Aluminum Leaves

by Marion Deeds

  “Why?”

  “Because she did not wish me to have something she could not have.”

  Trevian narrowed his eyes. It sounded much like his uncle’s comments about Erin’s family and the book. “When was this?”

  “More than thirty years ago. By then I already knew the truth: the elementals can serve us. It only takes finding the right tools.”

  Trevian eyed the scarf his uncle wore bunched at his throat. “Like a golden collar set with watery stones?”

  “Ah, yes, you remember the tales.”

  “Does it work, Uncle?”

  “You can’t expect me to blurt out all my secrets, when you keep so many. You’ve seen the book, haven’t you? She carries it with her.”

  “What do you intend? I don’t understand. You have found a way through a frontera, which I thought was not possible for most of us. You’ve found a way to make elementals serve you, and you speak of other worlds, uniting them? Somehow, you can locate the tools when you reach their world.”

  His uncle curled one hand over the wrist with the string of beads. “I can.”

  “To what purpose, Uncle?”

  “A better life for all of us. We can benefit from the knowledge of the wisdom-keepers and their allies, those who never fall ill, and they can benefit from the use of charms. And the world the Dosmanos clan fled to, we can stop them before they come here and do damage. We can put their inventions and marvels to good use here.”

  “How?”

  “By freeing their elementals.”

  “Isn’t that what destroyed our inventions and marvels? That’s what history says. Erin’s people have no charms, no defense against elementals.”

  Uncle Oshane let his face go solemn. He stared at Trevian. “We will control their elementals,” he said. “They can serve us, in more ways than keeping them in a jar, or trapping them in a quartz box and bleeding off their power. They can serve.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “You underestimate the power of these tools.”

  Trevian gestured behind him at the humming column. “What powers that? An elemental you have snared somewhere beyond that doorway?”

  “I’m not your father, Trevian, who would make my wealth by imprisoning them.”

  “The fire elementals, you’ve trapped them in shells. Shells that cause them pain.”

  “Set aside your sentimentality. We have no evidence that they feel pain. And no elemental powers that device. I swear it.”

  “What, then?”

  “I’ll show you, after you tell me what else is in the book she carries.”

  Chapter Nine

  Nearly halfway through the book, Erin found a page that started in the middle of a sentence. She had been looking for a poem that spoke of freeing flames. She flipped the preceding page and found a poem on a completely different topic. This was one of the sections with missing pages. It talked about a carapace.

  …object is made mostly of a gold which shares the same virtues and qualities as our gold, although the blue stones are like nothing we have. It creates an affinity that lets the flame draw substance to it without consuming that substance, creating a useful carapace. The object controls earth and fire elementals. There is no method at this time for testing it on water elementals.

  The flames can do much useful work within the carapace, whether earth, wood, or metal, although wearing it weakens them over time to the point of extinguishment. It seems that a flame held within some such apparatus would provide motive power and earth-moving power, if the creatures could be more consistently controlled. When the control drops away, as it tends to if the wearer of the object lets attention waver, the carapace vanishes. Often the flames lash out at the person who controlled them, with disastrous results. The vigor with which they turn on that one, even in a group of people, creates an illusion of understanding and intent among the creatures. It is disquieting.

  Disastrous results. Yeah. If they wore those constructs long enough it would kill them, but not before they’d killed her. The key lay in finding out what controlled them and breaking it. That was the collar. It all came back to that.

  She turned to the next page, hoping there was more, but it was a discussion about an iron spindle that pierced the world, which was no help at all. She flipped back. There was still no way to tell how many pages were missing, but it was obvious that Vianovelle had learned how to create this “affinity,” and that he controlled the hounds.

  She rubbed her eyes. She’d learned self-defense and some hand-to-hand combat because the family insisted, but she wasn’t a fighter. She didn’t think she could get close enough to Vianovelle to get the collar off him, not without bringing the book into his reach. And she didn’t know where she could hide the book where he or Trevian would not eventually find it. She tried to ignore that ache in her throat. Crying wasn’t going to help anything. There had to be some way.

  She stood up and stowed the book. She would let things settle in her mind and see if some great plan emerged. In the meantime, she was curious about that line of sprites.

  She stalked forward, as close to silently as she could manage. She did not know who or what lay around the bend in the tunnel. It seemed like she was heading back the way she’d come—that would be “east” in this world—and she thought she might be close to, or even underneath, Vianovelle’s house. She needed to go carefully. The smell she associated with copper and magic grew stronger, and underneath it was another odor, one she knew from visiting her grandfather at the hospital, although it was never as strong there, overlaid with scents of antiseptics and flowers. It was a stale urine smell.

  She came around the corner into a cavern that glowed with pinkish light. At first she thought that the sprites were lighting it up, but they were not the only source of light.

  A semi-circle of wooden boxes, five of them, pointed out into the cavern like the petals of a flower. At the center of the semi-circle, on a flat-topped boulder, sat a leather-wrapped bundle and a cylinder shaped of strips of copper alternating with dark green glass. The top of the cylinder rose to a peaked lid. A flange, marked with domed studs at even intervals, formed the base. Sprites swarmed around it.

  The illumination, a yellowish-pink light, rose from the boxes. The light brightened and dimmed in a steady rhythm, and Erin blinked and made herself look away, conscious that her breathing had fallen into the same pattern.

  She stepped forward. Her foot skidded in a slimy puddle that released a cloud of the stale urine scent with a ranker smell underneath. She gagged. She looked again at the copper lantern poised among the boxes. Copper wire ran from each box up to its base, each one attached to one of the studs.

  She stood rooted, knowing what she was going to see, wanting to turn away. She couldn’t. She had to go forward. She clenched her fists and stepped up to the nearest box.

  Inside lay a naked girl. Her eyes were closed. It was hard to guess her age because she had wasted to skin stretched over bone. Her hipbones jutted out, and Erin could see her ribs. Her eyes drifted under closed lids. She rested on a slatted surface about two inches above the bottom of the box, and Erin could see the holes drilled in the bottom of the box that meant a hose, or at least a bucket of water, would serve for hygiene purposes.

  For a moment, Erin didn’t notice anything else strange because the body was so shocking, so callously treated. Then her mind registered what she was seeing. There was a lump on the girl’s chest, just below the collar bone, the size of Erin’s clenched fist. It pulsed gently, a pinkish-yellow mass. Vomit rose in her throat, and she turned away. Once her stomach settled, she looked back. The thing was not part of the girl, but it was attached to her.

  The girl wore a copper headpiece like a skullcap, and a set of wires ran from the top of it over to the lantern.

  Erin’s hands hurt, and she unclenched them. She looked down and saw the fingernail imprints in her palm. Her heart was racing. She made herself walk around the perimeter. The first three boxes held peop
le who looked as used-up and starved as the girl, each with a pulsing sac on their chests. The next two boxes held the Augustos, who still retained flesh and muscle tone. They hadn’t been trapped as long.

  The Families had spoken of the lantern channeling energy. That meant energy given freely, by people who joined and let their spirits flow into the lantern, not something harvested. Not bodies feeding a, a thing. Or maybe those sacs were feeding them, keeping them comatose while Vianovelle drew on their energy.

  She would bet a hundred dollars the three local people were copper-hunters.

  She pulled her own knife, and the stake, out of the bag and tucked them into her waistband. Then she turned, scanning the cavern. There had to be something she could use. Shadows pooled in the edges of the room, but pink light glanced off something in a far corner. It was a pile of fabric, folded and stacked. Erin knelt and began searching through it, hoping for a better weapon. She found a t-shirt and elastic-waist jeans, along with jackets and trousers in a thick fabric like the kind Trevian wore. A light skirt and a pair of trousers that gathered at the ankle formed the bottom of the pile. Next to the clothes she found a discarded belt, a wallet made of ripstop nylon, and a small purse.

  Something creaked in the darkness. Her stomach dropped. A rhythmic clumping grew louder. It was too late to run.

  Erin turned, crouching down in the shadowed corner and snatched at the clothing, pulling it over her. Clutching the stake, she made herself as small as she could as the footsteps grew louder.

  A gap between the trousers and one of the coarse shirts let her see the ends of the boxes. An arm and shoulder came into view, the brown cloth looking dingy in the light. She made herself breathe slowly, filling her lungs, ignoring nerves that wanted her muscles to twitch, to leap, to cower. Metal tinked. She saw him again, facing back the way he’d come. He held the leather-wrapped package. He stood for a moment, his head lowered, free hand pressed against his throat. When he raised his head, Erin shrank back against the wall in spite of herself.

  He sighed.

  He started forward and vanished from view. She waited as the footsteps faded, and then waited a little longer. She stood up and climbed around the stack of discarded clothes.

  Shooting glances at the tunnel, she approached the lantern again. As she squeezed between the boxes, she bumped one and it jiggled. The person inside wobbled like a Jell-O mold. Cold rushed through Erin. She made herself focus on the copper and glass cylinder, especially at the copper leads where the wires connected. The wires were snug against the bottom of the studs, and she didn’t know if she could pry or unscrew the studs, not without tools. She made herself look down into one of the boxes. Mrs. Augusto lay there, her olive-skinned face slack, except for her eyes rolling under her lids. The copper skullcap was fastened under her chin with two pieces of rough twine, double knotted. Erin leaned down, breathing shallowly. The knot looked tight, but she thought she could loosen it. She just didn’t know how long it would take.

  “Before we speak of it,” Trevian said, “do you have a working pump? I need water. An earth elemental bit my leg, and I need to clean the wound.”

  “When did that happen? You said nothing.”

  “Last night. The kitchen, then?” Trevian led the way, limping more than he needed to. His uncle’s breath warmed his ear as the other man matched his stride, never letting Trevian get even an arm’s length ahead.

  The kitchen was long and narrow, one corner collapsed under the weight of the fallen roof. The sink and its pump were still working. He wet a cloth and sat in the one good chair to draw off his boot. “The broach you wear. Does it summon an air elemental? They are called to gold, aren’t they?”

  “Did you see that in the book?” Uncle Oshane stroked the ram’s face.

  “Mother told me that.” Trevian peeled away Erin’s bandage. The punctures looked clean, but he pressed the damp cloth against them anyway. Away from the trove of copper, with his mind clear, he could see how little his uncle had told him. He could see how little his uncle cared that the hounds had killed Cosigan.

  His uncle’s dreams of unity sounded more like conquest.

  “It looks like it had your whole foot. How did you escape it?”

  Trevian looked up and met the other man’s gaze. “Erin risked herself to beat it back.”

  “Perhaps she was never in any real danger.”

  Trevian lowered his gaze to the bandage he was trying to stick back in place.

  “Did she have a weapon?” His uncle’s tone was light, but a chill skittered down Trevian’s spine. “Did she use the book?”

  He pulled on his boot and laced it up. He gave no answer.

  “You pledge fealty to her, instead of family? I’m disappointed, Nephew.”

  Trevian stood. “I pledge fealty to no one. I only seek the truth about these artifacts, these tools. And I do seek justice for my dead friend.”

  His uncle blinked. “Your friend? Oh, the prospector. Safe journey to him, Trevian, but prospectors die every day.”

  “In fights over claims, when shafts collapse, or pieces of Ancient flare or explode. They don’t die with their hearts torn out by flames wearing metal armor.”

  “They would not have killed him if he had not provoked them in some way.”

  Trevian looked at him without speaking. From childhood he had known that his laughing uncle was a being of tricks, always seeking ways to better himself, often at the expense of others, but he did not remember this coldness. “Thank you for your hospitality,” he said, stepping around the man.

  “Can I say nothing to persuade you?”

  Trevian didn’t answer as he lifted the latch and pushed open the door. The air outside was cool, and the rippling sky darkened to the green of a new leaf. Erin had run west. He would start that way.

  Behind him, he heard the mournful notes of Oshane’s flautine. The other man did not follow him out, did not argue. Perhaps he saw the futility.

  He started west. The trail inclined and grew steeper. He would explain to Erin that he was not a comrade of Oshane. They needed to go far from here, perhaps as far as the capital, to find a way to stop his uncle’s scheme.

  The tune drifted after him.

  Blueness surrounded him, so deep that it blinded him. Rushing filled his ears, climbing to a whine. His nerves rang like bells. He could not draw breath, his chest a flattened bellows. He tried to turn, but his limbs would not obey his mind. Sparks of white light broke the blue, flaring and sparkling. Weight crushed him, and he could not move. He could not move.

  Erin stopped, her fingers on the prickly twine. She looked at the sac. Had the pulsing changed? Suddenly, her revulsion flared into resolution. That thing had to go. How, though? She sure didn’t want to touch it. She rummaged in the messenger bag for her emergency blanket and then opened the knife. Remedios Augusto didn’t move, but under her lids, her eyes rolled faster.

  She leaned down into the box, trying to see where the thing connected. She wrapped the blanket around her hand and fit it over the sac. It was warm, but she still shuddered. For a moment the world went out of focus. She pulled gently to see if it would just lift off, and Remedios moaned. Okay, then. Swallowing down bile, Erin worked the tip of her knife under the thing, praying that she wasn’t cutting Mrs. Augusto. The sac flattened out, clinging to human skin. Erin slipped the blade in flat, remembering the time she’d gone to an oyster bar. She gagged again. She levered up, pulling steadily. The thing came free with a loud sucking sound, and Erin took a couple of steps back. The sac thrashed in her hand. She turned it over and saw a flailing pink-gray tube with a needle-like appendage at the end. She threw the thing against the cave wall as hard as she could. It plopped to the floor and lay unmoving.

  Mrs. Augusto’s skin was gray, the flesh mounded, marked by a single puncture wound. A drop of blood welled up from the wound. Erin started to reach for the cap, but hesitated. Mrs. Augusto’s breathing had changed, growing deeper. Her face contorted. Erin pressed her fingers
lightly against the woman’s neck, tracking her pulse. It was rapid, and after a few seconds, it slowed and grew stronger. Mrs. Augusto moaned, and her head twisted to one side. “No!” She blinked and opened her eyes fully.

  “Mrs. Augusto? It’s Erin Dosmanos,” she said.

  The woman struggled. “Let me out!” Erin stepped back. “Daniel? Where…” Her gaze was distant, but then she looked at Erin and focused. “Erin! Vianovelle has the lantern! We have to—”

  “It’s right there,” Erin said, pointing.

  “I…it’s… Where’s Daniel?”

  “He’s here, in one of these boxes.” Erin reached for the copper skullcap, but Mrs. Augusto grasped her wrist. The older woman’s hand was cool and shaking.

  “No! Don’t remove it yet. I’m still…connected. If I drop out of the current, Vianovelle might sense that. Get your parents, we must get the lantern beyond his reach—” She looked at Erin’s face. “What?”

  “My parents are dead. It’s just me, and we’re in Vianovelle’s world,” Erin said, sweeping her hand around the cavern.

  Mrs. Augusto’s gaze followed Erin’s hand. She turned her head, looking behind her. Finally, she looked down at the boxes. “Oh, no,” she said.

  Chapter Ten

  Breath was welcome. His wrists ached and the surface behind him was unyielding. The room hummed with soothing energy. He relaxed, and the pain faded from his wrists and shoulders.

  The world tilted and he fell. He jerked himself upright and opened his eyes. Now he could orient himself. He wasn’t falling. He was seated in a chair. He tugged and found that his arms were immobilized. He was bound.

  Oshane stood at the edge of the table, watching him.