Queraline Chp 20

Chapter 20

Escape Plan B

Though waking up in the same place was a setback it didn't ruin Querl's plan to go home and not return to this other world. The next logical step was to try and leave the way he arrived; through the little door.

Everything was oddly still and quiet outside of Querl's room, even for it still being night time there. Each step was carefully placed to try and keep it that way, so not to alert the Other Mother of his awaken status.

It was unfortunate that the doors to the formal living room were locked, blocking Querl from getting to the little door. He was sure he could break the door open but that would cause more noise than he was willing to risk at the moment.

After a moment, Querl snuck outside and headed in the direction of the Kent Farm. The Kents were the landlords of the Pink Palace in his world; maybe their duplicates would have a skeleton key to the house?

Shortly after the garden, there was a distinct meow that came from by his ankles, Querl looking down to see Tinya, as a cat, looking up at him.

"And where do you think you're going?" Tinya asked, it no longer surprising Querl that she could talk.

"To the Kents," Querl suggested toward where the farm would be.

"Have you met the Kents?" asked Tinya.

"You mean besides Clark?" Querl asked in return, and then shook his head, "No."

"Then you won't find them here," Tinya stated.

That didn't make any sense. Even though Querl hadn't met the Kents he knew where they lived; they were just up the road from the Pink Palace. Surely the Farm would still be in the same place in his parallel world.

Yet the further Querl walked away from the Pink Palace the brighter things became. Or perhaps "whiter" would be more accurate. Trees and even the sky and ground slowly lost detail until they were nothing but dangling threads and soon even that was gone. Everything was white around them like a blank canvas.

"I don't understand," Querl looked around, trying to see anything besides his own body and the cat beside him. "Shouldn't the old well be here?"

The question made Tinya laugh and Querl turned to her. She was back to being a girl with cat ears. Her white bled into the nothingness and her black looked like an ink stain while her skin became paler, almost transparent. She looked like a ghost.

When she was done laughing, Tinya turned her ink blot eyes to Querl, "Nothing out here. It's the empty part of his world. She only made what she knew what would impress you."

"But why," Querl asked, "Why does she want me?"

"She wants something to love," Tinya shrugged, "I think." She ran her clawed fingers through Querl's hair as she floated in the nothingness besides Querl as he walked through it, "Something that isn't her." Her smile darkened, running a claw down Querl's throat and over his Adam's apple. "Or maybe she'd just love something to eat."

"Eat?" Querl stepped to the side, away from the claw, but kept walking beside her. "That's ridiculous; Mother's don't eat sons."

Still with her dark smile, Tinya narrowed her eyes as she looked him over, "I don't know; how do you taste?"

Though Tinya laughed, Querl shivered watching her float slightly ahead of him just as something started to form in front them. Just ahead was the outline of the Pink Palace, looking a bit like a page out of a coloring book he had seen back in the orphanage. In a sort of crackling motion the Pink Palace and everything they had left behind colored in and reformed before him.

"But how can you walk away from something and still come back to it?" Querl wanted to scream at the nonsense of it all but all he heard in his own voice was disbelief.

"Walk around the world," Tinya suggested around them, it all looking as real and solid as it did on Querl's previous visits.

"Small world," Querl truly felt that it was shrinking in on him as they spoke.

From somewhere near them there was the sound of a little trumpet. Before Querl could question it, Tinya leapt forward, into the bushes, her body shrinking back to a cat as she pounced upon the source of the noise. From the bushes ran out one of the Other Reep mice, trying to blow its trumpet again.

Querl watched as Tinya pounced upon the Other Reep Mouse again, playing with it like a typical cat would. It still surprised him though when she caught the orange, green button eyed rodent in her mouth and bit down with her fangs, making an audible crunch of the mouse's life ending.

Immediately Querl wanted to protest but instead gasped when the mouse grew, twisting into a rat and sand poured out of its mouth like a broken doll.

Almost as if spitting it out, Tinya threw the rat to the ground and licked her paw.

"I don't like rats at the best of times but this one was sounding an alarm."

Not waiting for a further response, Tinya picked up her kill and scurried off with it into the darkness.

"Good kitty," Querl felt grateful but couldn't find it in himself to smile. He looked back toward the Other Pink Palace and took a deep breath. "It's time for Plan C."