We Aimless Few

by Robert J. Crane

  Heidi, on the other hand—she had been driven by a more noble desire: to find her mother, and in turn to reunite her family.

  Again, I thought: I could understand why she went to Lady Angelica. If it were me, and Lady Angelica made the same promise …

  Why were these avenues of thought becoming so damned uncomfortable today?

  In spite of my growing discomfort, I couldn’t help but wonder about the difference between us. Maybe Heidi’s way was the way to go—not in search of glory, but better things, more meaningful quests that actually changed lives.

  I shut it down. For now, helping Heidi do this was all I cared about. Everything beyond that … much too far out to consider.

  Borrick had drawn to a halt not far ahead of us. Stopped beside a tree, one hand resting on its white-and-black trunk, vines twisted all about it, he frowned at the face of the compass.

  “Mira,” he said, half turning back but not lifting his gaze, “does this thing—?”

  Heidi gasped. “Alain, look out!”

  He jerked about—

  Too late.

  The vines that were wrapped about the tree trunk suddenly moved. Untangling themselves in a rapid blur, they fanned out into the air—and now I saw the flowers on them were not white-petaled little things resembling daisies, but rather carnivorous-looking heads, like the snappers of a hundred Venus flytraps all supplanted onto the pinkish-purple cord—

  It flew, like a net, at Borrick.

  Heidi lurched in to grab him, to yank him free—

  I followed, on autopilot rather than any distantly burgeoning sense of care about Borrick—

  All three of us were ensnared, the vines swallowing us in their net. Shoved together, I found myself slamming my jaw against Borrick’s hard cheek—

  And then the vine net sprung up into the canopy, taking all of us with it—and deposited us in a bird’s nest, so vast it was made not with twigs but entire broken branches—and three human-sized, hungry-looking chicks, staring at us with bulbous, bulging eyes.

  19

  Directly beneath a sky of summery, bright orange, the three of us lay in a tangled heap. We stared, paralyzed, in a corner of the massive bird’s nest.

  The chicks, which were brown and had stringy, unruly hairs and no feathers yet, immediately began a frantic cheeping.

  “Nooo,” I said. “Don’t call for Mummy …”

  “Crap,” said Heidi. “What do we do?”

  “Roll,” said Borrick.

  “We’ll fall back to the forest floor,” said Heidi. “We’ll break our necks.”

  “Would you rather that or be eaten by these three?” he demanded, voice rising in panic.

  They were shifting forward quite keenly, the trio of birds. Easily the height of Borrick, if not larger, they couldn’t have been much more than a week old; their movements were tremulous, wobbling about on footing they couldn’t maintain. Fortunately, it had the effect of bringing them no closer to us; rather, they flopped about in their efforts.

  On the other hand, every inch they tried and failed to gain was another reason for them to tweet ever louder, hailing their mother’s return.

  “Shut it, would you?” I hissed at them, from under Borrick’s elbow—it had settled on my forehead, dead center. The vines were so tight that I was pretty sure I’d have a tennis-ball-sized dent when we got out of here.

  If we got out of here.

  No. Don’t think like that, Mira. You’ve overcome greater challenges.

  If only I could reach Decidian’s Spear …

  I shuffled for it—but I was so tightly squeezed, more under Borrick than beside him—and Heidi pressing into me from the opposite side didn’t help.

  Nor did the sudden sensation of—was that—?

  “ARGH!” I yelped, struggling.

  “Mira!” Heidi cried. “OW! What are you—OW!”

  The snappers were biting—hard. And unlike Venus flytrap heads, which were weak little things, closed once and then stayed shut for the few days it took to digest whatever poor unfortunate bug had found itself amidst the adapted leaves, these had plenty of bite in them. They snapped and snapped, opening and closing—and with each I realized that the little hairs inside their mouths were not just hairs but rather barbs, digging into my skin, drawing blood—

  “Stop—moving!” Borrick hissed from between gritted teeth. “They bite—when you struggle!”

  Heidi tried to stop first. But I, on the other hand, had incurred the wrath of the snappers first—thus, I had been bit for longer, and was therefore bleeding—and hurting—a whole lot more than either of these two. With barbs sinking into me, each no more than a half-centimeter but spiky and thin and bloody painful, I couldn’t just stop my flailing like that, didn’t Borrick understand? I had to shake these things offFFFF—!

  “STOP MOVING, MIRA!” Heidi roared—then, “OUCH!” And she screamed a rapid-fire slew of profanities, doing her best to keep her renewed wild thrashing to a minimum.

  “Would you just—hold—still?” Borrick hissed. His jaw was so tightly clenched you could split a diamond on it—would’ve impressed Tyran Burnton, of chin fame, very much indeed. “Just—stop—moving!”

  Heidi obeyed—and somehow, I managed to force myself to go prone. The vines dug into me, tighter where our combined flailing had caused them to wind us up into an even more compact heap. But the snappers that had hold of me released and didn’t sink in again.

  I loosed a gentle breath. “Damn it, this hurts.”

  “No kidding,” Heidi growled.

  A nasty bite mark on Borrick’s nose dripped blood. “Thank you both,” he breathed, “for that.”

  We took a second to catch our breaths—also difficult, like stilling myself, because I had three quarters of Borrick’s weight and half of Heidi’s pushing down on my ribcage, so my lungs wouldn’t go much past a third of capacity.

  The birds cheeped frantically. Unlike the three of us, they were perfectly capable of their continued flailing—and they did so, trying madly to edge forward to get to us.

  In fact …

  “They’re getting closer,” I breathed.

  “Are they?” Heidi grunted. “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “Well, I hadn’t,” I said, panic rising—they were now at least eighteen inches, two feet closer than only a minute ago, when we’d been flung up here. Still a good five, six feet between us—but if we didn’t get ourselves free, even if their mother didn’t return to the nest, it gave us not much more than three, four minutes before their beaks burrowed into our heads—

  “We need to move,” said Borrick.

  “Yeah, hadn’t noticed that either,” said Heidi. “Got any brilliant ideas in that genius head of yours?”

  “Come on,” I said, “let’s save the arguing for later, shall we?”

  “Fine,” said Heidi. “I’ll berate him for setting off this trap if we get out of here.”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “Heidi,” I said, “can you reach your—”

  I stopped.

  There was noise below us.

  Even the birds went silent. Cocking their heads, they listened out, blinking their beady eyes.

  Something was moving down there—somethings. Impossible to see from our vantage point, within the confines of the massive nest … but I could hear them, moving through the brush.

  There was a muted sort of noise, like some beast’s chatter. That, I couldn’t exactly make out either: Heidi’s shoulder had pushed my ear so it folded over on itself, giving the world a timbre much like I was listening to it through a wall.

  “What’s down there?” I whispered.

  “Do I look like I can bloody well see?” Heidi demanded.

  “Ssh,” said Borrick.

  We silenced.

  The movement continued. Moving almost directly under us now. More of those chattering noises, quiet. Whatever the creatures were, their calls were fairly low. The distance between us—a good thirty, forty feet—
plus the thickness of the canopy didn’t help much either.

  Not that I could identify the creatures if I could hear them properly. I had no idea what world we were on. And supposing I did have some kind of creature handbook for this neon, ugly place, with its perfume smell (and, here in the bird’s nest, a vaguely overbearing scent of rot), I couldn’t exactly snatch it out of my back pocket right now and go leafing through.

  The sounds persisted … and then moved off.

  When finally the forest had returned to baseline buzz of thousands, perhaps millions, of insects, the birds resumed their cheeping—and I let out the breath I’d been holding.

  Then they began their awkward lurch toward us once more, and I sucked that breath right back in again.

  “Right,” I said, “Heidi—can you get to Feruiduin’s Cutlass?”

  “And get my fingers bitten off by these things?” she snapped. She didn’t say ‘things’, but rather something much more profane. “You’ve still got Decidian’s Spear, haven’t you? At least I didn’t see the Order of Apdau take it on the Spurn Wyle.”

  “These vines need cutting,” I said. “I activate the spear, and the blade will stick about six feet out of this net.”

  “Well, brilliant,” said Heidi. “You can stab those guys in the neck and deal with one of our problems.”

  “The cutlass, Heidi,” Borrick said through gritted teeth—still doing his damnedest not to move. Smart—but damn if I couldn’t do with him shifting, just a few inches so I wasn’t half crushed under him and his stupid jacket …

  “Fine,” Heidi snapped. She began to wrestle one arm around, clearly intent on doing this as quick as she could—

  “Owww,” she moaned—

  “OW!” I added, as Heidi’s jostling set me to jostling too, and the snappers began their assault on my epidermis once again—

  “Oh, for crying out,” Borrick cried, another snapper sinking its barbs into his nose. “Can you please just—?”

  “All right!” Heidi shouted. “I’ve—got it!”

  And there was a burst of light as the cutlass, disguised as a handheld Bluetooth speaker, sloughed off its glamour and leapt to its full length, the blade onyx and wonderfully sharp. It sliced through the vines as it grew, cutting one maw—

  The snappers shrieked all as one, reeling back like an animal kicked—

  Heidi rolled, and swung the cutlass around as she went, carving a wide swath through the net the vines had formed around us.

  It was like it was a thing made of flesh rather than a creeper. As the snappers’ screaming reached a panicked crescendo, the vines themselves recoiled with a mad, frantic spasm. Wildly contorting to free us from its grip, it shrieked backward and away from the three of us, unleashing us like we’d been rolled in a carpet: I went spinning, Borrick too, only Heidi keeping upright with spry footing.

  The snappers screamed one final time as the vines—the ruined tatter that remained of them, anyway—jerked back over the edge of the nest and disappeared below the canopy.

  I wheezed, pushing myself up tentatively on painful palms.

  “I’ve got you,” said Borrick, clasping my hand to help me onto my feet. I took it, not begrudging for the moment—possibly because of that weird, disconcerting way the atmosphere had changed between us; alternatively, quite possibly because I’d been inches away from smearing my face in a yellow-white splat of bird doo-doo.

  The birds’ screeching reached new, ear-splitting heights.

  I eyed them, backing away a step. They were growing closer all the while.

  “Stop it right there,” said Heidi, Feruiduin’s Cutlass poised, “or I will behead the lot of you.”

  “I don’t think they understand English,” I said. And looking at them, still flailing our way, increasingly agitated now their quarry had managed to snatch itself freedom, they did not appear to understand the threat that was now posed to them in the form of Heidi and her trusted cutlass.

  “Let’s just get out of here,” said Borrick, “before their mum comes back, yes?”

  “Right,” I said. “Compass?”

  He lifted it.

  The cut-through showed desert, a highway cut through it—someplace like Nevada, maybe, although I was sure there were a thousand other highways like it rather than one lone cliché.

  “No good,” I demurred—

  The image on the compass face changed. As though the highway were dissolving, it faded, only to be replaced with—a very, very large greenhouse.

  “Is that …?” Heidi asked after a stunned pause.

  “I think so,” I said. “The Palm House at Kew Gardens.”

  She and Borrick exchanged wide-eyed looks. “But how …?”

  “The Antecessors,” I murmured. “They’re watching. Pushing.”

  “But why?” Heidi asked. She was staring at me as though my head had just fallen from my shoulders.

  “I’ll explain it later,” I said, voice flat. Shooting a look over her shoulder showed the oversized chicks still closing the distance between us—and I didn’t trust that their mother wouldn’t finally come back—or that the Antecessors wouldn’t decide to shut down their newly placed connection, fancying a showdown between the three of us and a bird the size of a dump truck. “Let’s get going.”

  Borrick didn’t need telling twice, and nor did Heidi. As though remembering their reasons for being here, they both snapped off a nod. Borrick handed me my compass, which I affixed to my belt; and Heidi slipped into her palm the bracelet upon which her talisman was poised, then sliced open a gate in the side of the nest. It was a shimmering, messy thing upon the mass of branches, nothing like her usual perfect ovals—but it would do.

  Once again, we didn’t wait around before going through.

  Good thing, too. I was pretty sure, as I stepped through, that I could hear, in the distance, the booming CA-CAW of a bird that would be all too happy to finish what her chicks had not been able to start.

  20

  The Palm House at Kew Gardens was a greenhouse in the same way a mansion was a garden shed. It was a huge great thing, with curved roofs, and a raised upper section with a walkway running about its edge so that you could walk around the array of palms and other tropical trees growing there.

  It was onto this upper section that we popped out, exiting into the cramped space between the external wall, and two thick pipes that ran parallel to each other, each around eight inches wide, and beaded with water.

  “Careful,” said Heidi, as Borrick clattered into her, then—“Careful! That’s my foot!”

  “Mira’s just arrived,” he said by way of an apology.

  “Well shove her back into the gateway until I’ve moved, will you?”

  “Hurry up,” I said, from where my face pressed into Borrick’s back. His jacket was dirty with the detritus from the bottom of the bird’s nest, little bits and pieces of broken branches and decaying pink leaves, more than a few snappers that had broken off and remained clutched to him in death—and a streaky wet substance that looked suspiciously like a spatter I’d once had the misfortune of putting my hand into on my first foray to London after leaving home.

  Heidi clambered out from between the pipes, stepping properly onto the walkway. Borrick followed, snatching up his jacket so it didn’t flop across the soaking pipes; and finally I came too, stretching out to full length and groaning at the popping in my knees. Five weeks, and this was the reaction my body had to a few moments pressed into tight spaces? I dreaded to think of how I’d feel now if Heidi and Borrick had come looking for me after five months, or even five years.

  We were fortunate that the upper level of the Palm House was not as well trodden as the lower levels. Accessed by a pair of spiral staircases to either end, it also benefited from the many palms whose upper reaches spilled over into the walkway itself. As such, though around the corner there was a mother and daughter taking photographs of the lower level, we had popped into view without being seen.

  “Kew is sti
ll open?” I murmured. “What time is it?”

  Borrick pushed up a sleeve and consulted a wristwatch. “Six forty-five.”

  “Not even seven,” I said. “How long has this day been?”

  “Depends what time you woke up,” said Heidi. “Can we get out of here? I’m sweltering.”

  Indeed, the Palm House was much like the rainforest we’d just left behind. Hot and humid, if there were any last inches of my clothes not plastered to my body, this minute in the Palm House had already sought to rectify that.

  We made our way around the walkway’s edge. Borrick gave the palms a more than casual glance as we passed. Couldn’t for the life of me figure out why—they weren’t particularly interesting, especially when you had a universe of other worlds at your fingertips—but to each his own.

  Heidi descended the spiral stairs. Borrick paused, waved me ahead. “Ladies first.”

  I went—mainly because I knew the lower level was at least a little cooler, but also because I’d met the eye of a group touring the walkway from the other direction, and the multitude of bloody wounds across my body had given them a frightful start. Best to make myself scarce as quickly as possible.

  Down below, Heidi was already making her way to the exit. I followed, sweating profusely, and hoping that the summer heat had died down a little since I’d last been in my own world.

  It hadn’t, much. Still, the humidity was significantly lower than in the Palm House—which was just now receiving another spray of watery mist to keep the vapor levels up—and I felt myself sag a little in relief at cooler air.

  Borrick came out last, looking like he, too, was thankful. Not that the air could’ve chilled much of him.

  “Lose the jacket,” I said. “You’ll cool down faster.”

  He looked me up and down, assessing. “All right,” he conceded slowly. Shrugging out of it, he folded it and laid it across one arm, looking like a waiter at a particularly gothic establishment.

  With Borrick’s tendency to wear dark, long clothing, and the animosity that had bloomed between us, it was easy to forget that I’d thought of him as somewhat handsome the first time I laid eyes on him. He was fit, his shoulders just enough wider than his hips to give him a bit of a V shape. The shirt he wore under his jacket clung to him, stuck there by sweat.