Mulberry Wands (28 page)

“Alex is dead, and Susan is missing. How is
that okay?”

“What? Susan? What about her?”

“She’s been missing since the beginning of
November.”

“She’s what? Why didn’t you tell me?” Maggie
didn’t sound nearly as stoned now.

“I told you weeks ago.” Griff felt guilty.
He’d told her, hadn’t he? When he dropped off the cat trap? He was
sure he’d said something, but maybe she’d been too stoned to hear
it. Or maybe his memory wasn’t good. Maybe he’d just thought he’d
told her, but had been too wrapped up in Zoë to remember.

“Where did she go?”

“I don’t know. Her roommates don’t know
either. They say she just disappeared.”

“Susie? They did something to my little
girl?” she said, voice breaking. “Damn owls. They’ll be sorry they
messed with me.”

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Griff said.
“Maggie?”

But Maggie had hung up.

An owl was sitting on the fire hydrant not
four feet outside the phone booth, watching him. Listening.

The party that escorted Susan back to her
house consisted of four adult warriors, Shaluun, Noruu, Runook and
Tuusit, and a young man whom they identified as “Scout”. She was
surprised that they didn’t insist on a female chaperone, seeing as
how old-fashioned they were about women, but Tuusit said that
Shaluun was a man who “saw men as more than brothers” and that he
was chaperone enough. They all agreed that walking into
cat-territory was far too dangerous for a woman.

In the morning, they packed provisions,
water, and weapons. Susan had gotten up at dawn with the rest of
them, but she still hadn’t learned where everything was kept, and
how to tie all the knots they liked to use for packing, so she
quickly blew through all the work she was deemed capable of doing.
They at least let her carry a pack, though hers (being the one that
carried emergency medical supplies) was the lightest.

It was at most, a mile to the house from
where Tuusit’s family lived to where Susan’s new house was. If she
had been big, she could have walked it in twenty minutes. They
didn’t leave until mid-morning, and they didn’t take the direct
route, going far out of their way in order to stay under cover as
much as possible. They also avoided human houses, cars, anywhere
anyone had seen a cat or a stray dog, and a whole block that Tuusit
said had “bad spirits”. Their path was like the dotted line that
that little kid always took in that boring circle comic in the
newspaper.

Just after noon, they came across a
cinderblock wall that had a small hole halfway up. The warriors got
into an argument (Scout looked away, as though he were
acknowledging he was too young to have a say in it) the outcome of
which was that Noruu scaled the wall and climbed in the hole. A few
minutes later, he came out again and beckoned them all inside.

Inside, two women chattered excitedly and
hugged Noruu, then beckoned the whole party down the wall, out a
hole on the other side, and behind some weeds to the warren they’d
dug under the foundation of an abandoned gas station. Susan stayed
back to read the posted sign on the chain link fence which said
that the property had just been purchased by a drugstore chain, and
that shoppers could look forward to the fourth drugstore of that
chain in a square mile radius.

“What are we stopping for?” Susan whispered
to Tuusit, when she ran to catch up with him.

“It would be rude to pass by this way without
stopping, and Noruu’s sister is married to the head of this family.
His other sister lives here too.”

Tuusit ducked under the cement slab into the
dark tunnel. He must have stopped to let his eyes adjust to the
darkness, because she accidentally ran into him, bashing her nose
against his back.

“Do they know that this gas station is going
to be torn up and replaced with another building?” Susan asked.

“What?” he said.

“It’s on the sign,” she said.

“We don’t usually learn to read your
language, only speak it,” he told her. “We read with our
fingers.”

“Oh, right.” She ran her fingers through her
hair, feeling the knots in there which they said told her
story.

Tuusit reached back and touched her hair,
gently stroking her scalp before pulling his hand away as though
ashamed of how forward he’d been. He cleared his throat. “We should
tie the tale of this journey into your hair tonight.”

“Tonight? How long is this journey going to
take?”

He cut her off with a gesture, and she didn’t
even tell him not to be rude, because she wanted to hear the same
thing he did. Music. Someone was playing a drum, and a reeded flute
of some sort. Music. She hadn’t heard it in so long, it fulfilled
her like she was satisfying a vitamin deficiency. She missed her
trumpet.

They followed the sound of music deeper into
the tunnels, and came to a chamber full of light. Susan looked up
and saw that the roof was made of windows whose aluminum frames had
been stripped. The light was greenish, and the packed earth floor
was slightly greasy except where they’d laid fabric carpets to
protect their feet. She wanted to argue about the safety of living
near all this petroleum, but decided it would be rude. Besides,
they’d have to move soon, whether they liked it or not.

She figured they’d just stay long enough to
have a meal and listen to a few songs, but as soon as they brought
out the provisions they’d packed, Noruu’s sisters shouted with
scorn and started barking orders at the older children. Within an
hour, the chamber had a feast in it. Noruu’s sister apologized
frequently that the meat was dried, not fresh, but they had plenty
of insects (which apparently, like fish, didn’t count as meat to
some people).

As much as Susan loved exotic food (and, to
be honest, food in general) she was anxious to be on their way. She
met Runook’s eyes and thought he agreed with her. Tuusit and
Shaluun were old enough to conceal their feelings under politeness,
if they were irritated, and Scout ran off with a couple of other
young men whom he called his cousins.

They ate their fill, and napped, and had a
second snack, and saw a gloriously pollution-reddened sunset, and
then finally set off. It was moonlessly dark, a fact Noruu’s sister
pointed out when she tried to get them to stay, but Tuusit said it
was safer to travel after darkness. There were more cats and owls,
he explained, but fewer dogs and humans. It surprised Susan that he
categorized people as dangerous. It also pleased her that Tuusit
been deliberately waiting for sunset and hadn’t just been wasting
time. It had seemed like he was stalling.

After dark, they were able to travel more
directly. She heard the Catholic church chime seven by the time
they reached the mouth of the alley behind her new house.

Scout saw something ahead, and froze, then
the rest of them froze in turn, like a chemical reaction.

A moment later she saw the reason he’d been
wary. A pack of kittens came by, close enough that with a couple
leaps she could have reached out and pet one. She remained frozen.
They weren’t at the clumsy cute stage, they were weaned and
adolescent, just athletic enough to hunt. They looked hungry and
lean, with ribs poking out through their fur, goop in the corner of
their eyes, and the occasional frantic flicking of an ear, as
though they had mites.

The last of the pack was an older cat, grey
and white with sagging teats who must have been their mother. Part
of her tail was gone, like it had been cut off. The first kitten,
an orange tom with a wide head and big feet, turned in their
direction and slowed down, as though he smelled them, but when his
littermates passed him, he, too, loped to catch up.

When the cats were out of sight, Scout gave
the all clear.

“You’re frowning,” Scout said. “I thought
humans liked cats.”

“I get pissed off when irresponsible pet
owners don’t spay and neuter their cats.”

“If they were really responsible, they’d kill
the cats.” Noruu glared into the darkness. “Kill every one on the
earth.”

“Someday,” Runook promised him.
“Someday.”

“Why do you hate them so much?” Susan asked.
She’d never heard someone with such an intense loathing of felines,
even in Texas, where it was joked the men who didn’t hate cats had
to pay an infidel tax.

“A cat murdered his wife,” Tuusit
explained.

“Oh.” She had to allow that was a pretty good
reason.

“Psst!” Scout said.

They all froze again, as the big orange
kitten came back. He sniffed around the wall, then towards them.
The cat couldn’t see them. He was inches from his prey, and all he
could do was sniff and blunder about. Susan had the horrible urge
to giggle. It was like playing Blind Man’s Bluff, except that this
blind man had dozens of claws, sharp fangs, and a belly she could
hear gurgling from here.

Eventually, the cat gave up, and walked off,
pausing only long enough to take a dump in a pile of grass
clippings.

“Tuusit,” Runook said, “I’d feel safer on the
wall.”

Tuusit nodded and gestured to the others to
scale the wall. Susan glanced at him. She hadn’t realized until
then that they recognized him as their leader.

The pinkish cinderblock was studded with tiny
crevices, merely a rough texture to human hands, but as climbable
as chain link when you were small. She scampered up the wall with
the rest of them, reaching the top before anyone could insult her
by offering her a hand up. Five feet up, she had a clear view of
the next three houses, as well as the alley to her left. It wasn’t
a perfect path, as they’d have to get off the wall to go around in
the places where branches overhung, or where a gate or a section of
wooden fence interrupted.

Susan managed to get in line behind Tuusit,
so she could talk to him. “Can’t they get us up here too?”

Tuusit nodded.

“We were invisible back there, weren’t we? Is
that why I’d never seen your people before? Are you invisible all
the time?”

He shook his head, but didn’t turn around.
“We must hold still in order to become invisible.”

“I thought gnosti were all invisible except
to mages.”

He shook his head again, but kept his eyes on
the wall. “It’s not that simple. The less a part of this world, the
less visible. For some, the barrier between this world and the
Elsewhere is thin. For others, it is impermeable. We can traverse
it enough to hide. We have wise men and women who are able to slip
into the Elsewhere completely, through fasting and meditation. When
they do this, they disappear even to our eyes. We also have some
poor folk who are never able to hide themselves from predators. We
pity them, as they usually get eaten young, but it is better that
they die than for them to have children and weaken our people.”

“How do you know if you’re one of those
people who can’t turn invisible?” Susan asked. What would she have
done if she hadn’t been able to turn invisible, she thought but
didn’t ask.

“You don’t,” Tuusit said. This time he did
turn around, just long enough to glance at her. “Until a cat eats
you. This is why we hide from all predators, whether they have the
sight or not.”

“Is that why I’d never seen one of you
before? Because you hide from us?”

“They say before we were made small, we were
as bold as huge-mans, but now, a prudent warrior fights only when
he cannot hide.” Tuusit had to stop, as a thick branch overhanging
the wall prevented him from going any farther. He swung his legs
over the side and began to climb down.

She climbed down as well, and inched along
the side of the wall, like she was bouldering. It was three feet to
the ground, less height than what she climbed when she was
bouldering at the gym without a harness. Would she get badly hurt
if she fell from this height? She was smaller now, but she also
weighed less. Better not fall, just in case.

“When you talk about the ones that can go to
the elsewhere, I guess you mean ones like flamesprays, graebnors,
hexelmoths, and bramblemaes,” she said. “Those are the fey I see
most often.”

“They don’t hide. They can vanish so quickly
that they’re nearly impossible to catch. That’s why hexelmoth meat
is such a delicacy.”

It suddenly struck her that she was going to
be big again soon, and she wouldn’t ever get to eat that again.

They bouldered underneath the hanging branch,
then climbed back up to the top of the wall again so they could
walk. One of the warriors gave a shout, and Tuusit gestured for
Susan to hide. Runook and Shaluun were close enough to the branches
to nestle in among the leaves. Tuusit just pressed himself flat
against the wall, and Susan did the same.

Scout stood on top of the wall, looking up at
the sky.

“Scout!” Susan whispered, but he ignored her,
and Tuusit gave her the palm to shush her.

Scout kept looking up. The shadow of an owl
passed overhead. They waited a few heartbeats, and then Scout
relaxed. Tuusit gave the all-clear, and they scaled the wall
again.

“What was that all about?” Susan asked
Tuusit, hoping he wasn’t tired of her questions.

“Sunwards hate it when you hide from them,
but if they took one of the warriors, we wouldn’t have enough to
fight the cat, so Runook’s son stayed above.

“It’s cause I’m so good with languages,”
Scout said, winking. When they re-formed their line, he ended up
being just behind Susan.

“How many languages do you speak?” She didn’t
want to turn back to speak with him, because a breeze had picked up
and she needed to concentrate on staying on the wall.

“English, Spanish, ASL, Navajo, Hopi,
Mandarin, Dog, Western Songbird, and of course Owl.”

“Not cat?” she joked.

“Cats don’t listen, so there’s no point in
learning to speak to them.”