“Greetings, awoken ones,” she said. “I have some good news, and, alas, some bad news. The good news is that we now have over one hundred awoken cats, cats who understand both the value of comradeship and the extreme danger we are currently in. I believe most of you are here. But the bad news is that so many of our comrades still have no idea of what is in store for them on Midwinter’s Eve. We need as many of them as possible to understand, and come over to our side. We need to prevent the Diberi from being able to cast their spell, which, as we know, could threaten the entire world. They only need one hundred of us, don’t forget, and there are several times that amount who are still unawoken. Go upstairs, all of you, and try to explain to as many of our fellow cats as possible what’s happening. Time is running out.”

A ginger cat in the audience spoke up. “But, what if they don’t believe us?” he said. “I’ve tried this before and everyone just thinks that we’re insane conspiracy theorists.”

“Then you have to try harder,” said Mirabelle. “As I said, time is running out.”

The Bermuda Triangle stretched into an isosceles shape and then back into an equilateral again and sighed. It felt sad. Today was the day it was leaving home, possibly for the last time. At least it was not going alone. It would be accompanied by the Northern Lights, who had been with the Bermuda Triangle enjoying a pre-Midwinter vacation when the offer had been made.

The two entities had left the Otherworld within a year of one another—hundreds of years before, and not long after the Great Split—and had always kept in touch. They had left for the same reason every great entity leaves the Otherworld—for the fame and fortune available in the Realworld. In the Otherworld, no one had ever been that impressed with the colors and shapes the Northern Lights made in the sky—the whole Otherworld sky already looked like that much of the time.

A psychotic piece of geometry was more unusual, granted, but Otherworld adventurers were extremely good at escaping from the Bermuda Triangle, and back in the olden days some young people had even started using it as—horrors—a kind of game.

In the Realworld, though, people were properly afraid of the Bermuda Triangle. They treated it with respect. It had even had a pop song written about it! There were no pop songs in the Otherworld. And, okay, there was no denying that the Bermuda Triangle did make people disappear—but only to the Otherworld. It was not as bad as all that. But people were still afraid, which was kind of fun. Meanwhile, the Northern Lights had package vacations based around it, and entire books written about it. It had posters, films—a whole industry.