From GUSTAV GLOOM AND THE INN OF SHADOWS, Chapter One:
One of the many pressing questions piling up in Mrs. What’s head, so deep by now that it was a wonder she had room to think at all, squirmed out from underneath. She addressed it to the shadow girl. “If you’re Fernie’s shadow, aren’t you supposed to be with her?”
“I’m a free being. I can be wherever I want to be.”
“But you’re usually with her, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Fernie’s shadow said, “I am, but that’s a matter of choice, and it’s because I like her.” With a faint note of disapproval, she added, “Personally, I think you should spend more time with her yourself.”
“Why aren’t you with her now?”
“Well, I do tend to stick very close to Fernie, but then a little while back, when she was being chased by a shadow dinosaur, I got stomped on and jammed up between his toes.”
Suddenly, swimming with crocodiles seemed very mundane to Mrs. What. “Does that kind of thing happen often?”
“Where Fluffy the tyrannosaur is concerned? Unfortunately, yes. They’re not toes you want to get yourself stuck between. They smell like rotten bananas dipped in rancid mayonnaise and stored in a sweaty gym sock. I don’t know why they call that big lummox ‘Fluffy’ when he should be called ‘Stinky’ instead.”
Mrs. What felt the room spinning. “Losing a little control of your story, aren’t you?”
“I suppose. Anyway, it normally takes a shadow no time at all to recover from being crushed flat or to get out from under heavy objects like dinosaur toes, but I wasn’t the only shadow Fluffy stomped in that crowded hallway, and his feet were sticky, so we all got mixed together in a kind of jam. When we fell off, it was all in one big lump, like hard candies melted together in a bowl. A very bad shadow named Ursula recovered a couple of seconds before the rest of us did and had the time to lock me away in what I suppose you would call a closet, where I remained imprisoned until Gustav’s shadow, who was looking for me by that point, heard my cries and let me out.”
Mr. Notes’s shadow took over the story. “Yes. You see, Mrs. What, Fernie’s friend Gustav had sent his shadow to find Fernie’s shadow, but by the time he succeeded in that mission, Fernie had already left with Gustav to rescue your husband and older daughter from the Dark Country.”
The strangeness of this encounter had overwhelmed Mrs. What so much that until this last sentence she’d almost managed to forget that they were talking about the fate of her family. “The letter says . . . they fell into a pit of some kind?”
Hives sniffed. “Your husband’s clumsy.”
This was the first part of the story Mrs. What couldn’t even begin to argue with. “And . . . Gustav and Fernie have gone there to rescue them?”
“Uh-huh,” said Fernie’s shadow. “Word around the house has it that they must have taken the Cryptic Carousel.”
Mrs. What didn’t know what a Cryptic Carousel was, but it struck her as the kind of detail that instantly grants believability to unbelievable stories. Without wanting to, she suddenly found herself certain that everything Fernie had written about in her letter, all that nonsense about a house filled with shadows and a pit down to the country all shadows came from and so on, was absolutely true. The awfulness of this revelation welled up in her like a storm, leaving her frantic in the manner that only a terrified mother can be frantic. She leaped to her feet and made the chair fall over behind her and clatter on the kitchen floor like angry applause. “Oh . . . my family!”
Fernie’s shadow bit her shadow lip. “I know it’s upsetting. I’m still not entirely sure that telling you was better than not telling you, but I figured that Fernie would want you informed, so we’ve kept an eye on your house, hoping to scoot on over here and give you the heads-up if you came home.”
“What . . . what should I do?”
“That’s a very good question,” said Fernie’s shadow.
“You think so?” asked Hives. “It strikes me as a wholly average question.”
“It’s relevant and to the point,” Mr. Notes’s shadow argued.
“Oh, I recognize that,” Hives allowed. “I wouldn’t call it a bad question, either. But it’s not as brilliantly incisive as you’re painting it. I wouldn’t give this woman credit for asking a ‘very good’ question yet.”
Mrs. What had suffered more than enough of this. “I wasn’t asking your opinion of the question. I was asking you to answer the question! What do I have to do to get my family back?”
The shadow of Mrs. What’s younger daughter surprised her by crossing the distance between them and placing one gray hand on the back of hers. The comforting touch felt cool, like a piece of silk, but aside from the temperature it was so much like Fernie’s touch that Mrs. What felt her heart break a little at the thought that this could be all she had left.
“This is the problem,” Fernie’s shadow said. “I’m really not all that sure that there’s much we can do.”
“You mean it’s hopeless?”
“No. Nothing’s ever hopeless. But there isn’t much you can do, is my point. There’s no purpose in informing the police of your world that your family’s gone missing, because they’ll never believe your story about where your family’s gone and would only waste time looking in all the places in your world where we already know your family isn’t. You can’t go down to the Dark Country yourself looking for them, because the only way for you to get there now that the Carousel’s gone is to jump into the Pit yourself, and that’ll more than likely only deliver you to Lord Obsidian and make you yet another person Gustav and Fernie will need to rescue . . . and trust me, they already have plenty of those.”
All of this made a crazy kind of sense, even if it also made no sense whatsoever. Mrs. What, who was normally brilliant at dealing with emergencies and had once survived a week buried alive by an avalanche using nothing but a teapot, a hand mirror, and a fountain pen, now found herself paralyzed with fear. “But I can’t just sit here and do nothing! My children—”
“—are not helpless,” Mr. Notes’s shadow finished. “Yes, they’re in more trouble than any person of flesh should ever have to face, but if you knew the kind of dangers they’ve already braved, and the kind of monsters they’ve already defeated, you’d be more proud of your girls than you’ve ever been before.”
Mrs. What was proud of her girls already, but still didn’t find this very comforting.
The shadow girl paused now, to give her next words a weight that even a distraught mother had to feel. “And then you also have to consider Gustav.”
“I’m sure he’s a very brave little boy, but—”
Fernie’s shadow took offense at that. “He’s more than just brave, more than just the best friend Fernie has ever had or ever will have. He’s half shadow himself, almost as fast and cunning and hard to kill as a shadow—a good thing, as he’s spent all his life in a wondrous place facing down more dangers than even you could possibly imagine. If you knew the things he’s already done and the things he is prepared to do in defense of your family, then you’d know that your girls and husband are in the hands of the best possible companion. If anybody can get them home alive, it’s him.”
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