“The sounds this lad can coax out o’ that little musicbox. ’E calls it music like ’e’s used to playin’, but ’tis of a size I never ’eard in me short but full little life.”
“I don’t know what happened or why, sir.” Jon-Tom ran his fingers over the duar. “It vibrates a little when I play it. I think it’s trying to become the kind of instrument I’m used to, and can’t. As to the magic”—he shrugged—“I’m afraid I’m not very good at it. I only seem to have the vaguest kind of control over what I call up.”
“He’s too modest, sir,” said Talea. “He’s a true spellsinger.
“We were tired and worn from our long march through the woods when he started a strange song about some kind of transportation.” She looked sideways at Jon-Tom. “I cannot imagine what it was he was singing about, but what he produced was a L’borean riding snake. I do not think it was specified by his song.”
“Not hardly,” agreed Jon-Tom.
“Nevertheless, that is what he materialized, and a fine ride it provided us, too.”
“Nor be that all, sor,” said Mudge. “Soon afterward, as we glide through the forest night, ’e’s a-strummin’ those strings and then … why sor, the like’s o’ so many gneechees was never seen in this country! I swear by me piece they were about us like fleas on a fox followin’ a four-day drunk. You never saw the almost-likes o’ it.”
Clothahump was silent for long moments. Then, “So it seems you’ve some spellsinging abilities.” He scratched at a loose drawer in his plastron.
“It looks that way, sir. I’ve heard about hidden talent, but I never expected to find any in myself.”
“All most interesting.” The wizard rose from the bench, put both hands as far behind his back as they’d reach, and scratched at his shell. “It would help to explain so many things. It would explain why in casting I settled upon you and passed over others.” There was a touch of resurgent pride in his voice. “So it may be I am not as senile as some say. I thought there was more to this than mere confusion on my part. The talent I sought has been present all along.”
“Not exactly, sir. As Talea explained, I can call for something, but I get something quite different. I don’t have control over my, uh, magic. Couldn’t that be awfully dangerous?”
“My boy, all wizardry is dangerous. So you think you might be able to help now? Well, if we can settle on something for you to help me against, your services will be most welcome.”
Jon-Tom shuffled his feet nervously. “Actually, sir, I didn’t mean I’d be able to help in that way. Wouldn’t you still prefer a real magician, a real ‘engineer’ from my world to assist you?”
“I expect I would.” Clothahump adjusted his spectacles.
“Then send me back and exchange me for another.”
“I told you before, boy, that the energies required, the preparations involved need time to …” He stopped, squinted upward. “Ah, I believe I follow your meaning now, Jon-Tom spellsinger.”
“That’s it, sir.” He could not longer restrain his excitement. “If we both concentrate, both devote our energies to it, maybe the combination will be powerful enough to work the switch. It’s not like you’re shoving me back home all by yourself, or pulling a replacement here alone. We’d be complementing each other’s talents, and making an exchange all at once. Only a single conjuration would be involved instead of two.”
Clothahump looked seriously at his workbench. “It might be possible. There are certain shortcuts… .” He glanced back at Jon-Tom. “It involves definite risks, boy. You might find yourself stuck halfway between this world and your own. There’s no future in limbo. Only eternity, and I can’t think of a duller way to spend existence.”
“I’ll take that chance. I’ll take any chances necessary.”
“Good for you, but what about whoever you’re going to be trading places with?”
“How do you mean?” He looked uncertain.
“This eng’neer that we locate with our thoughts, Jon-Tom, will be as thrown from his familiar time and place as you were. He will likely also be trapped here for considerably longer than yourself, since I will not have the power to try and return him to his normal life for some time. He might not adapt here as well as you have, might not ever be sent home.
“Are you willing to accept the responsibility for doing that to someone else?”
“You have to take the same responsibility.”
“My entire world is at stake, possibly your own as well. I know where I stand.” The wizard was staring unwinkingly at him.
Jon-Tom forced himself to think back, to remember what his first sight and feelings were like when he’d materialized in this world. Glass butterflies and utter disorientation. A five-foot-tall otter and bellwoods.
How might that affect an older man of forty or fifty, who might find it far harder to cope with the physical hardships of this place, not to mention the mental ones? A man with a family perhaps. Or a woman who might leave children behind?
He looked back down at Clothahump. “I’m willing to try the exchange and … if you’re as serious about this crisis as you say, then you don’t have any choice. Not if you want a real engineer.”
“That is so,” replied the wizard, “but I have far more important reasons for wanting to make this switch.”
“My reasons are important enough to me.” He turned away from the others. “I’m sorry if I don’t measure up to your heroic standards.”
“I expect no heroic stances from you, Jon-Tom,” said Clothahump gently. “You are only a man. All I ask now is that you make the decision, and you have. That is enough for me. I will commence preparations.” He turned back to his bench, leaving Jon-Tom feeling expectant, pleased, and slightly anxious.
Self-preservation, he told himself angrily. He would wish whoever was to take his place the best of luck, and could do no more than that. He’d never know who was chosen.
Besides, his erratic and possibly dangerous magic could do little to help Talea and Mudge and Clothahump’s world. Probably whoever took his place would be able to, if Clothahump’s perception of the danger threatening them was accurate. Rationalization or not, that was a comforting thought to cling to.
I didn’t ask to be here, he told himself firmly, and if I have a chance to get home, damned if I’m not going to take it… .
XI
THE REST OF THE preparations took all afternoon. They were not ready until evening.
In the middle of the Tree’s central chamber a circle had been painted on the wood-chip floor. It was filled with cryptographic symbols that might have been calculus and might have been nonsense. Talea, Pog, and Mudge had been directed to stay out of the way, an admonition they needed no urging to obey.
Clothahump stood on the opposite side of the circle from Jon-Tom, who tapped nervously at the wood of the duar.
“What do I do when we begin?”
“You’re the spellsinger. Sing.”
“Sing about what?”
“About what we’re going to try and do. I wish I could help you, my boy, but I have other things to worry about. I never did have much of a voice.”
“Look,” said Jon-Tom worriedly, “the riding snake was an accident. I don’t know how I did that. Maybe we should stop and …”
“Not now, boy,” the wizard told him curtly. “Do the best you can. Sing naturally and the magic will follow. That’s the way it is with spellsingers. You do that and I will do my part.”
He slipped into a semitrance with startling speed and began to recite formulae and trace symbols in the air. There was a great deal of mumbling about time vortices, dimensional nexi, and controlled catastrophe theory.
In contrast Jon-Tom started to pluck hesitantly at the strings of the duar. They glowed blue as he furiously searched for an appropriate tune. His thoughts were confused enough without his having to recall the specifics of a song.
Eventually though he settled on one (he had to select something) and began. It was “Cal
ifornia Dreamin’.”
He started to feel the rhythm of the song, the deceptive power of the ballad, and his voice rose higher, the chords becoming richer as he put all his homesick feelings and desires into it: “I’d be safe and warm, if I was in L.A.” It grew dark in the Tree. Brilliant yellow clouds formed in the center of the circle. They were echoed by a thick emerald fog that coalesced just above the floor.
Yellow drops of swirling energy started to spill from the clouds, while green rain rose skyward from the lazy fog. Where they met they formed a whirlpool-globe that began to swell and spin.
Jon-Tom’s voice echoed around the chamber, his fingers flying over the strings. The powerful electronic mimicry thundered off the walls, blending with Clothahump’s sonorous and steady chant. A deep, low ringing like the distant sound of a huge bell being played two speeds too slowly on a bad tape recorder began to fill the room. A tingling came over Jon-Tom’s entire body, a glittering heat that radiated through him.
He continued to play, though it felt now as though his fingers were passing through the strings instead of striking them. Glass bottles shattered on the workbench and books tumbled from their shelves as the very heart of the Tree quivered with the sound. For all anyone inside knew, the whole forest was shaking.
The climax of the song was nearing, the end of the ballad, and he was still within the Tree. He tried to convey his helplessness to Clothahump, his uncertainty about what to do next. Perhaps the wizard understood his anxious stare. Perhaps it was just that their timing was naturally good.
A violent yellow-green explosion obliterated clouds and fog and whirlpool-globe. A great invisible fist struck Jon-Tom hard in the sternum and sent him stumbling backward. He bounced off the far wall, staggered a couple of steps, and fell to his right. Scrolls, fragments of skull, some stuffed heads mounted on the wall, wood shavings and chips, powders and bits of cloth were raining around him. Within the circle a whitish haze was beginning to dissipate.
He paid it little attention because he could see it, and he should not have been able to. Even through the shock of the explosion and his subsequent fall he knew he oughtn’t to be able to see haze or Tree. He should be back home, preferably in his own room, or in class, or even flat in the middle of Wilshire traffic.
Instead he lay on his butt within the same Tree.
“It didn’t work,” he murmured aloud. “I didn’t go back.” He felt like the hero of a war movie who’d set off the magazine of his own ship and gone down with his captors.
The last of the haze was fading from the circle. He caught his breath, aware of something besides his own self-pity now.
A tall young woman just a hair short of six feet was sitting spraddle-legged in the center of the circle. Her arms were straight behind her, keeping her in a sitting position as she gazed around with an altogether appropriate air of bewilderment. Long black hair was tied in a single ponytail.
She was clad in an absurdly brief skirt with matching pantyshorts beneath, sneakers and high socks, and a long sweater with four large blue letters sewn on its front. Her face was a stunning cross between that of a Tijuana professional and a Tintoretto madonna. Jet-black eyes, black as Mudge’s, and coffee skin.
Shakily she got to her feet, dusted herself off, and looked around.
With Pog’s assistance Clothahump was rolling off his back.
Once on all fours he was able to stand up. He started hunting around for his glasses, which had been knocked off by the concussion. A curved dent in the Tree wall behind him showed where he’d struck.
“What happened?” Jon-Tom thought to ask, his eyes still mesmerized by the woman. “What went wrong?”
“You, obviously, did not go back,” said Clothahump prosaically, “but someone else was drawn to us.” He stared at the new arrival, asked solicitously, “Are you by any chance, my dear, an eng’neer? Or wizard, or sorceress, or witch, as they would be known hereabouts?”
“Sangre de Christo,” husked the girl, taking a cautious step away from the turtle. Then she stopped. Her confusion and momentary fear were replaced by an expression of outrage.
“What is this place, huh? Comprende tortuga? Do you understand?” She turned slowly. “Where the hell am I?”
Her eyes narrowed as they located Jon-Tom. “You … don’t I know you from someplace?”
“Am I correct then in assuming you are not an eng’neer?” asked Clothahump despondently.
She looked back over a shoulder at him. “Engineer, me? Infierno, no! I’m a theater-arts student at the University of California in Los Angeles. I was on my way to cheerleading squad practice when … when I suddenly find myself in a nightmare. Only … you are not very frightening, tortuga.
“So if this is no nightmare … what is it?” She put a hand to her forehead, staggered a little. “Madre de dios, have I got a headache.”
Clothahump looked across the demolished circle. Jon-Tom was still staring open-mouthed at the girl, his own failure now forgotten. “You know this young lady, spellsinger?”
“I’m afraid I do, sir. Her name is Flores Quintera.”
At the mention of her name the girl spun back to face him. “I thought I recognized you.” She frowned. “But I still can’t place you.”
“My name is Jon Meriweather.” When she didn’t react to that, he added, “We attend the same school.”
“I still can’t place you. Have we had a class together, or something?”
“I don’t think so,” he told her. “I’d remember if we had. I have seen—”
“Wait a minuto … now I know!” She pointed an accusatory finger at him. “I’ve seen you working around campus. Sweeping the halls, working the grounds at practice.”
“I do that occasionally,” he replied, embarrassed. “I always managed to be out gardening whenever the cheer squad had practice.” He smiled hesitantly.
Loud, high-pitched feminine laughter came from behind him. Everyone turned to see Talea sitting on the wood-chip floor, holding her sides and roaring hysterically.
“I don’t know you,” said Flores Quintera. “What’s so funny?”
“Him!” She pointed at Jon-Tom. “He was supposed to be helping Clothahump cast for an engineer to switch places with. So he was thinking back to his home, to familiar surroundings. But he couldn’t keep his mind on his business. It was drifting while he was spellsinging, from engineering to something more pleasant, I think.”
“I couldn’t help it,” Jon-Tom mumbled. “Maybe it was something about the song. I mean, I don’t remember exactly what aspects of home I was concentrating on. I was too busy singing. Maybe it was the line, ‘If I had to tell her… .’” He was more embarrassed than he’d ever been in his life.
“So you’re responsible for my being here,” said the raven-haired amazon, “wherever ‘here’ is?”
“Sort of,” he mumbled. “I’ve kind of admired you from afar and when I should have been thinking of something else, my thoughts sort of … drifted,” he finished helplessly.
“Sure. That clarifies everything.” She fluffed her hair, looked around at man, woman, otter, turtle, bat. “So since this guy is too tongue-tied to explain, please would one of you?”
Clothahump sighed and took her by the hand. She didn’t resist as he led her to a low couch and sat her down. “It is somewhat difficult to explain, young lady.”
“Try me. When you come from the barrio, nothing surprises you.”
So the wizard patiently elucidated while Jon-Tom sat off to one side morose and at the same time perversely happy. If he was going to be marooned here, as it seemed he was, there were worse people to be trapped with than the voluptuous Flores Quintera.
Eventually Clothahump concluded his explanation. His intense listener rose from the couch and walked over to confront Jon-Tom.
“Then it wasn’t entirely your fault. I think I understand. El tortuga was very enlightening.” She turned and waved around the chamber. “Then what are we waiting here for? We have to help t
hese people as best we can.”
“That is most commendable of you,” said an admiring Clothahump. “You are a most adaptable yound lady. It is a pity you are not the eng’neer we sought, but you are bigger and stronger than most. Can you fight?”
She grinned wickedly at him, and something went all weak inside Jon-Tom. “I have eleven brothers and sisters, Mr. Clothahump, and I’m the second youngest. The only reason I’m on the cheerleading squad is because they don’t let women play on the football team. Not at the university level, anyhow. I grew up with a switchblade in my boot.”
“I am not familiar with the weapon,” replied a pleased Clothahump, “but I believe we can arm you adequately.”
Talea had stifled her amusement and had walked over to gaze appraisingly up at the new arrival. “You’re the biggest woman I’ve ever seen.”
“I’m tall even for back home,” said Quintera. “It’s been a drawback sometimes, except in sports.” She smiled dazzlingly down at Talea and extended a hand. “Do you shake hands here?”
“We do.” Talea reached out hesitantly.
“Bueno. I’d like for us to be friends.”
“I think I’d like that too.” The two women shook, each taking the measure of the other without conceding anything.
“It’s just like I’ve always dreamed,” Quintera murmured, eyes shining.
“You mean you’re not upset?” Jon-Tom gaped at her.
“Oh, maybe a little.”
Pog grumbled steadily as he began cleaning up the debris created by the explosive collapse of the interdimensional vortex.
“But I’ve always wanted to be the heroine in shining armor, ever since I was a little girl,” Quintera continued.
“No need to worry, then,” said Jon-Tom firmly. “I’ve learned quite a bit since I’ve been here. I’ll make sure no harm comes to you.”
“Oh, don’t worry about me,” she replied gaily.
Spellsinger: A Spellsinger Adventure (Book One) Page 17
