by Holly Lisle
The two of them kept up a steady pace. They stopped once to drink out of a stream, and several times while Minerva double-checked her directions, then kept moving eastward.
Minerva guessed the time to be a bit shy of noon when she became aware of an intermittent hissing over the hill in front of her. She climbed the slope, wondering at the cause, and made sure she stayed well under the cover of the trees. When she crested the ridge, she was delighted to see a road paved with blacktop (or something very like it), bisecting the ground in front of her. On that road an occasional round-cornered and flared-finned six-wheeled vehicle gaudy as a Puerto Rican bus zipped past. These vehicles made no noise except for the sound of their tires on the road and the gusting breezes they left in their wakes.
At first she was startled. She hadn’t expected automotive technology — she’d expected horses. “I should have known better,” she told the cat.
I wonder, she thought, if I dare hitch a ride. I don’t imagine the general population will be up in arms looking for me — I’d think my presence here would be a secret. She sat in the tall weeds that ran from the hilltop down to the road and watched the traffic. Except, naturally, the road runs north and south, and I want to go east. She double-checked her compass again, just to be sure.
That’s odd. I thought I wanted to go east. The needle seemed to have changed directions. She tapped it once, to see if it might be stuck. The needle swung freely, then reoriented itself — north by northeast, exactly paralleling the direction of the road.
Goosebumps rose on her arms as she looked from the needle down to the passing vehicles below. How — how very... convenient.
She’d wanted to find the fastest way to her kids. Perhaps the compass was showing her the fastest way — first straight to the road, then in somebody’s vehicle heading north.
She would give hitchhiking a try. She put her hand on the hilt of her knife, just to make sure it was there. The very idea of taking a ride with a stranger scared her to death — but she wanted to get to her kids. For them, she’d take her chances. She needed to make sure, though, that the cat wouldn’t get lost. “Murp,” she said, “I don’t imagine this will be your favorite game. Just stay put, though — okay?” She unzipped her duffel, picked up the cat, and dropped him inside. To her surprise, he curled into a ball on her spare set of clothes and after one giant yawn, fell asleep. “So maybe I was wrong,” she remarked. “You don’t look too put out.” She zipped the duffel until the opening was too small for the cat to get out, but plenty large enough for him to get air. Then she stood and clambered down the steep shoulder to the pavement.
The compass needle swung around and began pointing south-southwest. Minerva stared at it, then swore and smacked the compass once with the flat of her hand. The needle spun crazily, then returned to its south-southwest orientation. “Dammit,” she muttered. “This thing doesn’t work after all. If that’s the case, I don’t have any idea which way to go. I might have been walking in the wrong direction all morning.”
One of the gaudy local vehicles approached from the south. It was a truck of sorts, with a teardrop-shaped cab and a hinged cart on the back. Exotic livestock hung their curly-horned heads over the sides and cheeped. Minerva, suddenly suspicious, watched her compass. It followed the truck as if the point were attached to the vehicle by string.
So this is my ride, huh? Fastest way to my kids. Oh, well...
She stuck out a thumb, and the driver slowed and pulled off to the side.
“Need a ride?” the driver leaned out the window and yelled back at her.
“Desperately.” She ran to the vehicle, then slowed as she got near enough to make out details.
The driver was a man — more or less. His face was weathered and browned; corners of eyes deeply creased; hair white and thin and wispy over his head. But his ears fanned out from either side of his skull in delicate, leaflike folds, and the tip of his bulbous nose curled over his mustache to touch his broad upper lip. His clothes matched hers — but they were faded and patched, and the cloth at elbows and wrists was thin and frayed.
Minerva took a deep breath, walked around to the passenger side of the vehicle, and got in. Compass says this is the ride I’m supposed to take.
The driver pulled a lever and stepped on a pedal, and the truck rolled forward soundlessly. He gripped a sort of ski-pole arrangement in either hand — Minerva thought the absence of a steering wheel made the interior of the cab look bizarre. She admired the embroidered seat-covers and the beadwork decorations.
“Yer one of them critters from the magical reservation, ain’t yer?” the old man asked her.
Minerva winced. The old man, when he spoke, sounded exactly like Talleos’ imitation of a tourist. “In a way, I suppose so.”
“Yup — I figgered. None of you folks look right, y’know. I seen you suckers on the hollyvision bunch a times. My fevert is that old-timey show, MageWars.” He grinned as he said it, so that his lips rolled back to his gums. Minerva caught an unnerving glimpse of his teeth. She noted with some discomfiture that his canines were almost an inch long. This is the way the compass said to travel, she reminded herself. My ride.
The old man suddenly turned and scrutinized her, though, and said “I don’ recollect ever havin’ seen yer likes afore.”
Minerva had the line for this one ready, thanks to the cheymat. “We’re nearly extinct,” she lied. “Very rare.”
“Huh.” The old man turned away from her, and she was surprised how relieved she was that those vivid green eyes were looking at something else. The corners of his mouth curled up in a smile, and he said, “I reckon that’s it.”
They rode in silence for a while. Minerva cast the occasional covert look at her compass, but it continued to line up exactly with the direction in which they moved. She settled back, determined to enjoy the ride.
The old man said, “So where yer heading for, you?”
“Don’t know precisely,” she told him. “I’m looking for something.”
“Then, what yer lookin’ for?”
Minerva shrugged. “I don’t know that, yet, either. I guess I’ll know it when I see it.”
The old man scratched behind his ear, and Minerva was surprised at how big his hands were, and how sharp the claws that tipped them. Uneasiness settled around her like a cloak. It was all very well to think that the compass led her to this man, but she couldn’t help but wish he looked less the part of the aging werewolf. She felt too much like Red Riding Hood for her own comfort. What big eyes you have, she thought. And big ears, and sharp claws, and big teeth...
He grinned over at her. Face on, it was not a delightful grin. Not charming. Somewhat less than utterly pleasing. She’d seen the likes on pictures of hyenas. “We’ll be in Weezfield in just a few minutes,” he said. “You see whatcher lookin’ for there, you let me know. I stop for yer. Iffin not, I’m going all the way to Weirds’ Hold today. Gotta drop off my kaldebeasts with the buyer up that way. Yer welcome to come along. I don’t often get any company deliverin’ stock. Not even critters such as yerself.”
Minerva smiled — a strained smile, but the best she could manage at the moment. “Thank you. I do appreciate that.” She took a deep breath. “I’m not actually a — ah, critter. My name’s Min— er, Jean.” She felt the sudden compulsion to keep some things secret.
“Minnerjean. Huh! Well, I’m Lorcas.” The old man shrugged. “That’s a right pretty name for a critter. But all you folks is so danged touchy about bein’ called critters. What you want to be called then, Minnerjean?”
“People?”
“People. It figgers. You and danged dragons and lopers and kaldebeasts, too, more’n likely — everybody wants to be people. Well, Minnerjean, yer can’t be born a critter and then turn people. You got to be born people.” His smile when he looked at her that time was touched with condescension. “But there ain’t nothing wrong with bein’ a critter, honey. You just got to know your place is all.”
Miner
va bit her tongue. She would have loved to slap the old farmer down — but she didn’t know the rules in this world, didn’t know the place of women in general, or of female “critters” in particular. So she said nothing, and stewed.
They came into a village — evidently Weezfield, though she could not read the sign planted askew on the hillock before the village proper. The place was quaint, with single-story plaster houses painted in every conceivable pastel hue. Each house had a blue tile roof, and a bright red basket-weave fence about two feet high around the tiny yard. The houses were close together, with dirt paths beaten into the blue-gray earth between them.
The open market square in the center of town was busy — the inhabitants herded flocks of — well, of something. Minerva didn’t have the foggiest idea what sorts of flocks those were. Girls chased after waddling four-legged ducklike beasts, while the curly-homed creatures Lorcas had earlier identified as kaldebeasts stood in the middle of the road staring stupidly at hairy jade-green beasts which hopped past, kangaroo-like, on their hind legs.
She took an instant to check her direction on her compass, and shouted, “Oh, stop! Stop!”
The old man hit his brake, and Minerva nearly went through the windshield. “What’s the matter, Minnerjean?”
Minerva pulled her duffel bag onto her lap, preparatory to jumping out of the truck. “I have to go that way,” she said, and pointed to a cobbled road that twisted through the marketplace and off to the right.
“Well, that’s the way I’m going, too. If yer’ll just be patient—” He grinned straight at her again, and she tried to reconcile his cheery demeanor and friendliness with all those teeth. And claws. Mustn’t forget the claws. “We’ll get past the herds and the flocks soon enough. That’s Old Stoneman’s Road. Goes to Weirds’ Hold. Bit of a ride, but I’m goin’ that way. Yer sure welcome.”
There didn’t seem to be any reason to insist on walking. The man made her nervous, but not nervous in the way she would have equated with, for example, being around known sex offenders. There was nothing slimy about him. She came to the conclusion her anxiety was simply caused by being faced with someone so different. He probably feels nervous around me, too. She sighed. “Thanks. If you’re sure you don’t mind then, I’ll stick with you.”
The cobblestone part of the road only lasted to the end of the town. Then it became flat cut paving stones laid out in a single raised lane. The shoulders widened at regular intervals to allow the larger vehicles to pass each other. Old Stoneman’s Road, she discovered was much more lightly traveled than the road she and Lorcas had just left. Her uneasy feeling got worse. Lorcas had grown silent as the village fell away behind them, and she didn’t feel up to keeping a conversation going.
The terrain, which had been a steeply hilled and heavily farmed piedmont, became flatter, and the farms farther apart. Rolling meadows gave way to large marshy areas, and the road became a causeway for long stretches. She stared out at the countryside that flashed past her, at fens and bracken thickets and boggy lakes.
They rode over streams, and then two fair-sized rivers, and Minerva was glad she hadn’t tried to walk. On foot, she would have made an easy target, if any of the flying things still hunted her. In the truck, she hoped such creatures would have a more difficult time tracking her. But still her disquiet grew.
As the ground below the causeway started to rise again, the old man turned to her. Thoughtfully, he said, “Seems to me someone don’t know where she’s goin’ but in as much of a hurry to get there as you are must be running away from something. That wouldn’t be the case, would it?”
Minerva shook her head. “I’m running to something — I just don’t know what yet. Really.”
He tipped his head slowly to one side and rotated his ears up and a bit forward. His eyes narrowed. “Wouldn’t be running toward the Veil of Illusion, would you?”
Minerva was nonplussed. “The what?”
He shrugged and smiled. “No, I guess not then.” He seemed ready to drop the subject.
Minerva gathered up her courage. “What is the Veil of Illusion? If you don’t mind?”
“No fit place for anyone — not even critters.” And that was all Lorcas would say about it.
Minerva dropped the subject. They were coming into another village — more of a hamlet, really. A few shabby houses lined the road on both sides, and tiny, scruffy fields spread out behind them. She was having a hard time reconciling the cheymat’s wealth and technological sophistication with the apparent poverty and backwardness of these other parts of Eyrith.
On Earth, there are places this out of touch, she thought, but not so close to civilization. And then she reconsidered. Living in a middle-class neighborhood for most of her life, how did she know what the lives of the people around her were like? She saw the poverty and the squalor here because it was new to her eyes, and she hadn’t yet learned to look past it.
She thought, if she made it back to her own world, she would pay more attention to other people. Maybe — if she really were a Weaver — she could do some good there.
“Old Stoneman,” the farmer said, with a nod of his head back to the rapidly receding village. He then fell back to silence.
The duffel at Minerva’s feet shifted — Murp had evidently awakened. She yawned and stretched, hoping to cover any noises the cat might make, but the farmer was not misled.
“What yer got in the bag?” he asked.
“Clothes and my lunch,” she lied.
“Thought I smelled something fine in there — live meat, I reckoned, but didn’t think yer the type to eat yer’s live. ’S how I like mine, too.” He gave the bag a wistful glance, and smiled hopefully at her. “Yer wouldn’t like t’share, would yer? I’ve a bit of cheese and I’d planned t’ kill one of the beasts in the back, mayhaps, if they didn’t have something I liked in Weirds’ Hold, but I’ve never smelled the likes of that.”
Minerva tried not to let her dismay show. “Ah—” she said, and stared at the bag at her feet, which was now wriggling vigorously and would at any moment, she suspected, let out with an indignant yowl or two. “Um—” She gave the farmer an apologetic smile. “Really not even enough there for one, and I’d just brought this one along as a snack. If I’d known ahead of time, I could have grabbed another one, but...” Her voice trailed off into silence, and she gave him a helpless shrug.
His disappointment was evident. “Oh. Yes, I reckon the beast would have to be small to fit in there. Perhaps if you could tell me where you got it...?”
Minerva brushed her hair out of her face and said, “Of course. I caught this one in the — ah—” What did Talleos call the place? Oh, yes. “In the Preserve.”
Lorcas stared at her hand. Rather, she noted, he stared at her ring. And suddenly he smiled in a way she did not like at all. His attention snapped back to the road, and he said, “Then that would possibly be a magical creature, hmmm? I’d not want to eat that, anyway. Hard on the stomach, some of those.”
“I imagine so,” Minerva said, and edged farther toward the passenger door. The truck was moving awfully fast. The old man had decided to make some time, she could tell. Where before he had pulled onto the first shoulder he came to whenever another vehicle approached, now he just kept on driving, counting on the other drivers to make way for him.
Finally, she dared to say, “You seem in an awfully big hurry.”
“Gettin’ late,” he replied, “and I’m gettin’ hungry.”
That was as much about that topic as Minerva cared to hear.
“Minnerjean,” the old man said, “we’re not far out of Weirds’ Hold. Whyn’t you let me buy yer a nice dinner ‘fore you head on?” He smiled at her, keeping his teeth mostly hidden. “You’ve been fine company — and I’d like to treat you.” He frowned a bit, and his huge ears flipped back. “They don’t have real fresh meat in the big city — you’ll have to eat killed-and-cooked. But it hain’t bad. I’ve had it a time or two.”
Minerva hated to a
ppear rude — and as long as she didn’t have to eat a live animal, or watch the old man eat one, she thought she could tolerate his company a while longer. He wasn’t so terrible. He simply made her nervous. She smiled back at him. “Why, thank you, Lorcas. That’s very kind of you.”
His smile grew wider, so that she could see the fangs again. “Not a ‘tall,” he said. “Not a ‘tall.”
* * *
By the time Darryl got home from the family gathering after the funeral, it was close to four P.M., and he was exhausted. His mom and dad, refusing to be denied, were going to stop by in less than an hour. That didn’t give him much time to write. He pushed open his front door and plodded toward the stairs.
The voice from the living room stopped him.
“I wish I could watch things in the mirror when you weren’t here,” Birkwelch called. “I read what you wrote while I was waiting for you, and I think you’ve created a recipe for disaster — but I couldn’t see what was going on. There’s no telling what might have happened to her by now.”
“She’s fine.” Darryl started back toward the stairs again. “I only caught about two glimpses of her in mirrors the whole time I was at her folks’ house. Those are people who don’t believe in mirrors.”
The dragon snickered. “Having now seen her mother, I can guess why.”
Darryl laughed in spite of himself. “Minerva takes after her father.”
“That hawk-nosed weasel? I don’t think she was his offspring, either. Minerva was a foundling is my guess,” Birkwelch said, and followed Darryl up the stairs.
“Anyway, she was looking out the window of a bus or car or something — riding along at a pretty good clip. So you didn’t need to worry.”
Darryl noted the sudden silence behind him. He looked down the steps and saw the dragon standing halfway up, staring at him with a horrified expression. “Riding?” the dragon finally squeaked “Sacred Karras protect us all!” The huge beast charged up the stairs at a speed Darryl found hard to believe, and dragged him down the hall and into the art room before he’d had a chance to realize it had happened.
