Wildwood Imperium (Wildwood Chronicles 3)

bably throw him pretty far. So that’s a bad analogy. What I mean to say is: Don’t let him out of your sight.”

“Yes, Mr. Wigman,” said Desdemona. “Thank you, Mr. Wigman.”

The Chief Titan spun around on the heels of his tasseled loafers and strode out of the room, with purpose.

Desdemona turned back to look at Roger, who had begun absently browsing the titles on the bookshelf.

“Don’t even think about it,” said Desdemona.

Smile.

This was the word that Joffrey Unthank created in his mind as a beacon. It was the thing that harnessed him to the rocky shores of his own sanity, his own loose grip on the reality that had been swirling around him, somewhat amorphously, for the past several months.

Smile.

Simple, really, when you thought about it. Which he did a lot.

He’d braved a cold winter, wandering the Industrial Wastes in little more than an argyle sweater-vest and a tattered overcoat. He’d slept in culverts and had his toes nibbled clean by rats; he’d escaped wandering bands of feral dogs and had even befriended one, named Jasper, and the two of them had had a few spectacular adventures before Jasper vanished one morning over breakfast and it dawned on Unthank that the dog had, in fact, been a hallucination the whole time.

Even in the face of this unspeakable (and somewhat jarring) tragedy, Unthank remembered to Smile.

And Sing.

But singing was not supposed to happen now; that’s what Jack had said. Except his name wasn’t Jack anymore, was it? It was Jacques now. His old fellow Titan, his fellow fallen Titan. He’d liked Jack very much, back when he was Jack; they’d both been born to important families in their respective Divisions. They’d both taken a kind of preternatural shine to their respective responsibilities, and where other children of Titans squirmed uncomfortably in the shackles of their parents’ expectations, Joffrey and Jack had worn them like shining crowns. And when Jack fell, when he was shunned and his Division destroyed, Joffrey felt awfully sorry for his old friend. Not that he could afford to say anything to that effect—Wigman would’ve ostracized any sympathizer. But Joffrey always loved Jack. Always trusted him.

And so he trusted him when he told Joffrey not to Sing.

But he could still Smile.

Which was what he was doing now, while the linebacker-like stevedore pressed his stubby finger into the telecom at the front gate of the looming Titan Tower and announced that Joffrey Unthank, former Machine Parts Titan, had returned.

Smile.

A second stevedore stood on the other side of the gate, watching Joffrey closely. He felt studied, there, in the brilliant shine of the klieg lights, a specimen under a microscope. He suddenly felt the urge to sing, something he’d often done in his few months in the wilderness, in his mental wilderness, to comfort himself. But he knew—Jacques had told him—that it was very important that he not sing. That singing, somehow, would give away his disguise. And what was he disguised as? Himself. Shouldn’t his disguise be improved if he were to sing, just to hum a few times? Wasn’t that being himself more? Wasn’t not singing betraying his true self?

The stevedore at the intercom walked over to him and said, “He says he’s busy. He says come back tomorrow.”

Sing.

Don’t sing, he countered. That’s what Jacques said. The role he was playing was not himself, but a version of himself. A long-gone version of himself. The himself who had perished in the factory fire, when the orphans broke the windows and destroyed the machines. The children. Those children, who deserved his thanks and forgiveness. They allowed the chrysalis to open, to let the real Joffrey Unthank uncoil and fly.

“It’s very important,” said Unthank. Tra la. “Could you please tell him that I need to see him now? It really can’t wait.” Tra lee.

Again, the stevedore returned to the intercom; the other stevedore continued his studied stare. Unthank flared his eyes at him and the guard blinked, surprised, and looked away.

“Okay,” came the answer. “He’ll meet you in the lobby.”

Something smarted, deep down. Some crucial piece of his innards made a quick flex and sent a spark up through his esophagus to his cranium. “N-no,” he said. Don’t sing. Smile. He answered his own demand and smiled widely, saying, “No need to trouble the man. I’ll just go up to him.”

“He said he’ll come down to you,” said the stevedore, cocking his eyebrow.

“But it doesn’t work that way,” Joffrey said, before remembering: Don’t say that out loud. It was too late.

“What doesn’t work what way?”

The stevedore on the other side of the gate had resumed his stare; he seemed to be listening in, intently, to the conversation.

Smile. “Never you mind,” said Unthank. “I’ll just meet him in the, as you say, lobby.”