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GRNW Round Robin
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GRNW Round Robin part 7 by Sam Schooler
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Every chapter has been so much fun. Wonder what happens next!
Another great installment :) Super job, Sam!
"Stay alive if you want the D." Best. Line. Ever.
Baxter stared. “You . . . What,” he managed. “Wait, this happens a lot?”
Andrew gave him a long, droll look, utterly ignoring both Guy and Rodrigo. “Every week. Sometimes twice a week. I take it you’re not a regular?”
“I just moved to Seattle,” Baxter told him, which was the single most irrelevant fact in the entire history of the universe, if this library apparently opened itself up to alternate dimensions and/or realities every week. Out of all the cities and all the libraries, Baxter had to pick this one.
“Oh,” Andrew said. “Well, good luck with that.” He hugged Unraveling the Curse to his chest and turned to traipse back into the thick of the jungle, the sound of creaking wood preceding him, like the forest was springing up step by step to encompass him.
“Whoa, hey!” Baxter scrambled up, leaving the still-glowing coin in the sand. “We need that!”
Andrew barked out a laugh. When he stopped, the foliage was so thick that leaves covered his shoulders, draping over his arms. They were strangely, uh, familiar with him. But then again, he’d just said giant spiders made regular appearances at this place, so overly friendly plants probably weren’t too far a stretch.
“No way,” Andrew said, squeezing the book tighter. “This needs reshelving.”
“Look, sir,” Baxter said, throwing a hand out. “There are no shelves.” It wasn’t a lie. Where there had been shelves before, rows and rows of them knocked over or in the process of being knocked over, there was an odd clear darkness, the sharp outlines of things yet to be . . . created? Outlines, but the rest was shadowed. Forms that lacked filling. Negative space. Baxter’s head hurt looking at it, so he stared at Andrew instead, trying to sound more commanding, less pathetic. “We’re shelf-less right now. And I really, really need that. Please.”
“No.”
“I will take that,” Guy said, “good gentleman, as my cue.” He darted past Baxter, the pistol he’d had earlier fitted into one hand. He had Andrew by the arm before he could even try getting away, and Rodrigo, their squabble over Baxter temporarily set aside, moved in to take the book from Andrew’s arm.
Andrew squirmed, fury warping his face. “Disrespectful! Books have their place here. Books have guardians.” He squirmed again, his neat white teeth bared, and managed to rock Guy off balance, twisting free the second the grip on his arm went loose. “No matter what they do to us,” he said, backing into the trees, “we have to protect them.”
Then he was gone, the faint sound of cracking wood marking his departure.
At least he didn’t vanish into thin air.
At least one thing wasn’t totally, irredeemably weird today.
Aside from, you know, the moving forest and the two incredibly hot dudes standing there. Both of whom had a vested interest in kissing Baxter’s face and then arguing loudly about it while they were being hunted down by other dudes.
“Well,” Baxter said. “That was fun.” He held his hand out for the book without thinking, and Rodrigo handed it over, laying it face-up. Its embossed cover was a little worse for the wear, sure, but it wasn’t in terrible condition.
In Baxter’s opinion, he’d done a lot less to this book than it had done to him. Sure, Rodrigo and Guy were . . . well, great, but the stabbing, shoot, cannon-blasting, sand-appearing? Not so great. Around this point, Baxter was pretty sure he’d rather be waking up in Marcus’s arms in the hospital, half dead from food poisoning.
Especially when a flare of light caught his eye, and the coin started eating a hole down into the sand.
“No!” Rodrigo dove for it, tattered shirt flapping, and landed rough, sending sand spraying. “No, no, ah . . .” He dug his hands into the sand as Guy slid down to his knees next to him, despair crawling across his face.
Baxter’s stomach sank to his feet. “What—I mean, it’s . . . That’s just what I was supposed to use to call you, right?” he said, looking to Guy. “It’s fine, you’re here now!”
“That coin,” Guy said, watching Rodrigo dig uselessly for it. “It is more than that, it . . . It calls us.” He put a hand in the center of his ribs, over his diaphragm. “Here. It—”
“Holds us here,” Rodrigo finished.
So all of this was tied to the coin? “What about this, though?” Baxter said, holding the book out. “This one, and the other book. The Black Burt book. I thought these were why you’re here.”
“They are why we’ve come to this place,” Guy said. He patted Rodrigo’s shoulder and pushed upright. He was glazed with sweat, and his hair had come loose from its tie. It curled, Baxter noticed. “Why we traversed lands from our ship to this place—we need the tome. But the coin is what will take us back. With the book in arms.”
Baxter’s stomach dropped again. It was certainly getting its exercise today. It and him both. Only this time, Baxter wasn’t sure if he was disappointed because the coin was gone, or because there was a definite time limit set on Guy and Rodrigo being here. If Andrew was what Seattle had to offer in normal people, Baxter would stick with the pirates, thanks.
“So now what?” He stared at the hole in the sand, and at the darkness beyond. Was all that why Rodrigo had been trying to stop him from touching the coin? Touch it too much in their presence and . . . what? It started dragging their world here? “Did you . . . So wait, you literally just met me and handed me a coin with that much power?”
Guy grinned at him, his dimples flashing under his stubble. He wouldn’t be half as charming if everything he didn’t wasn’t so painfully roughish. “You struck me as worthy of trust, guapo.”
Woosh. Well. Baxter hoped he still struck that way, because so far all he’d managed to do was get them shot at a lot. Or—well, no, that was still the book’s fault. Wasn’t it?
“So now what?” he repeated.
“The coin,” Rodrigo said, his voice hoarse. He stood, too, and looked into the shapeless darkness. “A fight we’ll have.”
“A fight we haven’t been having?” Baxter gaped.
“Pike and Black Burt are high foes,” Guy said, “but without the coin, the vastness will have trapped us all.”
Baxter looked at the floor. The singed sand. Down there. That was where they had to go. Or maybe . . . “Into the forest?” he tried, turning to it. Rodrigo and Guy looked with him, and he wasn’t gonna lie, here, it was sort of a thrill, having two hella handsome, capable, strong pirates following his lead . . . even though he had practically no idea what he was doing.
All he knew was that he had the book, and what had Andrew said? Books had guardians? That meant right now, Baxter was the guardian of this book—and that meant he had a responsibility for it, and for these two hella handsome, capable, strong pirates, tangled curly hair and sweaty chests and all.
“Out there be monsters,” Guy said. In response, the forest’s leaves rustled. Baxter took a step back, and Guy brought his pistol up, ready to fire. But nothing came out, and a moment later, the leaves settled . . . enough for Baxter to feel the vibration of heavy, heavy footsteps through the floorboards. “Out there be monsters coming,” Guy corrected.
Right. Okay.
“Um,” Baxter said, “we should probably run.”
“At once,” Rodrigo agreed.
“Mrnghgrngh,” Guy said.
Baxter yelped as he turned and saw Guy struggling to climb out of the rapidly shifting sand, the coin’s vanishing point gobbling him faster than Baxter could follow. He leapt to grab Guy, try to pull him up, and Rodrigo was right next to him, but the moment they all locked hands, weight heaved down on them, driving Baxter and Rodrigo to their knees and then under.
So, as they were all swallowed up by sand, here was Baxter’s revised intended life accomplishments list:
1. Get away from the monsters that be coming
2. Find the coin
3. Use the book??? (you must read from the book)
4. Potentially have sex with one and/or two pirates . . .
5. If they lived (stay alive if you want the D)
Seemed doable.