Orphans of Chaos tcc-1

by John C. Wright

  Quentin interrupted me, which was unusual. “Or we are under a curse. Remember how you said Mrs. Wren stopped Dr. Fell. We crossed a ward of some sort, or violated a prohibition. It was just after lunch.”

  Vanity said, “Dr. Fell. He could have put something in the food.”

  Victor stopped. We all stopped.

  He was a score of yards ahead of us, climbing a gentle slope where broken rocks protruded through the snow. Ahead of him, we could see the tops of the trees growing on the far slope. The far slope must have fallen sharply away before Victor’s feet, because the crowns of these trees were no higher than he was.

  He turned his head, and shouted (for he was many yards ahead), “We missed the highway entirely. I see the bay.”

  I shouted up, “Which bay? Rhossili Bay, Port Eynon Bay, or Oxwich Bay?”

  He shouted back, “It’s not labeled in a prominent place!”

  I shouted up again, “If you see Cornwall across the Channel, you’re looking South. If you see Worm’s Head, you’re looking West!”

  I paused to look upward as I said it, but the sky was still as gray as old cotton, and the clouds were no brighter in one direction than the other. I said aloud, “How could we reach the water without going through Penrice, or the campgrounds? Even if we were headed due East instead of South, we should have crossed the B-4247 between Rhossili and Scurlage.”

  Colin stomped up the slope past me, kicking snow from his boots at every step. He gave me a dark, sinister smile, saying, “Anyone can make a dot on a piece of paper, write a name by it, and pretend there is a town there.”

  I stepped into motion again, toiling up the slope next to him. “But we’ve all been to Abertwyi. Where is Abertwyi?”

  Colin said, “We were led there. We didn’t go there under our own power.”

  “Why would that make a difference?”

  “They changed the paths there. If there is a there.”

  “How?”

  “The girl who believes in the Fourth Dimension is asking me to explain it?”

  “Look, there has to be a world somewhere. What about France?”

  “What about Slumberland, Narnia, and Oz? France is obviously a made-up place. Those places only exist if we believe in them.”

  “You’re more skeptical than Victor is.”

  Colin just snorted at that. “Hmph! Vic? Well, I should jolly well hope so.”

  And in a tone of voice that made it clear he thought Victor was both (1) the most naïve and (2) the most dogmatically pigheaded boy in our group or, maybe, in the world.

  At that point, Vanity and Quentin (who had forged ahead of Colin and me while we slowed to talk) achieved the brink of the slope where Victor stood.

  Vanity let out a shriek of pure joy. “She came! She really came! All my life I’ve been waiting, and I didn’t even know it… and, and… Victor! You idiot! Why didn’t you tell me she was here!”

  Colin and I raced up the last few steps of the slope.

  A silver ship, a trireme sleek as a spear, lay shining atop the waves below. By the prow a painted eye gravely gazed toward shore, wise and watchful. I think it was painted.

  “Oh, she came!” Vanity breathed in breathless joy, and her whole soul was in her eyes.

  3.

  The land fell very sharply down. A few trees clung to the far slope, and then, in a sudden brink, a cliff fell to the sea. White and gray water surged among the rocks; white and gray seagulls hopped from stone to stone, or shivered in the chill wind. One or two birds skimmed the waters on crooked wings, silent.

  About a quarter of a mile out in the water was a ship. Perhaps I should call her a boat, she was so small.

  She was silvery-white, with a prow like a Greek trireme, sloping like a sleek nose into a bronze-jacketed ram at the waterline. Two eyes had been painted on the prow, one to port and one to starboard. A mast like a white finger rose from blocks amidships. Aft, a small deck rose into a shape like a peacock’s tail.

  She was slender and sleek, built for speed like a racing scull, but the rail and the fantail were set with hammered silver, and the bench at the stern was carved and polished and set with white cushions held by silver nails, and all so finely crafted as to make the whole vessel shine like a lady’s jewel. The mast held nothing but a lamp, intricate with silver wire and nacre. There were no oars; there was no steering board or rudder.

  The whole vessel was perhaps forty yards long, four yards broad at the waterline, with planks forming outriggers perhaps six yards wide above. She lay as lightly on the waters as a swan, as slim and finely crafted as a Japanese sword.

  4.

  Vanity exclaimed happily, “She can take us anywhere in the world in a day and a night!”

  She started down the steep slope, moving quickly, almost running. The snow began to slide and curl around her legs, so that little growing snowballs were trickling down the slope with her.

  Colin said, “Hoi! Careful!” And, ignoring his own advice, with that axe still in his hand, went pelting and sliding down the slope after her.

  Victor said mildly, “We should approach with care, if that ship was seen by the enemy.”

  Quentin said in a hushed voice, “There is something ill afoot here. Vee and Coll usually aren’t so rash.” Then, shouting: “Come back! You two! Come back!” And he started down the slope, slipped, and fell, sliding at least two dozen yards before he spread his arms and legs and caught himself in a little wash of snow. His duffel bag went rolling and bounding and gliding down past where Vanity was skipping gaily down-slope, past where Colin was half-skating, half-stumbling. As it tumbled past, the bag began to spill canned goods from its unraveling mouth.

  I saw Quentin’s walking stick, his precious walking stick, go shooting over a hump in the snow like a little toboggan, and vanish into the trees.

  Victor said, “My wits, at least, are not clouded. Amelia, follow me. We are going to go left and circle this slope, and go down along the gentler slope over there, where those pine trees are. You see where I mean?” And he picked up Colin’s bag, which Colin had left behind. Vanity’s duffel was about forty yards down-slope from us. She had abandoned it, and it had rolled to catch up against a leafless tree, bringing down a little shower of ice particles.

  In a moment, Victor and I were among the spruces, jogging quickly down a somewhat more level slope. We could still hear Vanity squealing and Colin cursing. Even quiet Quentin was bellowing to them to shut up. I felt an impulse to shout at them, and call out, and the impulse grew stronger until I had to put my glove in my mouth and bite down on it to prevent myself from yelling at them.

  Victor looked at me oddly.

  I said, “Something—a hypnotic influence—is trying to get me to call out. Quentin’s right. There is a spell here.”

  Victor did not seem affected. All he said was, “Let’s hurry. We can cut across this slope as soon as it levels out, and rejoin them.”

  Unlike the leafless trees we had been walking through all morning, the spruce pines blocked our view with their thick needles.

  Fear gripped my throat when the voices of Colin and Quentin fell silent, and Vanity let out a long scream.

  Victor said, “Maybe we should run. Let’s drop the bags. We can come back for them.”

  We ran. Victor simply put his hands in front of his face and pushed through the snow-laden needles of the spruce, letting branches whip him. I followed in his wake, ducking whipping branches, letting him trample a path clear for me.

  We broke into the clear. Now I began to pull ahead of Victor. Even with my powers turned off, I was still a swifter runner than he was.

  Then I slowed, looking up. Victor came up behind me.

  We could see Colin and Quentin on the brink of a little cliff, but we had passed them, somehow. A little empty round glade filled with snow lay between us and the foot of the cliff. The cliff was up-slope and above us, a wall of icicle-dripping rock, atop which Colin and Quentin stood.

  There was a cleft w
hich cut the cliff into two cliffs, as if a giant with an axe had chopped it neatly in half. On the far side of the cleft was Vanity, alone on a little island-cliff of her own, with snow in her hair, and her garments mussed. She was standing, gazing back at the slope down which she had just toppled, as if trying to see a way back up the slope, across, over, and down to where Colin and Quentin were.

  In the seaward direction, behind us, away from Quentin and Colin, was another sharp drop, this one not as tall, leading down to a rocky beach. The ship, gleaming silver-white, was clearly visible behind us, delicate as a cloud, pale as starlight. It seemed closer than the quarter-mile she had been before. The eyes on the prow seemed to be watching us.

  Vanity shouted, “I can see a path down from here; there is a set of rock shelves, almost like steps, leading to the beach.”

  Colin shouted, “We’re stuck here. Up-slope is too slippery, and I don’t see any way down left or right. Is the rope in your duffel bag? We could tie it off to the rock here and rappel down. Heck, we could practically jump it.”

  Victor made a little trumpet out of his fingers and bellowed up at them, “Amelia and I will go back and get the rope, and throw it up to you. Vanity, you stay right where you are. Do not leave each other’s sight.” I could hear his voice making flat, metallic-ringing echoes from the cliff we faced.

  Victor turned. I said, “I could go around the foot of the cliff to see if I can find the bottom step of Vanity’s staircase.”

  “Let’s not split up,” he said. Again, I felt a strong urge, almost dreamlike, telling me to leave Victor and go off to find where Vanity would be going. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine or visualize the little dot of light in my own head, my own monad, snapping back into place the way I had done for Quentin, when his memory had been influenced. It did not seem to work. The tugging impulse would not go away.

  I said, “Victor, something is trying to stop me. You’ll have to drag me.”

  At this same time, I heard Quentin yelling something across to Vanity. I did not hear what it was, because I was distracted by the sensation of Victor putting his hand around my upper arm, pulling me after him. Victor is much stronger than the other two boys, much more swift, definite, and precise in his motions. Much stronger than me. I wondered what it would be like to have him pin me down, as Colin once had done.

  I heard Vanity call out in a solemn voice: “Bran! I call upon our agreement! Let open the boundaries which hem us in! Let the Four Powers of the Four Worlds of Chaos come forth from their homes to this place!”

  At once, I could see my monad, my noumenal self, hovering in the fourth dimension above and inside my nervous system. I could sense the pattern of energies rippling through them, and detect a disturbing force. I tilted the rotation of my monad, to bring the identity/meaning axis back into alignment. The disturbing forces blocking my proper nerve-path flows flickered and went down, but I could sense them changing, gathering forces, moving into another position to attempt to set up another nerve block. It was not the system Dr. Fell had used; this was not an infection of dark matter; it was different. It was self-correcting in nature, organic, perhaps self-aware.

  I turned my head. From somewhere, Quentin had found his walking stick. He had not had it a moment ago. Now he did.

  Colin was staring down at the snow below. He said something to Quentin. It was too far for me to hear the words, but it was something about the snow being deep enough to break his fall if he merely believed hard enough that it was. Quentin knelt, looking left and right nervously, and put his hand on Colin’s arm, and was urging him to crouch down and hide.

  Victor looked up. I looked up, too, and saw nothing but heavy, gray clouds. He said, “Boggin. I recognize his magnetic signature.”

  “He’s here?”

  “I think the masquerade is over. They are going to reveal their powers.”

  “What do we do?”

  “Go get the rope for Colin and Quentin. If you make us both lighter will that let us go faster? I get the feeling we are not going to have much time.”

  We made it back up through the pines in record time. Of the cluster of world-lines leading from our bodies and snaking through the trees, certain ones had higher potential, and occupied a smaller time-depth. These were the faster paths. I selected one for myself and Victor. For some reason, even though I did not tell him which trees to dodge around, or where the path I’d picked was, his feet found the path swiftly and without error.

  There were little metal aglets holding the bag laces shut. Victor squinted at them, even while we were several paces away. The bag’s mouth opened of its own accord. I could see the dark-matter particles like little specks flying out of his forehead and applying magnetic force to the bag.

  I got to the bag first. He turned around while I was grabbing the coil of brightly colored mountaineer’s rope from the mouth, and he was ahead of me as we raced back.

  We pushed through the trees, and were once again in the little bowl of snow beneath the feet of the two cliffs. Atop one cliff was Quentin and Colin. The other cliff was bare.

  Vanity was gone.

  16

  Goosey, Goosey, Gander

  1.

  Victor shouted up, in a voice of cold anger: “Where did she go?”

  Colin gave a pantomime one-handed shrug (the axe was in his other hand), and shouted, “Since when can I control her?”

  Quentin said, “She’s gone down the rock stairs to the White Ship. She said it was calling her.”

  “Idiot!” Victor almost never lost his temper, but now he looked worried, angry.

  “The curse is still fuddling her,” Quentin shouted.

  “You’re a warlock! Can you stop the curse?” Victor called up.

  “No such things as warlocks! But I can challenge the curse,” Quentin called down.

  Meanwhile, during this exchange, I had taken the coil of rope and thrown it up toward Colin. It was an easy throw, and there was no way I could have missed it. I missed it. The coil spun through the air, clattered against the rocks some six feet below him, and fell lightly to the snow a dozen yards to my left.

  Colin, helpful as always, called down to me: “Nice throw. Aim next time, Aim.”

  I ran, picked up the coil, wound up, and threw again. Again, the rope coil fell short, bounced off the cliff side, fell back down to my level, and went spinning and bouncing another thirty or forty feet across the snow of the little glade. I ran after it again.

  I was now about forty feet across the glade from the foot of the cliff where Colin and Quentin stood. I was at the top of the seaward cliff, the shorter one leading down to the rocky beach.

  Around a shoulder in the rocks down below, I saw Vanity come into view. She was picking her way from boulder top to boulder top, while foam and spray from the waves fell around her feet. A larger wave sent spray reaching up past her head, and it fell like a shower around her. The water must have been cold, because she shrieked.

  I shouted and motioned for her to go back, but she did not look up.

  Looking back toward the cliff side, I saw Colin gesture toward me impatiently. Quentin was holding up his walking stick, and had his eyes closed. Victor was standing with his back to me, his arms akimbo.

  I looked at the rope suspiciously. How could I miss two throws in a row? I have a good pitching arm. I closed my eyes and traced out the world-paths leading from the rope up to the cliff. The umbrella of possible paths spread out before me. Many of them were smooth parabolas leading up to the dark blotch representing Colin’s position.

  And the parabolas were being warped. Like flower stalks bending in the wind, fewer and fewer possible world-paths led to the cliff, as they were pushed left and right, like a curtain parting.

  I opened my eyes. Mrs. Wren stood on the cliff with Colin and Quentin.

  2.

  Mrs. Wren was about twenty yards away from the boys, standing on a tall rock she could not possibly have climbed. And she was in costume.

  In
her hand she held a broom. It was an old-fashioned besom, just a bundle of twigs and straw tied to a staff, obviously handmade, and by hands that were none too steady.

  She wore a green cloak that bore a tall, pointed hood. Around the point of this hood, like a horseshoe around a spike, was a crown of holly leaves with bright red berries. Her face was a smiling mass of wrinkles, surrounding eyes of tired sorrow, eyes that gleamed like black pebbles washed smooth and bright in a stream.

  She laughed and smiled, saying, “ ‘Goosey, goosey, gander, whither dost thou wander? Upstairs and downstairs and in my lady’s chamber?’ ”

  If anyone had ever told me I would be frightened to see Mrs. Wren in a dunce cap and wearing a Christmas wreath for a hat brim, I would have laughed. But I was not laughing.

  Victor (always the logical one) shouted up, “If she got up, you two can get down. Push past her and find the path she used. Amelia and I are going to try to get to the beach where Vanity is.”

  Quentin said, his voice trembling, “Her power comes from deep roots, from the core of the Earth. We can’t just push past her.”

  Victor said, “Then kill her.”

  A silence seemed to fill the area. Even the sea waves, for a moment, paused.

  One seagull, below me, let out a mournful, high-pitched wail.

  I said in a voice grown thick with horror, “You can’t mean that, Victor. What’s wrong with you?”