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casting the Air Pocket, which he might have to do if they kept up at this slow pace. And the gweilo didn't notice, anyway.
    "You're not in China, are you?" the gweilo asked.
    "Not exactly," he said, looking out the window at the sky over Orange County, the most boring ZIP code in California.
    "Where are you guys?"
    "They're in China. Where I live, you can see the Disneyland fireworks show every night."
    "God
damn
," the gweilo said. "Ain't you got better things to do than help some idiot level up in the middle of the night?"
    "I guess I don't," he said. Mixed in behind were the guys laughing and catcalling in Chinese on their channel. He grinned to hear them.
    "I mean, hell, I can see why someone in China'd do a crappy job for a rotten 75 bucks, but if you're in America, dude, you should have some
pride
, get some real work!"
    "And why would someone in China want to do a crappy job?" The guys were listening in now. They didn't have great English, but they spoke enough to get by.
    "You know, it's
China
. There's
billions
of 'em. Poor as dirt and ignorant. I don't blame 'em. You can't blame 'em. It's not their fault. But hell, once you get out of China and get to America, you should
act
like an American. We don't do that kind of work."
    "What makes you think I 'got out of China'?"
    "Didn't you?"
    "I was born here. My parents were born here. Their parents were born here. Their parents came here from Russia."
    "I didn't know they had Chinese in Russia."
    Wei-Dong laughed. "I'm not Chinese, dude."
    "You aren't? Well, god
damn
then, I'm sorry. I figured you were. What are you, then, the boss or something?"
    Wei-Dong closed his eyes and counted to ten. When he opened them again, the carpenters had swum out of the wrecked galleon before them, their T-squares and saws at the ready. They moved by building wooden boxes and gates around themselves, which acted as barricades, and they worked
fast
. On the land, you could burn their timbers, but that didn't work under the sea. Once they had you boxed in, they drove long nails through boards around you. It was a grisly, slow way to die.
    Of course, they had the gweilo surrounded in a flash, and they all had to pile on to fight them free. Xiang summoned his familiar, a boar, and Wei-Dong spelled it its own air bubble and it set to work, tearing up the planks with its tusks. When at last the carpenters managed to kill it, it turned into a baby and floated, lifeless, to the ocean's surface, accompanied by a ghostly weeping. Savage Wonderland
looked
like it was all laughs, but it was really grim when you got down to it, and the puzzles were hard and the big bosses were
really
hard.
    Speaking of bosses: they put down the last of the carpenters and as they did, a swirling current disturbed the sea-bottom, kicking up sand that settled slowly, revealing the vorpal blade and armor, encrusted in barnacles. And the gweilo gave a whoop and a holler and dove for it clumsily, as they all shouted at once for him to stop, to wait, and then --
    And then he triggered the trap that they all knew was there.
    And then there was
trouble.
    The Jabberwock did indeed have eyes of flame, and it did make a "burbling" sound, just like it said in the poem. But the Jabberwock did a lot more than give you dirty looks and belch. The Jabberwock was
mean
, it soaked up a lot of damage, and it gave as good as it got. It was fast, too, faster than the carpenters, so one minute you could be behind it and then it would do a barrel roll -- its tail like a whip, cracking and knocking back anything that got in its way -- and it would be facing you, rearing up with its spindly claws splayed, its narrow chest heaving. The jaws that bite, the claws that catch -- and once they'd caught you, the Jabberwock would beat you against the hardest surface in reach, doing insane damage while you squirmed to get free. And the burbling? Not so much like burping, really: more like the sound of meat going through a grinder, a nasty sound.