by Holly Lisle
The wagon rumbled and bounced, and he hit his head on the metal rim. I’ll never let that butthead eat anything but stinky fish again, he thought, but his brother started shaking him.
“Wake up,” Jamie whispered. “There’s something out there. It was following us, but now it’s stopped.”
Barney did wake up then. Jamie sounded really scared. He started to sit up, but Jamie said, “Keep down! Listen!”
Barney rolled out of the wagon and lay down in tall, dead, crunchy grass — and he listened. Out there in the darkness, something... slurped. He shivered, and goosebumps made all the hair on his arms stand up. He heard nothing at all for a long, tense moment, except for the hot, dry wind that blew through the darkness. Then he heard the same sound again, but from a different direction. Definitely a slurp.
He decided there were not many things a little kid hated as much as things that went slurp in the dark.
Jamie’s and Carol’s fear surrounded him like a blanket — and his own heart raced in tandem with theirs. Their terror nearly overwhelmed him; he couldn’t think, he couldn’t hear, he couldn’t sense anything except the two of them hunkered down next to him, shivering.
He wished they would stop being so scared — wished it hard. To his surprise, their fear was almost completely washed away. The little bit left didn’t affect him.
He closed his eyes tight and reached out for the slurping things; he tried to hear them thinking. He could sense them, but not well. Their minds were blurry and confused — and sort of washed out, he thought.
But the things weren’t bad. They weren’t scary. They just felt kind of... lost.
Barney stood up.
“Are you nuts?” Jamie hissed.
“No.” Barney climbed up the grade, onto the road, and stood waiting. He heard a slurp, and a squish, and looked in the direction of the sound. He could make out the outline of a lumpy form that oozed from the berm onto the road. He walked toward it, and it stopped.
“Here,” he said in his cat-calling voice. “Come here. Here, monster, monster, monster.”
Behind him, he heard Carol start to cry. Just dumb, he thought. Anybody could feel that these things weren’t bad like the Unweebil.
The thing on the road was afraid of him, but vaguely curious, too. It oozed toward him — squish, slurp, squish, slurp. He heard others like it crawling onto the road behind him, and saw that one which had climbed up from the side had gotten very close.
They were all afraid.
And they wanted something — but he wasn’t sure what.
The first one reached him. He touched it — it was warm, but as slimy and sticky as it had sounded coming toward him. Kind of like a worm, he thought.
Barney liked worms a lot.
The worm-monster brushed against him. It smelled yucky — but everything smelled yucky since the Unweebil stole him and Jamie and Carol from the green-eyed monsters.
“Hi, little monster-monster,” he said. It wasn’t really little — it was shorter than he was, but lots and lots wider. He wanted it to like him, though. He patted the top of it, since it didn’t have a head, and got sticky stuff all over his hands. “I won’t hurt you,” he told the worm-monster. “I’ll call you Wormy.”
Wormy had many relatives. Barney patted them all, and named them — Slimy and Squishy, Icky, Yucky, Stinky, and Booger. Booger was the littlest, so Barney liked him best. The monsters liked having names. They liked it when he patted them and talked to them, too. Barney could feel the beginnings of happiness in them. He still couldn’t figure out what they wanted, though.
Jamie yelled at him from his hiding place. “Barney, if those monsters eat you, I’m gonna tell Mom it was all your fault. I’ll tell her you were playing with them.”
“No you won’t,” Barney yelled back. “I’ll turn you into a frog. These are nice monsters.” He patted Booger again and said, “Don’t you have homes, little monsters? Is that why you’re so sad?”
Home. The word stirred something in them, and one by one they began slurping down the road, away from him, and away from the lurking mass of the Unweebil’s kingdom. Their wants became clearer to Barney — they wanted him to follow them.
“Come on,” he called to his brother and sister. “They’re going to take us to their home.”
“I’m not going with monsters,” Jamie yelled.
“Me either,” Carol added. “I’m afraid of them.”
“Then I’ll leave you behind,” Barney told them. “And you can make your own food.” He marched after the monsters. What poopyheads, he thought. Scared of nice monsters.
Behind him, he heard the wagon start rattling, and the sounds of Jamie and Carol climbing the berm and following. Uh-huh, he thought. Even if he was the littlest, he could boss them now, because he could do magic and they couldn’t. Just thinking about it made him smile. He liked magic.
He walked behind the worm-monsters, and Carol and Jamie walked behind him — they were mad at him. He could tell they were talking about him and calling him names. It was all right, though, because if they were mean to him, all they were going to get to eat was stinky fish and boiled cabbage.
They didn’t have to go very far before the worm-monsters slurped off the road and into a stand of dead trees. Barney followed — then stopped, shocked. The monsters had taken him to their home — but it wasn’t a monster home. It was a people home. It was falling down a little, and even in the dark he could tell it wasn’t very nice. He had not expected a people house.
Jamie and Carol stopped beside him.
“Why did they come here?” Jamie wanted to know.
“I don’t know. They were thinking of home. They don’t think very well — all the pictures in their heads are fuzzy.”
“You think they live here?”
Barney shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Carol said, “Ask them. And if they do, see if we can sleep in the house. I’m tired.”
The monsters didn’t scare Barney, and neither did the house — but there was something about both of them together he found very frightening. He stood, thinking. “Monsters, do you live in the house?” he asked them. They didn’t know or understand. “Can we go in?” he asked. Again, he could only feel confusion from them.
He walked to the house and up the stairs and opened the door. Finally, he felt something from them. They were happy he was going in. They didn’t seem to want to go in themselves.
“I guess it’s okay if we go in,” he told Jamie and Carol. “They like it.”
The children found a bed already made and climbed in. None of them talked about the house or asked each other any questions. Barney felt something terribly sad about the place.
Lying between his brother and sister after both of them fell asleep, he thought about being mean to them. It was fun to make them do what he wanted, and fun to scare them — but he thought maybe he wouldn’t do it anymore. At least not for a while. The sadness of the house made him glad he wasn’t alone. He snuggled deeper under the covers, and finally fell asleep.
CHAPTER 9
Minerva pulled the cloak closed in the front and shifted the weight of the duffel bag so it rested higher against her hip. Murp trotted along at her side, yowling and bitching as he usually did when forced to exert himself. She’d carried him for a while, but fifteen pounds of cat — certainly a lot of cat — was just too much to carry.
She was glad he didn’t show any inclination to wander off. The forest seemed to close in as she walked. Dark shapes loomed in front of her, then melted away as she moved nearer. She’d found a two-track path leading from Talleos’ house. She had, of course, kept as far away from the path as she could. She expected pursuit. No sense, though, making her pursuer’s job easy.
“I wish forests weren’t such ominous places at night,” she told Murp at one point. He chirped — neither agreement nor disagreement, simply acknowledgement that she was there and speaking to him. Minerva imagined that forests didn’t worry Murp much — and unl
ike her, he could see well in the dark.
She had no idea how long they’d been walking. However long it had been, she couldn’t tell any difference in the terrain. It was all trees covering gently rolling hills — with enough roots to trip her, enough holes in the ground left from rotted stumps for her to fall in, enough creaks and squawks and wavering, tenuous howls to scare the bejeezus out of her.
At her side, Murp hissed suddenly, then growled low in his throat. Minerva froze. She could hear, over the rustling of leaves and the steady scraping music of night insects, a ponderous, leathery flapping. It came from somewhere behind her and off to her left. A triad of slow wingbeats, a near-silent glide, another triad, another short glide — moving closer.
Murp flattened himself on a log, ears plastered against his skull, hackles raised. Minerva shivered, an atavistic fear of being prey fresh and new in her belly.
Flap... flap... flap... hiss-s-s-s-s-s.
Whatever it was, it was flying nearer, low. Just over the treetops. It sounded so — so huge. Minerva wanted to run — though surely she didn’t need to run. Surely whatever the thing was, it wasn’t after her.
Or had Talleos already discovered her missing? Had the dragon — Birkwelch — decided to fly after her? The thing that flapped nearer sounded big enough to be a dragon.
Run, panic urged. Stay, some primitive instinct demanded. Instinct overruled. She stood unmoving — even unbreathing — beneath the arching branches of a giant tree, her fingers wrapped around the hilt of the little silver knife. The creature flapped directly overhead, occluding much of the sky, looking big as a jumbo jet. Then it soared on past, and Minerva thought, Oh, good. It wasn’t looking for me after all.
But it turned. Angled back around. She could see the emerald glow of its eyes far overhead. She’d never seen eyes that truly glowed before. She heard the steady flap of its wings — heard its softly muttered curse, heard it say, “She’s here — I can feel her,” in a voice that chilled Minerva to the bone. It was nothing she had seen before, no mostly-friendly dragon come to drag her back to Talleos’ home, as she had thought.
No. In this world where even her allies were against her, this thing was hunting for her — and it was truly her enemy. She could not doubt that.
Flap... flap... flap... hiss-s-s-s-s-s.
It flew past her, a bit to one side, canting into the breeze. She could see it as a darker shape against the night sky. It would come around again, Minerva knew. It would narrow its field of search, and it would find her. She did not want to know what it would do when it caught her.
She could not run away. The thing flew — it would outstrip whatever pace she set, and cut her off. And if she ran, she would betray her position. It would catch her all the faster.
At that moment, a gust of chill breeze blew past and rattled the leaves — and threw the flying monster off course. Minerva saw that giant, terrifying form slip sideways, lose altitude, and fight to regain it.
I need more wind. A hard wind. Maybe a tornado — or a hurricane. At very least, a gale. She wished she knew how well the monster saw in the dark. She was going to have to try for her paper and pencils—
She waited until it came around again — until she knew it was behind her — and hoped the tree blocked her from its line of sight. Then she made a fast grab for the art supplies. She waited motionless, with dry mouth and weak legs as it flapped right overhead.
While she shivered there, she tried to think of a drawing that would convey wind, but only where she wanted it. And she tried to figure out how she could draw with any accuracy in the dark. She decided to sketch a cloud with a face, its cheeks puffed out and straight lines representing wind blowing before it. She figured she could do that in the dark well enough — a few curves, a winged scratch to represent the creature hunting her.
Whether it would work or not — what factors might make her drawing, and her magic — succeed or fail, she didn’t know. She had never gotten time to experiment. While she was being hunted did not seem to her a particularly good time to start.
The creature narrowed its circle, flapped behind her again.
She would only have one chance to get this right. One lousy chance.
The instant the flying nightmare was even with her position, heading behind her, she started her sketch. She spread one sheet of the vellum on her leg — so white it seemed to glow in the darkness — and scrawled her little glyphlike drawing, guessing at the shapes and drawing mostly by feel. She added every hope and prayer she could muster.
Flap... flap... flap... hiss-s-s-s-s-s—
The thing, directly above her, shrieked-a high-pitched nails-on-blackboard scream of triumph. “There you are!” it howled, and banked into a tight curve, and angled down.
The wind hit it at that moment — a wailing banshee gale that came out of nowhere and ripped branches off the tops of the trees over Minerva’s head. The creature tumbled through the sky, end over end, up and out of sight in the blink of an eye. Minerva could track its progress by the noise of the storm which followed it.
When even the sounds of the instant gale finally receded, she dropped to her knees, shaking and nearly in tears. Murp crept over to her and butted his head into her stomach. She cuddled the cat, and shivered. “It isn’t fair,” she whispered. “I didn’t ask for any of this. I wanted a normal life.”
Well, no, that wasn’t precisely true. She’d had a normal life, and she’d been bored out of her mind with that.
She’d wanted adventure — she really had. She’d wanted to matter in the scheme of things. She’d wanted to be someone of importance. She simply hadn’t considered what it would mean to her life if she got what she wanted.
Now she had what she’d thought she wanted. And she was stuck with it.
“Murp,” she said to the cat, “people can be really stupid sometimes.”
Murp gave his usual reply, and flopped over so she could rub his belly. She did, then tugged a few times on his tail. “Come on. We need to keep moving, at least until daylight. Then we can find a hole to sleep in for the day. We’ll go cross-country, maybe steal a horse — I wish I knew how to find the Unweaver. Talleos said he was here somewhere.” She sighed. “Or do you suppose that was another of his lies?”
She stood and shouldered the duffel bag. Murp took off in pretty much the direction they’d been going before. Minerva followed She didn’t have any better ideas.
I miss Darryl, she thought. She wondered how he was and what he was doing. Birkwelch had said something about him being able to see through her eyes by looking in mirrors. She wondered if there were some way to bring him to her; she didn’t think the woods would be so frightening with him along.
They’d gone camping back in the days when the two of them still had fun together. Not regularly, but often enough that they could put their tent up in the dark. They’d hiked into out-of-the-way places, set up camp, and vanished from the face of the Earth on more than one weekend to emerge tired, scratched up, and blissfully happy a couple of days later.
It’s been years since we did anything like that. She and Darryl had taken Jamie camping when he was a baby, but the idea of taking two toddlers, once Carol came along, was more work than either of them could envision. And they’d started to get busier. Started to “need” that bigger house in that better neighborhood.
We gave up a lot for that house and that neighborhood. We gave up our time with each other — we had to have more money to feed our social standing. We turned out backs on the things that really mattered — and we didn’t even notice we were doing it.
She remembered something — something ugly, something she’d pushed out of her mind long ago. She remembered looking at bigger houses with Darryl, back when the two of them just barely had a couple of dimes to rub together, back when there were three of them and Carol was on the way. Darryl had just moved to a part-time job at the ad agency. A real job — so they could qualify for a mortgage — but regular part-time so he could write, too. The
y were looking at cheap, ugly “older homes” and “handyman specials” — and Minerva, tired and angry — and jealous of a friend who’d just bought a wonderful new house — snapped that if Darryl would just live in the real world and support his family the way he ought to, they could afford a decent place to live.
Darryl didn’t say anything, she remembered. He looked a bit hurt, but he didn’t say a word. And he kept on writing for a few more months. They stayed in their apartment — Minerva couldn’t find a house she liked that they could afford and he said he couldn’t, either. Then a full-time position opened up at the agency, and Darryl took it.
That was the end of his writing, though Minerva had not realized it until right then. Carol came along, and between moving into a nice, new house in a nice, middle-class neighborhood and a lot of bills they hadn’t anticipated she and Darryl had found their time tied up in separate directions.
Her painting had followed Darryl’s writing into the abyss — though she still always thought of herself as an artist. She thought of herself as an artist/mommy/over-worked-administrative-secretary/genius-waiting-to-be-set-free, she realized. A sort of martyr.
She cringed. Hard to imagine Darryl enjoying living with such a paragon of virtue. He never complained much. He did, however, stay gone a lot.
Minerva could have waited forever for that revelation. She’d liked the situation better when she was sure Darryl was at fault, and she was the wronged party. She was going to owe her husband an apology — if she ever saw him again.
Depression and exhaustion weighed her down. Guilt sat heavily on her shoulders, too — and fear and anger and loneliness came along for the ride. She had to sleep. She hadn’t slept in so very, very long.
With Murp tagging along beside her, she searched through the darkness for someplace to hole up and rest.
* * *
Darryl’s dad was still asleep. His mother was gone — no telling what she was doing. He kept his voice down. “I just want to know if that Weird who was after her could have been Cindy.” Darryl had been arguing with Birkwelch ever since the mirror went dark, and he didn’t think he was making much progress.
