by Sharon Lee
Sighing, I bent over to pick it up—you don’t live with a dryad without learning a respect for leaves—and went to one knee, one hand gripping the edge of the table, the other cupping the leaf against my chest.
I was seized with a longing so intense, it near melted my bones, and in my mind’s eye I saw Heath Hill with aching clarity. Wind tousled my hair, and I heard the high clatter of merrybells, beneath them, a frail, tuneless singing, “Who’ll fetch me home to the hills so green . . .”
Oh. My. God.
I pulled myself to my feet and put the leaf on the table as if it were a priceless jewel. Which, in a way, it was.
Unless I was completely out of my mind, Gran had left me proof that Nessa, her daughter, and my mother, was still alive.
And now I knew where Gran had gone.
I don’t know how long I stood, staring at the small, perfect leaf that looked as green and as moist as if it had been plucked from its tree only a moment ago. It was an awful and precious thing, that leaf. Even the land was subdued.
Finally, I took a breath, shook myself, walked over to the coffeepot and poured myself a mug full. I rummaged in the fridge for the milk, added a dollop, and sipped, carefully not looking at the leaf glowing faintly atop Gran’s kitchen table.
“Question it, Kate,” I said out loud. “You know better than to just go jumping to conclusions.”
Well, I did, at that. So, then, first question: I’d seen and handled the leaf the day I’d arrived; why hadn’t it stood up and saluted then?
That one was easy: I’d been dying and had yet to reunite with the land.
Next question: Where the hell had Gran gotten the leaf?
Ooh, stumper. I sipped my coffee. The leaf couldn’t have crossed the Wall by itself, and it wasn’t likely to have come across via snallygaster or Black Dog. Which left—what, exactly?
Your gran, she didn’t much care for him, Nancy Vois said from memory. Looked like a bill collector to me.
Bill collector? And not only had Gran not particularly liked the guy, but the batwing horse had nipped him.
“Right,” I said, and put the coffee mug on the counter next to the half-eaten sandwich.
At the kitchen table, I slipped the leaf into Gran’s letter, folded it, carefully, into quarters, and slid it flat into the back pocket of my jeans. Mam’selle in her sheath went through my belt at the small of my back, cell phone into front jeans pocket. I pulled on my remaining piece of whole outerwear, a white hoodie bearing the legend “Tux Rules” next to a graphic of the Linux penguin, and was ready to rumble. The land sat alert at the back of my head, ears pricked with interest, neither boisterous nor bouncing.
I had my hand on the doorknob when my cell phone warbled; I flipped it open before the second warble was quite finished, took in the number displayed on the screen, and said, “Borgan?”
“Wonderful thing, technology,” he said affably. “Sorry I missed your call earlier, Kate. Everything okay?”
I leaned my back against the door.
“If you consider pitched battle with a snallygaster and two Black Dogs okay, I’m in the pink,” I told him, unable to resist sarcasm.
“You walk away to tell the tale?” he asked, static crackling around his voice.
“I’m telling it to you, aren’t I?”
“That you are. And I’m looking forward to hearing it again when you’re done polishing it up.”
I snorted, halfway between irritation and amusement, then thought of something.
“Borgan—that ambush I’m telling you about, it happened right at the Boundary Stone—Nerazi’s rock. The ’gaster was waiting right there, inside the shadows. I was ahead of her usual time, but—”
“I’ll check to be sure she’s all right,” he promised. “Anything else?”
“No—yeah.” I bit my lip, then said slowly. “Let me bounce this off you: What if Gran went across the World Wall and into the Land of the Flowers?”
Static crackled, then Borgan said, “Why would she do that?”
“What if she had what appeared to be compelling proof that someone—someone dear—who she’d supposed was dead, was in fact alive and aching to come home?”
“That’d do it,” he acknowledged. “Did she? Have proof, that is.”
“It looks like she did. I’m on my way to see if I can get confirmation from an independent source.”
“Be careful with that independent source,” he said, voice fading in a storm of interference. “I’ll check on Nerazi for you.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“No problem. I’ll see you later, Kate.” He ended the call.
I flipped my cell closed and slipped it away. Three minutes later, I was jogging through the misty streets, heading for Fun Country.
* * *
Inside the storm walls, the carousel glowed, bathing the metal walls in an oily, pearlescent shine, like the inside of an oyster shell. I locked the hatch behind me and walked forward, not bothering with the electric light.
Greetings, Keeper, the batwing’s voice rang nastily inside my head. My, how the child has grown.
I mounted the deck and looked down at it, standing secure in its binding of roses. One baleful eye rolled; nostrils flaring red.
“Two Seasons ago, a man came here to talk to my grandmother,” I said, without preamble. “He came up onto the carousel, and you bit him. Nancy Vois saw it happen. I’ll thank you to tell me what transpired between the two of them.”
Horrible laughter echoed inside my head.
What reward should I do so, Keeper? What punishment if I do not? You have no carrot and I am stuck. Until such time as the so-called Wise see fit to liberate me.
“Reward? My thanks, as I said. Punishment? The Wall between the Worlds is breached. Black Dogs and other vermin are crossing over from the Land of the Flowers. It’ll get worse, unless you give me the information I need to mend things. I know you have an intense fondness for the Dogs, and I can make sure they know where to find you.”
Silence. Then, Well. The Keeper has both a carrot and a stick. Your thanks I spit upon. The Black Dogs, however . . . Its thought faded. I leaned against a brass rail, arms crossed over my chest, and waited.
I fear you will be disappointed in the small tale I have to tell, and will set the Dogs upon me in your dismay.
“If you spit on my thanks, I can only imagine what you’d do to my assurance that I’ll meet truth with honor,” I said, nasty in my turn.
Swear on the land, the batwing said, that you will not give me to the Dogs.
I considered it. “And what reward, should I do so? What punishment if I do not?”
I swear, upon my essence which is bound into this object, that what I will relate to you is factual. If I should lie, then I submit forever to the wood, and this world.
I blinked. “That’s pretty damn’ potent.”
As you note, the Black Dogs are no friends of mine.
I nodded, and came out of my lean, reaching for the land, feeling it leap to my touch.
“I swear upon this land of which I am Guardian that I will not give you to the Black Dogs nor lead them to the place where you are bound, if you tell me the truth as you have sworn.”
My words swelled, filling the pearlescent space, and vanished, swallowed and sealed by the land.
There was a moment of silence, then a small noise inside my head, as if the batwing horse had cleared its throat.
Very well, it said. There was an Ozali who came. Who, I cannot tell you. He had woven a glamor about himself, but he could not mask the odor of High Magic, and did not care to conceal his contempt for this place or for the Old Woman.
“So far, so good,” I said, tentatively pleased that my guess and fact agreed. “What did he want?”
Now, there stands a puzzle. It seemed that he wished to speak of gardens and growing things, and the phenomenon of spring in this Land, so unlike the constant summer of his own.
My heartbeat quickened, and the sense of inter
ested attention from the land increased. “Gardens?”
It was the substance of his early conversation—perhaps a pleasantry; an acknowledgment of the Old Woman’s antecedents. Though given his tone and bearing, it seemed more insult. In any case, he eventually came to speak of an item which he had . . . lost, or which perhaps had been taken from him, that he sorely missed, and of which he had reason to believe the Old Woman held knowledge. He offered a fair and equal trade—this item for a singular plant, to be found only in his personal garden, and which, unlike all the rest of the plants in his native Land, hovered between winter and spring. He offered her a leaf, which he said had come from this plant, that she might judge its uniqueness for herself.
Eureka.
“And my grandmother?” I murmured. “Did she accept the trade?”
It appeared the Old Woman was wholly disinterested in the proposed transaction. She said to the Ozali that transplanting is a risky enterprise, and that some things are well enough lost. That was essentially the end of it, though the Ozali continued to importune her for some time. At the last, he descended to demands, but never spoke more plainly. Indeed, Keeper, the two of them seemed to understand each other very well, but the Old Woman simply did not wish to do business.
“I . . . see,” I said, damn’ near deafened by my own heartbeat. “And you bit him because he was importuning the Keeper.”
Laughter, sweet and terrible.
Nay. I bit him because the Old Woman had let me slip a mite from her regard, and it was possible to do so. What care I for the dignity of my jailers? It paused, then added, That she let her regard waver—that would seem to betray more interest in the business than she cared to acknowledge.
“It would, wouldn’t it?” I was finding the batwing’s little story charming, but a bit thin of certain pressing details.
“Can you think of anything that was said which might give me a clue to who this particular Ozali was, or what exactly he wanted in return for that plant?”
He was oblique, Keeper, and careful even of the ears of the damned. It pleased him to note that his arm was long and his touch potent. The Old Woman seemed to find this . . . amusing.
“Well, then.” I chewed my lower lip. “Thank you for your information.” I turned to go.
There was one other thing said by this Ozali which may be of interest, the batwing murmured between my ears.
I paused, one hand on the pole. “And that was?” I asked, not bothering to turn my head.
Why, only that he would be back, Keeper, if his lost treasure was not returned to him, whether or not the Old Woman cared to accept the exchange.
TWENTY-ONE
Sunday, April 23
Fun Country wears an air of sleepy menace in the hour just before dawn. The drowsing rides rise out of the mist like the monoliths of lost R’lyeh; the shuttered shops and games are transformed into the secret resting places of the patient Elders.
For those who are underwhelmed by the antics of Shub-Niggurath and that lot, the park offers shadows, silence and a geography made uncertain by sea mist.
Unsettling, at the least.
Since I was already plenty unsettled, and deep in my own worries, both efforts were lost on me.
While it was nice that the batwing’s story jibed with my pet theory and the existence of the leaf, it left ’way too many questions unanswered for my peace of mind.
An Ozali from the Land of the Flowers—the only one of the Six Worlds that resides in eternal summer. It would have been nice if he’d given his name, Ozali being pretty thick on the ground in that Land. As it was, my stomach hurt, and my back brain was revving up for a full-fledged panic attack.
Ramendysis had been the last owner of my mother’s soul—but surely, I thought, taking a deep breath of misty air—surely Ramendysis had long ago returned to the elements which had given him life, destroyed by his own power? He’d been something of a prodigy, granted, cutting a swath through Ozali in his World and, according to rumor, in others, as well. No one before him had managed to contain and control so much jikinap, but he must have overreached himself by now.
I took another breath, moving through eddying swirls of mist.
Stipulate, I told myself, that the Ozali who visited Gran is somebody other than Ramendysis. My back brain dropped from red alert to orange, which was something, though my stomach still hurt. Whatever.
That stipulated, I continued, forcing myself to think linearly. What is the nature of his lost-or-stolen treasure? More importantly, has he already returned, been satisfied and departed, or is that still in the future?
For that matter, was the leaf the proof that I—and I was persuaded, Gran—believed it to be? My mother was dead, her voysin drained, her jikinap taken. And the dead don’t come back to life, even in the Land of the Flowers.
Did you, I asked myself carefully, see the body?
I paused by the kiddie railway, one hand braced on Tom Thumb’s engine, and stared up at the Galaxi, the bottom half of its metal frame shrouded in misty shadow, the top half seeming to hover, unconnected to the ground.
In cold and sober fact, no; I hadn’t seen my mother’s body. Zephyr had managed to break us both out of house arrest before Nessa’s death freed Ramendysis from the letter of his promise to her.
What I had seen—I’d seen her in her last decline, her eyes dead, partner to any atrocity Ramendysis cared to commit; accomplice to every murder; his sins eroding her soul . . .
I gagged, shaking my head. If she wasn’t dead, she would have wanted to be, of that I was certain. And Ramendysis had looked to be well on his way to granting her the final grace at the end of her torment.
But what if . . . What if he had managed to keep himself from taking the final, annihilating sip of her essence; the last, seductive swallow of her power? What if he had . . . What if he had given her soul back, what was left of it—and then watched to see what she would do?
It would have been cruel, which certainly fit Ramendysis as I’d known him. Also, it would have given him a lever, in case he should ever need one, to use on one of the few Ozali native to the Changing Land, a notion not incompatible with Ramendysis’ thought processes.
And, then, when his head exploded, or he was taken at last at duel or in ambush, someone else had come into possession of his gardens, noticed the unusual plant, did a little research, and, when his treasure went missing, decided to indulge in a spot of blackmail.
Which brought us right back around to Treasure, Nature of, and no answers in sight.
Life, I thought, and theory, were getting ’way too complicated.
I went to the left, passed the Whale’s Tail, and in due time found myself at Keltic Knot.
The dragon was asleep beneath a blanket of sea mist. I leaned against the fence, the damp metal cold against my palms.
Mr. Ignat’, I thought, should at least hear the batwing’s story and my theory. Touch the leaf, too, in case it would do him any good. Problem was, I needed somebody to talk to—and it was just barely possible that Gran had mentioned the Ozali’s visit, or the existence of the so-called treasure.
I touched the land, smiling at the eagerness of its response, and formed my request, shaping the image of Mr. Ignat’ with care.
The land accepted the commission. I felt its attention shift, leaving me—not alone, exactly, but momentarily out of the center of attention.
The breeze danced in from the ocean to play with the mist, and I shivered. The Tux hoodie wasn’t as warm or as thick as the late, lamented Google sweatshirt. I pushed away from the railing, passed between the Knot and the Scrambler, and stepped out onto the beach.
Far away and hidden in the mist, the ocean whispered secrets to the shore. I raised my hands and ran them into my mist-dampened hair, wincing when my fingers pulled knots.
The land was still searching, which might mean that Mr. Ignat’ had crossed the boundary of Archers Beach, or only that he was being hard to pin down. I sighed, twisted my hair into a loose knot a
t the back of my neck, pulled the hood up, and stood working my cold fingers until I realized what I was doing and yanked the work gloves out of the kangaroo pocket. Absently, I pulled them on, my mind still chasing its own tail.
At least Gran hadn’t—according to the batwing—accepted the Ozali’s proposed trade. That was a mug’s game, and she knew it. You just didn’t do deals with Ozali in general and Ozali from the Land of the Flowers most especially. It was stupid, almost always painful, and ’way too often fatal. Trenvay will trick the unwary for the sheer joy of the game. But Ozali don’t care who or what they hurt in pursuit of their heart’s desire.
The tragedy of the Land of the Flowers is that it produces so many mages. Even those who might otherwise rather not accumulate jikinap seek it out, rather than live their lives as prey to those with more—especially the ruling class of Ozali. And the Ozali themselves—contention at the top means there’s no stability; it’s every lord and lady for themselves, though there is the pretty fiction of a council of equals . . .
So, anyway. Gran had turned the deal down cold, playing at being disinterested in the possibility of her daughter’s continued existence. Thwarted, at least for the time being, the Ozali descended to threats, followed by a grand exit.
Whereupon Gran went into action.
The steps she’d taken had been desperate, but I could see her reasoning. It was one thing to have lost a daughter in the on-going war zone that was the Land of the Flowers, and quite another to have news that your daughter’s essence was still green, and might yet be recovered, nurtured and regrown.
So, Gran had sung herself through the World Wall, thinking to do a snatch and run . . .
Dear Kate, If you’re reading this, things have not gone as I had hoped and expected that they would.
Uh-huh. Time moved different in the Land of the Flowers. The geography, the culture, the people—none of that was going to be either comfortable or comforting to someone rooted in the Changing Land. Not to mention that the place was crawling with jikinap-crazed Ozali, who wouldn’t hesitate half a heartbeat before snacking down a minor Ozali from a useless and annoying Land.
