by Dave Butler
“The road,” Atzick called.
Thassia slowed as the caravan approached a track. It looked to Charlie like the same track they’d traveled before, but he couldn’t be sure. They all peered left and right down the road and then rumbled across as quickly as they could.
The trees on either side of the track were scraped, smashed, and uprooted, and in the still-damp earth Charlie saw deep imprints of knobby India rubber tyres. He shuddered, scooted into the trees on the other side, and tried to stay focused on Thassia.
“A certain dwarf isn’t looking for the alfar themselves,” Atzick murmured to Charlie. He chuckled. “That would be impolite, and besides, I think it would require a dowsing rod of some exotic wood she doesn’t have. She’s looking for a good menhir.”
Charlie knew what that was. “A standing stone.”
“Yes. It isn’t always true anymore, but the standing stones used to be the place to contact any of the elder folk. Ancient crossroads, they are. Your pixies and kobolds and hulders and djinns and alfar all kept watch on the standing stones near their homes. If you went to those stones, you had their attention.”
“Dwarfs, too?”
Atzick shook his head. “We’ve never had a home. At least, we haven’t had one for thousands of years.”
“You said it isn’t always true anymore. That the stones used to be the place of meeting. So you mean that even if we find a standing stone, the alfar might not be paying attention to it?”
Atzick looked about. Thick pine boles and spreading oak branches formed a gigantic canopy over and around them. “This deep in their forests? The alfar will be paying attention, all right. It’s as if I walked right into your home, stood by the fireplace, and knocked on your chimney. Besides, we’ve got something they’ll want.”
Charlie walked for a minute, lost in his own thoughts. “What’s it like, not to have a home?”
Atzick was slow to answer. “You miss it. You talk about the home you used to have, a long time ago. Your family becomes very important. Your folk. And your traditions.”
Charlie’s traditions had mostly been the small ceremonies he’d shared with his bap: teatime, dinner, a back rub during which Bap would wind Charlie’s mainspring, reading in the attic while Bap worked. Charlie no longer had a home, and his traditions had been destroyed.
And what was Charlie’s folk? Did he have one?
“Where was your home a long time ago?”
Atzick laughed. “That’s a good question, isn’t it?”
“That’s why I asked it.”
Atzick said nothing.
Abruptly the trees cleared, and on Thassia’s heels Charlie entered a small meadow. In the center, on a knob of earth surrounded by a trickle of water too small to call a stream, stood two upright stones. They leaned against each other like gray teeth in a mouth that had seen many years, with yellow-green lichen creeping up one side of their pitted surfaces.
Thassia snapped her dowsing rod over her knee and threw it aside. As she passed Charlie, he saw her face; she looked very tired. She opened the back doors of her wagon, crawled in, and shut them behind her again.
Syzigon stepped forward.
He didn’t look into the trees around the clearing, or at the sky, or at the brook. Just as if he were stepping up to someone’s front door and knocking on it, he rapped his knuckles on the stone. “I wish to speak with the people of the woods!”
Then he took one step back and folded his hands in front of him.
Within a minute, two people emerged from the trees on the other side of the clearing.
Charlie had never seen alfar before, and neither the line drawings in the Almanack nor the mosaics inside Waterloo Station did them justice. They were tall and slender, and their features were elongated and angular. Wide eyes shaped like almonds, with piercing green-and-brown irises, dominated their faces. Their mouths were almost lipless, and they constantly smiled. Their ears swept up and came nearly to a point. Their hair climbed even farther and fanned out in a way that reminded Charlie of…well, of leaves. And their skin was barklike: one had silvery skin with spots and streaks of black that made him look like an aspen or a beech, and the other had skin a dark grayish-brown color. Their clothing was simple: long green tunics of a material that resembled velvet.
As the alfar reached the stones, Charlie took a step back. Then he screwed up his courage and took three steps forward so he was standing right at Syzigon’s shoulder.
“Greetings, dwarf,” said the gray-brown alfar. “How fares the search?”
“The search never ends,” Syzigon said. “Always we are parting. How grow the saplings of your nursery?”
“They are many,” said the silvery elf. “But never enough. Men fell them for fuel, and to make room to till the earth. Always we are planting.”
Syzigon nodded. “I bring your people gifts.”
Both the alfar smiled, showing tiny teeth. “Seeds?” asked the gray-brown one.
“Ah, you know us too well.”
The alfar laughed. “No, dwarf, it is you who know us. Tell us of these seeds.”
From inside his jacket Syzigon produced a leather pouch. He hefted it in his fist for a moment, as if he were holding something very precious, before handing it over. “Persimmon seeds,” he said. “From the East. I brought them myself, all the way from a souk in Istanbul.”
The gray-brown elf poured a few seeds into his hand. They were reddish brown and irregularly shaped. He smiled.
“But could we make such a seed grow in this cold and wet land?” The silvery elf frowned at Syzigon, but it was a playful sort of frown, and it hid a smile.
“A good gardener could make any seed at all grow in this wet land,” Syzigon said. “And I have brought you these seeds because I know that of all gardeners, you are the greatest who ever lived.”
The seeds disappeared into the gray-brown alfar’s tunic. “These seeds will be a blessing to our nursery, dwarf. Many seedlings yet unborn will bask in the rays of the sun and have cause to remember this day with joy. I am Pithsong.”
“I am Tenderroot,” said the silvery-skinned elf.
“I am Syzigon.”
“I’m Charlie.” He hadn’t meant to say anything; he’d just become so entranced with the rhythms of the conversation that the words jumped out of him before he even noticed them forming. But the alfar looked at him, Charlie bowed slightly, and they smiled.
“Tell us what gift we can give you, friends Syzigon and Charlie,” Tenderroot said.
“We travel to Machine-Town,” Syzigon said. “Machynlleth. In the land the English call Wales, at the foot of a great mountain known as Cader Idris. It lies beyond your forests.”
“It lies at the edge of our forests,” Pithsong said. “We know it. The giant’s seat. There was once a great kingdom there.”
“A barony,” said Tenderroot.
“We are pursued by enemies. They travel the roads, and we would reach Machine-Town without being seen.”
“Will your enemies follow you into the woods?” Tenderroot asked.
“They may. They have followed us along the forest track. You may have seen them; they drive in a wagon of brass and steel. Their vehicle is too large for the path, and so it uproots and breaks into splinters young trees along the road’s edge.”
“Ah,” Tenderroot and Pithsong said together.
“You would travel the Path of Root and Twig,” Tenderroot added. The way the alfar said it, Charlie could hear the capital letters in the name.
“We would,” Syzigon agreed.
“We shall ask,” the alfar said together.
Then they were silent, and stood still.
Charlie was astonished by the way the alfar looked and by the things they said. The conversation between them and the dwarf Syzigon seemed almost like a ritual, like a conversation that could be had a thousand times with the same words, or nearly identical words, repeated each time. He felt as if he were participating in something ancient and, if not secret,
almost forgotten.
The alfar were quiet for a couple of minutes. Syzigon stood quietly too, with his hands folded, so Charlie did the same. It wasn’t easy. He wanted to jump with excitement and run around the meadow.
Finally Pithsong spoke. “Your gift is great, dwarf. Your enemies are our enemies. It is no small thing that we bear other folk along the Path of Root and Twig, but we agree that we will carry your party to Machynlleth.”
“Thank you,” Syzigon and Charlie said together.
Tenderroot pointed at a bramble thicket at the edge of the clearing. It looked too dense to pass through, unless one had a good hacking knife or a fire to clear the way first. “The Path begins there,” the elf said.
“We wish you the joy of many saplings,” Syzigon said to the alfar.
“We wish you the joy of discovery and the release of homecoming at the end of your search,” they said back to him.
Syzigon bowed and returned to the driver’s seat of his wagon. “Climb aboard, Charlie.”
Charlie did.
Then, with Tenderroot and Pithsong watching, the three dwarf wagons rolled toward the brambles at the edge of the meadow.
As the exhilaration of meeting his first elves began to wear off, an idea occurred to Charlie.
“Can a certain dwarf dowse for people?”
Syzigon kept his eyes on the brambles ahead. Atzick’s donkeys were just about to enter the thicket. “Of course she can.”
“Do you think she would?”
“For you?” Syzigon spared Charlie a quick glance. “I hope so. But you would have to ask her. I am a dwarf who can get things done, not a dwarf who tells other dwarfs what to do.”
Where were Bob and Ollie and Gnat? Charlie hoped they were in a coffeehouse in Machynlleth, looking up at Cader Idris and waiting for him to arrive. Of course, if they waited there for a day or two and Charlie didn’t show up, they’d begin to worry. They knew his mainspring had to be wound. Wouldn’t they backtrack and try to find him in the forest?
They could be dead. The storm that had stranded Charlie alone in the forest might have crushed his friends. Could Thassia dowse for people even when they were dead?
Syzigon nudged Charlie in the ribs with his elbow. “Watch closely now.”
Atzick’s donkeys had pulled his wagon entirely into the brambles and stopped. Charlie watched as the brambles curled up and grew, wrapping around wheels and axles and the legs of the donkeys. Bill screamed and bucked but couldn’t escape the foliage. Mary stared at her hooves.
The brambles pushed and lifted the wagon and donkeys entirely from the ground.
And then, in a flash of greenish light, Atzick, his wagon, and his donkeys were gone.
Charlie almost fell off the wagon. “Is that what’s supposed to happen?”
“Shh.”
Charlie shot a glance over his shoulder and saw that Tenderroot and Pithsong were gone. What if this was a trick? What if the alfar weren’t as friendly to the dwarfs as they’d seemed?
What if they hated persimmons?
While Charlie had been looking over his shoulder, the second wagon had been whisked away, too. Now Syzigon drove his wagon into the bramble patch. Victoria took it calmly and didn’t object, even when the brambles began to extend and wrap themselves around her. Bad Luck John strained and tried to run, but he was strapped to his yoke too securely to escape.
“Are you sure about this?” Charlie whispered.
“This is not my first ride on the Path,” Syzigon said. “For all that Bad Luck there is complaining, it isn’t his first either. Hold on.”
A bar stretched across in front of the driver’s seat, for holding on to, for resting one’s feet on, or for wrapping the reins around. Charlie grabbed it with both hands.
Green light bathed the wagon. Charlie looked up and saw the forest canopy overhead. Wherever the light was coming from, it wasn’t the sun. He looked down and saw that he had no shadow at all.
Then he looked around and had to grip the bar tight to avoid tumbling out of the wagon.
The wagon moved. Judging by the speed with which the trees rocketed past, it was moving very, very fast. Faster than Bob’s flyer, faster than Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s Sky Trestle in London, faster than William T. Bowen’s steam-truck. Charlie couldn’t tell one tree from another, the wagon was moving so fast. It shot through a tunnel of green light like a bullet down the barrel of a gun.
Below, Charlie saw brambles wrapped around the wagon wheels. Looking ahead, he saw the back of Patali and Calphor’s wagon. Around its edges, blurred green motion seemed to indicate branches of the surrounding trees that reached out, grasped the wagon, and passed it on in the blink of an eye. Charlie leaned a little too far forward in his effort to see better, and a branch struck him in the chest, knocking him sideways.
He teetered and lost his grip—
and Syzigon caught him by the jacket.
“I warned you,” the dwarf said. “Hold tight.”
“We’re going so fast,” Charlie said. “Shouldn’t there be wind?” Instead the air was soft and warm.
“Yes, there should,” Syzigon agreed. “And yet.”
Charlie watched in wonder. This would grow old, surely, but before it could, and as suddenly as the journey had begun—
it ended.
Syzigon shook his reins and clucked at Victoria and Bad Luck John, and the donkeys pulled the little wagon out of a bramble patch. Charlie looked back again just as the green light faded and was gone. Behind him he saw only forest. Yew trees, maybe—very different from the pines and oaks they’d left seconds earlier.
Ahead of them and below lay a valley. The grass was a brilliant green under a blue-gray sky, sliced into great patches by gray rock walls and dotted with white sheep. At the far end of the valley was a mountain, long and high, its lower slopes furred with forest but its upper reaches bare and rocky.
Syzigon pointed up at the gray peaks. “There’s your mountain. Cader Idris.”
Charlie stared. Somewhere up there was Caradog Pritchard, his bap’s friend. Were there also one-eyed fish, as the medieval churchman Gerald had said? An island that sailed around its lake? Or had that all been nonsense, spouted by a madman?
Through the center of the valley below flowed a river, and on its bank stood a town. Even at a distance of a mile or more, Charlie could see that the streets crawled with horseless conveyances and that the air above the streets was thick with puffy white clouds of steam. In the center of town, at the intersection of two highways, rose a tower. Stairs climbed through the open air to connect the multiple levels, at which zeppelins and montgolfiers and other aircraft were moored.
“Machine-Town,” Syzigon said. “Machynlleth.”
Charlie was filled with sudden anxiety. The dwarfs were going to meet Caradog Pritchard, whom they called the Old Man. Should he travel with them and warn Pritchard? He owed that warning to his bap. If his bap had had such a warning, he might be alive today. Also, the Iron Cog had killed his father, and Charlie had a strong desire to prevent anything the Iron Cog wanted from happening—including Pritchard’s death.
But what about Ollie and Bob? And Gnat? The last he’d seen the pixie, she was being blown about in a rainstorm, and the troll lawyer Grim Grumblesson had said that rain would damage her wings. Didn’t he owe it to his friends to look for them? Especially since they might very well be out in the forest, looking for him?
“Do you think we got here ahead of Mr. Bowen and his steam-truck?” Charlie asked Syzigon.
The dwarf snorted. “By a day, at least. If Bowen is even coming this direction, which we don’t know.”
Charlie decided. “Will you excuse me, please?” he said. “I want to speak with a certain dowser.”
Syzigon chuckled. “You’re a dwarf born.”
Charlie wasn’t a dwarf and he wasn’t born, either, but the dwarf’s words made him feel good anyway. He dropped to the ground. As the wagons gently lumbered down a long meadow toward a highway below, he
knocked at the doors on Thassia and Atzick’s wagon.
Thassia beckoned Charlie inside, where it was very cozy. Because they weren’t sharing with children, Thassia and Atzick had broader hammocks, and beneath them, against the back wall, was an oblong cushion. One of the cats—one of the sheyala, Charlie reminded himself—lay on the cushion, licking its paws.
Thassia sat cross-legged against one wall, weaving a basket of soft wooden strips—withies, Charlie thought they were called. She yawned from time to time as she worked. Charlie sat cross-legged opposite her. They left the doors open, and Charlie enjoyed the sight of the forest and the hills receding behind them as they descended into the valley.
“What’s the sheyala’s name?” Charlie asked. It would be rude to begin a conversation by asking a favor.
“You’re not here because you want to know about the sheyala,” she said.
“I’m really worried about my friends.”
“And you want me to dowse them for you.”
“Yes. I saw you dowse the standing stones. That was amazing. And a certain dwarf told me you could use the same skill to find a person.”
“A certain dwarf my sister’s husband?”
Charlie thought that through. “Yes.”
“You see what a good dowser I am? I dowsed your very mind.” She pulled a withy through and tightened it. “A certain dwarf is a bit nosy, but he isn’t wrong.”
“Would you do it for me?”
“If I can. To find a person—not just any person, mind, but a specific person—you’ll need to have something of his. Something personal, something connected. It’s best if you use a rod from a tree that person himself planted, but I suppose we’re not that lucky.”
“We’re not.”
The wagon bumped as it struck the highway, and then Charlie’s view rotated ninety degrees. The highway was paved with huge lengths of blue slate, and behind him on the road he could see horses, steam-carriages, and other conveyances, animal as well as mechanical. A slender young woman riding on the back of a long-legged flightless bird chased a dozen white-fleeced and black-eared sheep across the highway. The shepherdess just avoided being struck by a six-wheeled cart full of coal that puffed steam out the back and had no apparent driver.
