If You're Reading This, It's Too Late Page 11

  Lord Pharaoh kicked the Homunculus from behind — whether to prove the king’s point or to push him forward was unclear.

  “If you please, Your Majesty, it is not so much how he looks, as how he was made. . . .”

  “Is it true he was made from dung?” asked the bejeweled Queen sitting by the King’s side.

  “Not from dung, Your Highness. In dung,” Lord Pharaoh corrected. “He was incubated in a fertile mud that I confess was not entirely savory.”

  “Disgusting! He’s a monster!” said a pale woman standing nearby, the Queen’s Lady-in-Waiting. “And so . . . small!”

  “So what then is the recipe for this dung-dwarf?” asked the King, silencing the Lady-in-Waiting with a look. “They say you have discovered the secret of the Philosopher’s Stone.”

  “Ah, a thousand pardons, but I cannot reveal that, Your Majesty. It may be that I am privy to secrets once known only to the Ancients. But such power, if it fell into the wrong hands —”

  “Are you so sure your hands are the right ones?” asked the King sternly.

  At this, his master’s face turned red, the Homunculus observed. He knew he would pay for it later, but he couldn’t help being pleased by the sight of his master’s embarrassment.

  “You jest, Your Majesty,” said Lord Pharaoh, smiling to conceal his fury.

  “I never jest — that is his job,” said the King. He pointed to a small, wiry man who was now holding in his hand the strange musical ball that had so fascinated the Homunculus.

  “Yes, His Majesty is not the Jester — for that is I,” said the man, shaking the bells that dangled from his hat as if to demonstrate. “No more is His Majesty the Ma-jester — for that is my mother!”

  He threw his ball into the air, punctuating his joke with a few notes of music. Then he burst out laughing, as if he tickled himself so much he couldn’t help it.

  “And what else of your creature — does he not speak?” asked the King, ignoring the Jester.

  “No, Sire,” answered Lord Pharaoh curtly.

  This was a sore subject for the alchemist. The Homunculus knew he would get extra lashings later just because the King had mentioned it.

  Lord Pharaoh knew — or strongly suspected — that in fact his creation could speak. Once, when the Homunculus thought his master was away, he’d made the mistake of practicing his speech at a slightly louder level than his usual whisper. His large, fleshy tongue made enunciation difficult, and he’d just managed to say the words “I am Cab —” when the door to his dungeon room flew open and his master entered.

  Excited by the prospect of the fame and riches a talking homunculus would bring, Lord Pharaoh demanded that he repeat the words. But the Homunculus never uttered another syllable again — even when he was alone. So little did he want to please his master, he was willing to endure years of beatings to avoid doing what his master wished.

  The Jester studied the creature’s reactions as his master spoke about him.

  “Truly? Your carnival sensation — hath he not sensation?” asked the Jester. “He hath the nose of an elephant and the ears likewise. As for his eyes, we cannot help but see that he can see. His great tongue — does it only taste and never talk . . . ?”

  “Silence, Jester! We do not like the look of you, Lord Pharaoh,” said the King, pronouncing the name with disdain. “But we think perhaps we are safer with you in our court than without. You will be our guest for as long as you wish to stay in our Kingdom.”

  “Thank you, Your Majesty,” said Lord Pharaoh, bowing with as much humility as he could muster.

  A royal guard stepped forward to escort them out.

  “Where sleeps the Homunculus — with the servants?” asked the guard.

  “With the livestock,” said Lord Pharaoh, fixing the Homunculus with a hard, angry stare. “He is dumb like an animal so he will lie like an animal.”

  “Methinks he lies not like an animal, but like a rascal. And he be not dumb but would not speak,” said the Jester with a twinkle in his eye. “If my thought be shrewd, he is no more fool than I!”

  “But you are a fool, Fool!” said the King, laughing. “And you are hard on the poor creature.”

  “Not half so hard as his master. I inflict only puns; he inflicts punishments,” said the Jester.

  “Mind your own business, you meddlesome idiot!” hissed Lord Pharaoh, his mask of politeness slipping.

  “But fooling is my business,” said the Jester, tossing his ball into the air.

  The Homunculus stared at the ball as it started once more to sing.

  Max-Ernest turned the pages over. “I can’t read if you don’t shine the light on it. . . .”

  “Sorry, I just wanted to see the Sound Prism again,” said Cass, unwrapping the object she had just dug out of the ground. It glowed in the darkness. “It’s definitely the ball in the story. It has to be.” She looked at Max-Ernest, waiting for him to contra-dict her.

  “What? I agree. It’s the ball in the story. . . .”

  Cass nodded in satisfaction and shone the flashlight on the manuscript again.

  “But that doesn’t mean the rest of the story is true.”

  “Why do you have to take the fun out of everything? It’s like when you’re reading a book, and you’re really into it, and then at the end the writer says it was all a dream . . . I hate that!”

  “I didn’t say it was a dream.”

  Cass sighed. “Never mind. Just read.” She flipped the manuscript back over for him and pointed to where they were on the page.

  Part the Third

  He might not get much sleep, but, at least, the Homunculus reflected, it wouldn’t be a cold night.

  The pigpen was nothing if not warm. The pigs were packed so tight they could barely turn around. Steam rose with every snort and kick and bowel movement.

  Alas, warm did not mean comfortable. These pigs were not cuddly creatures. Instead, they had mottled bristly coats caked in mud and feces, and they had hard hooves and hungry mouths and long, fight-sharpened tusks.

  In short, they were hogs. Swine.

  The Homunculus cowered in the corner of the pen, waiting for the hogs to realize he wasn’t one of them, and that he had quite possibly been left for them to eat. And yet he bore them no resentment. He felt an affectionate kinship with these beasts — and not only because their snouts resembled a bit his own. They too were helpless captives, condemned to feed on scraps, never satisfied, forever hungry.

  Ah, hunger.

  Hunger was his first memory, his only memory. Before the red glow of the furnace there was hunger. Before the cold stone walls of his dungeon room there was hunger. Before the painful blows of his master there was hunger. Before the jeering crowds there was hunger. This gnawing pit inside him. This never-healing wound.

  His master never fed him more than the bare minimum necessary to keep him alive — and sometimes not even that much. Often, he had to feed on the cockroaches that found their way into his room. If he was very, very lucky, and the housekeeper took pity on him, he might get a bone to gnaw on now and then. Bones were his favorite food. He sucked out the rich, buttery marrow as if his life depended on his extracting every last drop.

  If only he could have some bone marrow now!

  He looked at the hogs around him, weighing the odds: if he struck first, would he eat or would he be eaten?

  Lost in his bloody reverie, he didn’t notice the tune playing in the barnyard outside the pigpen until it was quite close. But his attention finally shifted to the ethereal music — so utterly unlike his muddy, grunting surroundings that it seemed to come from some other plane of existence altogether.

  “Where art thou, my little ’Munculus?”

  The Homunculus saw the Jester’s face peering into the pen before the Jester saw him. Instinctively, he recoiled. No one had ever sought him out before except to throw rocks at him or worse.

  “Ah, there you are — if not a pearl among swine, then certainly the Earl!” proclaimed
the Jester with a laugh. “Here — I have brought you dinner. From the table of the King, no less!”

  He tossed a turkey leg into the pen. The Homunculus caught it with his large hand — and immediately devoured it, bone and all.

  “What? Nary a thank-you?” teased the Jester. “Are you but a hog, after all?”

  The Homunculus did not answer, but he looked up from his drumstick long enough to lock eyes with the Jester.

  “Speak, Dung-boy! Prove thou art not pork but person!”

  Addressed so directly, the Homunculus trembled uncontrollably. He did not how to react.

  “Fear not your master. He is nowhere near. We are alone among animals. And unless they also speak, your secret is safe,” said the Jester more gently.

  “Come now, are we not alike, you and I?”

  The Jester removed his hat, revealing for the first time his ears — they were unusually large and pointy.

  “Can you talk? If you can, I wouldst talk with you.”

  The Homunculus could not have said why he answered the Jester, when for years he had refused to speak. He was so unfamiliar with kindness that he did not recognize it; and yet he responded like a kitten to its first bowl of milk.

  “I c-can,” he whispered.

  “What’s that? I didn’t hear you.”

  “I can,” said the Homunculus more loudly. “I can speak.”

  “Well done!” said the Jester, smiling.

  Hearing his first words of praise, the Homunculus’s chest swelled with a feeling others might have known as pride. And something strange happened, something that had never happened before no matter how hungry he’d been or how hard his master had beaten him — he cried.

  “Oh, talking is not so bad as that,” said the Jester. “True, most people say only silly things when they speak. But it’s easier to ignore them if you’re saying silly things yourself.”

  The Homunculus stared, uncomprehending.

  The Jester laughed. “So he can talk but he knows not a joke. What use is that? But perhaps I can teach you to laugh. Fancy that — a Jester for a teacher! That makes for a joke already!”

  Unfortunately, the homunculus’s unexpected speech had roused the hogs, and they were now closing in on him with hungry suspicion.

  “Here, beat them back with this,” said the Jester, throwing an oaken staff into the pen. “We must act fast if you are to escape. Methinks the hogs are easier to outrun than the King’s hounds.”

  As soon as the Homunculus had extracted himself from the pigpen, the Jester stopped him with a raised hand. “Wait, my friend. What are you called? I cannot rescue a man if I know not his name!”

  “But I . . . have no name,” stammered the Homunculus.

  “No name? Impossible. They must call you something.”

  “Only mean things. Awful things. Except sometimes . . .” The Homunculus hesitated.

  “Yes?”

  “Sometimes, the housekeeper, when my master is not around, she . . . she calls me her little Cabbage Face.” The Homunculus covered his face with his large hand; years of taunting had made him immune to most embarrassments, but this was something else altogether.

  “Cabbage Face, eh?” The Jester laughed. “It suits you perfectly!”

  The Jester tossed his ball thoughtfully.

  “Your master made you a monster. Your name will make you a man.”

  “So Cabbage Face is the homunculus’s name!” Cass exclaimed.

  “How ’bout that? I can’t believe we didn’t think of it,” said Max-Ernest. “Or did we? Now, I can’t remember. . . .”

  “Do you think that’s true — that your name makes you who you are?”

  “No. That’s silly. Like, if your name is Dakota, you don’t suddenly turn into a state. I have two names and I’m not two people.”

  Yes, but he often acted like he was two people, Cass wanted to say. Instead, she asked, “Why don’t you think Lord Pharaoh gave the homunculus a name? You know, like Frankenstein or something.”

  “Actually, Frankenstein wasn’t Frankenstein’s name. He was just a monster — Frankenstein was the man who made him. You know, Dr. Frankenstein. So that would be like calling the homunculus Lord Pharaoh. Which would be kind of funny considering the way he treated him. I mean in the story, not that he really —”

  “Yeah, I get it!” said Cass. “Let me read the last part —”

  Part Conclusive

  It is said that a Homunculus must serve his maker — for that is the nature of a Homunculus.

  But it is also said that if the maker takes advantage of his servant, and treats him too much like a slave, then the Homunculus will take vengeance on his maker and run away — for that, too, is the nature of a Homunculus.

  The Homunculus called Cabbage Face ran far, far away from his master, Lord Pharaoh. Never resting, he crossed oceans and deserts, mountain ranges and city slums. Until the day Lord Pharaoh caught up with him and the Homunculus at last confronted the man who should have been to him a father, but instead was a mortal enemy.

  When the Homunculus had vanquished his master, the homunculus buried his remains far from the eyes of those who knew him. So that never again would another person — whether for greed or glory or science — repeat the mistakes his master had made, the Homunculus buried with him the means of the Homunculus’s own making: the alchemist’s secret notes and diaries, his recipes and ingredients, and the leftovers of his awful experiments.

  And then the Homunculus laid himself down across the grave of Lord Pharaoh. Henceforward, he would protect the grave from the world — and, more importantly, the world from the grave.

  Yet, in all those years, and forever after, the Homunculus never forgot the Fool who freed him. Before he ran, he made to this funny man a solemn vow: that when the Ball called, he would come.

  And he always did. He always has.

  The End

  Cass put down the last page in wonder.

  “So do you think the Sound Prism really has the power to call the homunculus?” she asked.

  “Well, it would be sort of crazy if it did. And kind of scary. But it looks like Mr. Wallace thinks it’s all made up —”

  He shone the flashlight on the back of the last page, where there was a handwritten note:

  The Legend of Cabbage Face, indeed!

  It is well known that the author of this story, my predecessor’s predecessor’s prede-cessor, fancied himself a great writer and novelist. Here, I fear, he let his literary ambitions — and his imagination — get away from him.

  The fact that the Jester appears really to be a jester proves this “legend” to be just that. A hat with bells? Ridiculous! If we know anything, we know that our noble founder was a man of science, not a fool!

  And a talking homunculus? Sentimental claptrap! If such a creature ever existed, he must have been a monster, incapable of thought or feeling.

  Still, we know that the Masters of the Midnight Sun search even now for Lord Pharaoh’s grave. So perhaps there is a grain of truth here, after all.

  Deserves further study. — W. W.W. III

  “Mr. Wallace is a sourpuss!” said Cass when she’d finished reading.

  “Come on, be honest — you don’t really believe that some alchemist made a little guy out of horse . . . poop . . . five hundred years ago, do you?”

  “In poop. Not out of poop.”

  “And he’s still alive? And he even talks?”

  “I don’t know. All I know is we promised to find him, whether he talks or not. Are you going to help or aren’t you?”

  Cass looked at him expectantly. She needed Max-Ernest in fighting shape. Or whatever the Max-Ernest version of fighting shape was. She couldn’t afford to have such a waffling, moody partner.

  Max-Ernest nodded and extended his arm.

  This was serious business, and they both knew it. Whoever or whatever the homunculus was or wasn’t, the fact remained that Dr. L and Ms. Mauvais were looking for him — and that alone made their
job extremely important.

  And extremely dangerous.

  They shook hands, both beginning at last to feel the chill.

  After Max-Ernest had gone, Cass stood for a moment in the Barbie Graveyard contemplating what they’d read.

  How odd that the Jester had pointy ears. . . . She wondered if Max-Ernest had noticed.

  A breeze rustled through the yard, stirring the autumn leaves. And a small piece of paper fluttered in the air, landing at Cass’s foot.

  It must have slipped out of the wand, thought Cass.

  She shone her flashlight on the paper as she picked it up off the ground. It was a rather formal-looking document:

  STATE BOARD OF HEALTH

  DIVISION OF VITAL STATISTICS

  Certificate of Live Birth

  I’m sorry I can’t tell you the name of the girl listed on the birth certificate. Or who her parents were. Or what city she was born in. But it hardly matters; Cass didn’t recognize the names herself.

  And yet something about the birth certificate bothered her — what?

  Of course — the birth date! It was the same as her own. What a strange coincidence. Almost like discovering a long-lost twin sister.

  So why had the birth certificate been in the Sound Prism file?

  A dreadful realization struck her: the Terces Society had made a mistake. They thought she was this other girl.

  It was the other girl, not Cass, who was supposed to have the Sound Prism. It was the other girl, not Cass, who was supposed to hunt the homunculus.

  Cass knew she ought to tell Pietro right away.

  But what if he took the mission away from her? She couldn’t bear the thought.

  What good would that do, anyway?

  Obviously, he didn’t know where the other girl was or he would have given the Sound Prism to her.

  On the other hand, if Cass found the homunculus, the Terces Society would be so grateful, it wouldn’t matter who she was.

  Staving off her pangs of conscience, Cass slipped the birth certificate into her pocket and walked back into the house.