Doria had had a head start even before the Lyddie-caused delay.  Now, with the extra weight of a mud-covered six-year-old on her shoulders, Melisma had no chance of catching up.  But she couldn’t exactly not chase Doria, so she kept struggling forward.  Every step now felt like a thousand-pound effort.

            The smoke blocked any view of Doria, but Melisma occasionally caught snatches of her voice in the wind.

            “Don’t burn up my brother!” Doria shouted from somewhere ahead and to the left.

            “She's over there!  Giddy-up!”  Lyddie dug her heels into Melisma’s chest and yanked at her ears.

            “Gah!  Cut it out!”  Melisma stumbled to maintain her balance as her sister jerked her head sharply to the left.

            “I’m steering!” Lyddie said.  “Doria’s voice is that way!”

            “I can hear her too,” Melisma said.  “But I can't if you rip my ears off.  Knock it off, before you make me drop you.”  She re-centered her weight and set off again.

            “’Kay Melisma,” Lyddie replied.  “But I’m still gonna ‘giddy-up’ you when you’re being a slowpoke.”  She drove her heels into the older girl’s chest once more, for emphasis.

            Melisma turned to the left and continued her pursuit.  Another tree erupted, this one far to the right.  “Stop… lighting… fires!”  Doria coughed from that direction.

            “Wrong way, Melisma,” Lyddie advised unhelpfully.  The girls pivoted and set off toward the blaze.

            “Stop it, stop it, STOP IT!” Doria shrieked, her voice raw from the smoke.  Now she was behind them.  Either Doria was wandering at random, or the girls were.  Or perhaps the strange acoustics of the Man-Groves threw everything off.

            “Wrong way again.  Better turn around.”

            “We’ll be doing this all day,” Melisma said.  “Let’s just pick a direction and stick with it.”

            They approached a thick bank of smoke.  “Hold your breath and plug your nose,” Melisma ordered.  Lyddie took a deep breath, then immediately erupted in a violent coughing fit.  Melisma waited for her to recover, then took a breath of her own.  Her eyes were already red and bleary; she squeezed them shut and plunged blindly into the smog.  She tried  not to smell or taste the acrid air around her, but, she could feel the soot on her tongue even as she held her breath.

            Now, Doria’s voice seemed to come from all directions at once.  “Why are you doing this?” she pleaded.

            Lyddie huddled in close on Melisma’s shoulders, hunching into her hair and resting her cheek on the top of her sister’s head.  Lyddie’s knees pressed tight against the sides of Melisma’s neck and wrapped one arm under her chin.  Her other arm hung limp with the shape-sorting ball in her hand.  Melisma could feel her trembling.

            Melisma rubbed the grip of her toy bow.  It was stupid, but the feel of the cheap plastic reassured her.  With both Cade and Doria missing, and with Lyddie clinging tight to her head, she felt scared in a way that she hadn’t for a very long time.  The world was suddenly huge and full of bad guys, just like when she was in preschool.  But now, there was no Cade here to protect her, because the bad guys were going to burn him up.  Now it was her turn to protect everyone, and she wasn’t sure she could shoulder the burden.

            She pulled an arrow from the quiver she’d looped over her belt and nocked it onto the bowstring.  She slid it back and forth across the grip as she struggled against the mud.

            The smoke parted.  Melisma stepped into a small clearing and sighed in weary relief to see Doria at its center, her face a mixture of despair and exhaustion.  Doria’s cheeks glowed orange from the light of a giant tree smoldering behind her.

            “We should’ve just gone home,” she said.

            The momentary calm that Melisma felt evaporated as a figure in a long coat emerged at the far end of the clearing.  Fire from the burning tree danced across the goggles of his gas mask.  A second masked figure appeared at his side, then a third, then a fourth.  Each carried a hose-like nozzle in their hands, capped by an electric sparking mechanism.  The first figure flipped a toggle on the side of his nozzle, and a spurt of blue-red flame leapt upwards from the tip.  The person at his side pointed towards Doria.

            “Do you think it’s too late to go back?” Doria asked.

            The figures began to advance across the clearing.  The front one trained his weapon in Doria’s direction.

            “We’ll figure it all out,” Melisma said, struggling to keep the panic out of her voice.  “Just come back over here, Doria.”

            “Okay, Melisma.”  Doria clomped wearily towards her sisters.

            As she took her fifth step, the tree behind her released a foul-smelling pocket of swamp gas, setting off an eruption of new flames.  The trunk crackled, snapped, then exploded outward.  Fragments of burning wood flew in all directions.

            With its trunk blown out, the tree lurched and shuddered.  A massive branch, still ablaze, smashed down into the clearing behind Doria.  She flew face-first into the mud, then lay in a splayed heap under her blanket cape.

            “Doria!” Lyddie screeched.  Her knees clenched tighter around Melisma's neck, almost strangling her.

            The figures on the other side heard Lyddie’s shout and sprinted forward, weapons still pointed toward the girls.

“Doria, get up, ‘kay?” Lyddie pleaded.

            Doria didn’t get up.

            The masked figures continued their advance.  Melisma stood frozen in place, torn between concern for Doria and a desperate urge to run away.  The front figure stepped across the fallen branch, his heavy boots and thick clothing easily shielding him from the flames that licked its surface.  He approached Doria and stretched out his hand.

            “Doria, come ON!”  Lyddie yelled.

            The guard’s hand landed on Doria’s blanketed shoulder.  As he grabbed her, a cloud of ink-black gas exploded into the air around them.  Doria cried out, then fell silent.  The cloud roiled in place for a few seconds, then began to expand.

            Fear overpowered Melisma's other impulses.  “We need to get out of the way, now!”

            “But they’ve got Doria!” Lyddie protested.

            “And we’re next!” Melisma snapped.  “We can’t help her if we’re dead!”

            “But, Doria!” Lyddie wailed in a softer, sadder voice.

            “We’ll come back for her,” Melisma whispered.

            They moved back past the tree line.  The cloud chased them to the edge of the clearing, then stopped.  Melisma tried to stare into the roiling gas, but all she could see was a black, oily wall.

            Lyddie reached out and brushed the surface of the cloud.  “Do you think she’s already dead?” she asked.

            A large, gloved hand burst through the gas and wrapped around Lyddie’s fingers.  She yelped.  A trench coat-covered arm and rubber gas mask followed the hand.

            “Melisma, help!” Lyddie screeched.

            Melisma reacted without thinking, her brain a cloud of terror and adrenaline.  She jerked her body backwards.  Lyddie, still on her shoulders, came after.  Her hand wrenched out of the masked figure’s grip.

            Melisma lost her balance and toppled into the mud.  The figure stumbled out from the cloud, wiped black sludge from his goggles, then lunged.

            Seven-year-old Melisma seized control of Melisma’s brain at that moment.  She did the only thing she could think to do.  She placed a rubber-tipped arrow on her timeworn plastic bow, pulled back the string, and fired.

            The arrow flew from her bow straight into the figure’s chest, making a soft meowing sound.  The masked figure burst into a sudden swirl of rainbow glitter and stars.

            When the glitter cleared, he was gone.  All that remained in the spot where he’d stood was a plush, stuffed doll.  It wore a tiny trench coat, along with matching gloves and gas mask.

            Nostalgia and confusion surged into Melisma's overtaxed mind.  The bow had just done exactly what she used to imagine when she was  small enough to play with it: it had defeated a bad guy in the cutest way possible.  She stared at the lump of plastic in her hand and screamed.

            “That was AWESOME!”  Lyddie whispered.  “Can I keep the stuffy?”

            A second masked figure stepped out of the cloud.  He scanned the trees, searching for the girls.  Before he realized they were on the ground, below his line of sight, Melisma nocked another arrow and sent it into his shoulder.  This one made a literal sparkle-swirl rainbow behind it as it flew.  It hit the figure’s coat with the sound of a little girl giggling, then he collapsed into a second plush stuffy.  

            “Dibs,” Lyddie called.

            A third figure emerged from the darkness and pointed his weapon at them.  Melisma loosed an arrow at his head.  It whistled through the air with the sound of a solo rock guitar.  Holographic dolphins with Pegasus wings spiraled around it as it flew.

            Melisma blushed, both overwhelmed and embarrassed by her seven-year-old sensibilities, as the third figure burst into a cloud of sparkles and squishy pink hearts.  He left a third stuffed doll in his wake.  This one carried a tiny, plastic flamethrower.

            “Aww, that one’s my favorite!” Lyddie cooed.

            A gruff voice called out from within the black cloud.  “Hey!  I’m not here to hurt you.  I’m dropping my weapon.  Why don’t you put yours down, too?  Let’s talk.”  A nozzle-like gun and matching backpack came clattering out of the cloud as he disarmed.

            “Don’t do it, Melisma,” Lyddie advised.  “I want a complete set.”

            Melisma considered the figure’s offer.  “I’m not putting my weapon down,” she called out.  “But I won’t shoot you if you don’t make any sudden moves.”

            “Darn it,” Lyddie moped.

            The darkness roiled.  “Fair enough,” the voice called from within.

            A figure stepped out of the cloud about seven feet away.  Melisma pulled herself up from the mud into a crouch, so she could react quickly if he decided to attack.  He squatted down in front of her.

            “Which tree do you come from?  Did we burn it down already?  Is that why you’re upset?” he asked.

            “We’re not from a tree,” Lyddie replied.

            He thought for a moment.  “Well, you’re not from a vine.”

            “Nope.  I’m Lyddie.  With an ‘x’ and a ‘y.’  But the ‘x’ is just in the fancy part of my name.”

            “Okay, Lyddie, what are you doing here?”

            Melisma jumped in.  “We’re looking for my brother, Cadence Sullivan.  There’s been a mistake, and he’s trapped in here somewhere.  Your company needs to stop burning everything down until we find him and bring him out.”

            “My company?”  The figure laughed as he stood up and  removed the gloves from his hands.  “Cadence Sullivan, right?  There’s nobody here who answers to that name.”  He reached behind his head and unbuckled his gas mask.  His trench coat billowed as he moved, releasing a cloud of stale sweat smell.

            “Of course,” he continued, “that doesn’t mean the name doesn’t apply.  It could be that I don’t answer because ‘Cadence Sullivan’ is a stupid name to begin with.”

            He peeled the mask from his face, revealing a long, familiar nose, arched eyebrows, bulging eyes and frowning lips.  Melisma sighed with relief as her brother's face came into view.  Then she took a closer look.

            The boy in front of her appeared to be Cade.  At least, he was much more real than the action figure Cades out in the showroom.  But if this was Cade, it was Cade at his absolute ugliest.  His face was a sea of acne, even more than Melisma remembered.  It looked like he’d stayed up all night scratching and poking at his pimples, leaving a mess of scabs and open sores.  A smattering of short, black facial hair sprouted from his chin, his cheeks, and the skin between his eyebrows.  He brushed a clump of greasy, brown hair back from his forehead, and a flurry of white flakes fell to his shoulders.

            His outfit looked very different up-close than it had from a distance.  Beneath his stained trench coat (which was far too big for him, bunching up on his arms and dragging in the mud behind him), he wore a pair of grimy, navy blue slacks and a black t-shirt.  There had once been a slogan on the shirt, but the letters had cracked and fallen off.  On his feet, he wore a spattered pair of moon boots.

            The girls’ brother grinned at them, revealing a row of crooked, yellow-brown teeth.  His breath was awful, and it smelled even worse mixed with his body odor and the burning swamp around them.  “Cadence Sullivan is gone, I’m afraid.”  He extended a hand to help Melisma up.  “You can call me Pox Head.  Welcome to the Ever-Cades.”