Wisteria Wrinkle

by Angela Pepper

  Gavin shrugged. “Lighten up! If your prophecy says we’ll rescue them, then it’s destined to happen no matter what, whether we have a few laughs along the way or not.”

  Dawna said nothing.

  Karl said, “Dawna? Is there something you haven’t told us?”

  “I’m sure it’s nothing,” she said, waving a hand. “But depending on how you interpret the cards, it’s not exactly a sure thing that we succeed. There may be a slim chance the five heroes are...” She trailed off.

  The elevator dinged, and the doors tried to close. Zinnia was still inside the elevator, the last to leave. She had held back in order to package up the key and the remaining chameleon potion. The magical compound wouldn’t do them much good if it were to become contaminated with dry desert dust. Extra silica was not ideal, let alone silica from an alien planet.

  Margaret waved at Zinnia. “Hold the elevator,” she said to Zinnia. To Dawna, she said, “There’s a slim chance the five heroes are what? Eaten by sandworms?”

  “Thrown into a volcano,” Dawna said. “But that only came up once in a hundred readings.” She winced.

  Karl said, “That’s not bad odds. We have a one percent chance of failure. I can live with that.”

  Margaret raised her eyebrows at Zinnia, who was still inside the elevator cage, holding the door. The ding was becoming more insistent.

  “One percent isn’t bad,” Zinnia said.

  The others nodded in agreement. Margaret sighed.

  Zinnia took one final look around the elevator, and then stepped out. The doors closed, and there was a hum as it sped away.

  She already felt homesick for her cozy house with its floral wallpaper and comfortable furnishings. If she didn’t return, what would happen to her home and all her things? It would go to Zara. But what would happen to Zara? If Zara went to the DWM for answers, she’d be fed one of their usual cover stories. It would have to be a good one, to explain the disappearance of 87.5 percent of the Wisteria Permits Department. Perhaps a structural collapse. But Zara would know better. She would look for the truth. She would...

  Zinnia’s dark daydreams about her niece searching for her were interrupted by Dawna’s voice.

  “Everybody, come over this way,” Dawna called out. She was standing by one of the broken windows. “We can climb out right here.” She leaned out, looked left and right, her curly black hair waving in a breeze, then leaned back in. “Would you believe this building is growing out of the side of a mountain?”

  Gavin corrected her immediately. “Buildings don’t grow. What you mean is it’s carved into a mountain. Or embedded in a mountain.”

  “Magic buildings can grow,” Margaret said, correcting the corrector.

  Dawna waved them over. “You guys gotta see this! For real!”

  Everyone joined Dawna by the broken windows and looked out at the orange desert, then down, at a stone path that ran just below the windows.

  Dawna kicked the broken glass out of the bottom of the window frame and straddled the window ledge. “It’s real,” she said, testing the path with her toes. “Not one of those magic illusion things.” She stepped all the way out. “Let’s go find those nasty sandworm bullies and get our friends back.”

  “Hang on.” Karl raised both hands to halt the group. “First, do we have our supplies?” Margaret patted her purse. “Sure do, boss. Those sandworms will get some serious indigestion if they try to eat any more of us.”

  “Good,” Karl said. “Everyone stick together.” He made hand motions like a runway traffic director. “We are exiting the building this way, everyone.”

  One at a time, everyone stepped out, except Zinnia. “Be there in a minute,” she said. “Just checking my supplies.” She opened her purse and thumbed through the assortment of offense and self-defense potions. She wished she had brought more explosives, but everything took time, and the chameleon potion had been fussy. She went over the weapons one more time, mentally rehearsing the implementation of each.

  There was a sound nearby, like sand being softly crushed under a bicycle tire.

  A female voice asked, “What’ssss in that sssstrange bag?”

  The voice was coming from inside the empty third floor. The others were already out the window and walking down the path.

  “Who’s there?” Zinnia wrapped her fingers around one of the weaponized potion balls. “Show yourself before I make you.”

  “Such boldnessss,” came the voice again. “Is that a bag of yours called a purssssse? I’ve heard of pursessss.” The soft, sand-crushing sound was closer now.

  Zinnia looked down to see, less than four feet from where she stood, the largest snake she’d ever seen outside of a zoo. It was a shimmering copper and yellow reptile, at least ten feet long. The sight was shocking, and yet, she had seen much scarier things in this same location. This snake was tiny compared to the monstrous sandworm that had taken Liza.

  “Hello,” Zinnia said to the snake. “Yes, this is my purse.” Her fear instinct told her to blast the snake repeatedly with magic, but there were two reasons not to do so. For one, she had to save her limited supply of spells in case the sandworm came back. For another, it was extremely rude to blast magic at a creature who simply wanted to know more about your purse.

  The snake lifted its head up, up, up, until its eyes were eye level with Zinnia.

  “Greetingssss,” it replied. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

  “What gave me away?”

  “You’re not kneeling in terror before me,” it said casually.

  Zinnia swallowed the lump in her throat. The situation wasn’t entirely bad. At least the snake spoke English.

  “I like your pursssse,” the snake said. “What’ssss your name, human?”

  “My name is Zinnia Riddle. I’ve come from far away. I’m here looking for two of my colleagues. Their names are—”

  The tail of the snake rattled, cutting off Zinnia. “What are colleaguesssss?” The snake seemed genuinely curious.

  “That’s just another word for coworkers.”

  “Co... workers?” The snake tilted its head in what seemed to Zinnia to be a very human gesture. “You mean slavessss?”

  “Sure,” Zinnia said. She was not one to toss around the word slaves casually, but going along with the snake seemed to be the lesser of two evils, given the situation. “I’m here looking for two slaves, Liza and Xavier. They, uh, escaped this way a few hours ago. Have you seen them?”

  “Let’ssss say I know where your slaves are. What payment will I receive for showing you where your slaves might be found?”

  Payment? She hadn’t brought payment, not unless the snake liked explosives.

  “I would be willing to pay the usual fee,” Zinnia said, bluffing. Sure, why not?

  The snake made a sound halfway between a hiss and a human laugh.

  Zinnia stood up straighter.

  “Double the usual fee,” Zinnia said. When in doubt, double down!

  The snake stopped laughing. “Follow me,” it said. The snake slithered out the window and down the mountain path.

  Zinnia followed. As she stepped outside, she caught her first full breath of the air belonging to the alien landscape. It was hotter than she expected, and fragrant. And familiar. It was the same air that had been coming out of the hand dryers in the washrooms at City Hall, a blend of cinnamon, flowers, and something sweet.

  Zinnia followed the snake past a blossoming and fruit-bearing cacti. She paused to smell the flowers and fruit, careful not to contact the cactus needles. Yes, that was the scent, all right. And the flowers on the cactus were stunning. She committed the petal pattern to memory. The flowers would make a stunning custom wallpaper print.

  Zinnia kept walking, careful to keep up with, but not step on the tail of, the ten-foot-long talking snake. As much as she was concerned about what was going to happen next, and the one percent chance she might be thrown in a volcano, she was excited that some of the puzzle pieces we
re falling into place.

  Chapter 30

  Zinnia and the snake caught up with the others halfway down the mountain.

  “There you are,” Dawna said to Zinnia. “I thought someone was missing from our motley crew of adven...” Dawna spotted the ten-foot-long copper and yellow snake. Her eyes bulged. She shrieked and jumped up on a boulder. “Giant snake!”

  “That’sss better,” said the snake. “That’sss how humansss should react in my presence.”

  Gavin stamped his foot on the path once, twice, then paused with his food it mid-air. “Are we safe, Zinnia? Margaret? What’s going on?”

  Karl grunted, and his freakishly long sprite tongue flicked out of his mouth. His tongue whipped left and right, snapping in the air between the snake and his employees.

  Dawna screamed again, her gaze darting between the giant snake and Karl’s tongue, as though her brain was confused over which one was more frightening.

  Margaret held very still, her hand inside her purse, ready to draw. She reminded Zinnia of a gunslinger in an old Western movie.

  “These trigger-happy people are my friends,” Zinnia said to the snake.

  “Are they also slavessss?”

  “They all work for something called City Hall,” Zinnia said.

  Dawna, who’d stopped screaming, said, “What’s this about slaves?”

  “Just a translation glitch,” Zinnia said. “Calm down, everyone.”

  Karl slowly reeled in his bug-catching tongue.

  Gavin gently placed his raised foot on the path, heel first, then toes.

  Zinnia turned to the snake. “As I was saying, these are my friends.” She pointed at them in turn. “Dawna Jones, Gavin Gorman, Margaret Mills, and Karl Kormac. Everyone, meet...” She looked at the snake. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know your name.”

  The snake said, in its hissy voice, “You may call me Snake.”

  Karl, who had reeled in his tongue but was still regarding the snake with suspicion, said, “That’s not a name.”

  “Actually, it could be a name,” Gavin said. “Just not for a snake. That’s like me saying my name is Person.”

  Margaret didn’t say anything. She still had her hand in her purse, and one eye was twitching.

  “Then you may call me Gavin Gorman,” the snake said.

  “No,” Gavin said. “That’s my name.”

  “You can be Person,” the snake said. “We shall call you Person, so that nobody is confussssssed.”

  Gavin was, for once, speechless.

  “Susan,” Karl said to the talking snake. “We’ll call you Susan.”

  “You can call me that,” the snake—Susan—said. “But it’ssss not my name.”

  “I understand what’s happening here,” Karl said. He explained to the others, “I’ve heard about this from my elders. Sprites used to travel between worlds all the time. In many of the magic realms, a creature’s true name holds its power.”

  Gavin groaned and shook his head at Zinnia. “And you just told the talking snake all of our names, Zinnia. Good one.”

  Dawna elbowed Gavin. “You weren’t exactly jumping up to stop her.”

  “Because I was getting ready to protect you,” he said. “Keeping you safe is my number one priority.”

  It hadn’t looked that way to Zinnia, or to the snake, apparently.

  Susan slithered up to Gavin and flicked her forked tongue at him. “Interessssting,” she hissed. “You deceive this female mate of yours.”

  Dawna used Gavin’s shoulder to steady herself as she climbed down from the boulder. She said to Susan, “This man deceives me all the time. I put a three-quarters-full ice cream cake in his freezer and wouldn’t you know it, Gavin claimed there was a power failure so he had to eat it all before it melted.”

  Susan asked, “What issss ice cream cake?”

  “Only the best thing ever invented!” Dawna used the back of her hand to pat the sweat from her brow. “It’s sweet and cold, and it melts in your mouth with just the right amount of crunch. It’s better than regular cake, because you can’t eat it too fast or you get brain freeze.” Dawna reached out and flicked Gavin’s bicep with one of her long orange fingernails. “Unless you’re this guy, who can eat half a cake in the time it takes me to run out to get chocolate syrup.”

  Susan rattled her tail. “What issss chocolate syrup?”

  Dawna tried to explain chocolate syrup to the snake, but it was very difficult, since Susan didn’t know what chocolate was. When Dawna gave up, she looked at the others and said, “That answers the question of where we are. We must be in Hell, because they don’t have ice cream or chocolate here.”

  Karl looked skyward. “Hell doesn’t have two pale moons you can see in the daytime.”

  All the humans looked at Karl.

  Margaret asked, “And how many moons are there in Hell, boss?”

  Karl’s face reddened and he made a HARUMPH sound. “Never mind about that,” he said, wiping sweat from his brow with the back of one hand. “It’s hot out here in this desert. That giant red sun is higher now than it was a few minutes ago, which means it’s only going to get hotter.” He removed his suit jacket and slung it over his shoulder. His dress shirt had dark rings of sweat under each armpit. “We need to take cover, and we need to find the kids.”

  Zinnia explained to Susan, “By kids, he means the two people we’re looking for. The young man and woman who were taken by the sandworms.”

  “They weren’t taken by sandworms,” Susan said.

  Margaret finally spoke directly to the talking snake. “Yes, they were. Or at least Liza was. I saw it with my own two eyes.”

  “They were taken, but not by sandworms,” Susan said. “Sandworms are very small. You must check your shoes regularly for them. The ones you call kids were taken by timewyrms. They are the holy keepers of time.”

  Gavin threw his hands up in the air. “Oh! Well, that explains everything!”

  “Timewyrms,” Margaret said, twirling the gray curl that hung down the center of her forehead. “Never heard of them.”

  “I have,” Karl said, scratching his chin. “I believe they’re a sort of guardian that keeps realms from contaminating each other.” He looked around at the dry desert landscape. “That makes me the first one in multiple generations of my family who’s had the privilege of seeing a timewyrm.” His face had an uncharacteristic look of openness and wonder, like the expression Zinnia had seen that day on the swing set. “My great-grandfather wasn’t pulling my leg after all.”

  Everyone was quiet for a moment.

  Dawna broke the silence. She waved at the snake and said, “Is anyone besides me getting kind of a biblical, Adam-and-Eve feeling from this talking snake?”

  Zinnia said, “If Susan offers us any fruit, let’s not take it.” She waited for the others to laugh at her joke but they did not.

  Margaret said solemnly, “The fruit mentioned in the Bible was a metaphor.”

  Susan said, in a helpful tone, “Would you like me to offer you fruit?”

  In unison, all of them said, “No.”

  Karl cleared his throat. “Forgive our ignorance, Susan, but we need to know why the timewyrm took our people.”

  “Your people are anachronisms. They do not belong in this time or place. The timewyrms keep everything as it should be. Do not weep for them. Your people are among the living. For now. But you must take them away before they come to harm.”

  “What about us?” Dawna asked. “We don’t belong here, either.”

  “Stay by my ssside and you’ll be sssafe.” Susan flicked her forked tongue and then slithered ahead of them, down the mountain path.

  After a minimal amount of quibbling, the group was off again, following their talking snake guide.

  They finally passed from the hot, dry desert into terrain with some shade from scruffy trees just as the enormous orange sun was hitting its apex. The sky was now so bright that the two moons were no longer visible. Zinnia’s eyes had ad
justed to the orange cast of the local light, and while she couldn’t forget entirely that she was in another world, it was no longer her topmost thought.

  Margaret fell in step beside her just as they passed from the scruffy trees to a denser, cooler forest. The desert behind them immediately felt like a false memory. The forest was not only cooler, but filled with foggy mist and the sound of frogs. Two raccoon-sized rodents ambled across the path in front of the witches, showing no fear of people whatsoever.

  The two walked in silence for several minutes until Margaret said, “You know it’s a trap, right?”

  They were at the back of the group. They hadn’t cast a sound bubble, but Margaret had kept her volume down low enough so the others wouldn’t hear them.

  “Of course it’s a trap,” Zinnia said. “A talking snake shows up right when we pass through, and just happens to know where our friends are? I wasn’t born yesterday.”

  “So, what’s your plan? We’re just going to follow this snake right into a trap?”

  “We’re prepared.” Zinnia patted her purse. “I’ve got enough magical explosives in here to blow up a City Hall–sized mountain.”

  “It’s always good for a witch to be prepared for anything. I’m just glad I brought this.” Margaret dug into her purse and pulled out what appeared to be a pack of gum. She offered it to Zinnia.

  “What’s this?” Zinnia asked. It wasn’t one of the items they’d packed back at her house on Earth. “It this a neurotoxin that paralyzes the user?”

  “It’s gum,” Margaret said. “Peppermint.”

  “Also good to have on a trip to another world.” Zinnia took a piece and chewed it thoughtfully.

  Margaret said, “Dawna’s taking this really well. She just found out about magic today, but she’s adapting a lot better than I did. It must be different when magic comes to you in adulthood. Was your niece this easy?”

  Zinnia chuckled. “Nothing about Zara is ever easy, but I suppose she did accept magic readily.” Thinking about Zara made Zinnia desperately homesick again. She’d never been this far from home before. Most humans hadn’t been.