by Greg Keyes
“Right. But don’t cars explode, sometimes?” “Yeah,” he said. “Okay. Let me out your side, so I can go around.”
She complied in her usual unhurried fashion, but when she pushed on the door, it fell out onto the ground. Figuring it was broken from the crash, Errol stepped out after Veronica did.
It was then that he noticed that the car no longer seemed to have any paint on it, and was in fact covered in rust. He brushed at the roof, and a cloud of red dust travelled after his hand.
Aster’s door actually fell apart when he tried to open it. As he carefully cradled her and pulled her from the vehicle, the axels collapsed and what had moments before been an automobile became a rough hump of corrosion.
Errol laid Aster out on some moss and then pushed into the reddish pile, extracting the backpacks.
“Now why would it do that?” Veronica asked, as Errol began to search through the packs.
“I’m nearly at the point of not asking questions like that,” Errol told her. “None of this makes any sense. I keep coming back to this being some sort of nightmare I’m having.”
“So you think you’re dreaming me?”
He caught the way she said it, but he plowed on as if he hadn’t. “Why not?” he said. “Whatever. It doesn’t matter. I’m just going with the flow, from now on.”
“And Aster is the flow.”
“Apparently.”
“And what if we didn’t?” Veronica said. “Why should we let her tell us what to do? We can leave her. Now would be good.”
He paused for a moment. What about that? Could Aster send him out of this body if he was too far away to hear her? Was it the sound of the word she said that did it, or was it something more substantial?
He realized it didn’t matter.
“I won’t abandon her,” he snapped. “I’m not like them.”
“Them?”
“I mean I’m not like that.”
He didn’t find any medical supplies in the first pack. He started searching the second.
“Like it or not,” he rationalized, “she’s the only one who knows what’s going on.”
“I don’t think she knows as much as you think,” Veronica said. “She didn’t know who that guy chasing us was.”
“Maybe not,” he said.
“But you’re going with the flow.”
“Yes. Yes I am.”
“That doesn’t seem like you,” Veronica said.
“You don’t know me,” he said. “Nobody knows me.”
“Poor lil’ ol you,” she sighed.
His hand hit a flat metal box, and he fished it out. It had a red cross on it.
Veronica stood. “Well there you go,” she said. “Me, I’m going to have a look around while you play doctor with Miss Witch.”
“Don’t go anywhere,” he snapped.
“Huh. Does someone think he’s the boss of me? Because I can assure any such a person—”
But she stopped in mid-sentence.
“Did you hear that?” she whispered.
“No,” he began, but then he did. It sounded kind of like a trumpet, but more raw in tenor. And close behind it came the baying of hounds, two of them.
“I don’t think we ought to wait around here, anymore,” Veronica said. She pulled nervously at her blond locks and darted her gaze all around them.
“You know what that is?” he asked.
“It’s him,” she said. “The man from the hospital.”
“How do you know?” he asked.
“I can’t remember. But I know.” She looked more agitated by the second.
Errol looked back at Aster.
“Let me bandage her head. Then we’ll go.”
Delia felt a crackle in her hair and clothing, as if lightning had parted around her. The bloodshot eyes examined her, up and down, and she stood still for the scrutiny. Again.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
“My name is Delia Fincher, Mr. Kostyena. I’ve brought you something to eat.” She proffered the tray and the peanut butter sandwiches that lay on it, neatly sliced.
He frowned. “My name isn’t Kostyena,” he snapped. “Kostyena means ‘daughter of Kostye.’ I am Kostye. Kostyena is my daughter’s name.”
“Well,” Delia said, “in that case you’ve lied to the school system, and judging by your mail, the power company and at least one bank.”
He appeared confused, and looked as if he was trying to hide it.
“Again, who are you? Your name is meaningless to me.”
“I’m the counselor at Sowashee High, where your daughter attends school.”
“My daughter is nine. She isn’t in high school.”
“Read your wall,” she said.
She waited while he took it all in and then sat heavily in an armchair. He reached for a bottle of gin.
“You really should eat something,” she told him. “I’ve only been here a short while, but in that time your diet has been entirely liquid.”
His unsteady gaze came back to her. He looked at the gin and back at the sandwiches. He took a drink of the gin.
“Yes,” he said. “Why are you here? Have you come to take my daughter from me?”
“I wish that I could,” Delia told him. “You’re in no condition to look after her. Surely you must know that.”
“I know only that no one will take her from me.” He tilted his head.
“You should think of what’s best for her.”
He pointed at her throat. “That necklace,” he murmured. “Where did you get it?”
She took a step back. “Aster put it on me. Apparently while I’m wearing it, I have to do everything she tells me to do.”
“And what did she tell you to do?”
“I was to assure the school that all was well here. She also told me to take a leave of absence from my job, which I have done. And I’m also to look after you. I don’t want to do any of these things, mind you—”
“Yes, I understand the effect of the necklace,” he said. Then his eyes widened.
“Where is she?” he roared.
“I’ve no idea. She left yesterday and hasn’t returned.”
“Was she alone?”
“No. There was a sort of walking puppet with her, and a young lady I do not know.” It sounded ridiculous as she said it, but she had never been shy to face reality. This man and his daughter could perform what she could only characterize as magic. She could only theorize where their abilities came from—mental powers, mutant abilities, Satan—but given her situation it would be insane to deny the obvious facts. She was quite certain that she herself was not insane.
“A walking puppet?” For a moment he looked dazed, and then he began shouting in a language she didn’t know. He picked up the gin bottle and hurled it against the wall, where it shattered, intensifying the already strong smell of alcohol in the room. Delia stepped back and reached to shut the door. In a bit he would forget whatever was upsetting him, and next time he asked where Aster was, she would tell him she was at school.
A long wail tore from his throat, followed by a sob, and tears began streaming down his face. Her hand was on the doorknob, but she didn’t move.
“She will not survive,” he told her. “Do you understand?”
“No, I don’t,” Delia said. “I understand very little about any of this.”
“We came from a place,” he said. “Another place, where she is under threat of terrible danger. I think she’s gone back there.”
“You mean Russia?”
“No,” he sighed. “Not Russia. We aren’t Russian. We only told you that—” he stopped, staring at her.
“I do know you,” he said. “Your hair was different. You didn’t wear glasses. You wore a grey suit. And a wedding ring.”
She rubbed the place where her band used to be.
“Yes,” she said. “You noticed. You said my husband was a lucky man.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “Where is it now, the ring?”
/> “My husband didn’t share your opinion,” she said. She tried to smile. “But of course, he knew me better. I knew at the time you were trying to flatter me. You were trying too hard in general, and I figured something was wrong. You seemed desperate. The rumor was you were hiding out from the mob.”
He laughed bitterly. “If only it was so simple,” he said. He looked around him.
“I’m trapped here,” he said. “I cannot leave these rooms.”
“I know.”
“Then you must go after her,” he said. “You must bring her back to me.”
“Aster instructed me not to take any orders from you,” she told him. “And so I shan’t.”
“Then someone must.”
“I can’t tell anyone about this,” she replied. “Aster saw to that.”
He sighed and seemed to crumple back into the chair.
“Tell me about her,” he said. “About my Aster.”
“Well. She’s bright, very bright, but she’s always seems distracted. I’ve tried to talk to her about colleges, but she’s never seemed interested, although with her grades she could have her pick. She keeps to herself. Lately, her teachers—” she stopped.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Heavens,” she said. “I just remembered.”
“What?”
“Poor David. One of Aster’s teachers. He came here with me. They’re going to wonder where he is—”
“What happened to him?” He asked.
“You sort of—put him in a bottle.”
“Ah,” he replied. “Well then.”
“But you have to let him out.”
“Does anyone know he came here with you?”
“Well, no, but when he doesn’t show up the police will be involved. They might find it suspicious that he and Aster vanished at the same time—and at the same time I took a sudden leave of absence.”
He nodded thoughtfully.
“Do you know where the bottle is?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Bring it, then. And be quick, before I forget.”
Delia nodded and trotted back to the kitchen where the whisky bottle still stood on the table. When she returned, she found Kostye staring at the pictures of Aster.
“Here,” she said.
At first she thought he had forgotten her again, but then he nodded and took the bottle. She half expected him to rub it, but instead he said a few low words. There was a quick rush of smoke, and David appeared.
“What?” David demanded, his eyes full of panic. “What’s happening?”
Kostye pressed two fingers against the teacher’s forehead, and she heard a sort of hissing sound. David squealed. Blood dribbled down his brow.
“I lay this curse on you,” Kostye intoned. “You will have no pleasure from food or drink or any other thing until you find my daughter Aster Kostyena and return her to me, safe and whole. My blood gives you passport and direction.”
David staggered back, and Delia saw the blood was indeed coming from Kostye’s fingers. The red blotch on David’s forehead seemed to glow like fire, but then it faded.
“Oh my God,” David gasped.
“Hush,” Kostye said. “Now listen as I tell you where to go, for she will have taken the path out that we took in.”
“Wait,” Delia said. “You can’t—”
But he waved his hand, and the door slammed in her face.
One good thing about being a wooden man, Errol reflected, was that he didn’t get tired. He had all the backpacks on and Aster in his arms and had been trotting for half an hour and he wasn’t feeling a thing. Veronica also seemed tireless.
He didn’t have any idea where he was going; the woods seemed endless. In a way, he didn’t mind. This was the forest that trees must dream of. He’d grown up with two sorts of woods; pine plantations—which were dull because nothing else lived in them, and the trees were all the same size and distance apart—and the hilly forests which had been heavily logged. That left only a few really big trees, so they were thick with scrub and briars and saplings scrapping to be larger.
This place might have never known a chainsaw or an ax. Oaks reached up mighty, twisting arms, and hickories bigger than he had ever seen stood like gray columns to support the sky. Grapevines bigger than his thigh coiled up their trunks and wove between branches to cast a dense net of shade. The spaces between the trees were broad, and the floor was green moss and feathery ferns.
He noticed a distant stand of cypress, thought it probably meant water and plunged that way as the dogs grew louder. He was right; beavers had dammed a meandering stream. He sloshed through it, ran about thirty feet, and then came back and waded into the stream. A snake—a little copperhead—wriggled away from his footfall, and darters on the bottom of the creek broke in all directions.
“Trying to lose the dogs,” Veronica murmured. He wasn’t sure if it was a question.
“It’s worth a try,” he said.
“Maybe we should split up,” she offered.
He remembered the conversation from before. “You really want to do that? What if they follow you instead of me? I probably don’t have much of a scent. Being wood, and all.”
They sloshed on for another twenty yards before she answered.
“No,” she said. “I suppose not. Guess we’re stuck together.”
Despite his efforts, the hounds grew steadily louder. He quit the stream and struck off overland. He wished Aster would wake up. As scenic as the woods were, it would be nice to know which way they ought to be going. Plus, he was starting to get worried. What if she was hurt worse than she looked? What if she wasn’t going to wake up?
“Do you have any idea where we are?” he asked Veronica.
“We’re still in-between,” she said. “Aster was trying to push us through to someplace else, but she hit the tree first.”
“Well, maybe—I was able to see you in-between when she couldn’t. Maybe you can see the way to the Kingdoms.”
“I get glimpses of something,” she said. “Like something through the trees. But it never holds steady.”
“Well, that’s more than I’m getting,” he said. “You lead. Hold my arm and guide me.”
“Okay.”
She didn’t make any jokes or flirty comments. She was scared, he thought—a lot more scared than he was.
So they ran across the open floor of the forest. The horn blew again, and the dogs howled in unison with it.
“This way,” Veronica said. “I think I see a path.”
Errol didn’t see anything, but he followed her tug. Glancing back, he noticed something white flash in the trees.
At first he thought it was the woman from his nightmare, and terror shocked through him. But then it appeared again, and he saw it came on all fours.
A dog, white as a snake’s belly, and behind it another black as coal, and something else, something bigger.
Veronica wasn’t running straight, anymore, but was winding as if through some maze he couldn’t see. That was slowing them down, too much.
The lead dog was only forty feet or so behind him; he was about to put Aster down so he could fight when suddenly something broke from the trees in front of them.
It was another rider, this one on a dark red horse and wearing armor, like a medieval knight. He had fallen for the oldest hunting trick of all—he’d let himself be driven right into an ambush.
But the rider cut around them.
“Keep going,” the knight yelled. “I’ll get them off your trail.”
Errol watched the horse gallop by, open-mouthed.
Veronica tugged on his arm again.
“Come on!” she shouted. “See?”
To his surprise, he did see it, a trail on the forest floor. They started running again, and the forest began closing in around them, growing denser with saplings and blackberry briars, so that soon only the trail was near, and then even that became so overgrown that they had to fight their way through the weeds.
Finally, they burst into an open pasture, beneath a wide blue sky. He smelled the familiar scent of cow dung. They were next to a persimmon tree, and yellow jackets were buzzing around the rotting fruit. He might have been anyplace around Granny’s house, and a sudden feeling of belonging swept through him, of home.
“I’m tired of running,” he said, and turned around again, facing the forest. He settled Aster gently on the ground and then stepped a few yards in front of her.
“I don’t think we have to run anymore,” Veronica said.
“Either way,” he replied.
The moment stretched until Errol started feeling a little silly. “I don’t think you’re going to get your fight,” Veronica said.
TWO
DOCTOR SHECKY
You’re not fixed on her now, are you Errol?” Veronica asked.
It had been a while since they had emerged from the forest, but Errol was still waiting. She had resisted the urge to light out on her own several times. By some miracle they had escaped—but for how long?
“What?” Errol said.
“Miss knight-on-a-horse,” she said. “You aren’t that fickle, are you?”
“That wasn’t a woman,” he said, looking genuinely confused. “Was it?”
Veronica laughed. “Boy, you need glasses,” she said. “Totally female. And part of you knows it, even if your brain is slow catching up. But you’ve already got one hurt girl to tend to, unless you want to switch ‘em out.”
He finally relaxed his guard and faced her.
“Right,” he said. “We’d better get Aster some help.”
But he still seemed reluctant.
Veronica was starting to realize that Errol had a problem. He was loyal. He was loyal to Aster, for no reason she could fathom. And now he suddenly was willing to risk both of their—well, not lives, but existences—for a stranger just because she had done them a good turn. He acted like he didn’t care about anyone, but he cared like it was a disease.
An odd, unwelcome thought followed that. Had she ever been like that? It almost seemed like she remembered feeling that way, and why it made sense. But she couldn’t really get the feeling to hold still to examine—nor did she really want it to.
“This way,” she said, walking off toward the low hills in the distance. She liked hills.
