//------------------------------// // Chapter 3 // Story: Wonderbox // by GaPJaxie //------------------------------// When Avery held a rock in front of her face, she transformed into a rock. She couldn’t see it. She felt stupid, hiding like a particularly dimwitted child would hide, thinking that if she couldn’t see the others they couldn’t see her. Yet, it was true. Her friends took turns confirming it with the deer mask. When Cassidy plucked a sapling from the ground and held it in front of her face, she transformed into a sapling. Yet, strangely, the actual sapling did not move. To the deer’s vision, Cassidy hadn’t actually broken anything, and there were two identical saplings. But the changelings agreed, she had taken something, and the first sapling was no longer any good to them. Shakti used this ability to turn into a rock to sneak up on several unsuspecting songbirds, and with the power of the deer’s antlers, he captured them and broke their necks. Like the deer, they appeared as puppets, but there were relevant subtleties. Avery could wear their masks, somehow, impossibly, but they felt uncomfortably small, and according to her friends she was a freakishly large and distinctly ugly songbird. Lorin made the songbird’s wings into necklaces, and the changelings found that wearing them, they could fly. Not very well, but their hole-filled insect wings moved their bodies, and they instinctively understood how to move in the air. So it was that they rose above the treetops. They could see no end to the mountains, but Avery spotted a road passing through them, and the knowledge that they were not alone filled the group with something like joy. They could not fly for long. It was physically exhausting, and they’d all been two full days without food. Extended exertion made them faint, and Lorin once fainted when he tried to power through it. But to reach the road, they decided it was worth the expenditure. It would have taken over a day to reach the road on hoof, but their stolen powers of flight let them do it in a matter of hours.  The road was primitive, a dirt thing with deep wheel-ruts carved down the center, but evidently recently trafficked. They picked a direction, and started walking. It didn’t take long to find other travelers. There was still a good hour of daylight left when they heard the sound of hoofbeats and wagon wheels coming the other way. At once, their pace accelerated. “Hey!” Avery called, before the travelers even came into sight. “Hello, are you there!?” “We need help!” Cassidy called. “Where are you!?” shouted Shakti. From around the bend came three puppets which vaguely approximated horses, though not much more so than the insects did. One was pink, one was blue, one was snow white. Two pulled a wagon behind them, and of those, one had a unicorn horn strapped to its head with a chin-strap. The third, the snow-white one, hovered alongside the others on a proud set of wings attached to its featureless torso with a leather harness. They moved like puppets too. Jerky, unnatural, not so much walking on the ground as moving their legs while they faintly hovered over it. But they had clothes, tools, the one with the horn had glasses. They were people, and despite a growing pit of fear in her chest, Avery called out to them. “Hello! Hello. Please, we’re lost and we need help.” But puppets don’t talk. Pulled by invisible strings, the flying one drew a sword in its teeth, and with theatrically exaggerated alarm shouted: “■■■■■■■■■■■!” Thinking quickly, Avery put on the deer mask. The macabre show vanished, replaced with the sight of three panicking magical horses. Though one had a weapon drawn, none of them had the demeanor of soldiers, panicking and shouting as the two with the cart tried to pull themselves out of their harnesses. “It’s okay!” Avery called out in a voice not her own. The deer’s voice was deep, scratchy, and distinctly male. It had been a buck, after all. “We’re friendly. We’re your friends, see?” Later, it would occur to her what it must have been like for the three strange horses. A monstrous insect grew the head of a deer and started talking about how friendly it was. She didn’t blame them for how they reacted. The winged one threw its sword at her, and she had to stumble back to avoid being hit. “Run, just run!” she could understand it now, it was female, a mare, and panicked. The one with the horn screamed and wrenched its harness off its body. “Help me!” cried the other one stuck in the straps. The horn on the other one glowed, the straps suddenly came undone, and both cart-pullers were free. All three horses fled back up the road, the flying one hovering just above its friends. “Wait!” Avery took after them in the heat of the moment. “We’re friendly, really. We just need some help!” But Shakti, who still had the deer’s antlers, grabbed her with the telekinesis and pulled her back. “If you chase them,” he snapped, “it will only make them more certain you want to hurt them. They already threw a knife at you.” Avery struggled, crying out that they could make it work, but the others did not support her, and by the time she escaped Shakti’s grip the three ponies were long gone. “Hey, I’m Cassidy,” Cassidy said, looking into Avery’s face. She had nothing to take from the deer, and so she still had compound eyes and features the same as all the others. She had to remind Avery who she was. “I’m your roommate. Remember. We know each other?” “Cassidy, we’re gonna die out here,” Avery said, panicked and breathless. “We’re starving. We need to—” “I think we might be monsters,” Cassidy cut her off. Silence hung over the group for a moment. Someone was panting. “I know we’re… ugly,” Avery said. “But everything in this world is ugly. The deer the… the horse things. It’s just a freaky, macabre—” “No,” Cassidy cut her off, voice firm. “The deer wasn’t ugly. It wasn’t some freaky puppet. It was normal. The problem was our eyes, not the rest of the world. The… magical little horses? Ponies I guess? They were the same way, right? I only saw puppets, but when you put the mask on, they were flesh and blood, right?” Avery weakly nodded, and Cassidy continued. “And we can’t eat.” “Well… the plants on the mountain were just…” Avery paused. “Bad.” “And the deer was just rotten?” “Of course it was rotten,” Avery snapped. “We don’t know how long it had been lying there.” “And the birds?” “What, you expected a wild songbird to taste like chicken parmesan?” Avery’s tone grew increasingly thin. “Cassidy, please, let me go chase them down.” “The deer didn’t look putrified to me, and the birds didn’t taste like cheap meat, they tasted rancid. We couldn’t keep anything down. All we know is that we can’t seem to eat plants, we can’t seem to eat animals, and the only intelligent creatures we just encountered were terrified of us.” “Oh what, am I fucking vampire?” Avery spat out the words like an accusation. “An insect vampire? A big mosquito? Do I drink pony blood? You don’t know a thing about what’s happening. You’re making stuff up!” Another voice cut in. “I’m sure the ponies, or elves, or whatever lives in the next town can tell us what we are.” Cassidy and Avery both turned to regard the source of the voice. Shakti, since it was still wearing the antlers. He’d picked up the discarded sword, and was looking through the cart. “I don’t see a lot of food in here for three people, just some hay. So unless those horses graze every night, I think we’re close to at least one settlement. They were carrying teacups, for the record.” He levitated out a straw-packed wooden box full of china teacups. A distant part of Avery’s mind noted the poor craftsmanship. “Based on the reaction we got here,” Avery said, “I don’t think they’re going to want to answer our questions.” “Avery…” Cassidy said, in the tone of one who is annoyed they must say something everyone already knows. “Think about the powers we seem to have. I don’t think we’re going to have any trouble…” For a moment, Cassidy hesitated. “Fitting in.” Avery skipped class the next day. It was quite unlike her, but she had rationalizations. Her only Friday classes were Statics and Philosophy of Government, neither of which tracked attendance and both of which she was getting an A in anyway. She canceled her study group, texting that she had a fever and couldn’t come. “I’m so sorry to let you down. :(“ she texted her study partners. “I feel terrible. If someone can take notes for me I’ll make it up to you with cookies next week?” Then she put her phone on Do Not Disturb without waiting for their reply, and typed “‘Power of All Tribes’ Puzzle Box” into Google. She googled a wide variety of keywords that related to her problem. She bought a PDF book about famous riddles in history and skimmed it. She consulted ChatGPT. She posted on r/puzzles and r/riddles to see if anyone on Reddit could help her figure out the answer. Cassidy hung around all day too, but that was more normal for her. Sometimes she made suggestions. All this work and all these sources produced a variety of interesting ideas, ranging from suggestions on how to find the boxes manufacturer, to tips about how it could have been snuck into her room, to suggestions for why someone might express their love in such an odd way. But every suggestion on how to open the box met with failure. Secret compartments, hidden lid, catches, switches, none were found. Someone even suggested the box might be made of two different kinds of glass, one of which was much weaker than the other, so that the lid could be casually broken off the rest without damaging it. Avery strained as hard as she dared, but the lid didn’t budge. Around five, a knock came at her door. “It’s Jaya! You in there? You’re not answering your phone.” “Yeah,” Avery called back. “One second.” She and Cassidy shared a silent, meaningful stare. Avery picked up the box and walked over the door, Cassidy swinging in behind her to get a good view. The latch clicked under Avery’s fingers, and she pushed the door out and open. “Hey,” Jaya said. “You’re…” Then she trailed off, staring at the golden case. “Woah.” “Everybody does that,” Avery said, moving the box and watching Jaya’s eyes track it. “It’s beautiful, but there are lots of things that are beautiful I get bored of. This is more than that. It’s mesmerizing, right? Like you could stare at it for hours.” “Is this the stupid puzzle box Lorin won’t shut up about?” Jaya reached for it, but Avery whisked it away. “It’s not stupid. I’m going to figure out how to open it.” Jaya stood a good two inches taller than Avery. A girl of hindi ancestry, born and raised in New Jersey, she had a thick accent but not the one people were expecting. She knew more than anyone about rude gestures, had a figure made for beachwear, and always dressed in a way that emphasized her bustline. She’d had more boyfriends in her freshmen year than Avery ever had, yet somehow remained friends with all of them. Lorin once joked she was starting a harem. She politely explained that she was a romantic at heart. She would never sleep with a man who thought he owned her, or whose company she didn’t genuinely enjoy. It simply happened that she had many worthy and attractive suitors. “Right. May I? I promise to be careful.” It was only with some hesitation that Avery handed it over. True to her word, Jaya turned the box over carefully, admiring its golden finery. “Any luck figuring out who its from?” “No,” Avery spoke quickly. “I told the campus police someone broke into our room, but with nothing missing they didn’t take it seriously. Told me to lock my door. Cassidy is sure she didn’t see anyone, and for the record, I believe her. Nobody else in the dorm saw anything. No identifying marks. No one has texted or emailed me another part of the puzzle.” “Mmm.” She stared into the glass, then glanced from it back to Avery. “How do you know there’s anything inside?” “What?” Avery’s brow furrowed. “I don’t hear anything.” Jaya shook the box, and no rattling sound came forth. “It’s light enough it's hollow, but I don’t think there’s anything inside.” “Or what’s inside is very light,” Avery put forward, like it was obvious. “Like a sheet of paper.” “Is a sheet of paper ‘the power of every tribe and all the treasure in the world’?” Jaya asked. “I’m just saying, you don’t actually know what’s in it. You know what the maker wrote on the top, but that might not be what’s inside it. Maybe it’s another clue. Maybe it’s a wedding ring. Maybe it’s a letter. Maybe it’s anthrax.” “If you think it’s anthrax, then go get to the minimum safe distance.” Avery’s tone turned suddenly defensive. “I’ll open it on my own.” “No. Come on, I’m serious. You don’t—” “If you don’t think there’s anything inside, give it back to me, right now.” Avery spoke in a tone of command, and a stiff silence descended between them. “I’m serious.” “I’ve never gotten this vibe off you before,” Jaya hesitated, biting her lip. “What’s up?” “You know what’s up. I feel…” Avery struggled for words. “That box makes me feel the way it does when I watch rockets launch. It makes feel like how I feel when I think about why I want to work for NASA. This sortof soft, comfortable…” “It makes me feel like I’m sleeping in on a warm day,” Cassidy said. “What does it make you think of?” Jaya looked down into the box in her hands, and it was only after a long silence that she said: “A cute boy and a nice night. It makes me think of the good kind of horny.” “I didn’t know art like this existed,” Avery said, “No, rephrase. I didn’t know things like this could exist. So fuck all if I’m putting it on a shelf and admiring it and pretending this never happened. I want to know what’s behind it. I want to know what the prize is.” “Okay, okay,” Jaya said, lifting a hand to ward off accusations. “I’m sorry. I’ll… I’ll help. We’ll assemble the brain trust, get Lorin and Shakti as well and brainstorm some ideas. Besides, this dorm room smells like your sweat and feet. You should get out. It’ll clear your head.” After some more smalltalk, they agreed to get food and then meet in the common room in Shakti’s dorm. Avery and Cassidy got their shoes, Lorin returned the box, and all three of them made their way out of Syme. It was on the way down that Jaya asked: “If there is treasure at the end, do we all get a cut?” “Sure,” Avery said. “We’re all in this together.”