by Wen Spencer
Since the call-lightning spell took both hands, he couldn't cast a scrying spell.
Beside him, Jewel Tear cast a ground scry. "It took flight. I can't track it through the air."
True Flame cast his more inclusive, weaker scry of flame. "It's out of your range already, Wolf."
Wolf locked his jaw against a growl of impatience, forcing himself to remain silent as he canceled the lightning call. The spell was too dangerous to leave in a potential state. The power neutralized, he started to call the winds to fly after the dragon.
True Flame caught Wolf's wrist, stilling his hand. "No, I will not allow you to fight it alone. It's too dangerous."
"It killed my domi!" Wolf snarled.
"No." Stormsong dragged Little Horse up to Wolf, as if she was afraid to let the young sekasha go. "Domi's on the yellow brick road." Stormsong's eyes were soft and dreamy. "She's talked to the wizard. She's gone now to steal the flying broomstick from the witch and the flying monkeys."
Tinker fell into the cold blue air. She shouted the trigger to her shields seconds before plunging into the dark blue mass of out-of-phase ground. The blue deepened to midnight black, and then all sensation fell away, as if she had no longer had a body. Was she dead? She had felt the shields form around her in a flood of magic, and the deepening cold of the Ghostlands, but now she sensed nothing.
Suddenly, something hit her from her left. Startled, she lost her shields, and she smacked into a flat, hard surface and then slid down it, to land hard on something perpendicular to whatever she had struck. Pain shot up from her left leg. She lay panting in darkness. The air was hot, dry, and tainted with smoke. Nearby, water gurgled through unseen pipes. A distant hammering was muffled as if carried through a thick wall.
What had she hit first? Sliding her hand along the smooth floor, she found a right angle that rose up in a wall of steel. But how did she hit a wall sideways when she'd been falling down?
And where was she now?
She sat up and pain jolted up her leg again. Wincing, she felt down to her ankle and discovered that she was bleeding. "Shit." And then she remembered—she hadn't been alone on the scaffolding. She searched the area around her with blind hands. "Pony! Oh, gods, Pony!"
There was a loud, metal clank and then the squeal of hinges as a door opened somewhere out in the darkness. Someone was coming. It dawned on her that that might not be a good thing; the Ghostlands had been the oni compound. She groped at her side and found her pistol.
A flashlight flicked on some fifty feet away, its light a solid beam in smoky air. As it swept the room, her eyes adjusted, and she made out the figure of a being standing in the open doorway. The shock of hair, the sharp beak of a nose, and the tall lean body suggested a tengu.
She covered her mouth and nose to muffle her breathing.
The tengu moved toward her, shining his flashlight onto pieces of equipment on either side of the room—large tanks, pipes, pumps, and pieces of computer monitoring stations.
Go away, go away, go away, she thought hard at him.
The tengu paused at one of the monitoring stations, checking the gauges there, and then moved to the second one. Grunting at what he found, he turned and ran his light high along the back wall. The beam swept over her head, moved on, stopped, and returned to a point a few feet above her.
Gripping her pistol tight, she glanced up to see what caught the tengu's attention. A smear of fresh blood led down to her.
Don't look. Just move on. There's nothing here to see.
Inexorable, the light slid downward to shine on her.
Squinting against the brilliance, she pointed her pistol at the tengu. "That's far enough."
"Well, well." The tengu spoke English with a heavy accent, the flashlight obscuring his features. "You're what's down here making so much noise."
"Where is Pony? What have you done to him?"
Confusion filled the tengu's voice. "We don't have any ponies here."
"Where am I?"
"You don't know?"
"Answer me, damn it!"
"Water storage."
That explained the tanks, pipes, and liquid sounds. "Okay, you're going to walk me out of here."
"Walk?" He closed the distance between and crouched down in front of her, twisting the flashlight's base so it became a lantern, bathing them both in soft light. He was an older version of Riki, from the electric blue eyes under thick unruly black hair to the birdlike cock of his head. "Walk where?"
She tried to hold the gun steady but reaction from her fall was setting in, making her tremble. "Out of this place."
"You—you want to go outside?"
"Yes."
"Where exactly do you think we are?" He seemed more puzzled than alarmed, ignoring her gun to search her eyes.
"Water storage."
"Which is . . . where?"
"What is so hard to understand about this? I've got a gun and I'm willing use it. You either get me out, or I'll shoot you."
"Okay, okay, my English, it's good but not perfect. I don't understand what you want, princess."
"Oh, please, don't call me that; technically I am not a princess."
"Oookay." He acted like this was a hard concept to wrap his brain around. "What should I call you?"
"Tinker. Of the Wind Clan."
"I'm Jin Wong."
Tinker knew she had heard the name before, but she couldn't place it. "Jin, I want to go home, and you're going to take me."
He sighed and shook his head. "I'm sorry, Tinker, but you're going to need to give me the gun before I can take you anywhere."
"Like hell."
"You're hurt."
"I'm fine." And she scrambled to her feet to prove it. When she tried to put weight on her left foot, though, pain jolted up her ankle.
Jin had stood with her—as to be expected, he was at least a foot taller than she was. He wore a dark polo shirt with his name embroidered over his heart, dark nylon pants, and white socks, all stained with soot, oil, and blood. He stepped to her as she sagged back against the wall, hissing against the sudden agony.
"Don't touch me." She stopped him by raising the pistol.
"I'm not going to hurt you."
"Are all you tengu liars at birth?"
"No," he said after a moment of surprised silence. "Our mothers give us lying lessons so we can tell when someone is lying."
He looked down at her foot to indicate what he thought she was lying about.
"My ankle is just twisted," Tinker snapped.
"Just to point out the obvious, if you shoot me, you're going to have to crawl out of here." He held out his hand. "And I'm not going to let you out of this room with the gun. So just give me the pistol, and I'll do what you want."
"I give you my gun and you'll turn me over to the oni."
"There are no oni here."
"Liar."
"We lie, but tengu still have honor. I give you my word—you won't be harmed."
They stood there at an impasse, half in shadows, the gun growing heavy in her hand. She had fought to the death before, but she'd never shot someone in cold blood. She wasn't sure she could actually do it and live with herself afterward—certainly not after exchanging names and carrying on a civil conversation.
"I'm so screwed." Sighing, she unloaded the pistol, pocketed the clip, checked the chamber, and handed him the empty gun.
"I'll take care of you." He tucked the pistol between two pipes near the ceiling, way out of her reach. "I promise."
"Bleah." She wished she could believe him. Had Riki broken his word? Or had he actually never given her any promises, knowing full well that he couldn't keep them? She couldn't remember.
Jin produced sterile bandages out of his pocket and dealt with the shallow, bleeding cut on her ankle. He slipped an arm around her, then helped her up. As he supported her, they headed toward the door.
The room was a maze of tanks and pipes, gurgling ominously. At the end of the room, they stepped through a
low steel door, reminiscent of old submarine movies, and into another low-ceilinged room of mystery machines. What the hell did the oni have buried under Pittsburgh? She seethed with anger that Riki hadn't warned her about this.
"What the hell is this place, anyway?" she asked.
"This is life support."
She scoffed at that. Life support made it sound like a damn spaceship.
At the far end of the room, she could see there was a narrow, tall window. It gave her pause. Who put a window in an underground area? She forced Jin to detour through the equipment to look out it. At first she only saw night sky, above and below them, which confused her more. When had she fallen? It was midmorning—wasn't it? And how do you fall into the ground and end up above it? The stars were more brilliant than she had ever seen them. And they seemed to be moving—which really meant she was.
A planet rose on the horizon, filling it completely.
She'd seen enough photos of Earth from orbit to recognize the luminescent blue swirled with gleaming white clouds. The sight of it punched the air out of her; she stood gasping, like a fish finding itself out of water, trying to get her breath back. The planet rose, filling the window, evidence that the ship she was on was rotating to maintain artificial gravity.
"No—we can't be—this isn't possible. This is a trick. I can't be in space. I was in Pittsburgh. You don't fall in Pittsburgh and land in orbit." She couldn't be in space. Could she? "You don't fall in Pittsburgh and land in orbit," she whispered again. But she hadn't fallen to ground, but into the Discontinuity—who knew what all was tied into that knot of realities? "Oh gods, where am I?"
"Apparently quite lost." Jin tightened his hold on her, as if he expected her to collapse. Considering how weak she suddenly felt, it was probably a good idea.
"Lost! Lost!" cried the crows in her dreams.
She realized where she must be. She had fallen straight to Esme. "You're part of the tengu crew of the Tianlong Hao."
"I was the captain."
"Was?"
"This is the Dahe Hao." Jin leaned over her shoulder to tap on the window, drawing her attention back outside. "There's the Tianlong Hao."
The ship had continued to rotate and a vast debris field of broken ships slid into view. The great long cylindrical ships were shattered to pieces. Parts were folded like soda cans. The space around them hazed and glittering from frozen moisture and oxygen trapped in the same orbit as the ships. The bodies of astronauts tumbled in among the litter.
She covered her mouth to keep in a cry of dismay. Still her shock came out in low whimpers.
"The Dahe managed to rescue most of my crew minutes after the accident," Jin said quietly. "We saved crew from the Zhenghe Hao and the Anhe Hao, but the Minghe Hao reentered before we could get to it, along with parts of what we think was the gate."
"Jin!" A female voice called from beyond an open hatch. "Did you find what the hell made the loud bang?"
"Yes!" Jin shouted. "We somehow picked up a visitor."
"What kind of visitor?" the female snapped.
"The gun-waving elfin kind," Jin shouted.
"Have you fucking flipped?" The female voice drew closer. "An elf?"
"Yes, an elf," Jin called.
"Jin." There was something familiar about the female's voice. "There were no elves on any of the crew lists."
Jin cocked his head at Tinker and made a slight noise of discovery. "You did fall from Pittsburgh."
A purple-haired woman appeared at the door and Tinker recognized her. It was Esme. She hadn't changed from when Lain's photo had been taken, with the tiny exception of the bandage on her forehead. On her temple was a pink line of recently healed flesh. Like Jin, she was marked with soot, blood, and exhaustion.
"Well, I'll be fucked." Esme had Lain's voice, only slightly more raspy, as if she had shouted her throat raw. "Well, it's about time you got your scrawny ass up here."
"You had a gun-waving elf princess on order?" Jin asked.
"Not exactly. I had a dream. And you were there." Esme pointed at Jin and then Tinker. "And you."
"I'm starting to understand the appeal of Kansas," Tinker grumbled.
Jin looked at Tinker in surprise. "You forgot your little dog."
"I'm Dorothy," Esme corrected him. "She's the Scarecrow. So, how the hell did you get here?"
"I fell," Tinker said.
"Down the rabbit hole?" Esme asked.
"More or less," Tinker said.
"Great, you can get us out of this fucking mess," Esme asked.
Tinker could only laugh bitterly. "I'm not even sure where I am, let alone how to get out. What planet is that? Elfhome? Onihida?"
Esme glanced at Jin with narrowing eyes. "Onihida?"
"The tengu homeworld," Tinker said. "Or don't you know about the tengu?"
"We've covered that little speed bump," Esme said dryly, still looking at Jin. Then she shrugged. "All things considered, finding out that half the crew isn't human is just all part of the weirdness."
"It doesn't matter which planet it is," Jin said. "We've lost all our shuttles in the crash. We can't land. Normally that wouldn't be a problem, the ship is designed to support its crew for decades—but we've got the survivors of four ships onboard."
"I think its Elfhome." Esme turned back to Tinker. "At least, Pittsburgh is down there. Every now and then, we pick up an FM station." Esme named a couple of Pittsburgh radio stations. "It sounds like a fucking war has broken out."
"More or less," Tinker said.
"Oh joy." Esme indicated that they should start in the direction she had come from. "Hopefully you have something other than straw in that head of yours, because I've got a mess for you to fix."
"Aren't you supposed to be the expert?" Tinker let Jin pick her up and carry her. All the little speed bumps, as Esme would put it, had finally gotten the best of her.
"Yes, I am." Esme led them through the next section of the ship. Smoke hazed the air here, and red lights flashed unattended. "But you're the Scarecrow."
"What the hell does that mean?" Tinker asked.
"It means what it means." Esme opened a hatch, stepped through, and closed it after Jin. The light was dim in this section, but the air was clean. The floor was cluttered with crew sleeping. At a glance, at least half of the sleepers were wounded. "All fucking logic went out the window about seven days ago."
Stormsong had said the same thing when her dreaming powers had told her that Impatience was no longer a danger to them. Esme sounded like she was operating on the same skewed logic—she wanted Tinker to fix the mess that the colonists were in because the dreams said she would.
Oh great, yet another group of people expecting me to pull rabbits out of my hat.
For the first time in her life, Tinker felt intimidated by a piece of hardware. She knew that a spaceship was a delicate balance of systems, a spiderweb pretending to be a simple tin can, with the lives of everyone inside dependent on it. "Look, I really don't know a whole lot about spaceships."
"I'll use terms you can understand," Esme said. "My ship is sinking and I can't bail fast enough."
"Okay," Tinker said. "Exactly how does a spaceship 'sink'?"
"The jump did something to my computers." Esme stopped beside a workstation with a monitor showing static. The front panel had already been pulled, and the boards inside gleamed softly with magic. "I'm getting—all sorts of weird errors—and I'm starting to lose systems completely."
"Well, doh." Tinker dug through her pockets until she found a length of wire and her screwdriver set. "Magic is causing your systems to crash."
"Magic?" Esme echoed, looking mystified.
Tinker realized that none of the colonists could see the magic. "That's Elfhome and this universe has magic. Your computer systems aren't shielded for it."
"Oh fuck, it is blindingly obvious, isn't it?" Esme pressed her palm to her forehead, took a deep breath, and let it out. "I should have thought of that when I started to dream true again.
Okay. This system controls my engines. Right after the crash, I pulled into what should have been a stable orbit and started up the rotation that allows for the artificial gravity. We're drifting, though. If I don't correct our orbit, we're going to enter the planet's atmosphere—and my ship is not designed to survive re-entry."
"Okay." Tinker took the lantern from Jin and started to strip it for parts. "We need to first siphon off the magic, and then create shielding for the system. Here's what I need . . ."
