Caught, he opened his eyes and then widened them, seeing the figure speaking with her. Short, squat, it looked less like a living creature than a mobile stump, knee-high and covered with rough skin that looked like bark. Then it twisted to look at him, and he had to work not to flinch in reaction: stuck midway in the trunk-body was a face, bark-rough but identifiable, with lidless blue eyes staring back at him.
“All over this.” The lips were almost invisible, bark-covered and thin, set over a faint impression of a chin that sloped down into the trunk.
“Over my right to do as I please,” she said, tartly.
“Of course, of course.” The eyes closed once, slowly, and then it turned back, as though Tyler had been judged and deemed insignificant for further study.
He sat up, waiting for soreness or pain to make itself known, but nothing did. He reached for the memories that had been there on waking, desperate for something to hold on to, to resist the smooth gray fog already seeping into his brain, smoothing it all into a dull acceptance.
But it was gone, leaving behind the spiky, sharp prickling of thorns. There was only Stjerne, and she was expecting him to get ready.
He went to where she had indicated, and found a pot of water and a scrap of cloth. The pot was made of the same cloth as the towel, only stiffened somehow and given a glossy sheen. The water was just warm enough to make his skin turn red when he dipped his hands in, and there was just enough for him to wash his face and upper body, then dry off, and replace his shirt.
He craved a full shower but knew better than to ask.
By the time he returned, the stump-creature was gone, and she had made the blanket he had slept on disappear the same way she had made it appear, standing with her back to him, looking out at the mountain.
“What do you feel?”
“Feel?” She had never asked such a thing before.
“Feel.” She was impatient with him, and he shivered. “What do you feel?”
“I...” Fine was his first, instinctive response. He did feel fine, but he didn’t think that was what she had meant. “Physically, I am well.”
“And emotionally? How does your...heart, feel?”
The question perplexed him. She was his heart, and she was here, how could he be anything other than well? She had asked, and so he must answer honestly.
He thought about the question, tried to listen to his heart. Only this moment felt real; he had only fragments and blurs of anything else, anything before her, and when he tried to look at them more closely, the thorns pricked and scraped him until he let go. He had become accustomed to it; it no longer made his heart ache.
“I am well,” he said finally, not knowing how else to describe it.
“You feel nothing?” She seemed pleased by that, and so he decided—an illicit thrill that terrified him—to say nothing of the tug he had felt earlier.
Stjerne turned to look at him, then back toward the mountain. “Gathen is right, damn his twigs. Gossip outpaced us, and I need to present my case, not allow others to present it for their own means. No matter the urgency of our work, the Court plays its own games, and to be away too long, for any reason, is to be weak, unheard.”
She looked at him, but her gaze was far away. “You have been isolated, pet, for your own safety, and to ensure the bond took. The Court will confuse you, distract you. But I cannot leave you behind, and so you must come with me.”
He felt a splash of relief. He had not allowed himself to contemplate being left behind, brought back to the palace and abandoned like a misbehaved dog, or worse, abandoned where they were.
“Do not speak without my permission, do not approach any, save I command; keep your eyes down and stay at my side unless I tell you otherwise.”
He nodded, then raised his chin and lifted a hand slightly, as though asking her permission to ask a question.
“What?”
“This is because...we went elsewhere? Or...” He had to force the words out. “Or because of what happened there?”
He didn’t clarify what he meant by there. He had still little memory of that happening; only confusion and a surge of annoyance, of repulsion, the need to get away, to not be separated from Stjerne.
“Let me worry about it,” she said, reaching out to take his hand in hers. It was the first time she had touched him gently since they’d returned, and he was briefly disturbed at how much it meant to him. Then he smiled back at her. If she was not upset with him, everything would be fine.
* * *
For the first time in years, Jan wished that she wore a wristwatch. Her cell phone was still in her bag, abandoned on the street corner back in her own world, probably gone through and dumped, her phone jacked and her credit cards run through. The thought made her grimace, but there wasn’t anything she could do about it. Next time, she’d remember to make sure she had her pack with her when she went through a transdimensional portal on the back of a shape-shifting mass-murdering pony.
The thought almost made her laugh, but she thought that if a noise escaped, she would end up in hysterics.
The thread of Tyler’s presence still led her on, and what felt like a long while after they left the whisperers behind, it brought them to an end of the woods. Martin touched her arm gently and made them pause a long moment, waiting, before they stepped from the cover of the trees.
Only then did she realize that, while they’d walked, night had fallen. When they were clear of the branches, Jan got her first glimpse of the sky, black and clear overhead, the stars a scatter of blue-white glitter, the moon a faint yellow crescent low on the horizon. “How long were we in there?” she asked.
“I think it’s best if we don’t think in terms of units of time.” Martin was staring up at the stars with a look less of wonder than distaste. “The moon was waxing three-quarter when we left.”
Jan swallowed hard. She didn’t know anything about astronomy, but even she knew that meant something was wrong.
“Seven days like seven years?” The question she had asked Elsa and gotten no real answer on.
“Maybe. Maybe not. AJ said time between the halves isn’t aligned. We’re out of phase. That’s why the portals have always been so tricky.”
She rolled that around in her head, trying to think of it like code, getting two systems to communicate. “They don’t sync. So, when we go back...”
“It should be fine,” he said. “Tyler came back within a few weeks, remember?”
“You’re saying that just to make me feel better.”
“Yeah.” Martin managed a grin, shaky and endearing. “Did it work?”
“No.” But she wanted to hug him, anyway.
He turned away before she could act on the impulse, his body language a pointed rebuke that made her face tighten in reaction, feeling as if her only refuge had rejected her. “We should get some rest,” he said.
“I’m not tired.” Actually, she was exhausted. But there was no way she could stop now, especially if that meant more distance between her and Tyler. “The pull...I’m afraid of what might happen, if he gets too far away. And if they stop to sleep, then we can make up some time, maybe?”
“All right.” She could tell that he didn’t think it was a good idea but couldn’t argue with her points. Despite his earlier turning away, when they started walking again he took her hand in his. His skin was rough and warm against her own. It was as though he couldn’t help himself, taking comfort as much as giving it, as they started down the hill away from the woods.
The thread was strong enough now that she didn’t have to focus all of her attention on it. Maybe they were getting closer? But the lack of focus let her wonder about other things, like time. Time was changeable, not running equally on either side of the portal? Tyler had come back quickly enough—as they had been counting it. But if the two planes didn’t sync properly, how long had it been to him here? How long, in his mind, had he been with the preters?
Her eyes itched with tears, and she had to wipe her nose with the
back of her sleeve. Martin either didn’t notice or pretended not to.
It didn’t matter. However long he’d been here, in his mind, he’d recover. They just had to get him home. Jan focused on that, and the thread seemed to fade, then brighten again.
Or maybe she was just hallucinating that. Maybe she was hallucinating the entire thing and leading them in circles, and Tyler was somewhere else, never to be found.
The thread faded, enough that she had to stop, calling out in dismay.
“What’s wrong?”
Jan held her hand up, closing her eyes and concentrating. She tried to remember Tyler’s face, the sound of his voice, and failed. Refusing to panic, she concentrated again, this time not on him, but on herself. How she felt, waking up with his arm over her shoulder, his leg tangled in hers. The feeling of satisfaction she got when he laughed at her jokes or when his eyes got all soft, and he smiled at her.
The thread reappeared, not as bright as before, but steady.
Understanding hit: the strand that tied them together was as much her as him. If he couldn’t remember, she would. She just had to hold on. Whatever she did, she had to hold on to him.
Time faded again, and Jan felt exhaustion hit her, muscles aching and joints creaking, but she had said they should go on, so she wouldn’t call quits first. The stars were bright, but the ground was uneven, rising and falling, with occasional holes, as if an animal might have dug them. She couldn’t tell if the grass was the same intense green as before; in the starlight it seemed faded. The shhhh-shhhh of the leaves rustling overhead faded the farther from the woods they went, and another sound caught her attention.
Not a whisper. Something more familiar.
“Water,” Martin said, hearing the same thing. “There’s a creek ahead.”
“You don’t sound happy. I thought you liked water?”
She couldn’t understand the look he shot her, the night shadows long on his face.
“There’s water, and then there’s water. Especially here.”
All things considered, she couldn’t argue with that. “They went that way,” she said, pointing to their left, following the tug of the connection.
“So, we go that way,” he agreed, and started walking again. The grass was slippery under their feet now, and she was glad for his hand in hers.
The ground continued to slope downward, and the sound—and smell—of water grew stronger, until they could see it, a dark ribbon cutting across the bottom of a shallow valley. This was a proper creek, unlike the little rivulets in the forest.
“There’s a bridge down there,” she pointed again.
“Where?” He turned to follow her finger. “Your eyes are better than mine, I don’t see anything.”
“Down there. Come on.”
She had been right; there was a bridge of sorts. Narrow, barely wide enough for one person to cross at a time, and made of stone that glowed palely in the starlight. On the other side, the ground sloped back up, and Jan could swear that she could see the impression of footprints in the grass, as though limned in fluorescent paint. Then she blinked, and the impression disappeared. But Tyler had gone that way; she knew it.
Martin pulled on her hand, enough to make her pause.
“I don’t like it,” he said.
“The water?”
“The bridge.” He studied it and then shrugged. “But I like the idea of wading through the creek less. You go first, let me follow.”
The logic to that escaped Jan, but his hand was shaking slightly in hers, and she thought maybe it was best to just get it over with, whatever was upsetting him.
The grass near the start of the bridge had been trampled down and torn up, and the stone where the water lapped against it had an odd green tint that seemed almost to shimmer. Jan closed her eyes, rubbed them with her free hand and then opened them again.
No, it still shimmered, like a pearlescent frog.
“Hurry,” Martin said, as though she’d been standing there dithering for an hour. Then again, maybe she had. Time, she thought, aware that she was well beyond hysterical, was fleeting.
“It’s just a step to the left....”
Martin didn’t laugh. Either he didn’t get the time-warp reference, or—he probably didn’t get it.
There was no railing, so she had to step slowly, making sure to maintain her balance in the center. The stones were smooth but not slick, and so long as she held her arms out slightly on either side, she could move easily, like walking on a curved balance beam.
Jan had always hated gymnastics. Before asthma had sidelined her when she was in college, soccer and Frisbee had been more her thing, where quick movements were more important than grace.
She could hear Martin behind her, his breathing even and slow, and she tried to mimic him. In and out. Step, and step, until she was halfway across, at the high point of the arch, and he was a step or two behind her. The temptation to look behind her was like an itch between her shoulder blades, and an equal desire to look to the side slid into her brain, making her wonder how deep the water was, and if the plunkety-noise she just heard was a fish or a frog or...
“Shit.”
Or something else entirely.
“Run!” Martin’s voice was high and sharp, and she froze, terrified of falling off the narrow bridge even as she was terrified of staying there and facing whatever had made that noise, and then the bridge moved.
“Oh, shit,” she echoed, and started to run, even as the far end of the bridge lifted itself from the banks and turned to glare at her.
The head was square, and its snout was covered in mud where it had been dug into the dirt, but even in the dark there was no mistaking the way the jaw dropped open to display rows of sharp stone teeth, or the voice that rolled out of that jaw, deep and horrible.
“Fee Fie Fo Fum....”
Somewhere deep inside, Jan started to laugh, hysterically, even as she felt the compulsion to close her eyes that told her Martin was changing form. Then there was a high-pitched scream of challenge, and she was knocked off the bridge by something warm and hard hitting her on the shoulder.
The water was deep enough to cushion her fall, but she still hit the bottom with a hard smack, sharp pebbles scratching at her face and cold water getting in her nose and ears. She gasped, and the water shoved itself into her throat. Pushing her hands down against the creek bed, she surfaced, coughing, her lungs desperate for air.
The bridge had undocked itself, squat legs on one end, that square head at the other, twisting and snapping at the kelpie on its back. Water seemed to rise out of the creek and splash over them, giving the entire scene a surreal, darkly prismatic look.
“Go!”
There was no voice, only another shrill scream, a challenge rising from the kelpie’s throat, but Jan heard the order clearly and scrambled to her knees, then to her feet, trying to regain her balance. There was the sharp tang of blood in her mouth, and then something grabbed at her ankles.
“Oh, the hell with this,” she muttered, and slogged forward, refusing to look down or acknowledge whatever it was that wanted to play. It tugged again but let go, and she managed to reach the other bank, still coughing, her hair streaming water into her eyes. She reached for her inhaler, still safe, if wet, in her pocket and took a long hit off of it, enough to quell the coughing. Only then did she turn to see what was happening.
The bridge was twisted, a Möbius strip of stone, and she couldn’t see the kelpie anywhere.
“Martin!”
Another fierce challenge cry split the night air, and then there was a heavy thud as he leaped from the other side of the monster-bridge and landed beside her. Her eyes flickered shut even as she was trying to get to her feet, and she cursed whatever side effect of his magic didn’t want her seeing it.
“Come on,” he said, and his hand was in hers again, and they were running uphill, away from the creek, leaving the bridge bellowing in impotent rage and hunger.
At the top of the h
ill, they paused to catch their breath, and Jan dared to look back behind them.
The bridge was a bridge again, motionless in the clear night air, the waters streaming innocently along, and if not for the fact that she was soaking wet, covered in mud, and—she looked down to discover—the bottoms of her jeans were ripped, as though a dozen sharp claws had torn at them, Jan would have thought that she’d hallucinated the entire thing.
“What was that?”
“I...have no idea.” His voice was ragged, and she swiped the slop of hair out of her face and turned to look at him.
“Oh, my god.” Where her jeans had protected her, his hide hadn’t: there were bright red cuts on his arms and face, raking from cheekbone to chin, the flesh ragged and raw. His face hadn’t been handsome, particularly, but the sight of it damaged like that sent an unhappy quiver through her. “You need to, we need to do something about that, about your cuts, and—”
“With what supplies?” He looked around the top of the hill, bare except for grass and the occasional thrust of rock through the dirt, and shrugged. “Do you see anything? Want to go back down there and get some water to wash it out?”
“No.” She was quite certain about that.
“So, we go on.” He touched one of the cuts and winced, then shrugged it off. “Which way?”
Listening to anything other than her nerves was difficult. She reached out and took both of his hands in hers, the black nails no longer even but ripped and ragged along the edges. Unlike the rest of this world, he did not shimmer in the starlight, but rather seemed a pool of stillness, an anti-shimmer.
The tug was fainter than before, and Jan couldn’t say for certain anymore if what she felt was really a sense of Tyler or her own wishful thinking.
“That way. I think.” She loosed one hand and pointed to her left, then swung slightly forward. “That way.” Under the night sky, the distance stretched, grasslands rising again into foothills, and in the distance, a jagged peak.
“There. God, that’s a long way away.”
“Distances are deceiving,” he said.
“You’re trying to make me feel better again. It’s still not working.”
Laura Anne Gilman Page 20
