"Good boy. And now I must fade away as if I were never here in the first place, leaving you to doubt your own memory and sanity. But when you think you might have imagined the whole thing, you'll need to merely gaze upon the lengthy scar I'm going to leave upon your leg, as proof positive that this whole encounter did indeed occur."

"Given the choice, I'd rather not have the scar."

"Oh. Okay, then. Fair enough. I'd practiced for months to be able to have that kind of influence over the physical plane, but no matter. Best of luck with your journey, my son. I know that you'll make it home safely."

And then he faded away, as if he'd never been there in the first place.

Nathan cried a little bit, because he desperately missed his mother and father. But he would be okay. He would get to see his new family and friends again.

He began to walk.

There are some tales that demand an epic length. Their complexity of storyline and depth of character are so immense that every detail must be shared with the reader, lest some crucial element be lost. These tales can go on for thousands of pages and remain enthralling for each and every one of them, and when the tale reaches its final word, the reader feels disappointed, wishing the experience could last even longer, perhaps immediately returning to the first page to begin the story anew.

This particular tale, however, benefits from some compression. Therefore, though it was highly eventful and ripe with adventure, we shall skip the majority of Nathan's journey back home. Some of it was, quite frankly, redundant to other parts that have already been told. For example, there was a great deal of walking around in the woods that was not notably different from the section earlier on where he was lost in the woods for a year. Also, there was another chase on a horse. The circ.u.mstances that led to him overcoming his distrust of horses were fairly interesting, and the chase itself was a cavalcade of thrills, but again, it was remarkably similar to the horse chase wherein Steamspell, Kleft, and Mongrel lost their lives, and is best glossed over.

And so we will resume our story as Nathan walked onto the outskirts of the town of Giraffe Pool. His skin had indeed changed back to its natural pinkish color. And his teeth were loose. All of them.

He'd noticed this the same day he'd been thawed. All of his teeth were a little wobbly. He supposed that it made sense-if he was actually eighteen years old, then all of his baby teeth should have fallen out long ago, so this was his body trying to catch up.

By the time he reached the outskirts of town, half of them had fallen out, leaving several gaps in his smile. He gazed into a pool of water and decided that he looked even more horrific this way, like a fanged hillbilly.

He kept the teeth, and when he would sit down to rest he would add each new arrival to a necklace. Though it seemed morbid, it was preferable to keeping them in his pocket and constantly getting poked.

(Also, the moment in which he stole a new set of clothes from a clothesline was fraught with suspense-the dog almost got him!-but was ultimately too similar to the other moment in which he stole clothing.) The town seemed somehow different. There was more mold than he'd remembered. More litter in the streets. More people breaking windows, ducking into stores, and leaving with their arms full of goods that were clearly not paid for. More screaming. More gunshots. More examples of the elderly being shoved to the ground and clubbed over the head.

It was as if the entire town had gone mad.

Nathan just stood there, staring at the chaos and destruction, wondering what could possibly have happened.

He ducked out of the way as an ocelot was hurled at his face.

"What has happened here?" he cried out, hoping that by asking this question out loud instead of merely wondering about it, he might get an answer.

"Cover your nose!" shouted a man, right before he jabbed a corn dog into somebody's nose.

Had Nathan been a key force in maintaining the sanity of the town? Had things degenerated as soon as he left? Was it possible that though people considered him a freak, he was in fact the only thing maintaining the status of normalcy?

The answer to these questions is: no.

Dr. Thompson, who careful readers will remember had been Nathan's physician as a child, had retired the previous autumn, intending to live out the rest of his years doing absolutely nothing. This worked out well for a few months, until he realized that a complete and utter lack of activity, while appealing in concept, was rather dull. And so, upon his wife's urging, he began to test out random scientific experiments. Most of the results were buried in his backyard. But while experimenting with water purification, he discovered a chemical that would turn murky, contaminated water into water that was pure and crystal clear.

His initial thought was to use this discovery to benefit towns that had a poor quality water supply. Then he decided that perhaps he should use it on towns such as his own, whose water was quite good, and create a water supply that was so astonishingly pure and crystal clear that drinking it would create a town of intellectually and physically superior beings, perhaps even with psychic abilities.

Considering how difficult it was to gain access to the main water supply into which to pour the chemical, one might think that Dr. Thompson would have taken the time to test it on an individual before he gave it to the townspeople en ma.s.se. That thought did occur to him, and he wasn't quite sure why he'd ignored it. Perhaps, deep inside, he craved the thrill of not knowing how hundreds of people would react to ingesting his experimental chemical.

They reacted by going insane and embarking on sprees of violence and destruction.

"Excuse me," said Nathan to a man who was running past. "Can you tell me what's going on?"

"To the best of my knowledge, it's the end of mankind." The man's eyes widened. "Aren't you...no, it can't be...it's not possible...there's just no way...it simply cannot be...are you Nathan Pepper's younger brother?"

"No, I'm..." Nathan suddenly realized who he was speaking to. "Are you Jamison?"

"Nathan?"

"Jamison! You didn't die while I was away!"

"Nathan! This is incredible! Apart from the several missing fangs, you look exactly the same! Which would be a compliment if we were in our forties, but since we're eighteen, it's somewhat eerie and off-putting."

A woman ran up to them. "I will eat eighty magic markers before the day is through! Don't tell me I won't!" She growled and ran away.

"Is there somewhere we can go and talk?" Nathan asked.

"Yes, I was running toward safe haven when you first spoke to me. As far as I know, there are no insane people in the Department of Motor Vehicles. Let's hide there."

There were, in fact, two insane people in the DMV, but they knocked each other unconscious shortly after Nathan and Jamison entered the building. They hurried behind the vacant counter and crouched down out of sight.

"So, Nathan, is it really truly you?" Jamison asked. "Or have I gone mad as well?"

"It's me." Nathan was astonished at the physical appearance of his best friend. Jamison was no longer thin and sickly. He was handsome, muscular, and had an aura of self-confidence that had been missing when he was a dying little boy. "Did they find a cure for your disease?"

Jamison shrugged. "Every two weeks I went in for my doctor's appointment, and every two weeks they were reluctant to schedule another appointment because they doubted I would still be alive to keep it. But I did not die. My parents are very organized people and liked to plan ahead, so they purchased larger and larger caskets, but I continued to grow and continued to not die. Finally I decided that it probably wasn't going to happen. I'm not living my life as if I'm immortal-Gordon tried that, and it earned him a face full of bottle rockets-but I'm also not living it as if I'm dying. So why do you still look seven?"

"I was frozen in ice."

"Were you really?"

"Yes. Just like a box of fish sticks."

"My word. If the citizens of this town weren't running around in a state of deranged frenzy, that would be the oddest thing I'd heard all day."

"Do you know what has caused it?"

Jamison shook his head. "I was just about to have a cool refreshing gla.s.s of water from the tap to help me think, when somebody burst into my home with an electric carving knife. It wasn't plugged in and they don't make cordless models, but the blades were no less sharp. Since then I've been on the run."

"How terrible."

"I'm glad you're back," said Jamison. "Even though I no longer need pity friendship, I'm glad you're back."

"Thank you." And now it was time to finally ask the question for which Nathan wasn't sure he truly wanted to know the answer. "Penny and Mary. How are they?"

Jamison frowned. "The Poor House is a dark, dark place, and once you've gone to live there, it's very hard to get free."

"But has it been attacked by those afflicted?"

"I don't know. I mean, I literally just got away from the man with the electric carving knife. If I'd known you'd suddenly show after eleven years, I would have checked up on the Poor House, absolutely, but otherwise it wasn't the first thing on my mind."

"I have to go to them."

Jamison nodded. "I understand. You'd be a reprehensible scoundrel if you didn't."

"Will you go with me?"

"Of course I will."

They peeked over the top of the counter. A woman with a shotgun walked past the entrance, but she didn't come inside.

"We need a plan," said Nathan.

"No, we'll be fine without one. It's really just a matter of avoiding people. Move quickly, no unnecessary shouting, don't close your eyes for extended periods of time...basic stuff like that."

"Doesn't that count as a plan?"

"Those are just safety precautions. See, when you become as old as I am you'll realize these things." Jamison considered that. "Are you eighteen or seven? How does that work?"

"I think I'm considered an eighteen-year-old in a seven-year-old's body. I'll have to use disclaimers for the rest of my life."

"Wow. That's going to get tiresome."

"I know. As if the teeth didn't give me enough to deal with."

"Well, it could be worse. At least you know about things like fire and yogurt. Can you imagine if you'd be frozen eleven thousand years ago instead of eleven? You wouldn't even understand what I'm saying right now, because I'm using words instead of grunts."

"Or if I'd been frozen for eleven thousand years starting eleven years ago. It would be a world of s.p.a.ceships and robots that train pigeons to do their bidding."

"Yes. Well. The pa.s.sage of time has obviously created a distinct difference in our maturity levels, so let's focus on the task at hand."

They left the building and hurried down the street.

"Do you think the citizens will get better?" Nathan asked.

"I'm not sure."

"We should approach this matter as if they are going to get better, and not maim anybody."

"I agree," said Jamison. "We wouldn't want to have a pile of corpses at our feet and find out that their sanity could be restored with a nap."

Fewer crazed citizens attacked them than Nathan would've thought-it was approximately six or seven, and he would've expected twelve or even thirteen. Fortunately, the fact that these citizens were insane made them relatively easy to outwit and escape.

"May I ask you a potentially awkward question?" asked Jamison, as they jogged away from a middle-aged woman who was throwing cans of carbonated beverages at them.

"Absolutely."

"Why didn't you call?"

"Excuse me?"

"I don't mean while you were frozen in the ice. But after you became unfrozen, why didn't you give somebody a heads-up that you were on your way back to town? I'm not bothered by it or anything; it just seems like it would have been a natural part of the homecoming process."

"I honestly have no answer for that."

"Fair enough."

A man ran at them, wielding a pair of beagles. They evaded him and moved on.

"There," said Jamison, pointing ahead with a trembling finger. "That's where you'll find poor Penny and poor Mary."

"But it's not even a house!"

Jamison gave him a sad nod. "If only they could afford a house."

It was a hole in the ground, about two feet wide. They walked over to the edge and peered downward into the thick, impenetrable darkness.

"Is there a ladder?" Nathan asked.

"Ladders cost money."

The tears began to flow and there was nothing Nathan could do to stop them. "There isn't even a welcome mat, or a mailbox. They've been living in a pit because of me! A pit! They took me in, fed me, clothed me, forced me to become partially educated, and treated me with nothing but kindness, and because of it they're living in a miserable dark pit!"

"I would comfort you and say that it wasn't your fault," said Jamison. "But...well, you know..."

"I'm going to make this right," Nathan vowed. "I won't merely get them out of this pit. I'm going to give them a life of luxury, where they live in a mansion and have twenty-five servants and unlimited grapes and where their salt comes from exotic lands yet they pour it out just to amuse themselves!"

There was a scream of terror from within the pit.

"That sounded like Penny!" Nathan exclaimed. Actually, it didn't, not even close, but Nathan had gotten himself worked up and was ready for action. Jamison seemed to understand that Nathan needed to pretend that the scream, which quite clearly belonged to a stranger, belonged to somebody who'd loved him and cared for him, and so he did not contradict him.

"Shall I come with you?" Jamison asked. "Or is this something you must do on your own?"

"Oh, no, I definitely want you to come along," said Nathan. "My conscience will be just as eased if you end up saving them. I'm thinking about the end result and not the process. But I'll go first."

And with that, Nathan took a deep breath, held his nose, and jumped into the pit.

TWENTY-TWO.

He plummeted in the darkness for so long that he started to worry that his bones might be shattered upon hitting the bottom. The dest.i.tute residents of town would certainly be less of an inconvenience to the wealthy residents if their bones were all broken and they merely flopped around in this pit. But he'd heard screams, so somebody was alive down there.

Splat!