The Flowers of Halloween
written by: T. Ahzio
How different it was from when it first arrived. Josephine remembered it on its first day. When placed within the gilded box, it showed immense colors, containing blues bouncing off the interior sheen of the box, ricocheting back towards itself, through itself, and all around, as if the flower were angry at being confined. But the box was built specifically to harness this effect, and the flower released all its strength in a bizarre act of happy defiance. Now, its initial act of beauty had faded. It flickered. It was about to go dark, completely dark. Still, the old flower held on to elegance, in form, in function, a blue muffled into a faint humming. It was time. The flower in the transforming box had begun to wilt. There might be only a month, or two months left. The village would be without power, without soul, without spirit.
***
Josephine and Divnech looked at the sky through the hole in the roof of their hut. Above them, clouds flirted with the South Star and its companion Peornik. When added to the Five Brothers, the group of stars resembled a wolf. Jo and Div had slept underneath the constellation Dancing Wolf many times, even when warm rains fell upon their bodies and the wolf could not be seen. The rain was never in the way. It was a companion, a blessing. But there was no rain tonight. On clear hot nights like this one, lights from hut windows glowed, even purred if such a thing were possible. The lights of Holthgate village were a message of comfort and peace. They showed like jewels and seeped out an aura that the villagers were proud of. That, as everyone knew, was because of the flower. It was the flower itself that produced the energy to make the lights. Tonight, Dancing Wolf seemed on edge in the sky, for the dryness of summer had extended further than normal. Jo and Div had to decide. Two young people must be chosen.
As was the custom, two children had to be sent out into The Flame to search for a fresh flower.
The Flame, a land of fibers, a forest of red mesh, vines of red and trees of red, ferns of red, with only depressions and shadows to separate them. A few meters in, and a hiker could become lost. There were trails. Their endings unknown. Fables surrounded them. Such as the City of Teeth and the Monsters of The Flame. But they were all myths made up to keep children and even adults from wandering too far into The Flame. But as was the custom, when a new flower was needed, two children were sent to search deep into The Flame and bring back a new flower, for it was only inside The Flame where a flower could be found.
“I’m leaning towards Harkseer’s children. They are stout, smart, but not too smart. They’re like eggshells without an inner yoke. Yet resilient.” Div had a face kinder than his internal makings and an empathy that could be relied on. His hands were those of an artist. He gripped his sword as if were a paintbrush.
“That’s the problem. This yoke you speak of is what they lack. They will get lost. Plus, we’ve never sent out children who were related. No parents should run the risk of losing two. What about Sherdmarth’s son and Hindlemith’s daughter? They’re both second children, and they know each other.” Jo was a hearty woman of in-depth wisdom. Her place as acknowledged leader of Holthgate showed itself in age lines, but lines that added to her magnetism. Her eyes knew answers, knew when to act, knew when to hold back. She still hung on to a youthful strength and agility. She had what most leaders lacked, the ability to listen.
Div’s voice was a softness Jo knew well. “Have we ever lost a child?”
“No, not us. But it’s happened. You know that.”
The voice of Jo never failed to calm Div, even when expressing the bare truth. He was at her mercy as if she were reciting incantations hidden in simple words. He lightly kissed her lips. Her lips always responded. They decided to give it a rest until morning. The soundest sleep followed until they were awoken in the early hours.
At first, it was a scream, and then, as Div started to wake up, it was chaos. A shriek followed a mingling of gasps and hollers, frightened sounds, human, but animalistic. Sounds of fear mixed with confused voices. Broken away from their sleep, a darkness entered Jo and Div’s hut, a blindness they weren’t used to.
Div, always reluctant to pick up his sword, grabbed Morisot out of instinct, swept away the blankets covering the door, and entered the outside, where the sound of commotion came from. Before him were faces he thought he knew. At least he recognized their movements. It was as pitch black as darkness could muster. All the villagers had transformed. Their teeth had grown long and sharp, two to three inches long. Their heads had become oblong, and it looked like they were running on all fours, almost. They were darting around, confused, some alone, others tugging on young ones like rag dolls. Div didn’t want to know, but there was a feeling in the pit of his stomach. The flower had finally lost its power. The village he knew was not there anymore. In front of him was a vast grey plain with occasional bumps and curls, where dry sand bunched up against what appeared to be outlines of the village. Now, a skeleton of what it once was. The sand resembled licks of flames but without the heat, without reds and yellows. Morisot dropped from his hand and, turning back to the hut, he saw Jo standing within circular ruins. Only the foundation of their hut could be seen poking through drifts of grey and black.
Jo saw what was happening. She was frightened just like Div, but her stature was filled with a sense of composure. On a stand, where their living room once was, sat a wooden pedestal. The box, the transforming box, was placed on top of it. Inside the box, a dead flower. Touching the box, Jo started to sing a haunting, calm melody.
Div heard her song and picked up Morisot. He started to shout commands to the mess of people lost in the confusion. There was still a glimmer of power left inside the flower.
Jo’s song was reassuring, a tune that quelled all doubt. The villagers were led to her voice, a siren’s call to calmness. They gathered in front of her. Their static breathing began to settle. Even in this place of little light, Jo emanated a glow, and they were like moths drawn to it. It was this light, perhaps, that changed the surroundings. For as soon as all screams and cries softened, the old glow of the village returned. It was as if they had awakened from a group dream. The huts were back in their original form, built of wooden red planks plucked from the surrounding forest. Roofs made of wide red palm leaves that had dried, turning them into a light brown. The barren landscape had been replaced by a Holthgate surrounded by thick flora. The Flame. A few babies still cried, but Jo had brought them back. Or had she? Was she that gifted? When she spoke, the village became illuminated. It occurred whenever she spoke.
It couldn’t be ignored. This episode, this mass hallucination or transformation, was a warning. The flower had to be replaced at any cost. Even if it meant the lives of two children. At sunrise, Sherdmarth’s and Hindlemith’s children, Zek and Thamber, were ready to enter the red forest.
***
“Can you see the trail?” Thamber asked.
“I’m not sure there is a trail. I haven’t been sure for a while,” Zek answered.
“Let’s stop and rest until morning.”
Zekeriah Sherdmarth, or Zek, was a thinking kind of kid. Sometimes he thought too much. When he was overthinking, he would freeze in place as if the entire world had stopped in its tracks. He was easy to find because he had a cowlick on top of his head, a full three inches high. It was like an antenna.
Thamber Hindlemith was always getting into things. Maybe it was curiosity. Maybe it was just for fun. Maybe it was both. She had a knack for disappearing, running off to find trouble or fun.
The two had been inside The Flame for three days or so. They had lost all sense of time, and the more Zek thought about it, the longer it became. Thamber didn’t care how many days they’d been inside. If there was enough food, she’d stay. There were trails at the beginning. Those trails had been made by carpenters and builders. They crisscrossed each other but remained close to the protective walls of the village. They were far away from those comforting walls now.
The young ones unpacked their sleeping gear, lowered themselves down onto the forest floor, feeling with their hands the soft, stringy, cloth-like vegetation packed around them.
Zek and Thamber had grown up together. Others thought they were siblings, for they had developed an inseparable kind of friendship. Zek had hoped to find the flower on the first day and return quickly. He thought, how hard could it be to find a blue glowing thing in a forest that was entirely red? After the second day, he changed his thinking. It proved to be harder than he thought. One thing that both noticed was the further away from the village they wandered, the longer their teeth grew. Along with longer teeth, their heads began to become oblong to accommodate the large teeth. It was like the night when things went dark. It’s almost as if their heads resembled a smaller version of prehistoric dinosaurs. Jo had warned them that they might experience strange changes the further away from home they got.
“Sing me a song,” Thamber said, and Zek’s voice sounded out from his sharp teeth, a clear tone, and the red fluff of The Flame vibrated in a visual harmony. He wasn’t as good a singer as Jo, but it still was nice. Thamber felt the warmth of the song. It reminded her of Jo and Div and her parents. She shrugged it off. She was not about to become homesick. Not her. With that thought, she fell into a sleep deeper than dreaming.
Daylight was different in The Flame. Instead of slowly becoming bright as in an average sunrise, all the trees and plants of the red forest began to glow. It wasn’t a golden glow but a pulse slowly making the entire forest daylight. After three days, Thamber and Zek had gotten used to it and had slept well. There was only one problem. This morning, they found they were affixed to the forest floor. Vines had grown around them, and they couldn’t move, let alone sit up. Had the forest grown overnight? Zek was busy trying to think of reasons why the forest had grown so quickly until they saw a face hovering above them. The thing above them had a face like theirs with sharp, long teeth, but longer than theirs. The teeth made its jaw jut out further. Its head was a wedge. It was tall with a long white beard and white hair, wearing a long white robe. A wizard?
“I can see you, but nobody else can. Ha ha ha!” It said. “You’re going the wrong way. You always go the wrong way, and I always show you the right way. I always do this. Why do I always do this? I shouldn’t do this, that’s what I should do, but I’m going to do this. Yes, I am! I need you. Am I sure? Yes, I’m sure! I mean, I placed The Flame around you. Yes, I did. I had to. Maybe there’s a better way? I’ve never thought of it like that. What? Yes, I have! Hee, hee! If I met you and spoke, you would become scared, and I can’t have you getting scared, then you would run away, and I wouldn’t see you, and you would get totally lost. It’s happened before. Wait, I’m not sure. Wait again. I’m totally sure. I’m sure I’m lost! No, I’m not! Stop listening to me and listen!”
This person was not a wizard, or if it was, it was a different kind of wizard than what was portrayed in books back at the village library. This changed the way Zek thought again.
“Are you going to eat us?” Zek asked.
“Eat? Why yes. Why not? Wait! I don’t eat. Nope. I don’t do that. What if I did? I think I would eat you, or what you call them, vegetables. Yes. Those icky things. How disgusting! Well, they’re good for you. Did I say that? Certainly, I didn’t and wouldn’t, but would under certain circumstances, like a story or something real like that. How can you eat green things? Green means bad. We don’t have to eat in The Flame. Nope! I would like to eat. How neat of me, eating, I mean. Are you hungry? No, you’re not, but you are as I am and am not. I’m Meeb! No, I’m not. I made that one up years ago. Funny word, Meeb. Doesn’t mean anything, quite right! I like it! I’ll stick with it. Hello! I’m Meeb, even though I’m not Meeb. Just call me Not Meeb because I like to think there’s more than two sides to me! There, settled in an unsettling way. Wait! I’m Meeb!”
Zek whispered to Thamber, “This must be one of those Monsters of the Flame. Look, he has a flower.” Thamber didn’t know what Zek was talking about. Then she saw the staff in Meeb’s hand. He was a wizard? On top of Meeb’s staff, carved into a round knob that was attached to the top of it, was the semblance of a flower. It looked like it may have been painted, but now it was just as red as The Flame.
“You’re looking at me? I’m looking at you. We’re looking at each other, then we’re looking at ourselves.” Meeb raised the flower staff. “You’re looking at this but not looking at this. You’re sneaky like adults. You’re not adults. No, they never are. Sometimes. That’s not true. Adults aren’t true. That’s why they never find it. They are meansters like me. Not like me. Nope. Yes. And they spit! Kids don’t spit. Do they?” Meeb pointed the flower staff at Zek and Thamber. “If Meeb removes your trap, do you promise not to run on your flippity flappity feet? You could walk, but don’t walk. Only waggles walk, wobbly. Wait. There is no such thing as a waggle. Yes, there is if Meeb says there is. But I’m Meeb and I haven’t said so.” Meeb waved his staff. Zek and Thamber could feel the vines retract back into the ground.
“You must follow me or unfollow me if you want to be a darn dummy or if you’re smartyier than Meeb. Meeb is the smartest unless he is not, which occurs every day, everywhere, every time.”
Zek still thought that Meeb wanted to eat them. It’s good to be cautious, but he knew he and Thamber were lost. Every direction of the forest looked the same. There was no east nor west, no north nor south. Plus, Meeb had some sort of magic. If they ran, Meeb would just tie them up with vines again.
So, what else would Thamber do? She ran! Zek stood there in shock. She was gone behind layers of The Flame in seconds. No one would be able to find her. Meeb pointed his staff in the direction she fled, and all the red bushes and trees started to rustle. Soon, a vine was moving backwards out of the brush towards Meeb, and out came Thamber on her stomach with a vine wrapped around her ankle, being pulled backwards.
“A little further or sooner, you would be gone for good and bad and be a mish-mash of red,” Meeb told Thamber. “No one gets lost today, or maybe you will lose yourself, and Meeb will be mad. Or Meeb will be happy. You must follow me, and all will be revealed and hidden, too. Ta-da.”
Zek gave Thamber a look like they had better do what Meeb said. If things got worse, they would fight.
It didn’t take long after following Meeb that Zek and Thamber noticed The Flame started to change. Slowly at first. They began to see hints of green. Leaves and grasses. They began to see the browns of tree limbs and thin branches. These hints of color dissolved into another kind of red, a dark murk, where nothing could be seen in detail. Zek and Thamber were still afraid, but both could hear a song being sung inside the murk. It was Jo’s song from the village. It was quiet and came from a distance. This relaxed them both. Such a funny feeling, to be happy and afraid at the same time.
“Thamber, can you see where we are? Strange. That voice”
“You are me, and we are you, and we are all together. I didn’t say that. Someone else did. But I said it, though. Me thinks it’s a song. But I don’t listen to music. No! Meeb does not. Music bends Meeb’s mind.”
Thamber could only think what she wanted to say, for her lips wouldn’t move. She didn’t even know where her body was, yet she felt she was a body. Her thoughts were heard by Zek, “I can hear Meeb and even Jo!” Thamber didn’t know who she was answering, yet as weird as it sounds, she did. “Whoa, I just heard something brush up against my ear, but I don’t know where my ear is.”
“I just itched my ear,” Meeb answered.
Both Zek and Thamber felt branches begin to scrape their arms as they kept moving forward without walking. Something was taking form around them, but for some reason, their eyes were closed. They felt a very cold wind, and when they opened their eyes, they saw what seemed like a very hard, rock-solid surface. It was a road, like the ones in the village, but not. It was wider and was made of a very black, wet, hard surface. Surrounding this strange street were huts like the two had never seen. They were huge with two or three levels, and their windows had weird, clear things on them.
They were not alone in the strange village. On that alien street were groups of demons or monsters or creatures. All the above. They were all about the same height as Thamber and Zek, some taller, some shorter, and there was an occasional taller one who seem to be supervising the little devils. These creatures made a lot of noise. They laughed and yelled at each other, and all the creatures seemed to be carrying bags. Perhaps that’s where they place body parts, Zek thought! Had Meeb led them to their deaths? Zek and Thamber watched the little demons go in groups up to the front of the large huts, knock on a very heavy slab, which then opened. That’s when they heard a spell uttered by these monsters. They all said it without delay to whoever was behind the large front slabs of the huge huts. “Trick or Treat!” It must have worked. Whoever was behind the large slabs dropped something into their bags.
Meeb reached down inside a pocket of his robe and pulled out two bags. They were made of a substance the two had never ever seen. The bags had handles attached to a shiny, light material. They seemed like they could hold a lot of weight, up to a point.
“You follow the others and do what the others do, and Meeb will follow the others, too, maybe. Or unfollow to who knows where. Follow, follow, follow, follow the yellow thick toad!” Indeed, one of the creatures was a yellow fat toad.
The three followed a mixed bunch of monsters up to the front door of a large hut.
“You say what they say,” Meeb told Thamber and Zek.
They were late in saying it, but they repeated the magic words. “Trick or Treat!” And the person behind the large slab had a bowl with small nuggets of something. They would throw one of the nuggets into the bags of the demons. Both Thamber and Zek received one each, too. When the other demons went their way, the person behind the slab seemed surprised by the trio.
“Wow! Where did you get those costumes? They look so real!”
Thamber and Zek just stood there, confused.
“I made them myself. Yes, I did, but I didn’t.” Meeb’s usual way of answering anything.
The man next to the door just laughed. “Well, if you did or you didn’t, whoever did, did a hell of a job. You should enter a contest.”
The other monsters ran to the next house. Both Tamber and Zek looked at the object at the bottom of their bags. Was it a magic token? Did it have something to do with the flower? What the hell was it?
“Eat it. Throw it away. Stomp on it. It can’t be killed or cooked or grown or even swing! And as Meeb knows, it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing. Did Meeb just say that? Meeb doesn’t listen to … No, no, no! Just remember to take the wrapper off.” Meeb’s mind was a very interesting mind.
The two reached down and pulled the candy from out their bags. Indeed, it seemed to be wrapped in something very similar to the bags themselves. Smooth, light and glossy, with lots of colors on it. When unwrapped, a small chocolate candy bar appeared in their hands. They both smelled it. Zek’s eyes lit up. Thamber’s eyes frowned. They both popped it in their mouths. Thamber immediately spat hers out. Zek’s eyes lit up even more.
“That’s disgusting!” Thamber said. “I rather eat asparagus!”
“It’s delicious!” Zek said.
Thamber threw hers onto the hard street. Zek chased after it, picked it up, and ate it.
“You’re disgusting, Zek.” It could’ve been Thamber or Meeb that said that.
Meeb motioned to them to keep following the creatures, door to door, hut to hut, and recite the magic words. They did this for about an hour until their bags became heavy.
“I’m giving you all my magic tokens,” Thamber told Zek.
“Whoo-hoo!” Zek started to dance. “Wait!” Zek was thinking again. “What if we must collect enough tokens to buy the flower?” This thought made him sad. He didn’t want to give up his magic tokens. Thamber changed her mind about giving hers away just in case.
They had reached the end of the street, which led up a small hill. At the dead end, the little monsters turned around, crossed the street, and started heading back, hitting up the houses on the other side. Before knocking on the door of the last house on the right, Meeb had the two turn and look in the distance. A few miles away, the two could see taller structures. Huts taller than anything, reaching into the sky. All with little lights showing in their windows. The City of Teeth, for the skyscrapers, to Zek and Thamber looked like the teeth of a giant rising into the sky.
They knocked on the door and recited the spell. In return, a couple of tall creatures responded by simply saying “Trick!” Thamber and Zek were confused. They opened their bags expecting to receive magic tokens, but it didn’t happen.
The two tall creatures said behind the door said, “Before the days of treats, kids like yourselves would play tricks on people. We want you to perform a trick.”
Meeb just played dumb, which wasn’t difficult for Meeb to do.
Thamber and Zek started jumping up and down, dancing to pretend music, rolling around doing somersaults, but the creatures just stood there unimpressed. In front of them, objects appeared, as if they were there all along. There was a package of toilet paper, two large bottles of glue with paintbrushes, a box of firecrackers, and a pail of golf balls. It was obvious they had to choose one of them.
“Let’s paint!” Thamber said. She thought the glue was paint.
“No! Look how cool those little round white balls are. They must be magic items, and they have dimples!” It didn’t take long for Thamber to be convinced. But they didn’t know what to do with them.
They didn’t have time to figure things out for before Zek could come up with something, they heard a cry and a yell. Before them, the whole landscape changed. They’d seen this before. Gone were the large huts. Gone were the hard black streets. In front of them was a vast grey plain with occasional bumps and curls, where dry sands bunched up against what appeared to be the outlines of the large huts and the street. The sand resembled the licks of flames but without the heat, without reds and yellows. The creatures and their tending adults changed as well. Their teeth having grown long and razor-sharp. Their heads elongated. In the distance, the City of Teeth was nowhere to be seen.
“The flower? It wilts as fast as it blooms. Everything that is connected is really disconnected, and everything that has become unglued is glued.” Meeb said. He was still there unchanged, and so was the pail of golf balls. “Tricks, tricks, tricks. Tsk, tsk, tsk.”
They were too late. The village had been counting on them to bring back the flower as it had been done for generations. There were tales of kids getting lost. At least that’s what the stories said. No real kids like Thamber and Zek had become lost or couldn’t get the job done. Out of frustration, Thamber picked up a golf ball and tossed it as far as she could. It seemed to disappear into the haze. It felt good to do something just because, so she threw another and another in whatever direction she felt. Zek picked up on what she was doing and joined in. Golf balls were sailing in all directions, and the weird thing about it was that the pail never became empty. There were always a few golf balls left to grab. They moved slowly, stopping occasionally, bringing the pail with them and picking spots to throw a few more. It didn’t matter what direction they threw them in. Everywhere was nowhere.
It was a flicker, like a loose electric wire that needed to be secured. The world, not their world, but the world of Trick or Treat reappeared. This occurred while Thamber was making one of the hardest tosses she had ever thrown. Instead of landing in the middle of nowhere there came a huge crash. The ball had broken one of those clear things covering a window.
The window belonged to a strange hut made entirely of the clear stuff. The window house appeared to be in the backyard of a huge hut where they had been trick-or-treating. The glass hut looked broken down. A lot of the clear stuff on the windows had been broken. Some of it wasn’t there at all. But this didn’t stop Thamber’s curiosity. She walked over and peered into the window, her golf ball had broken, and when she looked back at Zek and Meeb, it was as if she had seen a ghost. She fell to a sitting position with her back to the glass house, buried her face in her hands, and began to cry. Zek had never seen Thamber cry. She just didn’t do that.
“Can’t you hear it?” she asked Meeb and Zek as if they should be able to hear what she heard.
Zek had to see what she was talking about. He walked over to the glass house and peeked inside. Faintly, again, he heard Jo’s song and saw inside the glass house. He turned around as stunned as Thamber. Next to Meeb stood the two tall creatures who asked for the trick. It was their backyard and apparently, their glass hut.
“You have performed the trick. Now you receive your treat.” Inside the old glass house, which was so dark on the outside, was a glowing room of red, like a fake forest of The Flame. Growing in troughs were long vines emanating a bluish pulse. They were more like tubes with lights inside them. There was one anomaly. One blue flower grew smack dab in the middle of meters of vines. “It only blooms on Halloween.” They seemed to be waiting for something. “What do you say?”
“Trick or treat?” It came out in perfect unison. The greenhouse owners plucked the flower with a few inches of vine still attached, a stem, placing it gently into Thamber’s bag. Her bag was empty. All her candy had been transferred over to Zek.
***
Getting back to The Flame was as easy as it was leaving it. They followed Meeb into a thicket right next to the greenhouse. As soon as they plunged into the branches the night, this Halloween night began to brighten. Both Zek and Thamber became disconnected from themselves as they had when they left The Flame. But soon the slow glow of red covered everything. All branches, plants, and trees appeared as they normally were, a shade of red. Home. And like magic, because it probably was, the trail was in plain sight, leading up a small hill where the village sat. And without realizing it, Zek and Thamber’s teeth and heads were back to normal.
“What is near is far and what is close is closer,” Meeb said while looking into the sky.
Thamber felt a big sense of relief. They had done it. A smile came to her. One that no one could see on the outside, but it was there.
Zek was another story. “I don’t want to go home,” he said while looking down at his bag.
“But this is what we were sent to do! This is what all kids who have gone to get a flower have done! This is your duty,” Thamber proclaimed.
“I like candy!”
They had switched. Now, Thamber wanted to go home as quickly as she could, and Zek wanted to never go back. Experiences change things.
Meeb didn’t look surprised. “The City of Teeth is much different than just getting candy. There’s goo. No. There’s not any goo. Well, there might be. You’ll have to eat goo! No, you won’t. Most likely you’ll have to eat asparagus. There’s a lot of tricky things about The City of Teeth and not so many treats.” Meeb showed his teeth a bit more after the last thing he said. But Meeb wasn’t about to change Zek’s mind, and Thamber could see that Zek was set on staying.
No longer did she have her trick-or-treat bag. All she had was the flower in a small protective vase and her backpack. She began to walk slowly towards the gates of the village, giving Zek plenty of time to change his mind. He didn’t catch up to her.
***
When she entered the village, cheers rang out. Younger kids came running out of their huts, excited about anything that was different than a normal day. Jo and Div greeted her as a hero, and Jo took the flower with reverence, replacing the old, wilted one inside the transforming box. The village immediately had a brighter glow. There was light where there hadn’t been light for a long time. The Hindlemiths hugged their daughter, happy with her return. Jo pointed up to the sky, which was clear with a slight chill from the upcoming fall in the air. The stars of the Dancing Wolf appeared brighter than they had ever twinkled before. In Jo’s way, like Meeb, she was saying that everything is somehow connected, regardless of how far away they may seem.
But the Sherdmarths. They looked around Thamber and behind her. On their faces were worry and tears. Where was Zek? Mr. Sherdmarth became angry. “Where is my son, Thamber? Where is Zekeriah Sherdmarth!” He went to fetch his sword, Nemahith. He was going to go out into The Flame and search for Zek. He would kill anything that got in the way of him finding his son.
Jo and Div stopped him. “We have known the risks from the beginning.” But Sherdmarth wasn’t going to listen. He would figure out a way to find Zek even if it cost him his own life.
With one hand on the arm of Sherdmarth, calming him down, Jo asked Thamber what had happened. Why wasn’t Zek with her. Thamber couldn’t answer, for she had forgotten everything, where she had been, The City of Teeth, Meeb, The Monsters of The Flame, and why Zek had chosen to stay. It was all gone. She did remember one thing. So, she told them.
“Trick or treat.”
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