The More Known World (The Oddfits Series Book 2) Read online

  Ann shrugged. “All right,” she said. “On the count of two. One. Two.”

  She felt her body blaze towards the transfer point, burst through it, and flash through each Territory—through Gobi-Minor and Finland-Bandicoot, then Australia-Terracotta, before finally coming to a halt at Madagascar-Aplomb. She looked around. Abode sweet abode. She looked around again. Murgatroyd was nowhere to be seen.

  Murgatroyd showed up a day later, just as Ann was putting the finishing touches on the expedition report.

  “Sorry,” he panted. He was studded from head to toe in lemon burs.

  “Oh good,” said Ann. She finished dotting the i and crossing the t of China-Plummet in the report title. “I was just about to go looking for you.”

  “I really thought I had it this time,” he said.

  Ann nodded.

  “But I forgot about the precipice in Finland-Bandicoot.”

  “Precipices,” Ann corrected. “Plural.”

  “Ah, that explains it.” Murgatroyd slapped his forehead, then howled in pain. The slap had connected with a lemon bur in his hair, driving its barbs into his flesh.

  “Is it bad?” he asked as Ann extricated the spiky cube and flicked it away.

  Ann leaned her one eye closer and squinted. “Yes.” She examined the damage further. “I think it’s going to leave a rash.”

  This was the final straw. Completely exhausted, positively starving, and exceedingly itchy, Murgatroyd began to stomp up and down in frustration. “So ir-ri-ta-ting! Two years orready on Quest, I still so buay sai one! How can?”

  Although Murgatroyd still spoke with a strong Singaporean accent, these days he lapsed into heavy Singlish only when speaking with the handful of other Questians from Singapore, or when frustrated or embarrassed. Ann stepped back and let Murgatroyd’s anger at himself run its course.

  “Sorry,” Murgatroyd muttered in embarrassment once he was done.

  “Why?” asked Ann.

  “I shouldn’t lose my temper like that. There’s no point. I just thought I’d be good at being an Oddfit by now. Or better, at least.” Then, to her surprise, he sat cross-legged on the floor, buried his face in his hands, and began to cry. “What’s wrong with me?” he bawled.

  Ann was not a demonstrative person, but she attempted to console him by patting him on the back.

  “There’s nothing wrong with you,” she said awkwardly as the force of her empathetic blows sent Murgatroyd into a coughing fit.

  “Yes, there is.”

  “No,” she said firmly, “there isn’t. Now look at me.” Murgatroyd looked up, and she continued. “You are good at being an Oddfit.”

  “No, I’m not. Transferring, exploring—it’s all supposed to come naturally, isn’t it?”

  “Transferring and exploring are useful for the Quest, but they have nothing to do with being a ‘good’ Oddfit. There’s no such thing as a ‘good’ or a ‘bad’ Oddfit. Even degrees of oddfittingness don’t matter. An Oddfit is an Oddfit.”

  “All right then,” Murgatroyd said with a sniffle. “I’m a bad Questian, then.”

  Ann was silent for a while. “Well, you’re not the best,” she said finally, “but you’re getting better.”

  Murgatroyd resumed weeping.

  “You are,” stated Ann. “Your progress is slower than expected, but your improvement is undeniable. Tell me. A year ago, would you have been able to transfer back here yourself at all?”

  Murgatroyd thought about this and shook his head.

  “See?” said Ann.

  Murgatroyd blew his nose on the hem of his T-shirt and managed a weak smile. Then he sighed again and drew his knees to his chest. “It’s just . . . I thought once I left the Known World, I’d be like everyone else.”

  “Like ‘everyone else’?”

  “You know. Good at life. Everyone seems to be good at life, and I’m still so bad at it. I thought joining the Quest would change that.” Murgatroyd squeezed his eyes shut and envisioned the individual he’d assumed he would become when he became a Questian—the true self he thought he would finally don. Retrieving it from the back of his mind’s closet, he wistfully admired the bright-red M emblazoned on the image’s spandex chest, and shook out its accompanying cape. He imagined what life would be like with it on: how muscular and confident he would be, what good posture he would have, how many new trails he would blaze through the More Known World every day before breaking for lunch.

  Ann said nothing. To be honest, she too had thought some transformation on Murgatroyd’s part inevitable. She hadn’t expected Murgatroyd to become a superhero, but she had thought his physical and intellectual abilities would undergo a slight improvement at the very least. The Known World had been suppressing him, and it was natural to assume that Murgatroyd would “get better” once he was removed from that suppression. After two years, however, it seemed that Murgatroyd was destined to remain, well, as Murgatroyd as ever.

  “There’s nothing wrong with being you,” she said finally. Unexpectedly Murgatroyd turned his anger on her.

  “Easy for you to say,” he snapped. “You’re good at everything! You’re smart, you’re amazing at transferring, you can do somersaults in midair, you have a good memory. I miss being good at something.” Here he began to tremble. He knew the horrible thing he was going to say next, but by then it was too late. “I wish I were back in the Known World! I wish I were back waiting tables for Shakti! At least I was good at that.”

  Murgatroyd clapped his hands over his mouth.

  “You don’t mean that,” Ann said quietly.

  “No,” he said regretfully. “I don’t. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  They waited silently, side by side, for the awfulness of the words to subside. Meanwhile Ann contemplated telling Murgatroyd how wrong he was—how there was in fact one exceptional quality he possessed that Ann envied very much indeed, and it was this: despite all he had suffered, Murgatroyd had emerged unscarred. Unscarred. This word fell shy of being completely adequate, but it was the best that Ann could come up with, despite the hours she had spent mulling over this extraordinary attribute of his.

  Murgatroyd occupied Ann’s thoughts more than he could have ever imagined. It was impossible for him not to, given how much time they spent together as mentor and apprentice. And over the past two years, Ann’s bafflement at this exceptional and peculiar attribute of Murgatroyd’s had only deepened. How could he still be so open? So hopeful? So vulnerable and genuine, despite all the pain he had suffered at the hands of those nearest and dearest to him?

  It wasn’t that Murgatroyd didn’t feel angry about what they had done to him, or upset, or hurt—he did. Very much so. (Ann knew this because it was to her he poured out all his feelings, though she was a poor receptacle indeed.) What set Murgatroyd apart was his ability to bear these wounds, yet continue to live as if the idea of anyone wounding anyone had simply never occurred to him.

  Ann thought about trying to articulate all this to her apprentice and friend. Instead, she dismantled and reassembled the ballpoint pen in her hands.

  “You’re right. You shouldn’t have said that,” she said. “The past is too terrible to wish back.”

  Before Murgatroyd could respond, Ann handed him an envelope.

  “It was here when I arrived. From the One—delivered by the Other.”

  Murgatroyd read the writing on the back of the envelope:

  Deer An

  Yoo wurnt howm. This nowt is fur yoo.

  frum

  THE OTHER

  P.S. Hi Murgatroyd!

  P.P.S. P.S.S. Wuz hungree sow et yoor choklit

  Murgatroyd was a slow reader, but it took him an especially long time to comprehend what the Other had written.

  “Poor spelling,” Ann remarked. “Hazards of being raised entirely in the More Known World.”

  She knew Murgatroyd had reached the last line when she heard him gasp.

  “He ate the chocolate?”

  Ann nodded impassiv
ely. She too had been upset, but had since moved on.

  “Hey!” he noted with a smile. “He spelled my name correctly!”

  “Read what’s inside.”

  Murgatroyd opened the flap and took out the note.

  Dear Ann,

  Report immediately to Flee Town, Cambodia-Abscond.

  Nimali is dead.

  Bring Murgatroyd (obviously).

  Yours,

  The One

  “Dead?” Murgatroyd murmured, the note almost falling out of his hand. “But how?”

  “Probably the same person who killed the others,” Ann replied. “I’m ready to go. Let me know when you are. You probably don’t want to transfer all the way back to your abode, but you might want to take a quick bath before we leave.” Ann motioned to the freshwater sea sloshing about beneath the translucent wooden floors.

  Murgatroyd raised his head. “Aren’t you sad?”

  “Of course I’m sad.” She put the note back in the envelope and walked to one of her filing closets to put it away. “Don’t forget to bring a toothbrush and change of underwear. There are new ones next to my sleeping mat in the bedroom—toothbrushes, that is. Can’t help you out with the underwear.”

  Murgatroyd read the note again. “It says ‘immediately.’ Shouldn’t we leave right away?”

  Ann’s voice floated around the corner. “It won’t make much difference. She’s already dead, isn’t she?”

  CHAPTER 3

  Life in Cambodia-Abscond was enough to drive anyone crazy. At least, that’s what Mildred was beginning to feel. It had been fifteen days since she and the One had arrived in the settlement to claim Nimali’s body and comb the scene for clues—and fourteen days since the Other had joined them and almost as quickly been dispatched to summon Ann for assistance. But there was still no sign of Ann, or Ann’s apprentice, and if Mildred had to spend another day here, she was going to go insane.

  The threat of impending madness loomed particularly large as she sat on the porch of the Bovquito Arms, overlooking the pastures and fields. And despite what her therapist back in the Known World had always told her about dwelling on the negative (i.e., not to), she leaned back in her rocking chair, made of bloodwood like everything else in this godforsaken settlement, and tried to decide which feature of this Territory she hated the most.

  Was it the head-splitting redness of everything? The vermilion-bladed grass and the rocks like distended uncut garnets? The tree trunks coated in carnelian and crimson? The foliage reminiscent of carnage from a horror-movie scene, or the soil so saturated in the pigment it verged on black?

  No, thought Mildred. What she hated most was the smell: the metallic tang that rimmed your nostrils and left you cold, as if you’d bloodied your nose or bitten your lip, as if you’d inhaled an entire stainless-steel operating table and a pair of forceps. You couldn’t escape it. The fumes rose from the ground, infusing everything and everyone in their ferric odour.

  No, she thought again. What she hated most were the bovquitoes.

  The fact that all animal life in the More Known World shared a common ancestor in the mosquito—the only nonhuman animal capable of crossing freely between the Worlds and Territories—already gave her the creeps. But there were no words for the horror she felt at the sight of these shaggy, lumbering creatures dotting the fields and hills, their fleshy, almost obscene proboscises suckling greedily on the soil; their translucent abdomens excreting droplets of muddy-brown urine even as they swelled with the creamy pink fluid that Flee Town’s settlers so depended on for nourishment.

  Ah yes. The Fleetowners. And like a mosquito finally thrusting its blade home after circling and probing in search of an appropriate blood vessel, Mildred’s mind pinpointed the one thing that, more than anything else, made her detest this place so. The people. It was an unkind thing to think, but there you had it. And upon giving herself license to truly ponder the matter for the first time, Mildred found herself at liberty to identify exactly what it was about the inhabitants of Cambodia-Abscond, or more specifically its only settlement, Flee Town, that repulsed her so.

  Perhaps it was their love of comfort—not necessarily a bad thing, but Fleetowners took it to a level of excess. Case in point: the sight that had greeted her and the One when they’d stepped into the Bovquito Arms. From the outside, the tavern had looked uncompromisingly spare—all weathered wood and thin railings, all severity and splinters. The interior, on the other hand, was unbearably plush. Shaggy grey bovquito pelts blanketed the floor and walls, lined the armchairs and footstools, trimmed the bar and the banisters. There were cushions everywhere—so many it was difficult to find a spot to sit. They came in all shapes and sizes, propped up against seat backs and piled in corners. Some hung on wall hooks as if they were coats. Others, richly embroidered, were framed in elaborately carved wood and displayed like art.

  At that point, Henry, the owner of the Bovquito Arms, had materialized, sauntering over with one hand extended obligatorily in greeting, the other resting on his prosperous belly. Mildred remembered noticing how all his fingers were loaded with rings of carved, polished bloodstone, and how his neck was garlanded with hoops of the same material. His sudden appearance had startled Mildred, and she realized belatedly that he had been sitting behind the bar in plain sight the whole time. She simply hadn’t seen him, for he, like the room, had been clothed in fur.

  Mildred thought about how to sum up the aesthetic in one word. Instead she came up with nine: French rococo meets crocheting granny meets log-cabin chic.

  The owner’s son, a scrawny boy of about ten years of age, showed them to their fur-lined, fur-carpeted rooms, and Mildred had been sitting on the edge of her furry, embroidered-cushion-strewn bed, still trying to recover from the sensation that she was being smothered, when the boy knocked on the door and announced, “Lunch.”

  She felt queasy, but bravely she descended the stairs along with the One and sat down to a sumptuous rustic feast of red rye, six different types of cheeses in six different shades of pink, wooden goblets of fresh rose milk and wooden mugs of a fermented rose-milk-based drink called bloom, a tureen of bovquito-ham chowder, and a creamy crimson pudding sprinkled with roasted bloodnuts for dessert. She managed to get down a salmon-hued sliver of very ripe runny cheese, but then she pushed her plate away and watched as Henry and the rest of the tavern staff—all as rotund as Henry, with the exception of the boy—gorged themselves, either unconcerned with or unaware of her lack of appetite.

  From what Mildred had seen of Flee Town so far, it was much the same everywhere else—the opulent decor, the flashy dress sense, the rich food. But even this plump, ruddy-cheeked tendency towards decadence Mildred might have forgiven if it had been accompanied by plump, ruddy-cheeked joviality, which it wasn’t.

  Fleetowners acted both suspicious and suspiciously, as if they had something to hide. Given the kind of people who had established the settlement and who had been coming here ever since, they probably did. There was a well-known saying in the Territories, as far as the scattered and isolated nature of life in the More Known World allowed for the popularity of any saying at all: “Only the truly desperate Cambodia-Abscond.” And how true it was. It was already the case that many Sumfit settlers were looking to make a fresh start. Unspeakable tragedies, bad relationships, spectacular failures personal and professional, calamities, catastrophes, and more spurred the majority of settlement in the More Known World. It was the shadiest of these who wound up in Cambodia-Abscond’s only settlement, attracted by the prospect of living in a community where no questions were asked, where conversation was kept to a minimum, and where one could grow fat on the land and live out the rest of one’s days in peace and comfort.

  Needless to say, this reticence, along with liberal doses of caginess and distrust, made social interaction rather unpleasant.

  “Have you been in Flee Town long?” Mildred had asked Henry during the meal, trying to be polite.

  “What’s it to you?” Henry an
swered, not even looking up from his plate.

  Startled by his reply, Mildred looked around and found that everybody was still eating, in silence, as if nothing had happened. Even the One seemed not to have noticed.

  “Just curious,” Mildred said by way of apology. Then: “Do you only have one child?”

  In reply, Henry took a long swig of bloom.

  Later, the One reprimanded her for her rudeness.

  “Excuse me?” asked Mildred, incredulous.

  “It’s bad manners to make needless conversation in Flee Town,” said the One, as if explaining an obvious fact. “And it’s especially impolite to enquire into people’s personal details.”

  “How was I supposed to know that?”

  “I didn’t realize you were so oblivious,” quipped the One. “I suppose you need me to tell you there’s a smudge of cheese on your chin.”

  As Mildred wiped it off, she sighed. The most astounding thing about the One was also the most maddening thing: her brilliant mind kept her perceptive powers several paces ahead of everyone else’s, even as her rapidly deteriorating physical health forced her body to slow down. To the One, everything was obvious, and the woman simply couldn’t believe that to others—even exceptionally bright Mildred—everything wasn’t. When Mildred first started accompanying the One, the older woman’s impatience had caused her to bristle. But now, after a year and a half, she had stopped taking such quips so personally. Similarly, after having to put up with Mildred for the same length of time for the sake of the greater good (that was how the One thought of it), the One had become better at providing patient explanations—at least, better than she used to be.

  “People in Flee Town have a past,” the One elaborated.

  The One really was a genius. Mildred would keep returning to the One’s explanation in the days to come, finding that it explained everything: not just the aversion to talking about themselves or prying into the lives of others, but also the high value Fleetowners placed on comfortable furnishings and fine clothes and food. How better to take shelter from past sins than by following the example of a rodent taking refuge from the winter? By padding yourself with soft bedding and extra body fat and piles of precious nuts and seeds?