“You bet.” Her finger’s moving faster now, the glass of the memory quilt crackling as the symbols fly so fast and furiously she can barely keep track of all the weird shapes, how they’re knitting and weaving together: swhiri, molumdode, czitl. Teoxit. “Yes. I’m here. Talk to me, Daddy,” she says at the same time she’s drawing and thinking hard, I want this; I’ve got the Sign of Sure and I want this. Want me, use me, take me instead of …
“L-L-Lizzie?” Dad says, only hesitantly, as if he’s never had a voice and just decided to give this a try for the very first time. “H-honey?”
“Dad!” Lizzie’s heart leaps because it’s her dad, it is. Caulat! her finger screams. Stim syob duxe! “Daddy, it’s me!”
“No, Lizzie,” her mother says, “it’s not—”
“L-Liz … Lizzie?” Dad’s voice wobbles. “Lizzie, is that y-you?”
“Yes.” Her lips are quivering, and her eyes burn, but she can’t cry, she mustn’t cry now; she has to focus and be sure; she has to be quick. Frit. Yaanag. “Daddy, listen, I want to tell you a story. Are you listening?”
“Yes, I’m … I’m listening, honey. I’m … yes, I’m here,” her daddy says, but she can tell he’s not really, not all the way. He’s still down deep. Well, she’s going to fix that. Oh boy, just you wait and see.
“Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Lizzie,” she says. Ptir. Zisotin. “And she loved her daddy very, very much. Her daddy wrote books—scary, scary books—but she didn’t care, because no matter what he did, he was still her daddy.” Smin trevismin. “Lizzie thought he was very, very brave to reach into the Dark Passages where the monsters live—and she wanted to be just like him. So she tried really hard to make new Nows.”
“What?” her mother says. “What?”
Riwr. “She drew adventures and she gave her dolls names and she grabbed them from her daddy’s book-worlds, and they all went away to other Nows together.” Pripper.
“My God,” her mother whispers, “you used the dolls? You switched? Lizzie, how did you do that?”
“But th-then …” Lizzie falters, the zared only halfway to being. “Then …”
“Go on,” her dad says, like a little kid. He’s much closer now. “What happens next?”
She swallows. Come on, come on, don’t stop now. She watches her hand move—down, up, cross, swizzuloo—and complete the zared. “Then, one summer, it was really hot and dry and the plants were thirsty and she wanted to help. So she did something she’d never tried before. She made a storm, a big storm, a monster storm from a different Now, and she brought it back.”
“Oh God,” her mother says.
“You did that?” Dad whispers—and is he crying? She hopes so, but she’s not sure. “Honey, it rained for three days straight. There were kayaks on Main Street.”
“Oh boy, I know.” She has stopped drawing. Her arm is tired, but her finger is fire and strange electric tingles ripple over her skin, stroking the hair on her arms and along her neck. Her brain is as white-hot as the sun. “I was really dumb. And the crazy lady in the attic: I did her, too. I made her move the block to a different story.”
“What?” her mother says.
“How?” Her dad sounds way interested now.
“You said there was a writer’s block,” Lizzie said, “and I thought, okay, I’ll just get her to suck the block out of your story and cough it up way high in the attic where you can’t see. That’s why she was all inky and dirty. She kept slurping down your block whenever it started to get bad again.”
“Oh my God,” her mother says, a touch of wonder in her voice now. “A house has stories. You took it literally. The attic is a different story.”
That’s it; that’s exactly it. Lizzie clutches the phone. “So don’t you see, Daddy? You don’t need the whisper-man anymore. You have me. I’m all the Sign of Sure you need. I’ll help you.” Her eyes brush the symbols, pulsing and swarming through the air. They are good and well-formed, and now she can see that they are beginning to go purpling mad. Good. Purpling mad is rare; purpling mad is the color of energy and power and thought-magic. “We can make book-worlds and go to other Nows together.”
“No,” her mother says.
“You will?” Dad laughs, like, Wow, there goes a butterfly! “Oh, that’s exactly what I need. Are you sure? You have to want this, sweetie. You have to be sure.”
“I’m sure.” Hot tears splash her cheeks. “I want you, Daddy. I love you. I’m so, so sorry I got you in trouble.”
“That’s okay, sweetie, I’ve got you,” he says. “Now, come home, honey. Concentrate and come to Daddy, and we’ll build great worlds.”
“I will, Daddy, I will, but you have to make the whisper-man go away. Send him back. Put his fog where it belongs and Momma will bring us home.”
“Oh, well now,” her dad says, “I can’t do that.”
She knew it. She had this really bad feeling: this story was too good to be true. Jumgit. “Why not?” she asks, not that she really wants to know. She’s got to keep her dad interested just a little while longer …
“Because I like him,” Dad says, simply, the way he says, Oh look, there’s a bug. “He’s my friend.”
“No, Daddy.” She’s running out of time. The fog is almost on them. The shapes flying from her finger are the right ones; they have to be. “No, no, Daddy, it can only be us.”
“Oh, don’t be silly, there’s plenty of room. He’s my friend and you’re my daughter and so he’s yours and you’re mine, Lizzie; you’re mine, and I see you.” His voice is changing again, crooning and thinning to a whisper: “Peekaboo, I see you, Lizzie. I see you.”
“I see you, too, Daddy,” Lizzie says, picking up the cadence, chanting the mantra. Sk’lm. “I see you—”
“I see you, so come and play, Lizzie. Come play …”
“Come …” She falters, the symbol she’s sketching only halfway to being. What was she supposed to do next? “Come play …”
“Yesss, Blood of My Blood, Breath of My Breath, come play, Lizzieee; come, let’s plaaay a game; come and—”