Old Missus Lopkit gazed steadily at Traycup as she rocked in a rocking chair—like, whittling-on-the-porch kind of rocking, not rock-and-roll kind of rocking, for Old Missus Lopkit would never do something like that—at least not these days—and even if she did, it wasn't something one would do sitting down. “Wherever did I go amiss?” she said. She was still smiling, but it had become colder, like a too-long stared-at painting. “No rhyming? Not enough alliteration? Did I use a contraction somewhere?”

Traycup laughed and said, “Alas, but I hadn't a scorecard to keep it tracked, but Roby and Ben Garment are wise indeed, and likely have a digital display at the ready. Roby! Ben Garment! Return and present a tabulation of Roby's mom's speaking patterns, if you would!” But Roby and Ben Garment did not re-emerge, as they were already filing the paperwork in the mail room.

“Now, now,” said Old Missus Lopkit. “It's as well you sent them away. Before we begin, I've a thing to ask you.” Now at this time did Old Missus Lopkit spring down from her rocker with great ease, and she stood up before Traycup, up tall, far taller than him.

“If it's about flower reproduction, I don't know a thing.”

“It's not, and I think you do.”

Then without interest, Old Missus Lopkit shed her disguise and was Jum Burie, and was the most beautiful lady in all the land, and had hair of gold and pitch-black eyes, and stood tall and thought deep, and knew almost everything about Traycup, and yet was still pressed to press him back.

“Answer this question. You saw something. Something special. Something secret. Now, tell me: who have you told?”

Traycup laughed like he'd just read the dust jacket for 101 Jokes and Jollies for Children and Children-at-Heart. “Now, I've said already, it's untellable! It's part of the job, of course, to keep the sights secret, so I willn't tell you, as I'ven't told anyone else.” Then something occurred to Traycup, which, despite appearances, did happen from time to time. “But, if it's you who've come to collect the knowings for the boss, then all's well! I can recount it to you and rejoin the party in quick recourse. It's a hope that Ben Garment's left a bit of cleanser for sharing's sake!”

“I already know what you saw,” said Jum Burie. “I know who you work for. I don't want loose ends. When I kill you, and when I turn your brain to soup and drink it, that will be the end of it all.”

“That's a promise with bite!” said Traycup. “Now, marbles make for poor soup, and I've grown partial to my gray matter's placement! Ah, but if it's hunger you've to quench, there's a great trough of ice cream, from which any so inclined may scoop their heart's content and feast in delight!”

Jum Burie hesitated at that, but she would never admit to it, and she felt like she was not tired enough for this. Then she took a deep breath and raised all of her hands, and with them came the wind, and it whirled all about her, and on the wind was carried the leaves of far-off trees and the seeds of far-off fruits, and the soil crawled in and lay about in the sun, so that when the seeds were planted and took root and grew into shoots and then stems and then trunks, the leaves swirled about and clung to the trees, and formed a new forest, which cast a great shadow on the land. In the darkness, Jum Burie's golden hair glowed, and she said, “Come, prey, and be hunted.”

Huntness was not one of Traycup's hobbies, and neither was checkers, yet when he found the checkerboard he perused the available moves and finally said, “Rook to e7!” The rook obeyed, since they're smart birds, and it cawed on its flight, and a nearby flapjacksmith misunderstood this as the signal to break camp and head for the hills, and so he broke camp and headed for the hills, and all his leopards were confused since lunch was being skipped. Traycup motioned to the leopards to join him in the checkers game, but when they saw the pieces consisted of rooks, the four of hearts, and those of Reese's, they gave Traycup an odd look, an even book, and then jump-kicked him onto a passing barge.

“You return to the sea?” said Jum Burie. “The ocean birthed us too long ago to call us children any longer.” Now she drew forth a thousand silver bows and fired a thousand tin arrows, and they crisscrossed the sky and froze in their places, holding their breath for eternity, and cast slicing shadows all about the still land and the raging sea, which in its fervor, cut and wounded itself and fell to pieces, lost its strength, and the barge sank into the deepest of the deeps.

Traycup wasn't allowed in the deep end—or rather, he wasn't the last time he'd been in a pool with any supervision, and he assumed those rules still stood. Either that, or he's really shallow—y'know, like, personality-wise? The reader is invote to use either one of those as the reason why Traycup didn't sink into the deep with the barge. But Traycup thought back to all the times he had been invote to people's hice to play in the pool after school and how he splashed around in the shallow end until it was time to go home, and so he splashed around in the sea until it was time to go home.

“Are you waiting for the bus?” scoffed Jum Burie.

“Public transportation is a boon to any healthy society,” said Traycup.

“Your bus is no more—but don't look at me. That was the sharks.”

Traycup snapped his fingers and grabbed a crossword. S-H-A-R-K-S—it was a perfect fit for seventeen down! Now all he needed was the president's bank account number and three different shades of turquoise, and he'd be able to solve the Riddle of the Spants once and for all. He sharpened a pencil. This would be an all-nighter.

“You wouldn't know anything about that,” said Jum Burie.

“I know,” said Traycup, “that three plus three is three—for a given value of three, and that if salami knew its own name, it'd be calling a lawyer right now! But no one's got time for an after-school special anymore, and even if I could juggle cabbage, who's going to change the fish's diaper? Oh, sodium!”

At the petting zoo, they have a little toy train that you can ride, and it goes all through the park, but it only has certain stops, so you can't just get on wherever you want, even though you could just reach out and touch it. You'd have to wait until it gets to a marked train stop, and those are already crowded by crowds—even if you toughed it out and waited, the ride's slower than just walking there. But, it's the train. You can't just not. So you'd wait, and it'd take longer than forever—maybe fifteen minutes, even! Can you imagine? You'd have to, because this never happened to you. Maybe it never happened to anyone. Is there even a train, really? Perhaps it's just speculation from half a commercial you think you saw once.

This nearly broke one of Jum Burie's hearts—but she'd had better training than that.

“I,” she said, “yearned long for nothing, never yearned, and have nothing—say your story again and again until you get it right, and remember every mistake you've ever made. And now before me I see nothing and all I want is to see nothing—but that's something else you wouldn't understand.”

The waves rose high, and even the shallows now had become great depths, through only their own long patience. In the water of the deep can all things begin, and in the water of the deep can all things end. Water rises high, and it drowns the sun, and it brings—something brand new—something that may only be a lie. Everyone lies eventually. Traycup had lied and so was a liar and so was now lying in the water, which rose up and bore him as best it could, and threw him into a cage that was invincible and made out of every metal, and then the waters receded at last.

Jum Burie took the cage with Traycup in it and left.

Roby and Ben Garment might have missed the fun, but they still saw the show. When they reached the mail room to inquire about Traycup's delivery, the lead post officer, Briggamante, a bullet-shaped tank, cited the old precedent of an eye for an eye, and so they were made to ship before they could receive. They searched their pockets for things to enpackage and see mailed—not the acorns, of course, that'd be treason, but whatever else they had—and, having met their side of the bargain, were informed that Traycup's package was fully fictional, and so they returned in defeat to the ice cream trough. Around then is when the city broke out in forest and water and was laid to ruin and reclaimed by Nature all in one breath. The slicing shadows cast by the arrows onto the land had carved the land so deeply so that it was all churned up and became soft and unwalkable on. Also, fortunately, no one was sliced by the slicing shadows since they sliced in squares just big enough for someone to stand in safely. However, the house on the hill where Old Missus Lopkit had lived was no more, and all that remained of that whole part of Nesodi Iveent was the forest woven by Jum Burie in a dream.

Top G came around and said to Roby, “This is why we don't let out-of-towners in.”

“Well! It is a fine fix,” said Roby, “or finally to be fixed. Oh, fiddlesticks! But where is the eldest Lopkit?”

“This seems as close as is safely expected,” said Ben Garment, collecting the disguise that formerly posed as Old Missus Lopkit.

Roby pouted and shook her head. “That guise worn by she is not the mother of me. I want for the real thing—the one who had donned it—so shall we get searching and soon be upon it?”

“Roby, that was the prettiest lady in the land,” said Ben Garment. “There is no possible way that she's your mother. But there's more unaccounted for than she—Traycup became a captive of that beauty.”

“Poor Traycup!” said Roby. “We must discage him from the so-called beauty, for as friendship is forged, that is our solemn duty.”

“A stolen Traycup,” said Ben Garment, “and a missing Old Missus Lopkit to make up for it! To think we traded a chance at Oopertreepia for this!”

“We want for much,” said Roby, and then she smiled and went on: “And so we want for naught, for our course is made plain, and I have gained a thought. An idea is of me, so please stay and see what it will be, unless you foresee and swipe it from me!” She was quickly away to put her plan in motion, and Ben Garment shrugged and ran after her.

Jum Burie saw Tuberlone, and grabbed it, and threw it into the air, and laughed, and spun around as it tumbled, and threw all of her arms wide, and soaked up the sun, and wrapped her arms around herself and embraced herself, and fell down in the dirt, smiling. Traycup was in a cage that was with her, quite a bit in pieces, which is to say that he'll be fine, so don't take that one literally. But Jum Burie was breathing, and with each breath drinking all the air, and growing tangled and fretted. She sprang to her feet and went to the cage and grabbed it, picked it up and shook it, shaking Traycup around, laughing at him.

“All right, all right,” said Tuberlone. “That's enough—we'll deal with that after. You need to dance.”

“Here?” snarled Jum Burie. “Now? No—not a chance!”

“Do it,” said Tuberlone.

Jum Burie threw her arms up and stomped her feet. “I don't want to!” She laughed again and ran in a circle and spun around and jumped up and down. It looked an awful lot like dancing—or, perhaps, it looked like an awful dance.

“You have to,” said Tuberlone.

“I know,” said Jum Burie, “so make me.”

Tuberlone looked to and fro and saw no one around—but Traycup was there for some reason, and so it said to Traycup, “You—shut your eyes and do not watch.”

“Sure,” said Traycup amiably.

Traycup's employment was the special situation of sitting in his room and watching a tree for a million hours in a row without blinking—something he was fairly good at. So, not watching proved to be quite a challenge, and soon he forgot about the “not” part and stared in awe. Well, he stared in a cage, but, y'know.

Tuberlone had a horn of some sort and began to play it—it played the most vibrant and flickering song there was, a tune of screaming and shouting joy and the most wild and ingrained disorganization, and as it played, Jum Burie danced a dance that no one had ever danced before, and made herself part of the wind and the sky, the sea and the soil, and the always-burning sun.