Half of the flock was gone.
They didn't fly away and they definitely didn't dive into the water. There had been a couple dozen of them, a small flock circling and now, while I stared, there were only a few, seven to be exact.
And then they were gone, also, but I saw them go, flying across the stream and into the trees. I had not seen the others go up, down or sideways.
They simply disappeared.
Wasn't that just my luck? I knew the exact spot where they disappeared, oh goodie, right above the center of the stream.
And here was I with folks who had never built a raft.
Hated to ask, but I knew I had to do it.
“Lor, how deep do you figure that stream is in the middle?”
“Come up more than waist high.”
Sounded right. I'd waded into it in summer and it barely reached above my knees. Waist high was okay except this wasn't summer and I was already freezing out in the dry air.
“I'm going to wade down the middle.”
And then, because I didn't want them floundering about, diving under the surface to search endlessly for me, which I knew they would do, I added, “I think I see the gateway. If I'm right, I'll disappear. Don't worry and don't hunt for me. I'll be fine. I'm pretty sure I know where I am now.”
Two pairs of pale eyebrows rose toward hairlines.
Lor was silent but Nance said, “Get wet in winter, get the fever.”
Worse yet, I'd have wet feet all the way home. Wet wool pants would be bad enough, but soaked boots would be too much. I pulled off my boots and tied them together by their laces, then hung them over my shoulder.
Then I walked to the edge of the stream, put in a bare foot, bit back a shriek because oh yes, it was barely melting ice, that stream.
Unfortunately, there didn't seem to be an alternate choice and the old “you do what you have to do” line covered my situation. I waded on in, step by grim step, sucking mud underfoot, slime and cold seeping higher and higher up my legs. I pulled off my wool cloak and rolled it up so I could hold it above the water. And help, the water reached my waist. Holding my arms up, I reached the center of the stream and waded north.
Something splashed behind me.
“Go back, Nance,” I said through chattering teeth.
A branch slapped at my face. I tried to push it away but when I raised my arm, my cloak bundle slid sideways and my scarf tangled with the laces of my boots. Everything would be soaked. I struggled to grab the bootlaces on my shoulder without dropping the cloak, stepped on something awful and tried not to think what. I walked into a spider web, brushed at it and realized my hands were not only wet, they were muddy and something burned at the corner of my eye, probably the mud from my fingers and where had I lost my gloves?
One misery after another. Where was I?
And then I heard the splashing again and I turned around.
She was plugging right along, teeth gritted, little face scrunched up with determination, the water almost up to her chin.
“Nance, go back.”
I said it and then I looked past her to shout to Lor who wasn't there. I turned, looked at the banks all around me. We hadn't come more than twenty or thirty feet, but I could not see Lor or the horses. We hadn't come around a bend.
“Rain approaching,” Nance said.
“Rain?” I looked up at the gray sky, a thin low cloud cover.
“I hear the thunder.”
Thunder? No, it was a familiar whistling roar.
“That's a plane,” I said, then got it.
Good for me, bad for Nance. But still, the gateway seemed to be about where it had been last summer. If I walked much further, I would never find it again, but right now?
“Nance, you're outside now. In the outlands. The outworld. Whatever. Hear those sounds? That's not thunder, that's engine noise. You need to go back. Turn around and walk right up the middle of the stream. Try to stay exactly on the way we came.”
She had a funny puzzled expression. Stared at me for several seconds and I could practically see her brain whirling through ideas.
“This is your side? Here?” she asked.
“That's right.”
“Good. I will never have to see my stupid cousin again.”
“What?”
“He cannot give me away to some horrid old scum.”
Oh lord, what now, what was I supposed to do with her? Okay, she wasn't an alien, not from off-planet or anything, but she also wasn't anyone I could explain. And when she tired of my world, then what? I would never find this exact stream again. Considering how seldom strangers appeared in their land, this was probably the only gate.
“You won't be able to return unless you return right now.”
“Good.”
“Nance, what about Lor? We dragged him with us.”
“He'll go home to his own village,” Nance said, but for the first time she looked unsure and her lower lip quivered. “He will be happier there. And rich, too, with three horses.”
Couldn't argue with that. Besides, I was standing in cold water in the middle of winter somewhere on the Olympic Peninsula. My choices were narrow. Stay here and die sneezing or move my butt toward the low roar in the distance, that wonderful sound of my favorite pollution source, traffic.
I could hear it now and where there's traffic there's always a ride for two shivering young women who stumble out of the forest with a long wordy tale of getting lost on a hike.
I stopped for one last look at the woods. I didn't want to look but Tarvik was back there somewhere and so was a big piece of my heart. Once he had asked me what happened to the tarbaby and I didn't know the answer. Now I guessed I'd never know.
Maybe this was only a few months later but I felt a decade older and a thousand years wiser. The Decko brothers might be waiting for me in Seattle. Or they might have moved on to other scams. It didn't matter. They were nothing compared to the barbarian brothers. They didn't have swords or poison potions. They didn't have armies. They wouldn't try to behead me, because despite the hands-off Mudflat policy, the police don't ignore things like that.
And most important, the Deckos lived in the land of hot showers, shampoo, coffee, and I'd either override their scare tactics or figure out a way to get help. Had to be easier than ducking barbarians. No way could a couple of bad boys intimidate me any more.
Anything to get back to the smog belt.
“Okay,” I said to my short companion, and we grabbed onto the trunk of a tree leaning out over the stream and hauled ourselves up the bank. “Follow my lead, don't scream when we get into a big noisy box that moves, and most of all, let me do the talking. Okay?”
“Okay,” she said.
I stopped to wipe my feet dry with my scarf, then pulled on my dry boots. Wonderful.
“Do you live in a castle or a hut?” she asked. “It doesn't matter, I can live anywhere, truly, and I can cook for you.”
“I live in a house.”
We picked our way through ferns and between fir trees, heading for the highway roar.
“What's a house?”
“Halfway between a hut and a castle.”
“That sounds nice. Do you live alone?”
“A troll rents the basement.”
She smiled that vague smile of the totally confused.
“That's nice,” she said.
EPILOGUE
For three days he wandered through the forest, the long road within sight.
He wound around the silver trunks of alders, their branches sprouting new leaves, and tramped through the familiar undergrowth of ferns beneath the shadows of the fir trees. When exhaustion stopped him, he slept curled against a fallen log or in whatever hollow he could find that gave him any protection from the steady drizzle of rain. Once, when the road was empty, he climbed up to it, crouched down, took off his gloves and ran his hands across its surface.
Flat, black, hard. Was this tar?
Then he heard another beast approachin
g and hurled himself into the long pebble-filled pit that ran beside the road. Above him he heard the beast's roar, its odd squeal, and he felt vibrations and the blast of displaced air as it rushed past him. When he lifted his head he saw its back and that it ran on wheels like the barrows and realized that whatever it was, it was not alive. But there was nothing pulling or pushing it.
At night the giant barrows sped down the road with eyes as blinding as the sun, shooting out arrows of light, and then they were gone and the road was once more black beneath the dripping skies.
After three days of walking through the woods and following the road, he began to understand the wheeled things came in different shapes and sizes, had different sounds and smells, and weren't hunting him. He was exhausted, his long wool cloak and his boots soaked, and although the cold didn't bother him, he was used to it, his food pouch was empty. He felt lightheaded and knew he was losing strength.
Late that day, shortly after sunset, he turned beneath the overhanging fir branches and saw one of the beast-barrows standing motionless by the roadside, humming softly. He feared almost nothing, had already faced his worst fears, and so he climbed through the ditch and up onto the road and walked close to the thing.
A door opened in its side and a man stepped down. They saw each other at the same time.
The man frowned and said, “Hey. Whatcha doing out here?”
He pushed his hood back from his head because the man was bareheaded. It was a common courtesy. Anyone who remained concealed could be an enemy.
The man's expression softened. “You need a ride, son? Gotta take a leak, be right back,” and stepped down into the ditch. A minute later he climbed back out, pulled at something on the front of his pants, and said, “Hop in. Where you headed?”
He watched as the man walked around to the far side of the thing, opened another door, climbed up and sat on some sort of chair, then leaned across to call out the open door, “Hurry up, kid, I've got to get moving.”
He nodded, walked to the open door, looked carefully into the little room with its step and chairs and a wheel sticking up, and climbed carefully up, turned, as the man had done, and settled himself in the seat.
“Fasten that seat belt. I can't afford a ticket.”
He stared at the man, not knowing what he was supposed to do.
“Wow. You are zonked. Bad scar on your forehead, but it looks like it's healing. Been camping? Get lost from your party?”
While talking, the man reached across, grabbed a strap and pulled it so that it stretched from shoulder to hip, clicked it in place.
He leaned against the strap and found it held him against the chair back. Before he could worry about that, the whole room moved and then the road and the forest went rushing by him. He could see it through the front of the room, see as clearly as if he were looking through an open doorway and should have felt a blast of wind but felt nothing. Numb, he stared straight ahead, expecting to be thrown out. When that didn't happen, he finally leaned forward as far as the strap would allow and reached out his gloved hand. His fingers touched something as solid as a wall and yet he could see through it.
“Yeah, got a few dings in that windshield,” the man said. “Where you headed, son?”
He turned to look at the man and for the first time actually saw him, gray hair, heavy face, not unfriendly, dressed in something shiny, arms reaching in front of him and his hands curled around the wheel.
Where was he headed? He guessed at what the question meant, nothing to do with his head, everything to do with where.
“Seattle,” he said softly. “Do you know where that is?”
“Sure, not going that far but I can drop you at a diner down the road. A lot of trucks stop there. I'll hook you up with a ride to town. You don't come from Seattle, huh? So why are you headed there?”
“Looking for a girl.”
The man laughed. “Yeah, that figures.”
THE END
NEXT -
Welcome to Mayhem, Baby
CHAPTER 1
Seattle, Washington
When I heard that low, sexy whine of Darryl's BMW, I grabbed Nance's arm and slammed us both down the drive and against the cement retaining wall. My cousin's house is built on a hillside. Actually, the whole city of Seattle is built on hills, but anyhow, this particular house is a half flight of stairs up to the front door and a six-foot drop down a sloped driveway from the street to the garage.
That's where we were, huddled in the corner between the garage door and the wall, hiding.
Nance swore. Fast learner, that girl.
“Sorry,” I muttered. “That's the car we don't want to meet.”
She's a tough little blonde teenager. She moved free of me to creep up the drive, peek out at the street.
“Stay down,” I said.
Teenagers are fearless. At twenty-three, I am a whole lot more careful. Kind of like to make it to twenty-four.
Bent low, Nance scurried back down to me.
“He's about two houses down. Claire, we need to get a gun.”
Late November rain didn't sweeten my attitude.
Her suggestion was tempting on an emotional level, impossible on a practical level. Sure, I'd love to shoot the bastard. Only I really wouldn't. Unlike Nance, I don't approve of violence and certainly not of murder.
I'd been home since the previous winter and avoiding creepy Darryl Decko all that time. I was really, really sick of it. I had to earn a living despite the Decko brothers.
Half my living is earned working at the Mudflat Neighborhood Center. I do a lot of paper shuffling for the counselors during the day. Two nights and a couple of afternoons a week I also teach teenagers. That means going home after dark in the winter.
Funny thing about tough-talking guys like Darryl, they never want daytime confrontations where there might be witnesses to see them bullying a skinny, helpless-looking woman. He was a big, handsome guy, dark hair and a cap-toothed perfect smile that never lit his eyes. Instead, he managed to chase after me a couple of nights a week when I headed home.
This night Nance and I were wearing dark rain jackets, jeans, sneakers. Nothing to reflect light except Nance's blonde hair. I reached toward her and pulled up her hood to cover it.
He didn't see us in the sloped driveway, but he knew we were close. The creep didn't want to catch me. He wanted to scare me. A shot rang out, and yeah, the scare part worked.
We huddled against the retaining wall of the drive, shivering and sweating at the same time, one of those body reactions that requires a massive dose of fear. Wasn't there anyone in the neighborhood to hear a gunshot?
My cellphone rang in my jacket pocket, because that's what cellphones do, ring when I don't want to make noise. I'd forgotten to turn it off.
Digging it out of my pocket, I flipped it open to shut it up.
The voice I expected was the one that spoke.
“All I want to do is talk to you, Claire. Where are you?” Darryl said.
Like I'd tell him that, a guy who follows me with a gun in his hand. And then I had a bad thought. Did he have one of those global positioning things in that car or some other device that could locate my phone?
I hit the off button fast.
“We should have headed the other way,” I whispered to Nance.
“Jimmy will help us.”
The girl had an odd amount of confidence in my scudzy cousin. Not that Jimmy was what worried me. It was the block. Trouble doesn't stay in one place. But that doesn't mean I go looking for the place it stays. And trouble was here, all right, on Jimmy's street.
A family who lived two doors down from Jimmy had disappeared. Not magic disappeared. Literally disappeared. No break in, no signs of robbery, and worse, purses, billfolds, money, car, all the stuff people take when they intentionally go on a trip? That stuff was still in their house and garage.
The Lettiwick family had been missing for a week now, long enough that we'd had police all over the place and way
too many TV vans and cameras.
Except when they might be useful.
“A guy is shooting off a gun and there's not a TV van in sight,” I complained.
“How long are we going to hide here?”
“Until he leaves.”
“He can corner us down here.”
“He didn't see us run this way, or he'd be pulled up at the top of the drive now. He thinks we're in somebody's backyard.”
A Mudflat backyard is capable of containing anything, because Mudflat is where old magic lives.
Fortunately, none of the Seattle city reporters know the name Mudflat. When they follow crime reports here, they haven't a clue that they are in a space between Seattle’s designated neighborhoods, an area that is so well organized it has its own council.
Now the Mudflat council was forming into an army of searchers. The missing family's history in the neighborhood went back three generations to some strong magic, and who knew, it might pop up again in the missing kids.
They had to be found.
Until they were, it was anyone's guess about why they were missing. Was it the Lettiwick family specifically, or was something bad going down for anyone on the street?
Obvious direction to look, according to the law, was adjacent houses used for meth labs or by pushers. That was Seattle law enforcement's theory. Mudflat knew better. That stuff could happen anyplace else. But in Mudflat, look for a cranky wizard or a crackpot vigilante.
Either way, I didn't like to hang around near the Lettiwick house.
Another shot exploded.
****
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Mudflat Magic Novels
Tyrant Trouble
Welcome to Mayhem, Baby
Barbarian Toy Boy
Spice and Sorcery
Goldilocks Hits Town
Beastly Week
Other urban fantasy series by Phoebe Matthews include Turning Vampire, Sunspinners, and the Wicked Good short story anthologies. For a list of current titles and backlist books by Phoebe Matthews, her website is at http://phoebematthews.com
Tyrant Trouble (Mudflat Magic) Page 28
