Minerva Wakes

by Holly Lisle

  He looked at it, surprised. He could see tiny changes in it as he sat there watching — its skin became drier; it made itself stretch tall instead of wide. It had a long way to go before it became people again, he thought. He hoped it found the rest of its family.

  He went back inside. I hope the rest of my family finds me, he thought.

  * * *

  They spent all morning walking. Barney was hot and tired, and he wanted to make his brother and sister pull him in the wagon — but they were hot and tired, too. The children kept running across more beat-up houses, and more worm-monster people. Barney felt sad around the worm-monsters. He wanted to make them all better, but he couldn’t. Instead, he kept reminding them they were people and doing the little magic that would keep them from forgetting. Even that little magic was tiring him, though, and the heat and the dust and the smell — and worse yet, the feel of the Unweebil’s magic all around him — were getting to be too much for him.

  They trudged along the road. Jamie worried while he walked. “This isn’t good strategy, walkin’ along the road in the daylight like this. We should have stayed in the house all day.”

  “He would’a found us if we stayed there.” Carol fidgeted with the tassled belt of her shirt.

  “He’s lookin’ for us now,” Barney said. “He has been for a while — but I didn’t want to say nothin’.”

  “Anything,” Carol corrected. “Didn’t want to say anything.”

  “Me either,” Barney agreed.

  His sister looked at him, her face puzzled. Then she decided it wasn’t worth arguing about. She hooked her thumbs into her belt and plodded on.

  The road curved to the right. Brush on either side blocked Barney’s view, but he sensed a change in the air ahead. He walked slower, nervous, trying to decide whether the difference was good or bad.

  All three of them reached the point in the road where they could see beyond the curve.

  “Hey, look!” Jamie yelled. “There’s another road!”

  It was a good change, Barney realized — a very good change. He broke into a run, and his brother and sister came racing after him.

  He felt the difference all over — as if he’d been on the inside of a bubble and had just broken through its skin to the outside. One instant, the weight of the Unweebil’s magic sat on his shoulders, and in the next, it was gone.

  “The grass is green,” Carol whispered.

  “It smells so good here,” Jamie said.

  Everything in front of Barney was pretty. The leaves on the trees were red and yellow, the sun was bright, the sky was blue. He could see animals around — birds and bugs and furry things.

  When he looked back they way they’d come, everything was murky — hidden by a yellow haze. He wanted to get as far away from that place as he could.

  “Well,” Jamie said “we can go straight, or right, or left. So which way is it going to be?”

  Jamie and Carol both looked at Barney. Barney stared past them as three huge monsters flew into view over the treetops. Their giant wings flapped slowly, and their long, pointy heads swung from side to side.

  “Monsters!” he yelled, and ran for the cover of the nearest trees. Jamie and Carol looked where he pointed, then scattered in opposite directions.

  “No,” one of the flying monsters screeched. “We’ve come to help you! We’ve been trying to find you since the Unweaver stole you from us!”

  Barney stopped. Now that he thought about it, the monsters did feel familiar — and not threatening. He turned around, just in time to see the three of them land and change into the ugly, big-eared people he knew from the first castle. Watching them change was pretty gross, he thought. They were awfully ugly, and seeing them sort of melt from one thing to another didn’t make them any prettier. But he was happy to see them. They could take care of him and Jamie and Carol until his mommy came to get them. Taking care of everybody made him tired.

  “Hi,” Barney said. “You gonna take us back to the castle and give us something to eat?”

  The tall monster nodded solemnly. “Yes — we’ve been searching for you since the Unweaver kidnapped you — but we haven’t found any sign of you at all, until suddenly you just appeared out of nowhere. Where were you?”

  Barney pointed down the road they’d just left. “Up that road.”

  The green-eyed monster looked puzzled. “Road?”

  Jamie rolled his eyes. “The road. The road. Right there.”

  All three monsters exchanged glances. Then they looked at the children. “You can all see a road there?”

  “Of course,” Carol said. “It’s right there.”

  “For you, perhaps,” the monster said. “Not for us. It may be that you must have a special kind of magic to see that road.”

  “I did some magic,” Barney said. “That’s how we got away from the Unweebil.” All the monsters looked at him, astonished. Barney was tired, but not so tired he couldn’t show off a little. “See — like this.” He created a tiny piece of chocolate, and handed it to the monster closest to him, who sniffed it cautiously, then took a bite.

  “Wonderful,” the monster said, and shook his head. “Amazing. So small, and already a true Weaver. I wonder where we can find a partner for you, little one. You would solve our problems once the — other troubles — have passed.”

  A soft cackle behind Barney sent his heart racing.

  “Oh, do tell the little beast what you mean by ‘other troubles,’ Weird,” the whispery voice said.

  The monster grabbed Barney and started backing away.

  “Save the children,” he told the other two monsters.

  Barney wriggled around in the monster’s arms until he could see the Unweebil. In the bright daylight, the Unweebil was nothing but a red-eyed shadow that crept across the green grass — but he left a trail of withered brown where he moved.

  “Save the children,” the Unweebil hissed. “Very sweet of you. Why don’t you tell them you intend to murder their parents? See if they’ll cling to you then.”

  “Liar!” Jamie yelled. “You’re lying!” His face grew red. He glared at the Unweebil and tears streamed down his cheeks. Once again, Barney could feel his fear.

  “Liar, liar!” Carol screamed. “You’re the one who wants to hurt us!”

  The Unweebil was telling the truth, though, Barney realized. He could feel it. The monsters wanted to help him and Carol and Jamie, but they wanted to kill Mommy and Daddy. Barney didn’t understand — and he didn’t want to. Nobody who wanted to hurt his parents was his friend. He bit the monster who held him — bit hard. The monster yelled, and held him with the other arm.

  “Don’t do that!” the monster shouted. “Let us save you. You can be angry later — but let us save you now!”

  The monster was shifting, becoming the bird-shaped thing it had been when it found them. The other two monsters were doing the same.

  The Unweebil just laughed at them. “Forget all this,” he whispered “Forget who you are, forget what you want. Just forget. It’s very easy.”

  Barney thought of the people along the road who had forgotten they were people — how sad and lost they were. He thought of these monsters, who were trying to save him from the Unweebil, becoming like them. He could keep them from forgetting. He knew the magic — it was only a little magic. And they wouldn’t forget.

  But these monsters wanted to kill his parents. They wanted to — and he couldn’t say the words that would save them.

  He just couldn’t.

  We can get away from the Unweebil again, he thought. We did before.

  The monsters forgot. Their hands dropped to their sides, and their faces became blank and confused. Jamie and Carol and Barney slid to the ground.

  The Unweebil chuckled again. “Very good, little Barney. So nice to have you on my side. Standing by and doing nothing is always the best solution to a problem, I think.”

  Jamie and Carol started to run, but Barney stood his ground.

 
; “I can get away from you any time I want. I’m not afraid of you,” he said.

  “You should be,” the Unweebil whispered. He didn’t move. He didn’t have to. He swallowed Jamie and Carol and Barney without even trying — then Barney heard a terrible sucking, tearing noise, and felt the awful weight of the Unweebil’s dirty magic surrounding him, and everything went dark.

  When it brightened again, he and his brother and sister were in the Unweebil’s stinking castle.

  “The monster and the door locks were very unpleasant,” the Unweebil told them. “You made me very angry when you did your little tricks and caused me a bit of difficulty.” Barney was lying on cold stone, looking up. The Unweebil’s red eyes stared down at him. “Not a lot,” the Unweebil added, “but enough. I will have to make sure you don’t escape again.”

  “Hah!” Jamie snarled. “You think you’re tough. You’re nothin’. You can’t make us stay if we don’t want to.”

  “You think not?”

  One second Barney was on the floor — the very next instant, he hung upside down in the air in front of the Unweebil’s glowing eyes. He tried to get away, tried all the different magics he could think of, but the Unweebil undid everything he did.

  “Let me tell you how I will keep you here,” he said. “In just a moment, I am going to hurt Barney. This will be a little lesson for all of you — every time you do something I don’t want you to do, I will hurt Barney some more. Understand,” he hissed, “it doesn’t matter which of you makes me angry — Barney is the one I will hurt. And I will hurt him more, and more, and more, until there is nothing left of him to hurt.”

  Barney kicked at the Unweebil, and squirmed around to see his brother and sister. Jamie’s face twisted with rage. “That’s not fair,” he shouted. “You can’t hurt somebody who didn’t do anything!”

  “Yes, I can,” the Unweebil whispered. “And, yes, I will. I don’t care about being fair. All I care about is getting what I want.”

  And then he hurt Barney.

  CHAPTER 10

  Minerva flew over a bleak and featureless landscape, soaring like a bird. The world below her was so devoid of detail she could not decide if she was five hundred feet above the ground or only five. The gray plain spread to eternity, it seemed. Perhaps beyond. No breeze brushed past her, nor did the faintest whisper of sound reach her ears. She knew she was looking for something but she could not remember what.

  A twinkling light appeared below her — but no more had she seen the light and marked its location than the unending grayness snuffed it out. She dove toward the place where she thought it had been, spiraling downward.

  Then she was upright, and without quite knowing how she came to be there she was inside a dingy, filthy stone building. She walked down a twisting passage, and on both sides of her were hundreds of doors. She knew she had to choose one. She didn’t know why, only that she did. None of the doors meant anything to her.

  She was very frightened.

  In all that time she had heard no sound, but suddenly, the world filled with a slow, horrible pulsing. The noise did not come from any one place — instead it came from all around her. And with the pulsing, she could see color for the first time. There were red footprints on the stone floor in front of her. She wanted to reach down to touch them; somehow, she understood, they were important. They were why she was... wherever she was. She tried to move her hand, to touch the little red footprints with one finger, but her body would not respond.

  She did not understand, and she became even more frightened. She followed the footprints, and became aware that she was not actually walking. She was gliding forward, floating an inch or two above the ground.

  The footprints turned toward one of the huge doors to her right, and vanished. Inside that door, she thought. The mystery is there. Minerva put her hand out and the huge doorknob turned into a lion’s head with sharp fangs that tried to bite her. She knew this was the door she’d been looking for — that the secret she was keeping from herself was closed behind the massive barrier it made. Terrified, she gripped the lion’s jaws with both hands, and twisted, and the door slowly glided open.

  Her children stood on the other side, their arms reaching for her. She ran to them, and put her arms around them. They were so thin — almost wraithlike, and they were silent. She could feel the tears that rolled down their faces, though. She held them as close to her as she could; she wanted so much to tell them everything would be all right. But like them, she was mute.

  The pulsing sound grew louder. It throbbed in her ears and shook the walls — and abruptly she realized that someone was behind her. Clutching her children to her, she turned.

  A tall specter of a man stood in the doorway, wrapped in a deep-cowled cloak. She could see through him — he was nothing but mist. He flowed toward her, and said, “You have found them, but you cannot have them until you have beaten me.” His voice, hollow and far, far away, blew like an ice storm around her and froze her heart. And though Minerva clung to her children, they became mist, like the man, and drifted out of her reach. Invisible weights pinned her in place, so that she could not move to go after them.

  Mute, unable to cry out, she watched them leave.

  Something began to scrape her nose off.

  Minerva opened her eyes. Murp stood on her chest and licked her nose. Sunlight filtered through the canopy of leaves overhead; as the breeze blew the leaves, light flickered across her eyelids.

  Another dream.

  She rubbed the cat. “God, I’m glad you’re here,” she told him. “After nightmares like that one, I want to fling myself off a cliff.” She sat, shivering in the warm puddle of sunlight, waiting for the nasty residue of the nightmare to leave her.

  Murp shoved his head against her face and purred.

  The horrible emptiness lifted slowly, and she began to feel better.

  “Breakfast would be a real plus,” she told the cat. She wished she had dared sneak to the kitchen to steal some food. All the running and adventuring the night before had given her an incredible appetite. She eyed Murp. “I read somewhere that cooked cat tastes lousy. Suppose raw cat would be any better?”

  “Mrrrrrrrp,” Murp said.

  “Never mind. Maybe we can swipe an apple pie off somebody’s windowsill — or something.”

  Her intuition insisted she wanted to walk east, into the rising sun. She decided she was going to trust intuition about as far as she could walk on water. She needed magic.

  She pulled out the same sheet of vellum she’d scribbled on the night before, and a pencil, and sketched a compass — a nice durable metal-looking one. Instead of drawing out the four compass directions, though, she noted only one — and that not truly a direction. “MY KIDS,” she wrote; closed her eyes; concentrated until the paper abruptly became heavy.

  A metal compass — her design — lay on top of the paper. “Shit” she whispered, impressed. The appearance of the cat, the transmission of sound that permitted her eavesdropping on Talleos, the wind that blew the airborne hunter away from her — all of those could have been coincidental. Not too likely that they were, she knew, but the possibility had existed. This latest occurrence could be nothing but the real thing, though. Magic.

  Wow, she thought staring at the compass. I did that.

  She carefully lined up the arrow with the mark she’d used to indicate the location of her kids.

  Straight east.

  “Well, then...” she whispered. “East it is. Might be more to intuition than I thought.”

  She looked at her small supply of vellum, and then at Murp, sitting patiently by her side, waiting with the air of one who knows his god is about to drop something tasty at his feet. Her own stomach growled.

  “I don’t have much of this stuff,” she said, eyeing the creamy parchment, “but breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”

  Murp waited in silence, apparently thinking that statement too obvious to require comment.

  She looked
at the vellum again. “I’ll just draw small.”

  She sketched a bowl full of Tender Vittles, Murp’s favorites, and an entire box of granola for herself. And a glass of orange juice. Then, as an afterthought, she drew a tube of toothpaste and a toothbrush — the angled kind.

  She closed her eyes and concentrated — thinking big. Murp yowled. Minerva looked up, saw what she had done, and winced.

  The bowl of cat food stood tall as a trash can, and about twice as wide. Each Tender Vittle was the size of a large mouse. She’d made enough food there to feed a band of Bengal tigers. She picked Murp up and dumped him in the middle. After a moment of what looked like shock, he chirruped delightedly and burrowed into the food, then rolled on it, and then began to bat at the Tender Vittles and to nibble at various of the huge bits.

  Her own box of granola would have made her a nice tent the night before. She glanced from that to the tube of toothpaste and the toothbrush, and shook her head. She wasn’t sure she could tip the granola box — and even if she could, she doubted she’d be able to open it. She had a hard enough time opening the normal ones. She could have gone swimming in the glass of OJ.

  Maybe she could reuse the same drawing, but concentrate on making the stuff the right size, not just bigger. She closed her eyes, concentrated, and opened them to see that nothing had happened. She took out the pencil and traced over the drawings, then repeated her previous steps.

  This time, she got what she wanted, more or less. Things were still a bit off-size — the toothbrush was uncomfortably large, but would work, while the toothpaste was of the jumbo commune size. However, she had enough granola to last a while, and the OJ, she discovered to her delight, was freshly squeezed and delicious.

  She and Murp finished their meals, she brushed her teeth— A bit too much mint in the toothpaste, she thought as her eyes watered and her mouth burned — and then they took off.