitated. “I have a terrible fear of horses….”

“Oh great,” Cass groaned. “Could you be more like Max-Ernest if you tried? I don’t think so.”

“What?”

“Never mind. There’s no time to be afraid. We have to get out of here!”

“Don’t worry,” said the Jester, standing tall. “I conquered the fear long ago. The first time I escaped from prison—”

“You were in prison before?” asked Cass, alarmed. “What did you do?”

“Nothing. I was referring to my parents’ house. It was far worse than this place—”

Unexpectedly agile, the Jester hopped onto the gray horse and pulled Cass up after him.

Anastasia reined her black steed next to them.

“You, Jester—what are you doing? That’s not your horse!”

The Jester laughed. “You’re a fine one to talk, Madame Thief! I would bet a king’s ransom that that horse you’re sitting on
is not yours, either. But if you like, I will give this one back after we have escaped.”

Anastasia was about to offer a retort when a dozen soldiers on horseback appeared from behind the palace, heading in their
direction.

“Very well,” she said, displeased. “Follow us. But if you lose that horse, you will pay with your life. Men—!”

She whistled, and the bandits took off in a thunder of hooves.

Cass woke with a stiff neck and with a sharp twig poking into her back. Above her, a maple tree made patterns of green and
gold. It was day.

Raising her head slightly, she spied a few burlap tents and a trail of smoke wending upward. Instinctively, she reached for
the Double Monocle, then remembered it was gone. Oh well, she had survived without X-ray vision in the past (or rather the
future); she would have to again. Rubbing her eyes, she looked out at the campsite in the old-fashioned way.

It was the
bandits’
campsite, she deduced when she saw a surly-looking man, Thomas, striding toward her, his black mask hanging around his neck
and his axe swinging on his thigh. She was about to greet him when he walked right past her, humming in the way one does only
when one is
alone. She’d forgotten for a moment he couldn’t see her.

Feeling like a spy, she watched him stop at a tree a few feet away. When a tiny stream started trickling in her direction,
she had the awful realization that he was relieving himself of the previous night’s drink.

She scooted to safety just in time.

As the bandit returned to camp, the Jester walked up to Cass. Or rather to his hat, which was sitting on a rock five feet
away from her. It was the first time Cass had seen him bareheaded in the daylight. His orange curls sprang up in all directions
like coiled wires.

“Cass?” he whispered to the hat. “Are you up?”

“Yes, but I’m over here to your right,” she whispered back.

“Where?” He looked around, confused. “I left my hat as a marker.”

“I move around a lot when I sleep. Wait. Stay there….” She got up and walked over to him.

“Here I am,” she said, picking up his hat.

The Jester stepped back in surprise as the hat appeared to fly into the air and land on his head.

“Ah, I see that you are,” he said, recovering. “I brought you breakfast.”

He held up a metal cup full of some kind of gruel-like porridge.

“I wasn’t sure if you ate real food or if you only needed invisible sustenance,” said the Jester, watching the cup move in
the air.

“I’m starving. But this is disgusting. What is it?”

The Jester laughed. “Do they not have frumenty where you come from…? Well, enjoy it. Those selfish thieves have a pile of
treasure that would be the envy of dragons, but I had to beg and plead for that little tin cup.”
^*

“They’re not selfish. They steal from the rich to give to the poor. Like Robin Hood.”

The Jester laughed. “Who? All I know is that I’m poor and they aren’t giving any treasure to me. I think the only reason they
let me have that cup was that it was stuck to their lodestone. Have you ever seen a lodestone?”

“I don’t think so….”

“Marvelous thing,” said the Jester. “Metal sticks right to it as if it were glue.”

“You mean it’s a magnet?”

The Jester’s face froze. “Quick, give the cup back to me!” he whispered.

“But I’m not done!”

“Just give it to me—Anastasia’s coming.” He grabbed the cup so hard he spilled frumenty all over himself.

“Practicing for a comedy?”

Anastasia regarded the Jester with arched eyebrows. Without her mask, she was even more beautiful, but no less formidable.
“I think next time perhaps you should use an empty cup for rehearsal.”

“It’s not the same,” said the Jester, playing along. “I need to feel the spill to play the role.”

“And yet you need not a real actor with whom to say your lines? I saw you talking a moment ago. He is very talented, I thought.
He who can speak to the air.”

“Watch and I shall pluck a whole world from the air. My comedy is my magic, my jokes are my spells.”

“Perhaps,” said Anastasia, turning serious. “But your spells have no place here. They do not protect us against the King’s
men. Nor do they clothe the poor.”

“Yes, but they feed the soul.”

“We want to feed the hungry. That is our only goal.”

“Must their food be so somber? Do not the poor deserve a merry dinner?”

“So they can forget their hunger? Forget injustice?”

“No, so they can laugh at it. ’Tis not the same.”

The bandit shook her head. “The men and I have agreed, you must go. On foot. Do not forget, the horse is ours. You have five
minutes. If you are not gone when I return, we shall remember how close you were to the King and we shall be much less generous
with you.”

The Jester watched her leave, uncharacteristically quiet.

Cass looked from the big porridge stain on his shirt to the glum expression on his face. “Sorry if I made you look silly.
I should have given you the cup back faster.”

The Jester shrugged sadly. “To her I will always be silly, I think, no matter how I look.”

He forced a smile. “Do not worry—a jester is not a jester who is not sometimes seen talking to himself. Is that not our job—to
throw balls from our right hand to our left, and to throw jokes from the left side of our mouth to the right? A jester no
more needs an audience than a puppy needs a kitten to chase his tail. Or is it the kitten who does not need the puppy? Or
the bird…? What I mean is, I have no more need of Anastasia than a, well…” He stammered, confused by his own analogy. “I am
perfectly merry without her, that is all. I never said I wanted to marry her!”

“Who said you did?” asked Cass, slightly mystified.

“Nobody!—I am perfectly capable of chasing my own tail and running in circles all by myself. That is all I am trying to say,”
said the Jester, flustered. “Now, my invisible friend, where do we go from here?”

Cass glanced around the woods. She had nowhere else to go. Her goal was to find the Jester and she’d found him.

It was time to ask about the Secret.

M
idnight was the mopping hour at the hospital.

When he got to room twelve in the PICU, the janitor looked up from the shiny floor and peered through the door as he did every
night. It was sad to see such a young girl lying there like that in the dim green light of the heart monitor. But she was
a strong one, he felt. A fighter. He could see it in those pointy ears of hers. He was rooting for her.

He was about to push on when he noticed her lips moving. It’s probably nothing, he thought. Just a twitch. Nonetheless, he
leaned his mop against the wall and stepped into the shadowy room.

Her eyes were closed, her face almost completely still. And yet there was no doubt—she was murmuring to herself.

By putting his ear close he was able to make out a few whispered words:

“The Secret… What is the Secret…? You have to tell me the Secret… you have to…”

The janitor shivered. What he wouldn’t have given to see inside the girl’s head just then! There was something about the way
she said the word
secret
that made him think she was talking about the Secret of Secrets, the secret of life itself.

But that wasn’t the point with somebody in her
condition, he reminded himself. It wasn’t
what
she’d said. It was that she’d said it at all.

Should I tell someone? he wondered. He wasn’t sure exactly how significant it was that the unconscious girl had spoken. Had
he witnessed a breakthrough? Or did she talk to herself every night?

Just in case, he hurried over to the nurse’s station. Nobody was there.

It was then that he noticed the flashing light.

An emergency. Downstairs.

He was reluctant to leave the girl, but he knew he should immediately go down to help.

Tomorrow he would leave a note about the young patient in room twelve. For now, her whispered words would have to wait.

H
ELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLP!!!!!!!”

As Max-Ernest ran screaming through the familiar double doors of the emergency room, he was overwhelmed with a flood of memories.
He felt almost sentimental remembering the time he’d come in for a Slurpee-induced brain freeze so intense, he’d been convinced
that he had frostbite of the parietal lobe.
^*
The night he forgot that he’d eaten red beets and was so alarmed by the color of his pee that he called 9-1-1 and started
dictating his last will and testament to the phone operator. The supersize genetically mutated head lice that turned out only
to be cookie crumbs left on his pillow after a midnight snack. The extra-strong strain of poison oak, which he was certain
had spread from the outside to his liver if not to his kidneys. The splinter he was positive was tapeworm. The hiccups that
proved he had lung disease. The runny nose that meant he had a cerebral hemorrhage. The athlete’s foot that indicated incipient
skin cancer or possibly elephantiasis…

In the past, due to the frequency of his medical complaints, Max-Ernest had been accused of such things as paranoia and hypochondria,
not to mention alarmism and hysteria. But there was another way to look at it, he decided as he ran through the waiting room—a
blur of fluorescent lights, hobbling
patients, crying babies. What all his ailments had in common was that they were products of a powerful creative imagination.
He had a surplus of brain waves, according to Benjamin. That was his problem.