“That’s what happened to me,” Bing said with a gasp. “You wrote Red Wolf, I played Red Wolf, and the power of everyone’s attention combined to create me as Red Wolf.”
Sand grinned. “All that begins with you, nephew. That is your magic.”
That sounded completely ridiculous, so he pointed out the error in her logic. “You’re saying if I believe Monkey is inside me, and we combine it with the magic in the air, then he is in me?” Walter shook his head. “I didn’t believe it first. Not until I felt it.”
Sand pointed her finger at the sky. “That is why I needed the magic in the air. I used it to create the channel. Every day that you believe, the connection grows stronger. Your body aligns to Monkey, your thoughts are Monkey’s. You become Monkey.”
No, no, no, no, no! And yet… obviously it was true.
Meanwhile, Bing suddenly clapped his hands. “That’s why she’s trying to kill Gator. He’s taking up all the magic in the air. He’s using all that mystical energy that she needs to finish putting Monkey in you.”
“Gator!” She spat the name. “He takes the magic in the air to make his videos powerful. Everybody watches, even when they don’t want to.”
Well, hell. How many times had Walter lost himself in internet videos? Going from one to another even when he had other things to do. He’d never imagined that someone could add magic to the feed—maybe a hypnotic kind of pull to catch attention and keep it—or that by watching he was giving energy to the creator of the video.
Sand pointed at Walter. “I need that magic for you. He takes it to make videos of a Wisconsin lake that kills, tornadoes that destroy, storms that obliterate. And he lives off the attention it gives him.”
Walter was catching on. “He’s a disaster tourist taking all the energy that goes into viewing the disasters online—”
“He eats that,” she snorted. “That is his life.”
Bing’s eyes widened. “He lives off all that attention? From people viewing his vlog?”
Sand pushed up from her seat. “My attention! My life! Stolen!”
“But how is that stolen from you?” Walter asked. Damn it, this needed to make sense soon.
Bing filled in the gaps. “Without the internet, what stories would we tell? Where would we put our attention?”
“I don’t know. TV? Movies?”
Sand hissed in the witness box. Around her, the judge and jury made similar sounds.
“Without modern communication, we tell the old stories.” Walter turned to her. “Right? That’s what you think. That once we stop with all the television and internet, we’ll all go back to telling the old stories. The fairy tales. The myths.”
“The Monkey King,” she said firmly. Then she pointed a hard finger at Walter. “You are the storyteller, and you are Monkey. Tell his story. Tellmystory! And then we will live again as we should.”
Bing turned to Walter. “That’s it. That’s the reason for the whole thing. She knew you were a storyteller, so she had you possessed by Monkey. As a storyteller, you can bring more life to her and Monkey. Tell the tale, get people to believe, and just like Red Wolf, they can live again.” Then he frowned and turned back to Sand. “So what is this?” he asked, gesturing around them. “Why the kangaroo court thing?”
She dropped down in a huff. “To lure Gator here. Your friends, they had phones, yes? Killing funny kangaroos is a disaster, yes?” She waved her hand and everyone disappeared—the judge, the jury, even the potted plants. Everyone except the three of them, a sad houseplant in the corner, and the poor kangaroo sleeping behind the judge’s bench. “Illusion is my talent.”
Bing looked around. “Woven from real things.”
She shrugged. “All illusion comes from somewhere. Why not the thing itself?”
The pieces slipped into place. “You did everything for attention. Gator lives off it, but so do you.” He looked at his aunt. “Did you want to join forces with him or destroy him? Because I’ve got to tell you, disaster porn isn’t going away. Neither is the internet.”
She threw up her hands. “I am not the storyteller! I brought you here. I put Monkey inside you. I tried to bring him here. You have to write the story however it needs to be told.”
Walter stared at her. “You put way too much faith in me.”
“No,” Bing said softly, “she doesn’t. You could do it. You could write a Monkey King story that would bring her new life.”
She straightened up. “And here in Wisconsin, with all the energy from the lake swirling around, is where we should do it.”
“That’s why you insisted on shooting in Wisconsin, as close to the dead zone as possible.”
“All that attention. All the magic in the air.” She pointed to the ground. “Here. Right here to use.”
