She set off across the tower floor. Rownie followed. He tried to watch out for moving gears and flying masks and also other sorts of masks, but that was too much to watch out for so mostly he just ran.

Essa found the crate she wanted and pushed it over. Metal rang against stone as a great big mess of weaponry spilled out. “Grab a halberd,” she said.

Rownie thought she had said “Graba” at first, and looked wildly around—but then he pieced together what she had actually said. “What’s a halberd?”

“If an ax and a spear had babies, they would be halberds,” Essa told him. “It’s a pokey-pokey weapon for convincing things that are taller than you to stay back, please. Here’s one.” She handed it to Rownie and grabbed another.

A bird mask swooped down at her on silent, newly solid wings. Rownie shouted a warning. Then the mask broke apart in midflight. Essa ducked as pieces of it fell around her head.

“Nonny!” Thomas roared from across the tower. “Please do not break any more of our masks!”

“Especially not that one over there!” said Essa, pointing. “It’s my favorite!”

“Which one?” Rownie asked. It was difficult to pick one mask out of the roiling chaos. “The blue one?”

“No, the one next to it, the one named Semmerling. Doesn’t it look like a Semmerling to you? That blue one might also be my favorite, though. See its eyebrows? Those really are fantastic eyebrows. Oh, hey, be careful of the giant.”

She shoved Rownie to the right and leaped to the left. A giant boot came crashing down between them.

Rownie looked up. The mask he had worn looked down. It reached for him with new and giant hands. Rownie swung wildly with his halberd, tripped, stumbled, and rolled out of the way. Giant fingers grasped at the empty air above him.

Rownie picked himself up and slashed at the giant’s boots, but the boots were thick and tough—or at least made of air pretending to be thick and tough—and the halberd only scuffed one.

“I bet you can’t turn into a burnbug!” Rownie called up to the giant.

The giant ignored the taunt and reached for him again, to crush him or to eat him or else replace Rownie’s face with its own and play at being a boy who had once played a giant. Rownie didn’t bother running away. Its legs were very much longer than his, and it would catch him if he ran. Instead he took three steps backward.

The giant followed. A swinging, tree-size piece of clock swung into it and knocked the mask away from its imagined shoulders.

The giant body faded. The giant mask fell. Rownie caught it before it hit the ground. He looked up, grinning—but everyone else was busy, and no one had noticed his victory.