Summerland (18 page)

Taking off the glasses, Ethan turned them over in his hands, feeling a faint pulse in the thin wire that veined them. He went over to his father's dresser and rummaged around in the top drawer until he found a thin black case. In it lay a pair of gold-wire granny glasses that had belonged to the late Dr. Feld. He took them tenderly out and laid them on the dresser, and replaced them with Rob Padfoot's dark glasses, which just fit. He snapped the case shut and started out of the bedroom, with something nagging at his conscience. He turned around and looked back at the deserted bedroom. The wallet. Mr. Feld, Ethan knew, hated going anywhere without his wallet in his back pocket. It was not the cash or the credit cards or the photos it contained, nor the wallet itself, a battered hunk of sweat-darkened cowhide. Actually, Ethan was not really sure what the big deal about the wallet was. But many times his father had delayed their departure from the house, for the most urgent appointments or a simple walk in the woods, until he tracked it down. "I just feel kind of naked without it," he would explain. Ethan went back and stuffed the wallet into his duffel. Then he went back down to his homemade zeppelin. It floated above the driveway, tethered by the inflation hose (something Mr. Feld hated to see—it damaged the hose) just about where he had left it. Cinquefoil was nowhere to be seen.

There was a low bubbling sound, followed by a soft, sweet twittering. It was almost like the sound of one of those novelty whistles, shaped like a bird on a branch, that you fill with water. And then the makeshift airship eased forward a few feet and came to a stop. A moment later Cinquefoil's head appeared in the driver's window.

"Ya'll have ta test it," he said. "I can't reach the pedal and the wheel at the same time. What's more I'm a might—uneasy—in the midsta all this steel. Steel ain't a stuff we ferishers are all that partial ta."

Ethan found an empty wooden cable spool and used it to climb up into the car. He tossed in his duffel bag. Just before he climbed in along with it, he remembered his stick. He didn't think it was such a hot idea, somehow, to travel without it. It was not much of a weapon, really. But it had served him well once. He got down from the spool.

"Where ya going?" Cinquefoil said.

Ethan went over to the old Schwinn and grabbed the stick, and once again found that there was a strange comfort in holding it. He showed it to Cinquefoil, who looked at it carefully, with his little head tilted to one side.

"Ah," he said. "Yer bit o' woundwood."

"Woundwood?"

"Woundwood is the stuff that forms around a gall," Cinquefoil said. "That's a splinter o' the Lodgepole itself, rube. That's a rare thing ta have, a real piece o' the Lodgepole. Ya'll wanta hold onta that. They don't come loose too easy. You might almost say wound–wood is
choosy
about who it lets get a piece o' itself." He looked at Ethan, and scratched his head. "Mebbe there's something in ya after all"

"I don't know why," Ethan said, "but when I hold it—it feels—just really holdable."

"It might make ya a fine bat someday."

"A bat," Ethan said, turning the stick over in his hand. Though scarred and knotted, it was perfectly straight. It had never before occurred to Ethan that a baseball bat started out as a piece of some tree.

"The Lodgepole is a ash tree," Cinquefoil explained. "It's the Ash o' Ashes."

"And baseball bats are—is that right?—made of ashwood?"

"Always. From the start o' the game until now. And why would that be, da ya imagine?"

"Why," Ethan repeated, uncertain.

"Yes, why. Don't ya
ever
wonder why, little reuben?" Cinquefoil sank back into the interior of the car, then reappeared. "Don't forget yer mitt, neither."

"My mitt?"

"It's a long journey we're contemplating. There'll be ample time along the way ta work on yer catching game."

Ethan retrieved the mitt, and then, carrying it and the unborn bat, he climbed up once more onto the wooden spool and pulled himself into the station wagon. He put his hands on the wheel. Cinquefoil stood on the passenger's seat and held onto the dashboard, looking eager as a dog.

"Touch the pedal," Cinquefoil said.

Ethan reached out with his right foot. There was nothing there.

"I can't reach the pedals," he said.

"Move the seat forward."

Ethan shifted his seat until his chest nearly touched the steering wheel. Now he could hit the gas with his right toes.

With the same watery chirping they glided forward twenty feet or so, maybe a little too quickly.

"Can ya see through the foreglass, there?"

"Yeah."

"Then ya must know we're about ta hit the glass barn."

Ethan moved his foot to the brake, hoping that it too was under a grammer. The car came shuddering to a stop when the front bumper was three inches from smashing into a corner of the packing shed.

"Oops," Ethan said. "Sorry."

"Just…what are the words? 'Back her up.'"

"Back her up."

"Put the machine inta
ree
-verse."

Ethan found the red R on the shift knob and tried to drag the gearshift over, right, and toward the back of the car. It wouldn't go.

"The
clutch
," Cinquefoil said. "Ferisher machines don't even have such things. But fer some reason I thought ya'd find it simpler."

"I'm only eleven," Ethan said.

"Don't remind me," said Cinquefoil.

Ethan got it into reverse, and gave the wheel a spin. Skid backed around to the right, and then with another twist, and a shift into first gear, lurched forward and down the driveway to the road. They were still only a few feet above the ground.

"I need loft," Ethan said.

"The radio."

Ethan switched on the radio. He touched the volume knob and looked at Cinquefoil, who nodded. Slowly he twisted the knob, clockwise, and Skid ascended, creaking and shuddering, into the sky.

"Okay," Ethan said. "We're up."

"We seem ta be," Cinquefoil remarked.

Ethan took her up until he was twice as high as the highest trees. Then he turned toward the Rideout place. The ferisher drive burbled and rang like rain in the gutters. A breeze filled Ethan's ears.

"We call her Skidbladnir," he said. "My dad and me. It's a Scandinavian name."

"What does it mean?" Cinquefoil said." 'Ugly as a grayling's hind parts?'"

"It was a flying ship that belonged to the god Frey," Ethan said. "In Norse mythology. A huge, beautiful ship, so cleverly made that you could fold it up and stick it in your pocket."

"A jesting name, then," Cinquefoil said. "Like calling a bald man Curly."

"I guess so. Actually mostly we just call her Skid."

Cinquefoil nodded. "If I were ta give this craft a name, it would definitely be—" and then he uttered a series of weird syllables, full of k's and g's and x's. Something like
Karggruxragakkurgorok
.

"What language is that?"

"Old Fatidic."

"What's it mean?"

"It means, 'Ugly as a grayling's hind parts.'"

Ten minutes after leaving the house on the hill, they were hovering over the Rideout compound. Jennifer T. and Thor Wignutt were waiting for him in the dusk, next to a small mountain of gear.

"What the heck is that thing?" she called up to Ethan.

"I made it," said Ethan. "Shut up."

He dialed down the radio volume, and eased the car onto a large bald patch in the center of the Rideouts' ragged yard. As they were landing, the twins, Darrin and Dirk, came running out one of the side houses, along with some of their young cousins. They stood gaping at the airship, except for Dirk, who tried to hit it with a brick. His shot went wide, and then his older sister gave him a smack on the back of the head. After that Dirk just stood there gaping, too. Uncle Mo and Aunt Shambleau came out onto their porch to see. But their eyes were not on the aged Swedish automobile that was descending from the heavens onto their weeds. They were looking at the ferisher.

"Can they see you?" Ethan asked Cinquefoil in a whisper.

"I didn't see no point in wasting a grammer on them," Cinquefoil said. "No one ever believes a Rideout. Rideouts don't even believe their own selves."

"Can everybody see you? I mean, if you don't work a grammer on them?"

Cinquefoil smacked him on the thigh. "Don't ya read? Don't children
read
anymore?"

"I read!"

"And ya mean, ya don't know who we let see us and who we never, ever do?"

"You only let people see you who believe in you already," Ethan said.

"That's the very one!" cried Aunt Shambleau. "Naked as a fish!"

"Naked as a fish!" said little Dirk Rideout, and his brother said, "Naked! Naked!"

"You kids get back in the house and look at television," Aunt Shambleau said. The twins and their cousins just stood there. Aunt Shambleau reached for her cataract glasses and made as if to take them off. The little cousins took a step backward. She started to slide the big wraparounds slowly down the bridge of her nose. The Rideout cousins all ran, screaming and yelling, back into the cabin they'd come out of. Nobody actually knew what would happen next if Aunt Shambleau ever took off her glasses. But clearly it would not be something good.

Ethan got out of the car and Jennifer T. brought Thor over.

"They got my dad," Ethan said. "Coyote did. This guy Rob Padfoot came and took him. Here." He crouched down and unzipped the duffel, taking out the glasses case. He took out Padfoot's glasses and passed them to Jennifer T. "Put these on."

Jennifer T. slipped on Padfoot's glasses. She started, and ducked her head. Her mouth opened.

"Huh," she said.

"What is it? What do you see?" Thor said.

"I see Mr. Feld," Jennifer T. said. "He's wearing a blindfold. He's sitting up."

"He's sitting up?" Ethan said. He wanted to see that.

"He's talking. He's doing that pointing thing he does when he's explaining stuff."

Ethan wondered what his father could possibly be explaining to his captors. He took the glasses back from Jennifer T. and put them on. She was right; Padfoot was clearly on the receiving end of a lecture from Mr. Feld, who was pointing at electrons or air molecules or whatever invisibly fine thing was the subject of his talk. It made Ethan's heart ache to see his dad patiently trying to enlighten Rob Padfoot on some score.

"Why did he—why would Coyote take your
dad
?" Jennifer T. said.

"Maybe he's going to make an airship?"

"Oh, Coyote
loves
contrivances," Cinquefoil said. "He made the very first one."

"The net," Thor said. It was his turn with the dark glasses; he had taken off his own horn-rims to try them out.

"That's right." Cinquefoil studied him, frowning.

"How did you know
that
, Thor?" Ethan said. "Did Jennifer T. explain this to you?"

"I tried," she said. "It turned out that I don't actually understand what's going on."

"But do you get it about all this 'scampering' and 'leaping' stuff, Thor?"

"Of course," Thor said, in his most reasonable TW03 voice, still peering into the lenses of Padfoot's glasses. "There is an underlying structure to the universe. This structure takes the form of a quantum indeterminacy tree. Apparently there are certain individuals who know how to locate the underlying structural elements and follow them for short distances. When it's done within a single dimension of reality, it's called
scampering
. When the travel is interdimensional, it's a
leap
.''

It was hard to know what to say to this. Nobody spoke for a moment. Thor took off the dark glasses and passed them back to Ethan, who returned them to their case.

"He's talking about you," Thor said.

"Huh? How can you tell?"

"I read his lips. He said, 'Ethan.' He said, 'my son.'"