Free Somewhither: A Tale of the Unwithering Realm by John C. Wright

firefly dots of light, like sometimes you see when you splash something on a red stove burner in that kitchen that intimidates you, started to appear in some of the bands of color around the mouth of the Coil.
    The voice of Penny seemed weird because it was so calm. Of course, she did not know why I was shouting. She did not know she was in the line of fire from a death ray. The concrete wall was in the way, and the wine shelves.
    “Mr. Marmoset? Is that you?”
    She has a faint accent or rhythm to her speech, a very precise pronunciation. It reminds me of the way Bollywood Actresses follow British pronunciation, but sound too musical and rich to be Englishwomen.
    “It’s Muromets! MUROMETS!” I shouted back, “The machine is dangerous: it is leaking some sort of radiation! Go out the back way. Don’t go back in the workroom! RUN!”
    She did not run. Instead she crossed her arms (which pushed up her bosom ever so slightly) and turned her foot to one side (which cocked her hips ever so slightly) and tapped her foot impatiently (which emphasized the curve of her nylon-clad calf ever so slightly).
    “Mr. Marmoset, who sent you?”
    “The Professor!”
    “How much did he tell you?”
    Strange. That was exactly what my father had said. Everyone seemed worried about other people not telling me things.
    I am sure there was an innocent explanation for it, and that this creepy feeling like Arctic ants crawling over my spine was totally an overreaction. No doubt the town of Tillamook decided to hold a holiday where, once a year, everyone keeps a bunch of secrets from just one unfortunate dupe, and today it just so happened to be my day.
    “He told me
everything
!” I said this, not because it was true, but because I wanted her to listen to me. I made a mental note to tell that next time I went to confession also. “Your father told me most of all to get you out of danger!”
    She looked thoughtful. “Ah—my
father
—perhaps is not in the best of health at this moment—I am sorry if he frightened you, Mr. Marmoset, but everything is under control.”
    I should have known. Of course he told her about the danger. She was his daughter. And of course she did not believe him. If she had, she would not have been here in the first place.
    The Coil got a little brighter. The ring of colors was now solid. The throbbing, thrumming rose a note in pitch.
    “Miss Dreadful! It’s
Muromets
! We can talk about this when you are a hundred yards away from the building! Move it!
Now
!”
    She did that thing girls with escaping hair sometimes do to blow a strand away from their eyes. It involves pursing your lips as if whistling while pouting and turning your eyes up and tossing your head back slightly. It looks adorable on any sufficiently pretty girl.
    “Don’t call me Dreadful. It sounds ridiculous. I understand the phenomena I am dealing with, and I am safe from any danger. The seaward of the in carnie ’twould baas the danger of ass troll gee from the Direct Hour.”
    I thought for a moment that my ears were dyslexic. I tried to sort out the sounds of her lilting accent in my head the way you do when you are not sure if Jimi Hendrix just sang
Excuse me while I kiss the sky
or
Accuse me while I kiss this guy
.
    The crazy words finally clicked into place, but they did not make any more sense to me.
The seaward of the Incarnate World bars the danger of astrology from the Dark Tower
. Or maybe the first word was
Sea Ward
.
    “Are you out there? Please come in. You can assist me in drawing down the twilight … If my father told you his plan, he doubtless failed to mention mine is the safer and wiser…”
    And she started to move away from the fuse box. She took a step toward the narrow passage running past the empty wine shelves from the generator area to the basement room.
    Closer to the death ray.
    I was expecting her to melt into a skeleton before my eyes any second. I realized I had wasted half a minute. I could have sprinted to