by Wen Spencer
* * *
A flatbed semi trailer sat parked in front of Lain's stately Victorian mansion. A yellow canvas tarp covered something lumpy. The xenobiologist stood on the trailer, leaning on her crutch, watching Tinker park the Rolls. Something about Lain's face made Tinker suspect that somehow the trailer was her fault.
"I thought you might turn up today," Lain said.
"Well, apparently I need a small army to go back to Turtle Creek, and Windwolf has all the sekasha today except Pony and Stormsong."
Said sekasha had already split up into Blade and Shield. Stormsong had moved off to scout the area as a Blade. Pony trailed behind Tinker, acting as Shield.
"So, I thought I'd come talk to you about the monster that attacked me yesterday," Tinker said. "The sekasha are saying it's an oni dragon."
"Ah." Lain made a sound of understanding. "I suppose I should thank you for your present."
"Present?" Tinker eyed the trailer apprehensively. What had she done now without realizing it?
Lain flipped up one corner of tarp to reveal limp willowy branches. "They told me that you sent it."
The black willow! "He eats the fruit of the tree that walks." Tinker shivered as recognition crawled down her spine. It was just too weird having another part of her dream show up with her name attached to it. "I sent it?"
"That's what they told me," Lain said.
Tinker could remember finding the tree, but she—she didn't order this. Or had she? She turned to Pony. "Did I ask . . . ?" His look of concentration made her realize that she had been so rattled that she was still speaking English; she switched Elvish. "Did I ask to have the black willow brought here?"
"You said you would love to give it to Lain."
That apparently that had been enough of an order for Pony. Tinker really had to keep in mind that the sekasha took her word as law. While she had been smothered in attention, the elves had bound up the long limp branches and sturdy trunk-feet and hauled it to the Observatory. Once at Lain's, however, they'd abandoned it—trailer and all.
Lain had warned her once about elves bearing gifts. Tinker winced, realizing that she had become one of said elves.
"I'm sorry, Lain." She made sure she was speaking English, afraid that she might insult Pony for her own stupidity. "I didn't know they were going to bring it here and dump it on you."
"It's a matter of gift horses and teeth, I suppose." Laying her crutch down, Lain nimbly swung down off the trailer, her upper body muscles cording to make up for her weakened legs. On the ground, Lain reached up for her crutch, and then turned to rap Tinker smartly on the head with her knuckles. "Learn to think before you open that mouth of yours."
"Ow!" Tinker winced. "I'm bruised there."
"You are?" Lain tilted Tinker's head to examine her scalp, combing aside her short hair with gentle fingertips. "What from? That creature that attacked you?"
"Yeah."
Lain smelt as always of fresh earth and crushed herbs and greens. "Ah, you'll live." She rubbed the sore area lightly. "Give the nerve receptors something else to think about."
Tinker mewed out a noise of protest and pain at the treatment.
Lain held her at arm's length then and looked down over Tinker, shaking her head. "I never thought I'd see you in a dress. That's a beautiful color for you."
Tinker showed off her rubies and her pistol, making Lain laugh at the contrast. "Do you want the tree?"
"A fully intact specimen? Of course!" Lain let her quiet scientific glee with the black willow show. "I saw my first black willow my first Startup; they flew me in on an Air Force jet to look at the forest where Pittsburgh had been the night before. I didn't want to come; I was still wrapped up in being crippled. Then I saw that wall of green, all those ironwoods as tall as sequoias. Out of the forest came a black willow, probably seeking a ley line, and the ground shook when it moved. God, it was instant nirvana—an alien world coming to me when I could no longer go to it."
A hot heady mix of delight and embarrassment flushed through Tinker; she wanted to hear more about how thoughtful she been, yet she knew how little she had actually contributed toward getting the tree moved. "I thought you might like it."
"I love it! But not necessarily here." Lain motioned toward her house. "I'm not totally convinced that the willow is dead. It might be just dormant after a massive system shock. I'd rather not have it reviving on my doorstep."
The tree that walks . . . "Yeah, that might be a bad idea. I can get a truck and move the trailer . . . someplace."
"What would be best is storing it at near freezing temperatures. The cold will keep it dormant if it's still alive."
Tinker eyed the fifty-three-foot semi trailer. "Well, getting it off the trailer wouldn't be hard—I can get a crane to do that—but shoving it into something refrigerated—that's going to be hard."
"I have faith." Lain limped toward her house, calling back. "I know you'll be able to figure it out."
Ah, the disadvantages of being well-known.
Stormsong was on the porch. She flashed through an "all clear" signal and indicated that she hadn't been inside the house.
"Let us clear the house first, domi," Pony said.
She wanted to whine, "It's just Lain's house." The sekasha had risked death for her, though, so she only sighed and sat down on the porch swing. "Can I have the willow cut up?"
"No," Lain said.
"I didn't think so. That would make life too simple." Tinker swung back and forth, the wind blowing up her skirt in a cooling breeze. "It would be easiest if we could keep the tree on the trailer and put it all into one large refrigerator. I could build one, but not quickly. Is there a large freezer unit that we can borrow?"
"There's Reinholds," Lain said.
"The ice cream factory?"
"I doubt they're using all their warehouses."
"That's true." The hundred-year-old company was one of the many Pittsburgh businesses that had survived being transplanted to another universe. Elves loved ice cream. Being stranded on Elfhome, however, limited Reinhold's production. Things such as sugar and chocolate all needed to be shipped in from Earth.
Pony reappeared at the door, and indicated with a nod and hand sign that the house was clean of menace. The sekasha took up guard at the doors, giving Tinker the privacy she was beginning to treasure so much.
It had been two months since Tinker had last been in Lain's house, the longest time in her life between visits. It was comforting to find it unchanged—large high-ceilinged rooms full of leather furniture, stained wood, leaded glass, and shadows.
Lain made a call to Reinholds to check on their freezer capacity. Apparently Reinholds shuffled her through various departments, as she repeated herself between long pauses. Tinker raided her fridge for breakfast. There were strawberries and fresh whipped cream, so Lain wasn't kidding when she had said that she'd expected Tinker to arrive.
The call ended with Lain hanging up with a sigh. "They have one large unit that has been shut down for some time. They're still trying to find someone that knows something about it; they'll call me back." She picked up the teakettle and limped to the sink to fill it. "You cut your hair again."
"Yeah, I cut it." It annoyed Tinker that her voice suddenly shook. When she had taken a razor to her hair, her oni guard had mistaken it for a suicide attempt; the following struggle came close to getting Pony killed. Immediately afterward, she had gone back to dipping circuit plates—it was stupid that tears now burned her eyes. She concentrated on stabbing a strawberry in the whipping cream.
"I know you hate it when people pry," Lain said quietly. "God knows, between myself, your grandfather, and that crazy half-elf Tooloo as role-models, it's no wonder you insist on keeping everyone at arm's length."
Tinker could guess where this was going. "I'm fine!"
Lain busied herself with teacups, the faint ring of china on china filling the silence between them. The teakettle started to rattle with a prewhistle boil. "God, I wish childr
en came with instruction manuals. I only want to do what's best for you—but I don't know what that is. I never have."
"I'm fine." Tinker actually managed to keep her voice level this time.
The teakettle peeped, a final warning before a full scream. Lain turned off the fire and stood there a moment, watching the steam pour out of the shimmering pot. Taking a deep cleansing breath, she sighed it out and asked, "Lemon Lift or Constant Comment?"
"The Lemon Lift," Tinker said.
"The EIA made Turtle Creek off-limits when the fighting broke out." Lain moved the teacups carefully to the table, and changed the subject with equal deftness. "No one has been able to get down to look at these Ghostlands. What did you find?"
Tea was only a medium to transport honey, so while Tinker coaxed it to maximum viscosity, she told Lain about what she found.
"Can you fix it?" Lain asked.
"I'm a genius—not a god. I don't even know what it is. But by the laws of thermodynamics, it should collapse. I had Pony score the trees around the edge. Once I can go back into the valley, I'll check on the rate at which it's decaying."
Tinker sipped her tea and then changed the subject. "What I really came here to talk to you about is the monster that attacked me. It's an oni dragon."
"There were warnings on the television last night and the radio this morning. Yet another beastie for us to worry about."
Tinker knew that she shouldn't feel responsible—but she did anyhow. She had made the Discontinuity that the dragon had passed through to get to Pittsburgh. "The dragon generates a magical shield that protects it. According to Pony and Stormsong, Windwolf's First Hand fought one of these things nae hae."
The elf phrase, meaning "too many years to count," dropped out of Tinker's mouth like she had been born to the concept of living forever. She found it a little disturbing. "Apparently the shield also protects it from magical weapons like spell arrows. They think Windwolf will be able to kill it—but he can't be everywhere at once. We need a more mundane way of dealing with the beastie."
"Do you know if it's a natural creature or a bioengineered one?" Lain took out her datapad and opened a new file to take notes.
"No. The oni didn't mention anything to me about the dragon, and the sekasha don't know. What's the difference?"
"The result of creatures evolving in an environment full of magic is they often can use magic to their own benefit. Take the black willow; it's mutated from a tree with all the standard limitations to a highly effective mobile predator. By and large, though, the bioengineered creatures tend to be more dangerous than the randomly mutated creatures."
"Like the wargs?" Tinker knew that the wolflike creatures had been created for war but now ranged wild in the forest surrounding Pittsburgh.
"Yes. The wargs not only have the frost breath, but they show no signs of aging or disease and their wounds heal at a speed that suggests a spell somehow encoded at the cellular level. They're massive, intelligent, and aggressive in nature."
"So the question is, how much did the oni dragons get in their DNA gift baskets?"
"Yes. But let's start with the basics. We've never encountered an Elfhome dragon—we only know that they exist because the elves keep telling us that they do, and that we really don't want to study them closely."
Tinker laughed at that comment.
"Is this dragon mammal or reptile?" Lain asked.
"I'm not sure. It had scales, but it also had some sort of weird mane. It was long, and lean, with a big square jaw." Tinker put her hands up to approximate the size of the head. "Short legs with big claws that it could pick things up with."
Lain got up to put the teakettle back on the stove. "Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!"
It took Tinker a moment to identify the quote, a poem out of Alice Through the Looking Glass.
"We fell down the hole and through the looking glass."
The sudden connection with her dream was like a slap. White's face jolted into her mind again. With the addition of the book title, though, she remembered where she had seen White before.
"You know, I had the oddest dream about Boo-boo Knees."
Lain whipped around to face her. "Boo?"
"At least, I think it was Boo-boo."
"H-h-how do you know about Boo's nickname?"
"The picture. It has her name on the back of it."
"Which picture?"
"The one in the book." When Lain continued to stare at her in confusion, Tinker went to scan the bookcases until she found the book in question: The Annotated Alice. Complete in one book were both Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass and What She Found There, with copious footnotes that explained layers upon layers of meaning in what seemed to be just a odd little children's story. Tinker had discovered the book when she was eight. Lain apparently had forgotten the photo tucked into the book, but Tinker hadn't.
It was an old two-dimensional color photo of a young woman with short purple hair. She hovered in midair, the Earth a brilliant blue moon behind her. She challenged the camera with a level brown-eyed gaze and a set jaw, as if she were annoyed with its presence. On her right temple was a sterile adhesive bandage. Written on the back was "Even in zero gravity, I find things to bang myself on. Love, Boo-boo Knees."
At the point Tinker had found it, she'd never seen a two-dimensional photograph; neither her grandfather or Lain were ones for personal pictures. From its limited perspective to the name of Boo-boo Knees, she'd found it fascinating. She stared at it until—ten years later—she could have drawn it from memory.
The picture was where she had carefully returned it, marking the place where one story ended and another started.
"Oh!" Lain took the photo. "I'd forgotten about that."
"Who is she?" Why am I dreaming about her? Tinker flipped through the book, remembering now forgotten passages echoing back from the dream. The tea party with the Mad Hatter murdering time, leaving his watch stuck at six o'clock. The checkerboard layout that they had flown over. Alice and the Red Queen hand in hand, like Tinker and White had been in the dream, racing to stay in place.
"That's Esme." Lain identified White as her younger sister.
"It is?" Tinker reclaimed the photo. She had always imagined Esme as a younger version of Lain, but Esme looked nothing like her. Come to think of it—Tinker had never seen a picture of Esme before, not even her official NASA mission photo.
"I'm not surprised you're dreaming of her," Lain was saying as Tinker continued to search the photo for the cause of her dreams. "You're bound to be upset about the gate and the colonists."
Was that the true reason? The dream seemed so real compared to the rest of her nightmares. She didn't know Boo-boo Knees was Lain's sister, and Lain had many retired astronauts as friends, so Tinker had had no reason to assume that this was a picture of a colonist. And why all the Alice in Wonderland references? Were they just reminders of where the photo was stored—or that the colonist had dropped into a mirror reflection of Earth? Certainly there was nothing to say that Earth had only two reflections: Elfhome and Onihida.
"Lost, lost," the crows had cried.
According to Riki, the first colony ship, the Tianlong Hao, was crewed entirely by tengu. If Black was a tengu female, that would explain the crows—but what about the hedgehogs? Tinker flipped through the book, found a picture of Alice with a flamingo and a hedgehog. The queen was screaming, "Off with his head!" Was this some oblique reference to the queen of the elves?
"Oh, this is going to give me a headache," Tinker murmured.
Down the hall, the phone rang. Lain gave her an odd, worried look and went to answer it.
Tinker found herself alone with the photograph of Lain's younger sister, looking defiantly out at her. "Why am I dreaming of you? I don't know where you are. I don't know how to save you. Hell, I don't even know how to save Pittsburgh."
Lain limped back into the kitchen. "That was Reinholds. The freezer in ques
tion is shut down because the compressor needs to be repaired. They said if I have someone repair the unit, we could store the tree there. They'll even throw in some free ice cream."
"He eats the fruit of the tree that walks," Tinker suddenly remembered all of what White—Esme—had said. "Follow the tree to the house of ice and sip sweetly of the cream."
"I'll go look at the compressor." Tinker kept hold of the book. She had a bad feeling she was going to reread the silly thing. "And see if I can fix it. I think I have to do this. Can you do me a favor in the meantime? See if you can find out anything about this oni dragon." Tinker described the magical shield that the dragon generated. "If we have to fight it again, I want to be able to hurt it."
