annotated floorplan - simple floorplan

“Your colours are fading,” Neon observed. “You’re hardly even green at all anymore, and there’s barely any of that rather nice oregano scent left.”

Trace looked down at his arms. “Oh yeah. Didn’t even notice. Guess I got used to it.”

Neon chuckled. “Some people are adaptable enough to do that. Not all that many.”

“Hi, folks!” A stranger bounced into the kitchen, or at least, sort of did.

All Trace could see was slightly-cheesy Hallowe’en fashion: a close-fitting black tank-dress printed with orange pumpkins and purple bats, orange fishnet stockings and matching fingerless gloves, nails painted in a mix of black and purple and orange, knee-height black boots with wedge heels, dangly earrings with plastic pumpkins on one side and bats on the other, a black lace choker. The glossy orange lips were smiling, and the black-lined lilac-and-white-shadowed eyes looked like they might be in accord, but there was no visible person underneath that or the clothing.

“Heya, Wanda,” Neon said. “This is Trace.”

“Oh, hello!” The invisible woman made her way quickly over to the table, still with that bounce in her stride, as near as Trace could approximate the motions. “Food can wait a minute, meeting a guest is more interesting. Catching your breath here in the kitchen? It makes a good time-out zone.”

“It does,” Trace agreed. “Although it hasn’t been a very stressful night so far.”

“Well, that’s good to hear. You being good, Neon?”

“Am I ever?” Neon chuckled, with a wink.

“Good, you keep right on being you. What’s for supper?”

“Lasagna,” Neon said. “Meaty version? And pea soup before?”

“I had soup earlier, it’s yummy but it’s time for something more substantial.”

“Have a seat, coming right up. Mustn’t interrupt the boss when tomorrow’s bread is on the line.”

“I am done kneading bread, you pest,” Tarragon said. “For the moment. However, if you want to be useful, I’m certainly not going to complain.”

Wanda chose a stool that put her close to the glass bowl of water. She reached into it to stroke something not clearly visible with one fingertip. “Hi, little guy, how’s it going?”

“What’s in there?” Trace asked.

“That’s my personal minion,” Neon laughed, from over near the stove. “His name is Banana—you gotta be careful letting him near those, he eats himself into a food coma. He’s absolutely harmless, aside from being cute enough to melt your brains.”

“He gets confused trying to climb onto me,” Wanda said. “He tries to match the colour of whatever he’s on. Come on, ‘Nana, out you come onto the table so Trace can say hi to you.”

“Is he safe out of the water?” Trace asked. “He’s not, like, a fish or anything?”

“Nope. He evolved to spend a lot of his time on dry land. He just needs to keep from drying out completely, and the air in the house can be a bit dry. So he has a few bowls around the house that Neon can toss him into when he needs it, in places Neon most often is, like her own room and Jake’s labyrinth and here, but we move them around when necessary. Thalia keeps one in the loggia with all kinds of things in it for him to climb on but he likes playing in her plants even better, especially when she’s misting them.” She scooped something very gently out of the bowl and released it onto the table.

Still pink and black and muted brown-grey, a palm-sized octopus looked up at Trace without fear.

“Give him a grape,” Neon suggested. “He won’t bite you. He only eats fruit.”

Cautiously, Trace picked a juicy-looking grape and set it on the table next to the little creature.

It tested it by touch, then via one tentacle tucked under its body for some reason.

Then it wrapped all eight arms around the grape in what looked like a fiercely tight grip for a creature that small. The colour of it shifted and flowed, part of it the green of the grape, part the light yellow-brown of the table. That really did make it hard to see.

“Wow. He looks like he has one heck of a grip.”

“Yeah, you aren’t going to pry him off that while there’s any pulp left inside,” Neon said, setting a plate in front of Wanda and handing her a knife and fork. “If you manage to use sheer brute force and size to peel an arm off, it’ll reattach while you’re working on the next one. Do not get between my lil guy there and his food.” She sounded deeply affectionate. “There won’t be anything left but the skin in a few minutes. If he was hungry, he could eat the skin too, but he’s too spoiled to bother.”

“Will he get bigger?”

“He’s grown a little bit since I got him, but that was a while ago and it isn’t very much. I think he is growing but really slowly. You think so, Wanda?”

“That’s the best guess,” Wanda said. “The species as a whole aren’t huge even at full size, but he’s still a really small one despite how much he eats. The other pets live a long time too, though.”

“Other pets?” Trace asked.

“We lock them up safely on Hallowe’en night,” Neon said. “There’s no way to know how a guest might behave, so they have food and toys and they’re confined where no one else can reach them. No one’s willing to take chances with their safety and stress levels.”

“Oh. That sounds like a good idea. I love animals, but I’d rather they stayed safe where they are. This one’s the exception?”

“That one gets cranky if separated from Neon for too long,” Tarragon said. “Even if I provide both wet and dry places to sleep and all the fruit he could possibly eat, or when Thalia offers him a green playground, he still fusses, and being left with the other pets, it’s worse. It could be considered insulting, if I tended to bother with that sort of thing.”

“We’re all resigned to it,” Wanda laughed. “This is good lasagna, Tarragon. Great filling comfort food, considering the weather outside looks cold and wet.” Her serving was disappearing rapidly.

“Not the intention, since I can’t predict the weather, but I agree.”

“So. Trace. Who’ve you run into so far?”

“We covered that,” Neon said. “Music with Dora and the Master, poetry book in the library, Thalia.”

“Oh my. We need to jazz this up a bit. Do you like games, Trace?”

“Sometimes,” Trace said, suddenly wary.

“Would you like to make a bet? If you win, I’ll do my best to answer any question that I can, considering that we have rules I don’t have a choice about breaking. If I win, I’ll pick someone or something in the house that you could encounter on your own anyway and maybe help with any decisions involved.”

Trace glanced towards Neon, hardly even aware of doing it.

“Wanda’s crazy about games,” Neon said. “But she’s never mean when she wins, and she pays up fairly when she loses.”

“What game?” Trace asked.

“Well, we haven’t got any equipment here,” Wanda said. “So how about something really simple? Rock-paper-scissors, best two out of three. And we can do that as many times as the winner wants. I mean, once I win, I’m going to drag you off to meet someone, but as long as you keep winning you can keep asking questions, with the chance that I’ll eventually win.”

Trace considered that, then slowly nodded. Her hands were invisible, sure, but between her painted nails and her gloves, it should be easy enough to tell what she’d chosen. “All right.”

“Good! Neon? You can referee.”

“Sure,” Neon said. “Should I count three each time?”

“That works,” Trace said.

“On three. Not after three, or anything, actually when I say three, okay? One... two... three.”

Wanda won the first, Trace won the second. To his surprise, he won the third as well.

“You got two out of three,” Wanda said. “What do you want to know?”

Trace pondered that. The obvious subject to ask about was the house, but that was almost certainly solidly on the ground that she wasn’t allowed to discuss. Richard had made it very clear that there were things he wanted to say but couldn’t. Which meant that asking questions like that was probably a waste of time and he needed to ask something different.

“Doesn’t it get kind of inconvenient and awkward sometimes, being invisible?”

Wanda laughed. “Now and then. It would be much worse if I was actually invisible all the time and to everyone. There are times and ways I can see myself and my family can see me. And it’s fun finding ways to balance out being invisible but still interacting with everyone.”

“It does take a bit of getting used to,” Neon said, “interacting with someone you can hear talking and you can see their lips moving but not much else.”

“This will probably sound rude,” Trace said, “but I have a hard time reading faces anyway, I have to try really hard to get any info at all, mostly I get it from voices and overall body language, and sometimes I’m completely wrong, and I’m really bad at eye contact. So, um, it actually doesn’t bother me at all.”

“Everyone is sort-of not there,” Neon said. “And you can’t make contact with eyes you can’t see. Makes perfect sense and I don’t think it’s rude.”

“Not in the least,” Wanda said. “Does that answer your question? Tell me the truth, because I don’t want to cheat you.”

“That covers it,” Trace said.

“Do you want to play again? Same terms?”

“Sure, why not?” There was nothing he felt a burning desire to ask, but she obviously enjoyed the game, and it was interesting.

He won both of the next two.

What could he ask about?

“The little guy there’s not like anything I ever heard of,” he said. “Where’s he from?”

“He’s a terrestrial fruit-eating cephalopod,” Wanda said. “They evolved in a tropical environment that is not in your world. But he got here by accident. You said you were reading poetry in the library? Like that, but the journal of the naturalist on a ship that was exploring. It’s not exactly normal for anything to come back, but Banana did. And we love him.”

“I can see why. He is pretty cute. Although he’s just death on grapes, from the looks of it.”

“Or any fruit,” Neon said. “He likes to eat.”

“Play again?” Wanda asked.

“Um... I guess. I’m not sure what else I want to ask about. I’m pretty sure you can’t tell me anything that I actually do really want to know.”

“Hmm... that’s the problem, right? How to know what to ask about when you don’t know what might be relevant. How about this. If you win, I’ll tell you something that will be very useful to you tonight.”

“I already explained the paintings,” Neon said.

“Other than that.”

“Okay,” Trace said. “Sounds good.”

Wanda won, then Trace won, and Wanda got the third of the set.

“I win!” she said happily. “And I think we’re going to go visit... Ophelia.”

Banana spread his tentacles out wide and pulled himself a short distance. All that remained, as promised, was an empty grape skin lying on the table. He looked up at Neon and rippled his way across the table towards her, arms reaching forward and pulling and then other arms already seizing the surface further ahead to continue the motion. It was fluid and looked unexpectedly efficient.

“All right, up you come,” Neon said indulgently, and scooped him up in one hand. When she held it near her shoulder, he relocated promptly, and secured himself to her t-shirt.

Hadn’t it said, TRUST ME I’M THE DOCTOR when he’d first seen her? Now, it was the same blue, but with two columns of four ghostly panel outlines on the front, the top pair paler and broken up like windows, and it said BIGGER ON THE INSIDE.

If the strangest thing he had to worry about was a t-shirt not being what he remembered, this night would be a lot easier to cope with.

“So where are we going?” Trace asked.

“Upstairs,” Wanda said. “Not very far from the top of the back stairs.”

“We won’t be walking right by all the paintings,” Neon said, “but we’ll be very close to some.”

“Have fun,” Tarragon said. “We’ll eventually run out of lasagna but there’s plenty of soup and bread and cookies.”

“Thank you,” Trace said.

He went up the stairs with Neon and Wanda, looking around with interest since he hadn’t been up here yet.

Neon urged him a bit farther along the narrow hallway and indicated the paintings; she even showed him one of a cat that purred and responded when he reached in with one hand to pet it. Wanda, instead, went the other direction. Neon urged Trace that way once they’d looked at the paintings, including a beautiful animated one of Dora dancing. Everything opened up immensely when they went around a corner into the main corridor; they passed an open door, through which Wanda’s voice and another were audible. Neon pointed out the plethora of paintings adorning the walls.

“They’re a lot of fun to play inside,” Neon said. “But right now, Wanda’s waiting, and concocting some diabolical idea with Ophelia, I’m sure. You know which room, we just went by it. You don’t really need me at this point. But don’t worry, I’ll be around. If you can’t find me, just ask anyone you come across. Enjoy yourself.” With a wink and an absent wave, she raised both hands to a painting, stepped towards it, and vanished.

When Trace looked into the painting, everyone was moving around, and there were enough people in that shadowy scene—a nightclub with a band on the stage—that it was easily possible Neon was there but he couldn’t see her.

He went in search of Wanda instead, and found her in a room full of glass tubes and bottles.

Wanda’s companion greeted him with a smile. “Come in, it’s safe.”

Trace came all the way into the room, and accepted her gestured invitation to perch on a wooden stool. The constant motion of the snakes kept distracting his gaze. The air had complicated scents he couldn’t even begin to untangle.

“Ophelia, Trace,” Wanda said. “I’m feeling like Trace could use a real challenge, something to push him a bit, because everything so far has been way too easy.”

“Oh, I believe we can find something that fits that description,” Ophelia said, her smile quirking into a grin. “Do you have any phobias, Trace?”

“Not really,” he said. “Nothing I know of. I have some real problems if multiple people are talking right to me at the same time, especially if they’re telling me what to do or how to do it, but that doesn’t seem to be much of a thing here. It’s nice and quiet and no one is pushy.”

“We’re used to giving each other space,” Ophelia said. “And guests have a better time if they have the freedom to make their own choices. Good. I have something that I think will be sufficiently challenging for this time of the night.”