Spirits in the Wires (37 page)

“I wasn't talking about them,” Aaran said. “And I
have
read your books—or at least the ones I've reviewed. The ones where you collect all those urban myths and make connections between them and old legends and folk tales. In them you allude to personal experiences as well, though you don't go as much into them.”

“That's because until now, I could count my truly inexplicable experiences on one hand. I've always been a believer and a disbeliever at the same time.”

“It never seems like that in your books.”

Christy laughed. “That's because people tend to find what they're personally looking for in them—it's human nature. The believers believe, the skeptics focus on my own questions, and those with a personal axe to grind against me will find what they think makes me look foolish, even when the examples they inevitably pull out aren't actually in the text.”

On the other side of Christy, Suzi laughed as well. “I'm guessing Aaran was one of the latter.”

“Maybe I was a bit too enthusiastic,” Aaran said, “but—”

“You had an axe to grind,” Suzi finished for him, still laughing.

“Yeah, I guess I did.”

“That's okay,” Christy said. “It's not like you're alone. The very idea of the consensual world, never mind discussing what might lie hidden within or beyond its boundaries, pushes a lot of people's buttons.”

Suzi gave him a curious look. “You sound pretty accepting of the negative press.”

“Oh, I have my moments of bitterness, but really, what can you do? You can't—sometimes I think you shouldn't even try to—change people's minds. It just gets their backs up. Better to put the information out and let them deal with it in their own way, on their own time.”

“And if they don't take the time to assimilate the information?” Suzi asked.

“You conduct your own life as a positive example. Always remain open-minded.”

“People aren't going to believe in fairies just because you do,” Aaran said. “They aren't even going to think seriously about it.”

“I know. That's why in my nonfiction I'd rather focus on the World As It Is—as Professor Dapple likes to call it. The idea of a consensual world— that things are the way they are only because that's what we've agreed to. It's something that seems completely preposterous to so many people, but the funny thing is that chaos theory—which science
does
take seriously—is now catching up to the same ideas: how on a microscopic level, it's the presence of an observer that makes a thing be one thing or another. Until that moment of observation, they're simultaneously both and their possibility remains completely open-ended.

“And those same scientists are now actually considering the concept of parallel worlds as viable.”

“Well, considering where we are,” Suzi said, “that theory is pretty obviously true.”

Christy shook his head. “These are
otherworlds.
The parallel worlds theory posits that every time a decision is made, a new world splits off from the original, making for an infinite number of alternate or parallel worlds. They start off very close to one another, but if you think about the decisions in your own life, even the smallest choice can start a ripple effect resulting in utterly changing your life.”

“Like how the movement of butterfly wings in China,” Suzi said, “can affect the weather here. Well, not
here,
maybe, but back in Newford.”

Christy nodded.

Or like stopping to talk to Suzi had been for him, Aaran thought. It had begun with him thinking of himself as usual, wondering what he could get out of her, and ended up with him being here, in this place, risking his life for other people, most of whom he didn't even know.

Was there some other parallel world where he hadn't? Where he'd gone on the way he always did?

Was there a world where he hadn't forced Jackson Hart to write that virus in the first place?

Before he could follow that line of thinking too far he realized that up ahead, Bojo and Raul had come to a stop. He looked past them to see that the path they were following dipped under a freeway overpass. To their right, the highway was lost in a wide sweep of fields and far-off mountains. To their left, the ocean had long since vanished and he could now see a large city in the distance. Traffic sped by on the freeway in both directions, no one seeming to pay any attention to them.

“Okay, this is weird,” Aaran said.

“Why's that?” Bojo asked.

“Well, look at this. What's a freeway doing here? I thought fairyland was supposed to be all pastoral, with maybe a castle or some little village.”

Bojo smiled. “This isn't fairyland—it's the otherworld. Somewhere in its reaches you'll find every landscape you could possibly imagine, and some you can't.”

“Yeah, but that city …”

“IsMabon.”

Aaran saw Christy perk up.

“Mabon?” Christy repeated. “Really? That's Sophie's city. Or at least it was when she was a little girl.” He turned to look at the others. “She started imagining it when she was a latchkey kid and … well, I guess all of that grew up around the few streets she created.”

“You know Mabon's creator?” Bojo asked.

Christy nodded. “Sure. She's a friend of mine.”

“Wait a minute,” Aaran said. “Are you talking about Sophie Etoile, the artist?”

When Christy gave another nod, Aaran was about to argue how that was impossible.
He'd
met Sophie and …

But he caught himself and just shrugged instead. Maybe nothing was impossible anymore—at least not in this place.

“I need you all to wait here for a few moments,” Bojo said, “while I scout the lay of the land under that overpass.”

“Is there something wrong?” Raul asked.

“Don't know yet,” Bojo said. “But it looks like a place of power—what with that freeway and all those people travelling over what amounts to another crossroads. You've already had a brief introduction to what you can meet at a crossroads.”

He was referring to the hellhounds, Aaran realized, which the others had confronted in Holly's basement. He and Suzi had missed them and he, for one, was happy to leave it that way.

“It won't take me long,” Bojo said.

Aaran watched him go ahead, then looked at the city again.

“So Sophie made that,” he said.

Christy nodded.

“Does your friend Jilly have a place here as well? When I think about how
she
goes on about fairies and magic …”

“No,” Christy said. “But she's been to Mabon.”

“Bojo's waving the ‘all clear,' “ Raul said.

Aaran took another look at the city before trailing along after the others. On the other side of the overpass, the landscape did another abrupt change and for a block or two they were walking in a derelict cityscape that reminded Aaran of the Tombs back home in Newford, but this area seemed far older than the abandoned buildings and empty lots of the Tombs. This city appeared to have been deserted for decades—or at least deserted by normal people. By the time they were halfway down the second block, Aaran got the sense that they were being watched, but by whom or what, he couldn't tell. He just had this prickle in the back of his neck, some vestige of alarm handed down from his own primitive ancestors warning of imminent danger.

But then they reached the end of the block and they were walking across a frozen field, snow crunching underfoot. Aaran shivered and wrapped his thin jacket more tightly around him. He was about to ask Suzi if she wanted to see if they could find something warmer for her to wear in the pack that Holly had given them, when the landscape changed once more and they were walking through desert scrub, where every plant seemed to have a thorn, even the trees. But at least it was warm, and the nervousness Aaran had felt in the deserted city had faded.

They'd fallen into a new order as they walked. Bojo continued to take the lead, but Raul was now walking on his own behind him. Christy and Suzi were next, the two of them still talking about consensual worlds and parallel universes. Tired of that conversation, Aaran stayed in the rear.

Trudging along, he continued to fall farther behind the others, distracted over and over again by the changing landscape. By the time they came to another of what seemed like a perennial English countryside, the others were well ahead of him and didn't hear him when he stopped and called out after them. He was surprised that none of them had noticed the little man he'd spotted just off the road. But perhaps he hadn't even been here when they walked by, the landscape changed so frequently.

Aaran studied him curiously, half-disbelieving what he saw.

He was more the way Aaran imagined a fairy-tale character to be than Dick, the hob he'd met back at Holly's store, had been. Barely a foot tall, this little man's features were all sharp angles, his limbs gangly and stick-like. He was wearing a red cloth cap and leather pants, but his jacket seemed to be made of burrs and leaves, held together with vines and braided grasses.

He appeared to have his foot snagged in among the protruding roots of the tree that towered above him. Aaran couldn't identify it. All he knew was that it was a solitary tree with a wide expanse of open fields spreading out from beyond it and some of its boughs overhanging the path. When Aaran stopped, the little man tried to make himself invisible, but without any real luck. He wasn't having much luck freeing his foot, either.

Aaran glanced at where his companions were still foraging ahead. He remembered Bojo's warning when they'd first crossed over.

I
can't emphasize this enough. Don't leave the path.

But this wouldn't really be leaving the path. It was only a couple of quick steps to where the little man was trapped.

He gave a last quick look at the backs of his companions, two hundred yards or so ahead on the path, then stepped off, into the field. The little man's almond-shaped eyes went round with fear and he frantically started tugging at his foot again, his whole little body shaking and trembling.

“Take it easy,” Aaran said, gentling his voice the way you did with a frightened child. “I'm not going to hurt you.”

When he reached forward, the little man stopped moving. He lay there, terrified eyes staring at Aaran, nervous tremors making his limbs jump.

“Really,” Aaran told him. “I'm here to help.”

He dug with his fingers around the little man's foot, found where the roots had wedged around the tiny ankle. It only took him a moment to stretch the knotty roots far enough apart to pull the foot out. Even with his foot free, the little man continued to lie there on the ground, shaking with fear.

“It's okay,” Aaran said. “You can go now.”

He moved back, holding his hands open to show that he meant no harm.

“Or did you break something?” Aaran asked.

But as soon as he was an arm's length away, the little man jumped to his feet and went tearing off into the field. In a moment, all Aaran could see was the small wake the little man left behind in the tall grass and weeds. Then that, too, was gone.

“So I guess you're fine,” he said, straightening up. “No need to say thank you.”

He had a last look into the field, trying to see if he could spot the little man, before he turned around to get back onto the path.

Which was no longer there.

Don't leave the path.

Oh, come on, he thought. I only took a couple of steps.

But retracing those steps didn't bring him back to the packed dirt of the path they'd been following. Instead, he was still in the middle of this enormous field, knee high grass and weeds swaying in a light breeze, the expanse dotted here and there with large trees like the one under which he'd rescued the little fairy man.

And not at all a bright little man, either, Aaran thought. If the fairy hadn't panicked, he'd have discovered that all he had to do was push his foot the other way and he could have worked himself free.

Maybe fairies weren't all that smart.

Right. And look who's talking.

He turned back to look at the tree, trying to judge how many steps he'd taken from the path to get to the roots where the little fairy man had been trapped. He was about to go back and try to retrace his steps when a hand fell on his shoulder and he suddenly understood the cliche of almost jumping out of your skin.

Adrenaline slammed in his chest and he whirled, flailing his arms, only to have them both caught in firm grips. Then he saw who it was that held him. Bojo let go as soon as he stopped struggling.

“Jesus,” Aaran said, heart still pounding in his chest. “You just about gave me a heart attack.”

“I told you not to leave the path.”

“I only stepped off for a minute.”

“Maybe for you,” Bojo said. “But you were gone two hours for us.”

That didn't seem possible.

“Two hours?” Aaran repeated.

The tinker nodded.

“But…”

“Trust me,” Bojo said. “You were gone for a while.”

“But…”

Bojo smiled. “I thought a newspaperman would have a larger vocabulary than that.”

“He should. I mean, I do. It's just…”

“Hard to get your head around. I know. It's always like that at first. But if it makes you feel any better, the four of you are doing much better for a first trip into the other world than most people do. Now come on. Let's get back to the others.”

He did something with his hand again, a sideways motion, a twitch of his fingers, but Aaran couldn't concentrate on it. And then he didn't care about it anymore because they were back on the path and Suzi grabbed him in a hug.

“I thought we'd lost you forever,” she said into his chest.

He put his arms around her and looked over the top of her head at the others.