Page 35

Leopold

F ishing for Chaos was exhausting.

It wasn’t a terrible or painful task. In fact, every little bit of Chaos that Leopold reeled in felt satisfying, like adding a rare figurine to a collection or fitting a Lego piece properly into place.

And it wasn’t as if he had anything better to do with his time.

It was either Chaos-fishing, napping, watching ancient TV, or feeling sorry for himself.

Honestly, he could do two or three of those things at once, which was better multitasking than he usually managed.

But catching all those parts of himself and drawing them inward was mentally taxing. If he didn’t concentrate, those parts slipped away from him, and then he had to redo his work. He wasn’t especially good at concentrating; he’d never done much of it in the past.

So eventually he needed to take a break.

He locked his imaginary Chaos fishing reel in place so the line wouldn’t play out, and he collapsed onto the couch with a heavy sigh.

He desperately wished there was something else to distract him in this prison.

Chores to do. Food to eat. Books to read. Someone to talk to .

He’d led a fairly solitary life, not because he chose to but because his knack for causing disaster drove people away. Maybe nobody knew he was made of Chaos—that wasn’t the sort of thing most folks would assume—but they could sense something off about him. Something hazardous.

His loneliness had been painful when he was a kid and never got picked for teams or invited to birthday parties.

Things got worse after his parents died and he bounced from foster home to foster home, dragging his meager belongings in a plastic garbage bag that inevitably tore at the most inconvenient times.

By the time he reached adulthood, he told himself he was used to solitude.

Lone wolf , he assured himself. Individualist. Hardcore introvert.

He’d never been fully convinced, though.

And his recent time with Crispin had blown all of that out of the water.

Gods, it had felt so good to spend time with someone. Even if a good chunk of it had involved escaping disaster or death.

Oops. There he was, self-pitying again when he was supposed to be on break. “You’re not on the clock, Leo,” he said. “Chill.”

Easier said than done. Maybe he should get back to fishing. He had no idea how big his task would be. How much Chaos was there in the Connected Worlds?

Suddenly, an old memory resurfaced. It had been sunk deep in his unconscious since he was a kid, but now here it was, bobbing along on the surface.

When Leopold was nine—a few months before his parents’ fatal camel accident—they took him to a little cabin somewhere in the woods.

Due to limited finances and his dad’s work schedule, they rarely went on vacation, so this had been a real treat.

Even though bears broke into their car, Leopold slipped and sprained an ankle, and all three of them ended up with poison oak rashes.

In between the calamities, they’d had fun.

One day they’d fished in a river, although nobody caught anything except bushes on the opposite bank.

Dad got a fishing hook stuck in his thumb.

Leopold’s rod broke. When they took a break for lunch, a downpour began, instantly soaking them and ruining their sandwiches.

But they’d laughed almost the whole time, even when Mom tumbled into the ice-cold —but thankfully not very deep—water.

Leopold’s parents had behaved as if it was amusing that everything went wrong; Dad said something about Murphy’s Law, whoever that was.

They’d ruffled Leo’s hair and told him he was a great kid and they were glad he was there. He’d believed them.

Now, on the couch somewhere in the bowels of the Office of the Lost, Leopold let out a shaky sigh. His parents had loved him, no matter how much of a mess he was.

After a few minutes, he got up, switched on the TV, and shuffled back to the couch. He was looking for entertainment rather than advice, but if Robin or Jeannie wanted to pop back in, he wouldn’t object.

Instead he got a cartoon.

At first he was disappointed that it wasn’t SpongeBob , which had been a childhood favorite.

In fact, he still watched it now and then.

This TV, however, only seemed to receive much older shows.

Then he realized it was Rocky and Bullwinkle , and that was okay too.

His foster parents had owned parts of that series on DVD.

In this episode, Bullwinkle the moose could predict the weather via a bunion on one hoof.

Bad guys broke into the home he shared with Rocky the squirrel, bound and gagged Rocky, and started to kidnap Bullwinkle.

All of which hit a little too close to home for Leopold, considering his recent misadventures.

Intending to change the channel, he got up from the couch, but then the image on the screen shifted a little.

Instead of a cartoon, Rocky was now a live-action squirrel.

A live-action squirrel who looked really familiar.

“Minkis?”

The squirrel shook himself free of the ropes, tossed aside the gag, and scampered forward. “Chaos Man!” he squeaked.

Yeah, okay. Well, the squirrel wasn’t wrong. “How did you get inside—” Leopold stopped abruptly because those sorts of explanations weren’t important right now. “Are you all right? Is Crispy all right?”

“Acorn Man’s sad and angry and good.”

“Sad and angry?”

Minkis used a hind leg to scratch behind one ear. “He’s looking for Chaos Man.”

A puff of hope filled him. Followed by an equally strong huff of fear. “Is he angry at me?”

This time, Minkis gave him an incredulous look, as if Leopold were the stupidest person he’d ever met. “Anger at lizard man and big man that tastes….” Minkis made a gagging sound. “He loves Chaos Man.”

“Oh.” Relief felt as sweet as a delta breeze on a hot summer night. But then Leopold remembered his previous concerns. “I love him too. But I’m afraid I might have accidentally magicked him into loving me back.”

“Love always magic, silly man.”

“Okay, fine. But it’s not right to bespell someone into?—”

Minkis called him something in Squirrel that sounded distinctly unflattering. Leopold would have objected, but he was already conversing with a squirrel on television. Actually arguing with him seemed like a step too far into insanity.

“Acorn Man is for Chaos Man. Chaos man is for Acorn Man. Kismet.”

Minkis sounded so sure of himself. He could be just making this stuff up, but Leopold decided to believe him.

“Okay,” he said with a sigh. “Got it. We were meant to be . But now I’m locked up here, and he’s out there. Can he come into the TV too?” Surely if Leopold could speak directly with Crispin, they could figure this whole thing out.

But Minkis dashed his hopes. “Only Minkis.” Then he winked, which was interesting to see, made a noise like a cat trying to hawk up a hairball, and opened his mouth.

A thick little gray cloud wafted out. It floated toward the screen.

Then through the screen. And then it floated right through Leopold’s chest, where it joined the Chaos he’d reeled in.

“You ate some Chaos?” Leopold asked.

“Tastes good.” Minkis cocked his head, looking around the room, a speculative gleam in his eyes. “Does Chaos Man have acorns?”

“No, sorry. They haven’t supplied me very well here.” He gestured to indicate the mostly bare room and his mostly bare body.

“No acorns is sad.”

Leopold chuckled in spite of himself. “No Crispin is even sadder.”

Minkis made a sympathetic chittering noise. “Keep the tail bushy, Chaos Man.” He winked again and scampered offscreen. The TV clicked off.

Slightly heartened, Leopold returned to Chaos-fishing.