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I thought of turtles. Chelydra serpentine. Penetrate the shell and you get to the meat, but most turtles are defensive creatures, prone to snapping off fingers at the slightest provocation. I succumbed to a morbid daydream, seeing myself running blind through this mansion, trying to open doors with ten bloody stumps. Seeing myself, eh? The hell do I look like? I needed a mirror. Room by room I went, looking for lights to flip on. Switches flipped, but light didn’t follow. An electrical system seemed in place.

A head shot. The swamp had me; I was on my back, floating. Violet pointed and laughed. My left temple hurt something fierce; I was bleeding but I wasn’t dead. Q. Detroit, screamed my brain, irrational as ever. Carnage raged. The Smileys ignored me, thank God, but I was too sick and dizzy to do anything but lie there, bleeding, cold, wet, feeling tiny, blinking up at the three-mooned sky. I could see the sprites a few meters up, all weird and dreamlike, merged now, something singular, cycling purple-orange-pink-black, over and over again.

A superior being, the old bastard, his power was greater than mine. Is he the one who shocked me? “No need to trouble Maestro,” I said. “Very well,” she sighed. ” The gauze materialized around my wound as if by magic. My legs swiveled over; I rose from the bed. Whisper blinked at me sleepily as I walked into the untidy bathroom. Glass in the sink, glass on the floor. ” The shards vanished; the bathroom mirror reassembled whole. I oohed softly and clapped my hands. “You’re too kind,” Nanny said.