"Conrad, run!" No sooner had Chiyo shouted this than she felt numbed by stupidity, for the boy could never break free. Though she yanked at Conrad's arm, and Aito pulled them as taut as rubber-bands at their snapping point, they could not pry him from the gigantic woman, and when the tall man's gangly arms circled Aito's waist like an ungainly python, then jerked him away, Chiyo fell in the recoil, and Conrad was swept over the huge woman's head. In the light of the swaying Santi's door and the wet shadows of the alley, the behemoth seemed an albino, hairless gorilla, and Conrad as measly as a tree monkey.
Not that Chiyo didn't know an ogre when she saw one. While the dull Earth dwellers swallowed anything costumed in the commonplace, such as a Ratzapper's uniform, a clear head on any world would be wary of her brazen differences, like the huge, squared-off hands formed from five thumbs each as long and wide as a hamster, not to mention needle-sharp teeth in a head as round as a snowman's. No matter what cosplay she wore, this was no person, but a fiend in need of slaying.
When the ogre dangled Conrad from one huge thumb-hand wrapped around his shoulder joint, the other grasped his chin. "Where's the prince, groundworm—tell me where he is!"
"You're hurting me! Let go!"
"The prince! Now!"
Having seized Aito and Chiyo's elbows, the tall man flung them toward the ogre, twisting his wrists at the last moment so that they snapped forward and stumbled to keep their feet.
When Aito dropped the whistle—a simple tin whistle on a copper chain—he stooped for it, and the tall man yanked Aito up by his vestment. Chiyo dove, scraping one hand on wet blacktop, and with only half a thought of the whistle's grime and rainwater drizzle, put it to her pursed lips and blew.
Despite the utter silence of the noiseless whistle, the ogre's face contorted in rage, and as she reached inside her white exterminator jacket, Conrad fell into a bruised, groaning heap.
"Stupid," said the ogre. "Groundworms can't blow whistles!" The hand emerged from the coat flap gripping a dull iron key about a foot long, and with a hoop handle large enough for the ogre's thumb-hand. As if in response to this apparent threat, howls and yawls rang shrill, as if the crying beasts were a block away. The ogre furrowed her brow, and the key glowed white, but when she pointed it at Chiyo, Conrad sprang onto her outstretched arm. Though the key's iron point went askew, its bright, sizzling bolt found a target, ricocheting off its own reflection in a puddle, then bouncing in the glare of a Santi's window to strike Conrad.
The boy slumped from the humongous arm to his hands and knees, hiccupped, then writhed, seeming to shrink, shrivel, and pink.
The ogre's face wrinkled into an expression unique to ogres, like a scowl crushing a smile, and when she raised the key for a second time, her arm was smacked aside by towering antlers, and the rest of her was smashed back by a gigantic deer.
"Conrad!" shouted Chiyo. The boy's clothes deflated as he shrunk and shrunk, until the back of his vestment settled on the wet pavement, and a pink earthworm crawled out of his sleeve.
When a raccoon and a wildcat skulked out of the alley shadows, the tall man drew an iron key and stabbed toward the cat, who crouched back, then circled the wary human. While each looked for an opening, the ogre clenched the rack of antlers and vainly strove against the mighty deer, and the raccoon turned toward Chiyo and Aito.
"Flee, children. Protect the prince."
"Thank you, venerable Jgorga," said Chiyo. "He yet lives."
"Thank me not," said Jgorga the raccoon, "for nothing is accomplished. So long as the prince does not sit on the Noble Pelt, only false kings will rule in Alsantia."
Two wolves jogged into the alley. "Well met, Jgorga."
"Shakalra, escort these humans where they need to go."
Four more wolves trotted behind them, two of whom limped and bled from dark wounds. "Do no such thing, Shakalra."
"Cgega does not run this pack."
"Shakalra does not run with it," growled Cgega, "or Shakalra does not run."
When a wounded brown bear with bloody gray fur in his mouth loped into the alley way, it roared, "Cgega has turned, Shakalra."
Shakalra looked sidelong at the wolf next to him. "Who is your chief, Ulfis?"
Ulfis glanced at his chief, then Cgega. "There is only one chief, and he is no belly-crawler for ogres." When the wolves snarled and joined battle, the bear lumbered forward on his hind legs to lend his might to Shakalra, though the fight still seemed uneven when Aito grabbed Chiyo's hand and pulled her into a stumbling run. Craning her neck and straining to keep her eyes on Conrad's crumpled clothes broke her stride, causing Aito to tug so hard that she churned through a puddle and the hem of her vestments soaked through to her ankles.
They ran and ran down the alley, past the library, and into the Greyhound parking lot,
where one lighted bus trailed fumes in its departure, and passengers filed into another with an idling motor.
"Just board, Chiyo. We don't have time!" said Aito.
"You can't stowaway on a bus," said Chiyo. "I'll tell them not to leave while you buy tickets."
"Leave without me if you have to."
"That's pointless. The prince needs both of us." As Chiyo climbed aboard, Aito dashed at the Greyhound station so fast that the automatic doors only cracked an inch before he blasted through.
"It's about time." Though she did not recognize the voice, there was something familiar about it. "Where does duty take you today?" While the driver's bald head and white beard drew a blank, his subtle accent was so naggingly familar that she wondered if it was Alsantian. While she would have liked to hope it was Alsantian, nothing good had come from Alsantia in years, and her wonder felt more like fear than hope.
"I'm going home to Pelhurst," she lied. "Mom and Dad..."
He cut her off with a wave of his wrinkled hand. "While I can't drive you home, I might drive you near." Despite his easy-going vagueness, Chiyo heard the insinuation—though a bus couldn't reach Alsantia, he might drive her to a portal. When a woman boarded with two children, he said, "come closer, so I don't have to yell."
Though the driver didn't look like an ogre, some ogres concealed their monstrousness in human cities. While the faintest taint of ogre would have raised Oji's hackles, Chiyo's uncertainty rubbed her the wrong way, and she was reluctant to approach. Her moment of indecision stretched tighter and tighter, until a soldier in camo fatigues dragged a large duffel toward the bus.
The old Alsantian said, "wait here," exited the bus, and took the soldier's duffel As he loaded it in the undercarriage cargo, another family boarded, then two boys and two girls, either in late high school or early college—which Chiyo could never tell apart, as both cast the same shade of teenage contempt on smaller kids, as if aging a few years was an achievement.
If she lived through the next few days, Chiyo would count it as an accomplishment.
Chiyo's eyelids drooped as she watched the boarders: two more soldiers with two more duffels, three bearded young men with backpacks, a dozen drunken young adults in the red and gray of Draden Barnmice, two elderly women in matching baja sweaters, and lastly, a graying woman with a large musical instrument case that she insisted on loading herself into the undercarriage.
Then she saw them coming towards the other side of the bus. Looking wartorn, with slashed white jackets, and a sleeve missing from the man's, the Exterminators limped into the parking lot, followed by a man and a woman with spiky hair and wolfish grins that made their faces seem not only fanged but hinged, leers that looked out of place considering the contusions and scratches on their cheeks, neck and arms.
When Berangere and Aito boarded, Chiyo pulled them down into a crouch, then towed them toward the back, where they found no empty benches, until one soldier stood up.
"Sit here if you want." Another soldier scooted over, and he sat beside his friend.
"Thank you."
"Who are you hiding from?" He looked out the window. "I hope those nuts aren't boarding. Look at that snagglepuss." His bullying snicker was a comforting ugliness in Chiyo's present straits.
"Do you need any help?" said the other soldier.
"Actually," said Chiyo, "could you sit here, on the edge of our seat? They might not notice us."
"It'll be tight."
"Just until we leave."
"I don't mind if you don't."
When the ogre and her compatriots howled and shrieked like coyotes fighting over a fat, roasted pig, Chiyo risked a peek. The driver blocked the door as he talked evenly to the Alsantian monsters, whose disheveled disguises were rapidly disintigrating in their rage, and could now only fool the fools of this world. She cracked the window.
"You didn't ask them for tickets!"
"Of course I did," said the driver. "No one boards my bus without tickets."
"Your superior will hear of this," snarled the ogre.
"God above already knows when I wake up, wipe my butt, and go to bed," said the old driver. "But I doubt he's listening to this foolish conversation. Look, there's still time to get your tickets."
When the ogre growled, Chiyo lowered her eyes and cowered in the seat. The doors closed with a hydraulic hiss, the overhead lights came on, and the radio crackled around the already crackly voice of Louis Armstrong.
The driver hummed along for about a minute before he backed the bus out. "Next stop, Morwin Station." Though the passengers clapped, and Chiyo broke a nervous smile, she only sat up halfway, and dared to bring half of her eyeballs over the window sill. When the pack of Alsantian monsters sprinted out of the Greyhound station, for the ogre and the man it was a futile gesture that ended with them flailing their arms and swearing in the tongues of two worlds so creatively that even muffled by the glass, Chiyo's ears pinked—but the wolfish man and woman were a nose away from overtaking the bus, as if they were skilled in catching large, faster-moving prey.
The soldier moved back to his seat. "That was cold." He smiled at Chiyo, then added, "it all worked out." He leaned back and closed his eyes. "It was nice to meet you, but I get up at four tomorrow. Good luck getting where you're going."
Though it was a bumpy ride at first, with a series of wide turns and idles at lights, when they exited onto Highway 96, their journey leveled off to a smooth shot.
"Young lady." The old voice carried as if the driver sat beside her. Though several on board fit that description, none looked up from their conversations.
Using the posts and overhead straps, Chiyo walked towards the driver.
"Chiyo?" asked Berangere.
Chiyo glanced at Aito. Berangere was a good, sweet girl, if a bit of a know-it-all, but she was from this world. She needed reassurance, not understanding.
"It's ok," said Chiyo. "I have a question for the driver."
After making her way to the front of the bus, the driver said, "I'll be brief. I don't like my passengers to stand."
"I don't mind. Thank you for helping us."
"I did no such thing."
"Yes, you did. Those people..."
When he cut her off, her annoyance at this second interruption began to outweigh her sense of indebtedness, and it may have showed in her face, for his eyes in the rearview mirror, already with crow's feet from age, crinkled under the weight of a sneer. "Even in our world, the ones chasing you are less and more than human, and if you called them people, they would laugh like hyenas and eat you to keep the joke going."
"You are Alsantian."
"Foolish girl," said the Alsantian, "we may not be the only ones, even here. Do not be so free."
She leaned closer. "Can you take us to Alsantia?"
"This bus goes very near the door," he said. "Do you have the prince?"
Though the highway still carried them smoothly on, when Chiyo's heart palpitated, her footing faltered, her hand tugged tight on the overhead strap, and she stammered her honest reply, though she did not yet know if she should trust this Alsantian. "No."
"No?" he hissed. "You left your post!"
"We did not," she snapped, then regained her composure. "Why should I trust you?"
"When you're victorious, trust no one. When you're lost, trust someone." Though the Alsantian proverb didn't indicate which side he was on, the apt quotation so fit their situation that she felt not only understood, but more relaxed, as if a grave authority spoke directly from antiquity, telling her to trust this old Alsantian. There was also a humbler and saner voice in the back of her mind insisting that villains could also have empathy, that just because the driver empathized didn't mean that their interests were aligned.
"You're right," she said.
"Right? What about?"
"We can't talk here. I'll tell you at Morwin Station."
"Will your friends be there?" Chiyo's heart skipped another beat. "I mean those animals."
"They might be."
"Go back to your seat, young lady. I wouldn't talk about anything real back there, if you know what I mean."
"We won't. Only one of my friends would know what I was saying, though the other has had glimpses."
The driver grunted. She made her way back by the posts and overhead straps. Berangere's hard stare felt like it drilled through to the other side.
"What did you say to him?"
"Nothing."
"It was definitely something. That was long enough to sum up the Deathly Hallows."
"I asked how long this trip was. I wanted to see if they said anything about us."
When Berangere looked uncertain, Chiyo realized she no longer trusted her and would scrutinize everything from then on. "Did they?"
"If they did, he didn't say. They didn't exactly make a good first impression."
"We should get some rest," said Aito, coming to her rescue. "I could have told you, Chiyo—this trip is six hours."
"Six hours!" said Berangere. "I should have eaten more at Santi's. I'm hungry again."
As she rifled the magazines slid in the pocket on the back of the chair in front of her, she
held up each one—while there were no takers for the Gideon's Bible, Aito took the Sudoku,
and when Bernegere was left with an overappreciated Archie comic book that had been read to tatters and a ruffled Draden Times dated September 22nd, 20XX, Chiyo snatched both.
"Rude," said Berangere. "That doesn't leave me anything."
"You have the Bible."
"Read it. Boring. This one doesn't even have the good stuff."
"Berangere." Chiyo had a note of trepidation in her voice. "What's the date today?" "Well...it was the twentieth, but I guess it's the twenty-first by now." When Chiyo held up the paper, Berangere grabbed it back. "This must be a joke."
Chiyo laid the paper between them, but Aito yanked it away, and she had to lean over Berangere to gawk at the blazing Rockham carnage, flanked by interviews with shocked witnesses, and six black and white columns of print and photos supporting the headline spelling it out in black and white, which she read again in denial: EXPLOSION ROCKS ROCKHAM, with a smaller--but still all caps--subtitle, PROGRESSIVE SCIENCE CENTER, THE DESERA INSTITUTE, SAID TO BE GROUND ZERO. When Aito released the paper, Chiyo took the ruffled paper back into her lap and scanned for anything that might reveal this newspaper to be a fraud: the very ordinary table of contents, a corner piece on corrupted voting machines, and two more columns of professional prose, continued on page A6, that did their best to distill the emotions of the chaotic scene into impersonal terror:
At 4:30 PM today, an explosion sheared the top from The Desera Institute and leveled surrounding buildings in a one block radius.
While there are no active fires, responders are still treating burn victims, as well as those injured by glass ejected from shattered windows, and the casualty tally is unknown.
Uber driver Steve White witnessed the explosion. "It was like glass and fire were raining." While White claimed to witness wild animals fleeing the scene, this report could not be corroborated, and he was later treated for a concussion and smoke inhalation.
"That's crazy."
"What if it's real?" said Berangere.
"How could it be real?" scoffed Aito, but he looked sidelong at Chiyo.
"Somebody left it to warn us off," said Chiyo, "possibly the driver."
"So he did say something to you." Berangere's eyes narrowed.
"He may have—I'm not sure. What he said was so vague, it wasn't even advice."
Berangere rolled her eyes and Chiyo stopped talking and pretended to look at tomorrow's music reviews in the entertainment section.
"What do we do?" asked Aito.
"Does it matter? We're going to Pelhurst."
"I lied, Berangere," said Aito. "Or rather, I fed misinformation, because I thought one of our group might be passing information to the other side. Our destination is Rockham."
"What about Loren?"
"We're meeting the others in Morwin Station."
"Is the Mansion in Rockham?"
"It's no Mansion, but a place sacred to us." This was no lie if by 'us' he meant only Chiyo and Aito.
"Why are we going there?" said Berangere. "We're finally free of the Elderliches."
"Are we free? On a day when the Elderliches were conspicuously absent, we were attacked--what if the Elderliches were our shields?"
"That protection isn't free—something will be expected."
"We can stay up agonizing about it, or we can get some sleep." When Chiyo stuffed the newspaper back in the forward seat pocket, reclined her seat, dimmed the overhead, and read the Archie, the others followed suit, leaning back to make the best of their limited recreation.
Chiyo awoke holding the comic, which had crunched and crinkled in her restless sleep. Despite the meager light of a few overheads, they hurtled through a morning so dark that the glimmer sparking on the horizon streaked a charcoal blue sky. After stuffing the Archie away, she scrunched even further into her seat, turning on her side and pinching her eyes shut.
In her dreams, Conrad had shiny cross-hatched Archie Andrews hair and the letter C stitched to his big blue vestments, and Chiyo's hair was a luxurious black stripe like Veronica Lodge; when Conrad squirmed in the blue wool, and his face freckled, then mottled into a pocked brown and eyeless wiggle, she exulted in being the cause of blame, and her shadow slithered proud and powerful. She woke, hiccupping and weepy, to the bus hurtling through a lighter gray, and she filled in two medium Sudokus--one neat and right, one eraser-torn and wrong--before she was able to fall back asleep.
She woke a third time to a cloudy blue window, and the louder sound of a lower gear. As she raised her seat, she saw the stop sign, and the meshed traffic that wouldn't give them an opening until the last bumper passed through the intersection, when the bus lurched right and rolled down a narrow residential street.
Chiyo shook Aito and Berangere. "Wake up."
"Gimah?" blurted Aito incoherently.
"If the Rockham hasn't left, we'll have less than five minutes to change buses. Pull yourselves together."
"They have to gas, Chiyo. And board new passengers."
"Boarding didn't take long in Draden."
When the Pelhurst pulled into Morwin Station, the Rockham bus was parked in the adjoining gate. Its door was closed, the lights were off, and no one could be seen through the windows.
"Stand by the gate," said the driver. "Normally, you'd have fifteen minutes, but this isn't a normal day." Then he entered Morwin Station without giving them a backward glance.
"Where's Loren?" asked Berangere.
Aito said, "well, the bus is here, so they weren't blown up."
"Yet," said Chiyo.
"What do you mean?" asked Berangere. "That newspaper was a joke."
"You're probably right," said Chiyo. "There's no time travel here."
""Here?'" asked Berangere. "That's a funny thing to say."
"It's good to keep an open mind." While Chiyo had never seen any deliberate and calculated time travel, a time shift was one consistent side effect of breaching between worlds. While the temporal leak usually only displaced you a few minutes into the past or future, sometimes you leaped a whole day. Though the time variance was small, and the risk of gate travel was grave and exponential, a few cagy opportunists exploited this time discrepancy to their benefit in two worlds, not only in cheating at sports gambling and the investment market, but in gathering intelligence and accelerating coded messages. For some reason, the well-meaning heroes that crossed back and forth to rewrite tragedies were invariably frustrated, or if any had succeeded, they did not brag about their victory.
"Why isn't he coming back? What if you're wrong about him, Chiyo?"
"I never said anything about him, Aito."
"You said something to him."
"Where's Loren?" Berangere repeated.
"Bear!" Berangere turned, ran, and clasped Loren in a huge hug that lived up to her unwanted nickname, lifting her friend a few inches off of the blacktop.
Chiyo nudged Aito, and he nudged back.
While she was glad to see Loren, Akachi, Lucien, and Michel, the fox was with them. Just when they had learned which Elderlich was the traitor, the Holy Foyer window was broken, and they were unable to report back to Alsantia, and Chiyo was relieved when their hands were forced, for she did not like sleeping under the same roof as the traitor fox, who had led who knows how many Alsantians to ogre dinner plates and the bowls of their depraved human lapdogs.
Vieno's big beaming smile would have told an idiot something was wrong, for not only was this no situation for smiles—this was neither field trip nor family vacation, and they were neither school nor family—it was not an expression made with Vieno's face in mind. "Hello, my Animalytes."
The bald, white bearded driver exited the station and opened the door of the Rockham bus. "You can board," he said. "I'll be your driver until Rockham."
Though the twinkle in Vieno's eyes flickered out, the corpse of her smile remained. "How fortunate." She boarded first, stepping to the back, and the children followed her to adjacent seats.
When Lucien, Akachi, and Michel exited Morwin Station holding Cokes, this was not, in and of itself, disturbing, but Michel's other arm held Akachi, and Oji was nowhere to be seen.
After they boarded, Chiyo snapped, "Where's Oji?"
"I'm happy to see you too," said Akachi.
Chiyo closed her eyes in frustration. "Oji is one of us. Where is he?"
"He's somewhere in here." Michel's arm-locked hand felt along her vestment for the cat. "Don't worry."
"Animals aren't allowed," added Akachi. "Let him be, Michel. If he shows himself, we have to leave him here."
Other boarders included a half-dozen young men in Rockham basketball jerseys, two nuns in black habits, three backbacking college students from the Pelhurst bus, and two children a few years younger than the Animalytes. After the doors closed with a creaking hiss on the half empty seats, the bus backed out and headed for the highway.
Chiyo debated showing the paper to Vieno. She wasn't sure why she took it from the Pelhurst, as her friends from this world would think it an elaborate prank, and she and Aito already understood its message. Would spooking Vieno be a good thing? Could she be tricked into revealing some crucial intelligence? Or was accepting Vieno's illusions the only thing keeping the fox from showing its claws?
"Will this change our plans?" Chiyo held out the crumpled newspaper.
Vieno scanned the wrinkled article, a bemused smile on her face. "How long would you have kept your secret?" She looked at Chiyo over the rumpled edge of the Draden Times. "I don't mean the newspaper."
"It was never a secret." Chiyo flushed, and sweat trickled down her spine. "Not compared to what's curled up behind you, or what you've wound up for the others. After Hanne brought us here, she ordered us only to talk about the events of each day. Though she never asked us to conceal our origins, by following that command we looked out for the welfare of our friends."
"What's wound up for the others? Do you mean us?" asked Lucien. "What's going on, Chiyo?"
When the rear windows were suddenly seared by the tailgating glare of another Greyhound, Chiyo took a few steps back to press her face against the window.
Hanne was at the wheel of the Pelhurst Greyhound, her shout muffled by the windshield. When Njal waved through the glass at Chiyo, as if telling her to get back, she dashed to her seat, and threw herself over Michel just before the Pelhurst rammed the Rockham, sending them a quarter spin, and knocking the other passengers into the forward seats. As the bus teetered, they reached for the overhead straps, but when the Rockham had spun perpendicular to the Pelhurst, its bumper gave them such a solid tap that they rocked again, recoiling back into their seats as it came to rest.
The first to regain her feet, Vieno swayed woozily and bent a hooked finger toward the windows, which splashed inward and drenched everyone. When Vieno leaned over Chiyo to seize Michel's soaking sleeve, Akachi locked arms with her friend, and Chiyo clutched one armrest, hooked her knees under the other, and hunkered down over the blind girl. Though the Elderlich's face twisted into a white-lipped snarl, and she clawed at Akachi's robes and Chiyo's hair, they both clung obdurately, and the Elderlich stepped back from their blockade, curled her lips into a predatorial hunger, and touched Loren.
Loren melted quicker than the windows, her robes dissolving to a puddle and her pink face and hands liquefying to red-gold fox. While she still had her eyes, when Vieno growled, they were backlit with a red glare, and she scurried out the window. The Elderlich then leaned down until her snarling smile loomed over their faces. "Bring him to the galonedi unilohisdi if you want your friend." After Vieno also poured into fur and paws, a silver fox jumped to a headrest, then cleared the window.
When the door opened with a hydraulic hiss, the scowling driver stomped outside. With the windows melted clean away—leaving neither jaggedness nor residue—they could hear him vent on Hanne and Njal. "There was plenty of room," he shouted. Their weak mutter not only incensed him, it spiked his volume to the point of hoarseness: "for both of us. If you can't share a road, you should have followed." At another low mutter from Njal, he rejoined, "you have to take them on the Pelhurst."
Berangere said, "we have to go after Vieno. She wants to leave Loren!"
"They don't know she's gone." said Aito, with an irritable tone. The boy spoke increasingly often of finishing their mission and forsaking this half-living world and its noise pollution, horrible food, and tainted colors. He was homesick for Alsantia.
"What are you talking about?" asked Lucien.
Berangere looked at him in disbelief. "Vieno kidnapped Loren."
"Vieno? Loren?"
"Did you get hit on the head!?" Berangere shouted through tears, then wiped them away as she bent down over Lucien's head with a solicitous look, hoping her words were not true. Chiyo knew she would find no wound, as the hole in his memory would not show.
Chiyo and Aito looked at each other. While difficult to explain even on Alsantia, only one on this world remembered Loren, and that raised an insurmountable barrier to understanding.
Since Loren and Vieno were foxes in truth, not only their human bodies, but the entirety of their identities—including their memory in others—were illusion. When the enchantment was dispelled, it wasn't just that the borrowed shape changed, but a person vanished in the memory and society that they influenced. Unfortunately for Berangere, noticing Loren's absence not only attested to the inextricable ties of their friendship but pointed to a fragility in her house of memory, which had become a house of cards. Since Lucien had shared only a few hundred words with Loren in the entirety of their lives, he still had a sense of self with those memories subtracted, but Berangere and Loren were best friends, and to remove one from the other might lead to the collapse of memory and self. While her memory of the girl might eventually fade, Berangere would be a lonely shadow of herself without Loren, who was her counterpart in every conversation, every moment of play, and every waking hour, week, and day. With Loren dissolved, Berangere might dissolve as well.
"Yeah, who's Loren?" said Aito.
Chiyo punched him, saying, ""don't you dare. We have to bring Berangere."
"We're not taking her," scoffed Aito.
Akachi said, "you're not leaving me halfway to Rockham either."
"We can't take them all."
"What are you talking about, Aito," said Lucien.
"It's not up to us. We'll take them until the Prince or the elders say otherwise," said Chiyo.
"The Elderliches?"
"What about them?" Aito pointed at the Elderliches, who were still arguing with the driver. As they had finally raised their volume to match his, their shouting match drowned out the murmurs on the bus, and the children huddled closer together.
"Who cares?" asked Berangere. "They want to leave Loren." Keeping her head down, she snuck past the passengers.
"Who's Loren?" asked Akachi.
"You don't remember her either?" asked Michel. "Why don't they remember her, Chiyo?"
Chiyo rolled her eyes, though it was wasted on Michel. It was too much to explain, and mostly guesswork. Perhaps the blind girl, not being dependent on visual cues, organized her memory differently; or perhaps, since Michel was never deceived by sight, she never internalized the illusion and had only ever interacted with Loren the fox. The short of it was that Michel was immune because she didn't know any better. However, Michel knew Loren better than she did herself, for unless Chiyo was mistaken, Loren never knew she was a fox.
"This is your fault." Aito looked squarely at Chiyo. "If things go south, I blame you." Then he followed Berangere, Lucien, and Akachi, who clutched Michel. As Chiyo scrambled after, she peeked through the gaping windows at the argument, which wasn't showing any signs of dying out. She still had the newspaper rolled up and creased between her clenched fingers.
The first glimmers of sunrise streamed across the pebbly ground. Their shadows stretched between scraggly junipers and pines as they dashed past sagebrush and through bluegrass. Chiyo gritted her teeth—because she disliked the thought of Lockwood Desert's cacti, tarantula, vultures and rattlesnakes, she and Aito had decided to bus hours longer to Rockham. When four ravens perched on a juniper tree looked at them sidelong--seeming like cyclops creatures, more one-eyed shadow than animal--their hoarse song to morning sent shivers down Chiyo's back.
As Aito ran like his life depended on it, the others loped along at a pace for which their cloistered lives at The Mansion left them unprepared, and in their meandering sprint over the pebbly ground, Chiyo not only no longer knew which way they were going, or even which way were the buses. but when the sun inched higher, she realized the path they were following was only Akachi and Michel's merged shadow.
As the rising sun banished the cold morning, shadows scurried from the endless desert floor, and Aito headed over the red sands and black pebbles toward a mesa girded by fairy chimneys. Fairy chimneys, also called hoodoos, are stone columns jutting up in rocky, temperate deserts, and mesas are vast stone plateaus at the top of sheer rocky walls. The combination of an enormous mesa circled by possibly a hundred hoodoos looked like an ancient coliseum.
Though the mesa and its hoodoo cage were so immense that the low sun was blocked by this awesome stone formation, it was still miles away. When Chiyo called to Aito, the boy doubled over, put his hands to his knees, and panted.
Having kept an easy pace behind Akachi and Michel, Chiyo used her saved strength to jog to Aito. "We can't run all the way there. It's farther than it looks."
"What if they're chasing us?"
They turned around as one. Though the pebbly sand stretched to the far off horizon,
when Chiyo blinked, the black pebbles and red sand fused into dark, glassy water. When the lake again dissolved into sand and stone, she told herself it was a mirage.
"If they do, Lockwood might take care of them for us," she said.
"They're definitely coming," said Aito, "and I hope you're right about that. I don't mind taking it easy, if that's what you mean."
"Are we going there?" asked Akachi.
"Is that where Loren is?" chimed in Berangere.
"If that's where we're going," said Lucien glumly, "I'm definitely walking, otherwise I'll keel over climbing up that thing."
"I'm with Lucien," said Akachi. "We'll save our strength."
They continued over the desert floor, stopping now and then to dump rocks and sand from their shoes.
"Is it a Santi's?" said Michel. <
When everyone laughed weakly, Akachi said, "anyone hungry? I grabbed Vieno's bag." In their flight, Chiyo had not noticed the scraggly white plastic bag dangling from Akachi's free hand. Opening it now, Akachi took three candy bars, split them in half, and gave the extra share to Michel; then she monitored the water carefully, pulling each away after a meager gulp, so that they had one and a half bottles when they continued onward.
After Chiyo had the last swig of the third water bottle—though it was undoubtedly backwash, she steeled herself to the swallow out of necessity—it dropped from a hand nerveless from hunger, thirst, and exhaustion. "Hey!" Akachi stooped to pick it up. "We'll need this if we find water."
Oji leaped from Michel's sleeve, swatted the bottle from Akachi's fingers,
and seized it before it hit the ground. Turning on his back, the cat held the bottle between his paws until the last drops trickled into his mouth.
"We forgot Oji," said Akachi.
"He was sleeping," said Michel.
"He's only a cat," said Lucien. "Save it for us."
"No," said Chiyo. "He's one of us. Give me a bottle, Akachi."
When Akachi reluctantly held out the half-full bottle, Chiyo fed it to the ginger cat carefully. When Oji was done, the water level had barely gone down at all.
"Do we have anything a cat might eat?" asked Aito.
"Maybe jerky?" said Akachi. Though Oji sniffed at the jerky and grimaced, the cat chewed at a tough mouthful as they continued their long walk toward the formation. Oji now trotted beside them, at times sprinting ahead, then coming back, and all the while masticating the stubborn mouthful of dried meat.
Though it was clear to reasonable people that ancient artists sculpted fairy chimneys, the humans of Earth denied their common sense and told themselves air friction and sand erosion caused it all. In the case of the galonedi unilohisdi, it was super obvious that a conscious mind had crafted it, for the fairy chimneys circling the painted mesa marked a spiral staircase around the towering plateau; each hoodoo was a foot taller than the previous one, and a sojourner that shimmied up the shortest hoodoo might ascend the series of hoodoos that ringed the humongous mesa, terminating in a small ledge and steeply ascending path to the plateau.
At least, this is what they were told in their escape instructions, should they ever have to brave Lockwood Desert to this derelict gateway, the worst alternative among many unpleasant last ditch plan Bs. It seemed Oji had also received this communication,
for on reaching the shortest hoodoo, he scampered up, then leaped to the next fairy chimney.
Three buzzards circled tightly and screeched greedily.
Since Berangere was the tallest and strongest, the others helped her up the first hoodoo, and she grasped Aito's outstretched arms from above as the others pushed from behind. Aito and Berangere raised Akachi together, and soon all five stood on the shortest hoodoo, which was also the widest, at five feet wide. Scampering from hoodoo to hoodoo, Oji soon disappeared behind the mesa.
In their haste to be done with the terrifying stunt, they ascended too quickly, though the hoodoos tapered as they climbed, so that soon no more than two might climb together. As each step meant a short split over the gaps between hoodos, Chiyo's calves and groin tightened from the strain of putting all her weight down on one foot, time after time, until they were near the top and encountered a worse difficulty to overcome.
While Akachi and Michel had ascended side by side thus far, the last three hoodoos were no more than a foot wide, so that the climber must walk alone the last steps. While it was a small kindness that the blind girl could not see the hundred foot plunge to the sands, in that moment no one wanted to be her eyes, and there was a profound silence.
"Why did we stop?" said Michel. "Are we there?"
"The next steps are only wide enough for one. You have to go yourself."
"How?" Michel shook her head, then her body shook. "Just leave me here."
"Leave you? You'd starve, if you didn't fall to your death."
"I can help," said Chiyo. "She'll cross between us, holding my hands in front and Akachi's in back, so that if she slips to one side, we could pull her back or ahead."
"That sounds impossible."
"It will work," said Chiyo, "as long as we don't stand still. We must do it fast and together, or not at all."
"I won't have you dying for me," said Michel.
"We're not leaving you to die, either," said Akachi. "We'd climb down and hike to the road before that, Michel."
"There's nothing for us there, Akachi. Go on, and leave me here."
"No more talking," said Chiyo. "Or we'll talk ourselves out of it. It will be all over in ten seconds. I'll go first. Michel, remember that I'm walking backwards, and don't let go of my hands or Akachi's. What are you doing, Michel?" Michel had frozen in place. "Now, Michel." When Michel took a shaky step forward, Chiyo backpedaled, nearly slipping as her straining leg found purchase on the next hoodoo, then by an act of miraculous human locomotion, repeated it several more times until they collapsed on the ledge of the mesa.
They sprawled on the ledge for several minutes, panting and trembling, then continued up the gentle slope to the mesa, which had a glassy sandstone surface blindingly illuminated by the sun. Towards the center was a darker splash of reds and blues, though it might have been another mirage, spots swimming in her eyes from exhaustion, dehydration, and arid desert air.
"Do you see that?" asked Chiyo.
"Yes," said Aito. "That's it."
"Where is the keeper?" said Chiyo.
"That's up to him, isn't it?" said Aito.
With tears in her eyes, Berangere turned in a circle, as if there was another hoodoo staircase to climb. "Why did we come here? Where's Loren?"
"Vieno said she'd meet us," said Aito. "We have to find Oji."
"Why? You won't give him to her," said Chiyo.
"Has our mission changed?"
"Then tell her."
"Shh!" he said. "There he is!" The ginger cat was nearly invisible against the red stone until shadows passed over the mesa. One shadow hurtled back and forth, while the others scudded slowly, cast by the skeletal clouds wrung from the deep blue, as if twisted toward the red and blue mesa pattern. The rapid shadow proved to be a grotesquely ungainly buzzard, whose tight swoops passed back and forth like a pendulum. When the clouds unrolled over the sun and darkened the plateau, Oji's ginger coat contrasted starkly to the brick-red mesa.
As they neared the center, Chiyo saw that the galonedi unilohisdi was well-named; literally "paint gateway," in the Cherokee language, this ancient mosaic was once entirely semi-precious stones, but as the years went by, the gaps were filled with chalk, shells, bottle caps, and whatever other detritus of the right color could close the gaps and keep the pattern intact. While the paint gateway was now a junkyard mosaic, Chiyo hoped it could still carry them to Alsantia.
"I see Loren and Vieno!" Before anyone could answer, Beranger dashed to the center, reached out her hand, and dissolved into red and blue sand splashing the central spiral of the mosaic.
"Bear!" The scream shivered from the shadow of two lonely fairy chimneys standing like smokestacks next to the pattern's spiral hub. Before Vieno pulled Loren back behind the hoodoos, the girl's face curled into a maze of grief and disbelief.
When Oji reached the galonedi unilohisdi, he glanced back, then stood on his hind legs; though his paws and kitten feet became light brown hands and feet, and his ginger fur became a red and blue swirl nearly blending in with the pattern, the boy looked through deep green cat's eyes and his ginger hair stuck out in feline tufts. Or like the points of a crown, Chiyo thought.
When he charged on all fours with a ferocious, leonine roar, the children backpedaled, as one, into the suddenly swollen and fluttering shadow that consumed them, and into Chiyo, who fell on her back just as the vulture clung to her head, its green wings a flapping shroud, her cheek burning and her eyesight smeared from the flash of its claws.
Chiyo screamed. Though she clawed and punched back, the vulture seemed to sneer around its shrieks.
When the boy that was Oji pounced, the vulture came away like a clump of seaweed, leaving one of Chiyo's eyes sticky with blood, and the other wet with tears of fear and agony. Though her vision was half what it once was, before she drifted into unconsciousness, the vulture's feathers seemed to part like a curtain, then dissolve, making way for another tall boy.