Mervin Q. Peevler & the Monkeywrench Express

By Matt Mills · Estimated Reading Time: 25 Minutes

Everybody knew that if you wanted unicorn blood, you had to go see Mervin Q. Peevler.

“No, not Marvin,” he would inevitably correct you. “Mervin. Rhymes with swervin’.” He was very particular about his name.

“What’s the Q for?” people would sometimes ask.

“Questions like that, I don’t answer,” he would reply, and then laugh at his own incomparable wit.

Yessir, Mervin had it all: unicorn blood, dragon scales, eyelashes from a leprechaun, the fossilized skull of a werewolf, and a whole host of bewitched and bedazzled magical doodads and whatsits, including powder that gave good luck on job interviews, scissors that cut nasty words out of people’s sentences right while they were talking, eyedrops that let you see through walls, and even an air freshener that could cure baldness. Any kind of charm or trinket you could ever want, Mervin had it. 

Mervin sold his peculiar wares out of a rusty little cart with rickety wheels. He had no home, not that anyone could tell. He wandered all around with his goods, sleeping in train cars and on busses, hitchhiking from Sacramento to Wichita to Huntsville to Myrtle Beach. No one ever knew where he came from or where he was going. He would simply roll in from parts unknown, wearing his bowler hat and old-fashioned overcoat, set up his cart in a prime location, and begin hollering at the tourists.

But, despite all this unpredictability, there was one spot Mervin could always be counted on to show up. Every summer, without fail, Mervin Q. Peevler pushed his old cart down the bustling streets of Chicago.

And boy, did Todd Maxwell really hate it.

✷

Handsome Todd Maxwell, with his silk ties and granite countertops, was one of those guys whose last name could double as a first name. This simple fact—the convenient reversibility of the thing—summed up the essence of the man with an efficiency he himself would have appreciated, had he bothered to think of it. But he never did think of it, because Todd Maxwell was one of the most uncreative men alive.

Todd worked in a skyscraper downtown as a consulting consultant. He consulted consultants. Sometimes consultants consulted him. He also filed reports. Of these reports there were, of course, the quarterlies, the annuals, the bi-annuals, the semi-weeklies, the monthly, the quarter-monthlies, the monthly-annuals, and even the occasional semi-quarter-annual. It was quite a lot to keep track of, and Todd made an obscene amount of money doing it.

“Todd,” people would sometimes ask, “how are you so successful at such a young age?”

“Simple,” he would answer, flashing those straight white teeth. “I don’t waste time.”

He would then proceed to offer, by way of example, his daily regimen: Every morning, Todd woke up at exactly 5:03. At 5:05, he drank a cup of coffee and ate a bowl of yogurt with fruit. At 5:15 he hit the gym (working out each muscle at very particular intervals, of course). At 6:15 he took a shower. At 6:23 he combed a pinch of pomade through his hair. At 6:57 he arrived at the office. He was usually the first one through the door. He stayed there until 7:13 every night before walking home in time for dinner at 7:45. Then he’d work on more reports—especially if the semi-triennial was due—until 11:06 before brushing his teeth and starting the whole thing over again.

Todd Maxwell was, quite simply, a man of achievement. He knew what he wanted and he knew how to get it. He did not abide nonsense.

Which was probably why he hated Mervin Q. Peevler so much.

Living downtown, Todd was accustomed to his fair share of grifters and panhandlers. He saw them all the time, so often that they blended into the scenery, like shrubbery in the medians or discarded pizza boxes that never fit in the trash cans. But Mervin Q. Peevler was different. Every summer, the strange little man would push his squeaky little cart up to some highly-trafficked street corner, and, every summer, he’d hoodwink the most gullible tourists into buying his phony garbage.

“Mermaid eyeballs!” he would yell, holding up a jar. “Step right up folks, this is a true rarity. Just drop one of these puppies in your soup and you’ll be able to breathe underwater for the next year. At fifty bucks a jar, these things are a steal!”

Todd would pass by the cart on his way home from work or going to and from an important lunch meeting. Peevler would inevitably be surrounded by a group of tourists, usually wearing fanny packs and sunglasses, ready to fork over their money. The sight made Todd furious.

“How stupid are these people?” he complained to his wife one night at dinner. “Can’t they tell they’re being swindled? I should call the police on him; I’m sure he doesn’t have a license to sell that crap.”

“Mmm,” his wife would say, not lifting her eyes from her phone.

Todd’s wife, Chunyu, was an artist. You could tell because she had so many piercings, and half of her hair was dyed blue. She worked out of the condo, in a large guest bedroom they’d converted into an art studio. Some days she would put on Spandex, cover her whole body with different shades of paint, and roll around on a pile of canvases. Other days she would sit with her eyes closed for hours, listening to recordings of people screaming. Still other days she would drag bags full of garbage into the studio and throw it at the walls. Todd really didn’t understand it at all. 

What Todd did understand was this: Chunyu was very successful. He knew this from the magazines with her picture on the cover, her painting hanging in the lobby of a prestigious law firm, and the incredible sums of money that would show up in their bank account after each of her gallery openings.

Indeed, this success—and the uncompromising drive to get more of it—was the only thing either of them really understood about each other anymore. They felt it on a primal level, like two lions stalking their respective plains in designer clothes, each nodding at the other whenever they passed in the tall grass.

Of course, it hadn’t always been like this. Six years ago, before the success, before the money, they used to go to the lake. They’d play frisbee and sit on a blanket with their toes touching. She’d laugh and lean back into his arms, looking out at the waves.

But they had goals, and they had plans, and, as Todd was so fond of telling everybody, they didn’t waste time. Not a millisecond, not a nanosecond. They were so good at not wasting time that they almost never spoke to each other at all anymore.

✷

“I can’t take this, not a day more.”

It was August, and Mervin Q. Peevler had been peddling his cart up and down the city for six weeks now. Todd was about to explode.

“Mmm,” said Chunyu.

The next afternoon on his way home from work, Todd passed by Peevler’s cart as he always did. An elderly couple were peering at the trinkets with ooh’s and aah’s.

“Special price today on my very own Fantastical Elixir!” Peevler was saying. “Cures baldness, gout, and unwelcome houseguests!”

“We do have quite a few of those,” said the old woman.

Todd stopped. With a deliberate huff, he spun on his heels and marched over to the cart. It was covered in bottles, boxes, and strange-looking objects. He thrust his finger at one.

“What’s this?”

The little man behind the cart looked up. Now, if Todd had been a more observant man, he might have noticed the light glinting in his eyes, like the moon catching the surface of deep blue water. Peevler smiled.

“You have good taste, sir. That is Perennial Passing Potion. Put it in your coffee on the day of the big exam and I positively guarantee you’ll get at least 70% of the questions right.”

“Oooh,” said the elderly couple. “Aaah!”

“And this?” asked Todd.

“Ground centaur hooves. Solves all your automotive troubles and gets you out of parking tickets.”

“Oooh,” said the elderly couple. “Aaah!”

“This?”

“Vampire mucus, sir. Good for insomnia.”

“Oooh,” said the elderly couple. “Aaah!”

Shaking with indignation, Todd looked at the elderly couple. “You know he’s ripping you off, right?”

“Oh, come now, young man,” said the old woman. She handed Peevler a twenty-dollar bill and put a vial of the Fantastical Elixir in her purse. “Have you ever tried any of it?”

Todd blinked. Then he turned and grabbed the first thing he saw. It looked like a perfume bottle, with a dark green liquid inside. The label said Mixture of Medusa. 

“How much for this?” he said, shaking it under Peevler’s nose.

“Ah, good sir, that is quite powerful and quite rare!”

“Of course it is,” said Todd.

“But for you, sir, I will give a special price today. Fifty dollars for a bottle.”

Disgusted, Todd took a fifty out of his wallet. He stuffed the glass bottle into his bag and hurried off.

By the time he got home, he was twenty-three minutes late. Chunyu was blow-drying her hair.

“You’re twenty-three minutes late,” she said.

He emptied the Mixture of Medusa into a glass. Then he took out his phone—it was the new model; he’d been gloating about it at the office all week—and began recording a video.

“Here,” he said, thrusting the glass at Chunyu.

“You know I only drink vitamin water and merlot.”

He sighed very loudly and looked up at the ceiling, as though there had never been a more tragic martyr in all of history. “Chunyu, I don’t have time for this.”

She scowled. “Neither do I. My new gallery opening is in two hours.”

“Chunyu…”

“Ugh, fine!”

She took the glass and drank.

Poof!

There was a flash of light and a shower of sparks. When it was over, everything was exactly the same. Everything, that is, except for Chunyu’s hair: curling out from her scalp were two dozen green, hissing snakes.

Chunyu screamed. Todd stared. He looked at the bottle in his hand, then back at his wife, then back at the bottle.

“Huh,” he said.

Then he stopped recording.

✷

Thirteen minutes later, Todd was panting back at Mervin Q. Peevler’s stall.

“Back so soon?” said Peevler.

“What are you playing at, you conniving little huckster?”

“Ah, not so lucky with the Mixture of Medusa, were we?” Peevler grinned and tapped a handwritten cardboard sign. “Sorry, Mr. Maxwell, no refunds.”

Todd knew he had never mentioned his name to the dirty little con artist. He also knew that his client from Beirut would be needing his quarter-semis by midnight. He grabbed Peevler by the scruff and hoisted him up.

“Change her back!” he said. “Change her back now!”

“Mr. Maxwell,” Peevler said, very calm despite being suspended in the air by Todd’s muscular grip, “reversing the effects takes some time—”

“I don’t have time!”

People were giving them odd looks. Blushing, Todd lowered Peevler to the ground. The little man straightened out his jacket, then grinned a sly grin.

“Not to worry, I have just the thing.” 

He held up a rabbit’s foot dangling from a chain.

“You need something harmless,” he said. “The paw of the Magical Hare of the North. Rub it three times, spin in a circle, and chant the magic words.”

“Magic words?” repeated Todd. “You mean, ‘please?’”

“Hocus pocus higgledy-piggledy zippity-zop presto-kazam!”

Todd gritted his teeth. “Whatever. How much?”

Peevler stroked his chin.

When Todd arrived back at the condo—his wallet two hundred dollars lighter—Chunyu was glaring at him. So were the snakes. They flicked their forked tongues and hissed in unison.

“These snakes do not go with my orange chiffon dress,” said Chunyu.

Todd held up the rabbit’s foot. Feeling like an idiot, he rubbed it three times, spun in a circle, then cried out, “Hocus pocus higgledy-piggledy zippity-zop presto-kazam!”

Pop!

There was a flash of light. Chunyu blinked. The snakes on her head blinked. Todd blinked too, and reached up to scratch his ears, which had suddenly become very itchy. Very, very itchy, in fact, and very furry, and very long…

Twenty-six minutes later, Todd was back at the cart. He had a towel over his head.

“Peevler!”

“Who’s there?”

“What do you mean, who’s there? I was just here fifty-seven minutes ago!”

He pulled the towel off of his head. Sticking up from his head were two long rabbit ears. Peevler took one look at him and grinned.

“No trouble at all, Mr. Maxwell. I have just the thing!”

And so it went. For the next two hours, Todd went running back and forth between his condo and the cart, handing over larger and larger sums of money for increasingly ineffective solutions. 

The Vivifying Vial made their dining room table come alive and start running around in a panic. The enchanted water from the Cloud Lake caused a river to spring up from their bathtub, running out into the hall, down the stairs, and spilling onto the lobby floor, where the doormen and mail carriers kept slipping as they went in and out. The Kobold-in-a-Box summoned a dozen little men who jumped on the sofa and threw dishes at each other. The petals from the Whispering Lotus made all the books on their shelves start reading themselves aloud, and the Transmogrifying Tonic turned their maintenance man into a walrus. 

It got so bad that the building manager stopped by and began writing down all the fines they were incurring, shaking her head as she stepped over the tumbling kobolds and hopping over the river streaming from their bathtub.

“The condo association is not going to be happy about this.”

But no one was more upset than Chunyu. She quaked with rage at every one of Todd’s failed attempts, the snakes on her head writhing and gnashing their fangs, until at last she stood from her chair.

“Enough! I’ll go see this Peevler fellow myself, and I will just have to be late to my own gallery opening! I hope you’re happy!”

Todd, who was swatting at the kobolds that were tugging at his rabbit ears, was not.

But when they arrived downtown thirteen minutes later, trying to ignore the stares and the double-takes from passing strangers, the cart was gone.

“You lookin’ for ol’ Q?”

It was a homeless man, sitting on the corner. He held a tin cup in his hands and was surrounded by pigeons.

“Q told me if I was to see a lady with snakes for hair and a guy with bunny ears, I should give ‘em this.”

He held out a note, scribbled on the back of a stained deli sandwich receipt. Todd took it, but Chunyu snatched it out of his hands. It read:

Poor, poor Mr. and Mrs. Maxwell: 

I am sorry. No, I’m not sorry. It was fun. Plus, I haven’t made this much money in one day since Y2K. You’ve cleaned out my stock, so I think I’ll be off. Maybe take a vacation. Thank you for your patronage and see you next year!

The Honorable Mervin Q. Peevler, Esquire, Etc., Etc.

P.S: Hope your gallery opening goes well, and good luck filing all those reports—they sounded quite important!

Chunyu glared at Todd. “How does he know about the gallery? What have you been telling this swindler, Todd?”

“Nothing, I swear! He just knows, I don’t know how—”

Chunyu made a face and spun around to the homeless man.

“Which way did he go?”

The homeless man pointed at the train stop, the stairs winding down below the street and vanishing under the earth. Todd felt a stab of revulsion; he hadn’t taken the train since he’d gone above six figures.

But Chunyu smacked the note against Todd’s chest and took off at a run, the snakes on her head snapping at the pigeons as she scattered them. “Let’s go! With any luck, we can get this taken care of before my photo shoot for Avant Guardians tomorrow.”

Todd thought of his Beirut client, and the quarter-bicentennial he was expected to turn in by the end of the week, and he hurried after her.

The underground swallowed them up with a satisfied gulp, and the homeless man laughed while the pigeons settled back to the street, fluffing their feathers and thinking how rude, how rude in their little pigeon sort of way.

✷

Sandra had worked the L train booth for eleven years. In that time she’d seen all sorts of weirdness. So far, this particular Thursday had been remarkably unremarkable. The train doors opened and closed like clockwork, depositing an endless stream of businessmen, tourists, and high school students onto the platform in various colors and hues. It was like looking into a very boring kaleidoscope.

Sandra was sitting there, watching a cooking show on her phone and waiting for something interesting to happen, when the woman with the snake-hair and the man with the rabbit ears stumbled into the station. She blinked at them once, then chuckled to herself, leaning forward and pressing the intercom button.

“Excuse me, ma’am, sir. Are you two looking for Mervin Q. Peevler?”

They were startled and looked at her as though a rat had scuttled out of the wall and started talking to them. That’s when Sandra noticed their clothes: his silk tie and leather shoes, her striped jumpsuit and pearl necklace. She sighed and shook her head. Lost, rich lambs, wandering outside their pasture.

“Ma’am, sir, will you step over here please?”

They came over to the booth. “Excuse me, what did you say…?”

“Mervin Q. Peevler,” Sandra said, trying to speak slowly. She’d learned it was best to go slow with these types. “Little guy, old-fashioned jacket, bowler hat? You know the one.”

“Er, yes,” said the man, glancing at his wife. “How did you…?”

She chuckled again. “Just a guess.” 

“You’ve seen him?” snapped the wife. “Which line did he take? Red? Blue? Orange?”

Oh, this would be fun. “Vermilion.”

They narrowed their eyes at that.“I’ve lived in Chicago for ten years,” said the woman very coldly. “There’s no vermilion line.”

“Sure there’s not.”

Sandra slid two special tokens under the glass to them.

“What is this?” said the man. “The trains haven’t run on tokens since the 90s.”

“Uh-huh.”

Suddenly, there was a distant rumble. The lights of the station flickered and went out. From down the tracks, headlights made patterns on the wall.

“Get ready,” said Sandra into the darkness. “Here it comes now.”

The train roared into the station, tearing through with a mighty wind. It blew litter across the platform, pushing back the woman’s snakes and the man’s bunny ears. It was not like any of the other L trains. Instead of the dull silver sides, it glowed a vibrant scarlet. Instead of being lit by white fluorescents, the train cars—which were all empty—were bathed in a soft yellow light coming from lanterns that hung and swayed from the ceilings.

The doors slid open.

Sandra waved the couple along. “This is you. You’ll find Peevler at the end of the line. Don’t get lost!”

Mystified, they stepped onto the train car. There was a sound like a bell from far away, then, with a whoosh, the train was off, vanishing into the tunnel.

The station lights flickered and returned to normal. Sandra chuckled and went back to her cooking show.

✷

Chunyu Wang had been having a bad day even before there were snakes on her head.

For starters, her latest piece had not sold for nearly as much as she thought it should. Also, the dealer in Munich had not returned any of her calls. And there was the matter of this insipid Hannah Chang making waves with the critics. How bold her technique was, how original her perspective! They had said the same thing about Chunyu four years ago; the words still echoed in her ears. But Chunyu was creeping into her mid-thirties now, and this Hannah girl was only twenty-five. 

She had said nothing about this to Todd. Indeed, mentioning anything to Todd was the last thing that crossed her mind these days. They were two planets with their own orbits, which is why, despite the peculiar day they were having, all either of them could think about aboard the vermilion line was the million things they still needed to do.

“I have a client in Australia who needs a color-coded bar graph!” said Todd.

“I have an art collector who needs a colorized lithograph!” said Chunyu.

“My boss needs this Excel sheet by noon tomorrow!”

“My dealer needs these rough sketches by noon tomorrow!”

“I need to confirm lunch with an investor from Portugal.”

“I need to confirm lunch with a magazine editor from Paris.”

“I need to buy a new tie for my next presentation.”

“I need to buy new spandex for my next body-painting.”

They tried to get reception in the empty car. Todd stood on the seats, waving his phone in the air. Chunyu tried to open the window, but it wouldn’t budge. They paced, they stood perfectly still, they turned their phones off and on again and checked the cellular settings a hundred times. But there was no signal anywhere.

They slumped into the seats with their arms crossed.

“For the price we paid, you’d think these lousy phones would get reception underground,” grumbled Todd.

Beneath them, the train hummed along the rails. Everything else was quiet. They had not sat next to each other like this, without phones, without plans, for a long time.

They sat there in awkward silence as the train took them further and further from home.

✷

Then, all at once, they were there, although they had no idea where “there” was.

When the doors whooshed open, Todd and Chunyu stepped out into a bustling train station. But it was not Union Station, or Ogilvie, or any other train station they knew of. This one looked old, like something out of a photograph from fifty years ago. The high, domed ceiling glittered with glass, and there were people everywhere, or things like people. They, too, looked like they had stepped out of an old movie, wearing striped suits and pocket watches, carrying large sacks over their shoulders. Most of them were shabby, their clothes worn from much travel. Many of them did not look human. Todd saw a hulking creature with a great red beard, and Chunyu noticed two tittering women with gossamer wings. There were strange smells wafting into the air from vendors selling odd-looking vegetables and meat on skewers, and not far from them a creature with cloven hooves was hawking hand-carved wooden instruments.

Todd put his fists into his large, furry ears with a moan. “It’s so loud in here!”

“Sir, madame, do you have your passage tokens?”

It was an attendant, holding a clipboard and holding out a little tin cup towards them. Thankfully, he looked human: he wore a conductor’s hat and had a big, drooping mustache. He did not seem at all perturbed by the forked tongues of Chunyu’s snakes nor the twitching ears growing out of Todd’s head.

“Our what?” Todd asked.

“Your tokens, sir, for the passage.”

They remembered the tokens the woman at the L station had given them, and they dropped them in the little tin. The man smiled and made two little checks on his clipboard.

“Will you be transferring?”

“Listen,” said Todd, “we’re looking for someone. Short guy with an old coat and bowler hat, pushing a cart.”

“Ah, of course, Mr. Peevler! He is well known in these parts. But I’m afraid you just missed him; he’s just taken the Monkeywrench Express.”

“The what?” Chunyu asked.

“The Monkeywrench Express,” he repeated and smiled. “To the Wild Lands.”

Todd drew himself up. “Sir, I have a client in Beirut and another in Australia, both expecting reports. If these reports do not go out, this deal cannot go through. Now, I don’t expect a man in your position to know what that means, but it is imperative we speak to Mr. Peevler immediately.”

“As I’ve said, sir, Mr. Peevler is no longer here.”

“Ugh!” said Chunyu. “When does the next train leave? The next, er, Monkeywrench…?”

The attendant smiled a third time, and Chunyu had met enough art critics to recognize the condescension. “People in your position typically don’t like the Monkeywrench Express, ma’am.”

Nevertheless, after some haggling, Todd and Chunyu were able to convince the attendant to sell them two tickets. He would not accept their credit cards or cash, but took a lock of Todd’s hair and three of Chunyu’s eyelashes as payment. He used tweezers to put them in a little plastic baggie, then pocketed them and handed them their tickets.

“Right this way, sir, madame.”

As they walked through the crowded station, Chunyu braced herself for screaming babies and flickering fluorescent lights, and Todd prepared for crackly intercoms and grime-covered windows. 

But then they saw the Monkeywrench Express.

The train was old, but elegant: its chimney was like a tower in a castle, still covered in soot from what appeared to be centuries of journeys. The boiler churned with steam, and as they approached the whistle sounded. It reminded Chunyu of the Monet hanging in the Art Institute, the smoke like smudged ripples of water coming out of the stack.

The inside of the train was just as impressive. The cars were made of a beautiful polished wood, and there were little lamps along the aisle, flickering with serene flames. Creatures of various sizes and shapes sat in the seats, reading newspapers in strange and exotic languages. Once again, no one even looked twice at Chunyu and Todd.

The attendant showed them to a sleeper car. It had two beds, one over the other, hidden behind a lacy curtain and outfitted with downy comforters and fluffy pillows.

“If you should need anything,” said the attendant, “just ring the bell and the porter will provide it.”

“An overnight compartment?” Todd frowned at the beds. “How long is this trip?”

The attendant shrugged. “Impossible to say, sir.”

They looked at him in alarm. “What do you mean?”

“Could be minutes. Could be days. Could be months. That is the peculiar nature of the Monkeywrench Express.” His condescending smile returned, and he cocked his head like a disapproving schoolteacher. “Would you prefer to turn back?”

They stood there for a long moment, feeling as though a strong wind were tearing out the pages of their calendars and day planners. In their minds they saw appointments and projects and due dates, all fluttering in the air like scraps of paper before being sucked out a window and disappearing.

Then the snakes on Chunyu’s head hissed. “I cannot be photographed for Avant Guardians like this, Todd,” she said.

Todd grimaced. “Well, is there at least wifi on board? I have several important emails I need to—”

But the attendant just chuckled and closed the curtain.

✷

After the first few hours, their phones were dead; they had drained the batteries trying to get reception. Outside, green hills and forests rolled by. They had seen no cities or towns since leaving the station, no highways or airports: everything around them was wilderness. There was a sunrise on their right, and they watched it sink on their left. They sat on their separate beds, Todd on the top bunk and Chunyu on the bottom. They sat staring out the window until Todd tucked his furry ears under his head and Chunyu’s snakes curled up in drowsy contentment and they all fell asleep.

In the morning, the train was still going. They had slept for a long time, and they were hungry. It took them a while before they worked up the courage to ring the porter. Todd did not like the idea of being told off by another weirdo, and Chunyu worried the food would not be paleo. Finally, they could stand it no longer. To their immense relief, they were served a platter of toast and jam, pancakes with blueberries, sausage patties, and eggs sunny-side up. The porter was a large, gelatinous creature, but he was very kind, and though the food was not paleo, Chunyu enjoyed it very much.

They felt better after eating, and for a while they sat in silence again. But there was something new about this silence, and something pleasant about the clack-clack of the wheels beneath them. Todd found himself thinking less about his reports, and Chunyu was not so worried about her photo shoot. They found themselves thinking of things they had not thought about in a long time: of being a child and building sand castles on the beach, or playing board games on a hot summer night while the fireflies twinkled outside. 

Finally, surprising even herself, Chunyu said, “There is this new artist, Hannah Chang, who’s been getting a lot of attention lately.”

Todd’s rabbit ears twitched, and he leaned over the side of the bunk to peer down at her. “Oh?”

And for the first time in as long as either of them could remember, they had a conversation. The words came like water breaking through a concrete dam, trickles at first, then gushing, a wave that carried off the debris of the walls that had taken years to build. Chunyu’s snakes slept, peaceful, their tongues darting out to taste the air before withdrawing again, satisfied. 

✷

It is quite impossible to say how long they went on. The train engine chugged, the green hills rolled past, the sun set and rose again. Todd and Chunyu lost count. For once, they found they did not care.

Then, in a blink or an eon, they arrived.

The station was small, just a platform with ancient hills on one side and a wide beach of white sand on the other. There was no city or town to speak of, save for a small inn by the water. It had flowers growing around it, and a hand-painted sign in the window said, Vacancy.

“It’s just Wisconsin,” said Todd in annoyance.

But Chunyu was looking at the glittering waves and the ancient green hills. “It’s not Wisconsin.”

At the inn, they rang the bell. The innkeeper was a delightful old woman, and she smiled very kindly at them as she shuffled in from a back room, peering at them through thick spectacles.

“Ah, two young lovebirds! You must be looking for a room. Taking a little vacation, are we?”

Todd and Chunyu blinked in surprise; they couldn’t remember the last time they’d taken a vacation. “Actually,” said Todd, “we’re looking for someone. Goes by the name Mervin Q. Peevler.”

“Ah, yes, quite right. Mervin mentioned he might have company.”

“He did?” said Chunyu. “Then he’s here? In the inn?”

The old woman shook her head. “In all the centuries I’ve known Mervin, not once have I seen him sleep someplace with a roof over his head. No, he is a true child of the Wild Lands. The spirit of this place is in him.”

She took a little map out of a cupboard. On it, they could see the beach and the water. She pointed to a speck of green out in the blue

“This is the place,” she said. “This is where you’ll find him.”

✷

They took an old ferry with barnacles on the side that left from the beach’s lone pier. The crew were lobster-like creatures who ignored them completely, going about their business with monotonous repetition. Todd and Chunyu rode the waves, watching the distant island grow larger and larger.

When they landed, he was waiting for them. 

He was smiling that same con artist grin he had used in the busy Chicago streets, but there was something else behind it now, something old and deep like water at the bottom of a well. He was not alone on the island. There were creatures with him, animals like horses but for their glittering horns—unicorns, they realized—and he was feeding one a carrot as they approached.

“Well, now,” said Mervin Q. Peevler, chuckling. “I was beginning to worry you wouldn’t find me. Can’t have you wandering around the streets of Chicago looking like that, now can we? You’d scare the dickens out of everyone.”

He patted the flank of the unicorn, and the animal tossed its mane.

“Beautiful, aren’t they? They can live to be two hundred years old. I milk them and feed them, and when they die I bury them. After I bottle their blood and grind down their horns, of course.”

Had this all happened three days earlier, Todd and Chunyu would have have been shouting at him. They would have threatened him with lawyers or waved wads of cash over their heads. But now that they had finally arrived, they were struck with silence. Maybe it was the image of this strange little man, looking every bit the con man from an old black-and-white film, standing with his toes in the glistening white sand, surrounded by mythical beasts. Or maybe it was just the smell of the sea.

Peevler raised a bushy eyebrow. “What, nothing? No, ‘Please, Mr. Peevler, change us back, we’ll do anything?’ No, ‘You’d better fix this, or I’ll throw you in prison for the rest of your miserable life?’”

“What is this place?” Chunyu asked instead.

He grinned at that, and spread his arms out with a dramatic flourish. “Don’t you know? This is the Wild Lands!”

“Sounds made up,” said Todd.

“Well, you won’t find it on Tripadvisor, that’s for sure. But it seems most people wind up here at some point or another. See, the thing about the Wild Lands is, if you don’t come to them, they’ll come to you. Like termites in your wainscoting or a broken umbrella in a hailstorm. And when that happens,” he cocked his head, “well, you start to ask yourself about the choices you’ve been making, don’t you?”

He took a box out of his coat. It was tied with a red ribbon, and inside was a red powder. 

“I believe this is what you came for.”

Before Todd or Chunyu could respond, he took a little pinch in his fingers and blew it at them. In an instant, the snakes on Chunyu’s head hissed and shriveled and became hair; the rabbit ears on Todd’s head twitched and shrunk, returning to their original human shape.

They looked at each other in surprise. Peevler laughed, shut the little box again, and handed it to them.

“This here is Undoing Dust. Very valuable and very powerful. Take it back to your apartment, back in ol’ Chicago, and it’ll undo quite a lot of things. Why, you can even catch the Monkeywrench Express, and it’ll take you right back to the minute you left. You can still send your report to your client in—where was it, Beirut?—and you can still make your gallery opening. It can all go back to the way it was.” He shook the box. “Well, don’t just stand there. You’ve come this far.”

Todd took it. “How much for this?” he grumbled.

Peevler waved his hand. “On the house.”

They looked at the box warily, waiting for a trap. Peevler glanced back and forth between them, then tipped his hat.

“How about this? Next summer, when you pass me on the street, how about we each just look the other way. Fair?”

“Fair,” said Todd.

They turned to go.

“Oh, one last thing,” Peevler called. “A word of caution about that Undoing Dust. Just be absolutely sure, before you undo anything, that you know what it is you want undone.”

Then, with a wink, he strolled off with his unicorns, whistling all the way.

✷

The sun was setting over the water, and they rode the ferry back in silence. They held the box of dust between them, and each was thinking very hard.

When they arrived back at the inn, the old woman was behind the counter. “Ah, the lovebirds return! Will you be heading back? Or will you be staying the night?”

Todd and Chunyu looked at each other.

And they smiled.

✷

They did return home, eventually. When they did, there was still a river coming from their apartment. The kobolds had broken every single one of their dishes, and their dining room table was hiding in the guest room. Worst of all, the building manager had issued them an eviction notice and a list of fines into six figures.

Todd and Chunyu did not mind. Holding hands—an unfamiliar thing, that feeling of fingers cupped into fingers—they stepped into their condo and opened the box Mervin Q. Peevler had given them. They took a pinch of powder each. And they blew.

Many things—but not all things—were undone.

What wasn’t undone was this:

Todd and Chunyu laid on the beach. They skipped stones and sat on a blanket with their toes touching. Chunyu laughed and leaned back into Todd’s arms, and together, for the first time in forever, they looked out at the waves.

✷

Story by Matt Mills · Photo by Roland Losslein
The character of Mervin Q. Peevler was created by Khati Paul

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