Dandelion Fire (24 page)

The raggant didn't have any extra senses. He only had one, and it interfaced everything into an amazingly complicated but entirely accurate caricature of whatever worlds were within his range.

The only thing more intricate and accurate than the raggant was a common bumblebee. And bumblebees only used their abilities to name every individual flower within their flight radius and inflate nectar value by re-classifying every vintage based on temperature, light angle and refraction, time of collection, barometric pressure, period elapsed since previous electrical storm, and mood of flower.

They had the raggant's respect. Though it couldn't comprehend why they would allow themselves to be seen flying any more than a turtle could imagine going around shell-less.

A bumblebee was distracting him now. He dropped off the tree limb where he'd been sitting, pinched off his breath, and flapped madly while his drooping hind end approached the ground. He landed hard on a bed of pine needles and picked his next perch.

Right now, everything he sensed was located in relation to four things—himself, his birthplace, the woman who had raised him, and Henry York. He knew where his self was. The ship he had been born on was just around the next continent and a couple hundred meters below the ocean surface, wedged between a loud rock and some melancholic red coral. The woman was just over the mountains. But Henry York—he had found Henry York. That had been the goal. The first goal. Then he had to find a way large enough and safe enough to lead Henry back through world seams. Now one had opened up, but Henry had gone away just before. And
when he'd felt Henry shift, he'd rushed back without planning and stepped on some sort of back-fanged legless thing in the transition. His haunch still stung where he'd been bitten.

The raggant looked at the old ruined temple wall, nestled back in the brush and vines. The crumbling niche in the wall he had come through was completely hidden by leaves, but he didn't need to see it to know it was there. He could sense the flat grassland and the salt water and the flavors beyond each of the cupboards from where he stood. And he knew which one Henry was in. It had been too small for him to fit through—a world of smoke full of people that sounded like peacocks. He had to find another way. There would be one. There always was.

He slowly jog-hopped to build speed, and then jumped, flapping as wildly as he could, just dragging himself in a spiral toward the top of the ruined wall. People were coming. So he hurried and flared his dark wings against the breeze for balance when he landed.

Below him, vine leaves rustled. A white sack dropped to the ground.

Frank pushed through the leaves and fell out onto his pillowcase. He sat up, blinked in the sunlight, sneezed, and turned off the flashlight. Then he stood up, leaned the shotgun against the wall, parted the vines with his hands, and yelled. “Right! Penny first.”

A few seconds later, he pulled out another pillowcase, set it beside his own, and dragged Penny out by the wrists. She stood up beside him and looked around.

“Wow,” she said.

Another pillowcase was born. Anastasia slid out through vines and staggered on the soft, needled ground.

“This doesn't look that different,” she said.

Frank ignored them both. His daughters chattered while he pulled out Richard, and then Zeke, and then Dotty, and lastly, a limping Ken Simmons, bulging in his Christmas sweater and uniform.

Anastasia and Penelope had already stripped off their extra layers and thrown them onto the pillow stack. Richard was sitting on the ground, and Zeke was pacing a small perimeter, looking around at their new location.

“We should have brought tents,” Anastasia said. “This would be just like camping.”

Penelope looked at the tall fir trees and the sloped ground rising up around them. “It would be camping,” she said.

Dotty pushed her hair back and picked out a leaf. “Try to keep your voices down,” she said. “We really don't know where we are or what might be around.”

Frank pulled in a deep breath and licked his lips. He reached back into the leafy wall and lifted the loose vines, looking at the stone and the shape of the hole. It had been an alcove once, a niche, and he had seen it before. But only once. A lifetime ago.

Facing the ruined wall, Frank backed up. He bumped
into Anastasia, but he didn't stop. The wall had changed a little. Or a lot, he couldn't tell. The place had been so vividly stamped in his memory for so long that it was hard to submit his memory of the place to the reality. He had filled things in over the years, imagining what he thought he was remembering. The place had seemed so big then. A hidden hollow, with a crumbling temple wall once belonging to the wizards but long thrown down. The vines were thicker and had swallowed the whole ruin, but it was the place.

Shutting his eyes, Frank could still see Dotty's father striding down toward the wall. He could picture him stepping up into the gap. He remembered waiting. And following. And crawling through into a strange bedroom. And a lifetime in Kansas.

His father-in-law had lied to him. Not that he was surprised. But why would he say that the connection had been broken, that the wall had crumbled? Why had he believed him? He hadn't ever. Not really.

Frank sat down hard and looked up at the sky that had been his as a child. He looked at the sharp firs, and then he filled his hands with earth. He lifted the dirt to his face, and he smelled it. It smelled like him, like his arms, like his bed, like what he really was. He was made from this stuff.

His lips were pinched tight between his teeth. His eyes were warm. He wiped them on the backs of his hands, blinked, and looked toward the hills. Beyond them was the sea. Beyond them, he would find the
graves of his fathers. And maybe of his mother and brothers. It had been long enough that beyond them, he knew he might find nothing. He sneezed again, and then sniffed.

Dotty looked at him. “Frank?” she asked. “What's wrong?”

Frank just smiled and stood up.

“Frank?”

“I know where we are,” he said.

Henrietta nodded slowly and jerked awake. The branches beneath her were moving. She couldn't sleep in a tree, but Eli wouldn't even let her lie down on the ground. He said it would make her feel worse, that the longer she slept on it, the weaker her life would be. So he'd tucked her up in the oldest, strongest tree he could find. And now he was gone.

Her feet had been killing her, but her legs had fallen asleep, so she didn't notice them. She did notice her back, resting against the tree's hard surface, and her tail-bone, which felt like it would be snapping off soon.

“Eli!” she yelled.

“What?”

The voice came from above her, from up in the tree's canopy. Old Eli, with his bag slung over his shoulder, came moving down through the leaves and lowered himself onto her branch.

“I can't sleep here,” Henrietta said. “I need to get down.”

“You've been asleep for an hour.”

Henrietta pulled herself upright and let her legs dangle. She wasn't looking forward to the needle pain when they woke up. “When did you get back?” she asked.

“An hour ago. You were snoring.”

Henrietta glared at him. “I was not. Where did you go?”

Eli pulled in a deep breath and yawned. “I have been risking capture and destruction. And without doing much good. We need to move through these hills and over the next ridgeline. Then you can rest again.”

“What?” Henrietta shut her eyes and leaned her head forward. “You said we were done. You said we were almost safe.” She looked back up.

Eli was chewing on his lower lip. It made his beard move. The top of his head was sunburned.

“I was wrong,” he said. “We have to keep going. Now.”

He slipped off the branch, grabbed a lower one, and dropped eight feet to the ground.

“How long have we been walking?” Henrietta asked. She stretched her numb feet carefully down to the next branch.

Eli grunted. “Does it matter?”

“Yes. I want to know.”

“Why?” Eli asked. “So you can wallow in your misfortune? No one has ever had to walk all night before. You are the very first.”

Henrietta dangled, then dropped. Pain shot up
through the arches of her feet and throbbed in her shins. She hopped for a moment and then sat down to rub them.

Eli laughed.

Henrietta wrinkled up her nose at him. “And I'm starving. I could lay down right here and just die.”

“You're right. You could. Why don't you try it? I'll come back in a couple years and see what's left. As for food, good I fed you before we started.”

“That was last night,” Henrietta said. “It has to be lunch by now.”

Eli looked up at the sky and squinted at the sun. “Not yet. But maybe you'll get lunch tomorrow. If we start moving now.”

Henrietta stood up and puffed her hair out of her eyes. Right now, she wanted to cut it all off. “Fine,” she said. “I'm ready. Where are we going?”

“We'll find out,” Eli said. He turned and started walking up the slope.

The hill in front of them climbed sharply. Trees were scattered around the rising slope, but higher up, they grew dense, broken only by enormous jutting rocks.

Henrietta tried to stretch her legs while she walked, and she swung her arms to loosen her shoulders. “What do you mean, we'll find out? What are we looking for?”

“We are looking for old mage-doors,” Eli said. “These foothills become mountains, and they run the length of the continent. Once, the mountains were the demesne of a single wizard. An order grew around him, and they
spread themselves through the ranges, in heights and valleys. They had a choke hold between the northern and southern seas, and the lands on either side saw little of each other without paying tributes for passage. They carved enclaves into the rock and built towers on the peaks, and they connected them all with doorways in stone. Many were disguised, but some were open. And not all were destroyed.”

“So we're looking for one?” Henrietta asked.

“Yes,” Eli said. “For one in particular. It may still lead us to the coast. One of the old way stations is in a cave not far from here. I meant to explore it while you slept. One doorway led far to the north, where the wizards retreated long ago. But I couldn't approach it. So we seek another.”

Henrietta was breathing heavily. “Why couldn't you approach it?”

Eli veered left, marching diagonally up the slope, weaving through trees and rocks. He turned and pointed back across the hill's long face.

“You can see the slope below the cave from here,” he said, and he kept walking.

Henrietta hopped up on a rock and looked back. She wasn't sure what she was looking for. But when she saw it, she knew. The green tree canopy was marked by a ring of orange. Inside, the leaves were a paler shade of dead, and in the very center, the trees were gray. Below the tree line, a swath had been burned through the tall grass. But Henrietta had seen farmers burn fields before, and she
knew that fire hadn't been used. The grass would have been black. Instead it was gray and shorter than the rest, curled and gray. Dust, ash, stirred above it in the breeze.

She jumped back off the rock and hurried after Eli. “What's happening?” she yelled. “Is that what you were talking about? The life-sucking? Why don't you just shut the door?”

Eli stopped and turned to look at her. His head was bright and sweaty. He took off his glasses and polished them on his sleeve. “If I were to walk past that doorway, or even into the cave, then I would either find myself turned to ash or pulled through and then turned to ash.”

“I can't believe you let me sleep so close to it.”

“You were in a tree,” Eli said. “Trees are strong. On the ground, and I would be carrying you right now. Only I wouldn't. I would have left you.”

Henrietta's feet were slipping sideways down the slope. She grabbed at rocks and trees as she passed, trying to brace herself and catch up with Eli.

“I still,” she said between breaths, “think that you should, well, just try and shut the door.” She looked up at Eli's back. “If that's where everything is coming from.”

“I appreciate your sage counsel,” Eli said. He turned around and watched her catch up. “When my sister, queen of all living things, blames me for everything now happening to her back garden and goat—if she survives—then I'm sure you could testify to my guilt. ‘O Queen, I told him he should just shut the door. That would have done it.' ”

“You don't have to be nasty,” Henrietta said. “I could help you try.”

Eli cocked his head in surprise. “And how would you do that?”

“I don't know. We could roll a rock in front of the cave or something.”

Eli leaned back and laughed. It wasn't a mean laugh, but it was patronizing, and Henrietta didn't like it.

“Thank you for your offer,” he said. “But it really wouldn't help, even if we both survived. The draw isn't coming from the door. It's pulling from the far north, but it is in concentration through the door. Closing it could only buy pointless time. And only if we could close it. Which we can't.”

Henrietta stopped beside him and put her hands on her head to breathe. He smiled, turned directly up the slope, and pushed on.

Henrietta took a deep breath and followed. “So what happened to the wizards, then?”

“You know,” Eli said over his shoulder, “you would have a much easier time if you focused on breathing.”

“I'm not tired,” Henrietta said.

“Liar. You were ready to lay down and die a while ago. Your life was so hard, what with staying up late and missing breakfast.”

“What happened to the wizards?”

“I will tell you,” Eli said, “if you beat me to the ridge. We really should be going faster.”

Henrietta held her breath and started running,
pushing forward with deep, painful strides. The bones in her feet felt like they might spring loose. She ran past Eli and smiled.

“Don't be idiotic,” he said. “Just walk faster. Find a pace you can hold.”

Henrietta didn't slow down. Eli had been shaking her off for long enough. And she'd let him. And she'd complained too much. A stitch knotted tight in her right side and then on her left. The two of them joined in the center of her stomach and contracted. She spotted a large rock jutting out of the trees at the ridgeline, and she resolved to climb it. That's where she would be waiting when Eli reached the top.