Aluminum Leaves

by Marion Deeds

  Trevian touched his hat. “Thank you for your help. Good health to you and yours,” he said. He moved on, then paused. Erin moved up to his side.

  “What was that smell?” she said, wrinkling her nose.

  He sniffed hard. “What smell?”

  “It smelled like burned hair and lickerish.”

  “Lickerish?”

  “It’s a kind of spicy candy, very sharp. Some people like it.”

  “There is copper in that house,” he said.

  “That’s not what copper smells like.”

  “I smell nothing except dust and the lake,” he said.

  “It’s gone now.”

  They walked past the ruins of the counting house and the empty town square. They saw no further evidence of people. The air was still and the ruined town silent. Trevian hadn’t realized that everyone had left. He assumed that there would be a village, or even a makeshift roadhouse for prospectors and trader caravans coming from the north. The town was not merely dying, it was dead, soon even the prospectors would pass it by.

  Erin sniffed. “I’m smelling it again.” He felt it too, the warmth of the charmed metal.

  “You’re a copper-hunter,” he said. “You’re sensing copper.”

  “I’m not, though.”

  “Many copper-hunters smell copper, and some feel tremors in their arms and legs when they grow near it. You smell it just as I feel it. The Dosmanos family had copper-hunters in its line.”

  “But why now? I mean, I’ve been carrying around copper, I lived around copper, and I’ve never noticed this smell before.”

  “You grew accustomed to it, perhaps.”

  “Believe me, that’s not it. I’d remember if I smelled this before. Something here must have triggered it.” She pointed up toward the sheriff’s old house. “It’s stronger up that way.”

  Trevian nodded. The town had built the house for its sheriff years before, a fine, two-story thing, and was part of the position’s pay. The sheriff had gotten very little coin for his work, and his wife, a well-known weaver, brought in most of their money. He guessed they were gone now, since there was no town to need a sheriff, and she could ply her trade anywhere they could find wool or flax. From the front, it looked as if the house had avoided most of the damage the other buildings had faced. As they started up the hill, the side of the house came into view, and he saw where the wall had crumpled. The roof sagged. The house had been damaged after all.

  “That’s where we’re headed?”

  He nodded.

  She glanced at him. “It doesn’t look safe.”

  “It’s safe enough I think,” he said.

  “You haven’t grown up around earthquakes,” she said.

  “You mean the earth ripples? I have. We have them all the time in the Crescent.”

  She shrugged and looked down at the ground without answering.

  Trevian adjusted his knapsack. “I’m not sure we’ll even need to go inside,” he said. “I don’t know where my uncle is staying. This is simply where we’re meeting.” He didn’t tell her that this was mostly riddle-guessing on his part. He wasn’t even sure Uncle Oshane was inside.

  The garden that had filled the yard in front when he had been here two years ago had gone mostly to seed. Bean runners crawled along the ground and other vegetables had leafed out. No one had tended it, but there had been enough rain in the valley through the spring to keep the plants alive.

  He stopped at the edge of the yard. The pleasant sense of copper filled him. Erin’s face was wrinkled, and he guessed she was sensing it as much as he was. “Greetings to the house,” he called, and waited.

  “Why is it so quiet here? There isn’t even any wind.”

  He raised his voice. “Greetings to the house.”

  “Did you hear that?” Erin said. He had heard nothing, but a moment later, the door opened. A man stepped out. The fall of shadows hid his face. He came down the three steps, as tall as Trevian, his hat tipped forward. Trevian recognized the slight swagger to his walk, and he relaxed. He took a step forward.

  “Uncle Oshane,” he said.

  “At last, Nephew.” Oshane came down off the steps and walked toward them. Oshane tilted back his hat. Behind Trevian, Erin gasped.

  “You bastard, Trevian!” Erin shouted. Trevian started to turn. She bolted past him. Oshane stepped out into the road, his arms outstretched. “Wait.”

  Erin hurled her knapsack at him. It hit him and he staggered. She dodged around him and ran, her feet churning up dust as she headed past the house into the hills.

  “Erin! Wait!” Trevian started after her. What was she thinking? She didn’t know her way around the valley, and the hills here were treacherous. “Erin!”

  Oshane broke into a trot and cut Trevian off, both hands raised. “Let her go, Nephew. Let her go. She’ll get over her fright.”

  “She doesn’t know this place!”

  Oshane’s voice was so different from his father’s, low-pitched, smooth as aged plum lick. “She’ll be safe here. I’ve got it warded.”

  “You don’t understand! She doesn’t know the land!”

  Oshane caught his arm. “She’ll come back when she’s ready.” He stooped and picked up the abandoned knapsack. “What’s in here?”

  “She’s not a wandering sheepdog, Uncle.”

  “Trevian. She’ll go nowhere. Have faith in me.”

  “Why did she run from you? And why call me a bastard?”

  Oshane tipped his head to one side and spread out his hands in a clownish gesture of ignorance. “Should I know this? She’s your friend. I wasn’t expecting you to bring a woman.”

  “She’s not some ordinary woman.”

  “I assume you said something to make her angry.”

  “I said nothing.” Trevian looked around his uncle, up the hill, but Erin was nowhere in sight. “If you’ve warded this place, how did we make it through?”

  “I reawakened the ward. I put it to sleep when I heard you halloo the town.”

  “You cannot have warded the entire village, Uncle.”

  Oshane smiled. “Oh, Trevian, wait.” He turned, bent, and picked up Erin’s knapsack. “Come inside now,” he said, “and you’ll see the things that I can do.”

  The messenger bag thumped against her thigh, as if nothing had changed since she’d fled her burning house. Fool. Stupid, stupid fool.

  Trevian shouted something behind her. She didn’t spare a glance. He shouted again and then fell silent. She didn’t dare look to see if he were chasing her, or something else was.

  She had trusted him so easily, let him lead her right into Vianovelle’s hands. Why hadn’t she seen it?

  Her breath gusted in her ears as she climbed, skirting a hole in the trail, dodging a boulder. She settled into a lope. The ground was rough, and she had to watch her footing.

  Behind her, a hiss, a crackling sound she knew too well. One of the hounds, maybe both. The track climbed, and beyond a row of rough gray boulders, she could see trees. She could only hope to make it there, to some cover, and hope they didn’t burn the grove down to find her.

  The trail leveled out a bit, and she lowered her head and lengthened her stride, pulling with her arms, running with all the speed she could gather. On her left, the ground dropped away, and she veered right. Her heart pounded and black spots flickered in her vision, but she kept on.

  Her head collided with a wall. She crashed into it, staggering. Her world blossomed into pain. She tried to straighten up, but her legs went limp. She fell. She heard herself groaning, heard the crackle of the hounds, and pushed herself up with her hands. The earth fell away beneath them. Overbalanced, she fell out into empty air. She struck ground once, the breath punched out of her, then spun through air again, clinging to the strap of the bag. She struck again, hard on her right hip, rolled, falling over rocks, and then was sliding, sliding, with no end in sight.

  Chapter Eight

  Trevian’s cheek muscles contracted, pulling h
is mouth into a smile in spite of himself. He felt as if he were floating as he stepped across the threshold of his uncle’s dwelling. The place was filled with copper and charms. It embraced him, cradled him. His fear for Erin faded a little. Surely she would be fine. She would return and explain what had made her flee.

  He followed his uncle into the large downstairs room, looked around, and laughed. “It’s a mestengo’s den, Uncle. I’ve never seen this much copper in one place.”

  “Years of work.” Uncle Oshane flinched and put his hand to his forehead.

  Trevian recognized the reaction. “Something struck the ward?”

  His uncle nodded. “Probably an earth elemental.”

  He led Trevian to a thick-topped table. Just beyond it, filling a corner of the room, stood a narrow cylinder of copper as tall as Trevian. Braided copper cords like bridle reins sprouted from the top and ran along the ceiling. Trevian tipped back his head. The ceiling was covered with rows of copper braids. Piles of scrap copper, some pieces as big as his chest, some as small as his thumbnail, filled every other corner of the room. He looked down and saw that the edge of the table was lined with the metal.

  “You could feed every family in the Crescent for a year with this much copper,” he said.

  His uncle smiled. “It must look that way.” He stroked a gold pin that gleamed on the breast of his worn brown jacket. Trevian squinted and made out the features of the four-horned sheep, Cheviot the Ram. “You have a limited understanding of commerce, though, Trevian, for being your father’s son.” He picked up a pitcher and poured clear liquid into a cup. “Lick?”

  “I’d prefer water, if you have it,” Trevian said. “The last parcel of the journey was dry.”

  Uncle Oshane shrugged. He poured the spirit back into the pitcher. A string of beads on his wrist slipped out from beneath his sleeve. They were the color of loomin and gleamed like polished stone. He brushed the string back up out of sight and went out of the room.

  Trevian walked over to the cylinder. He held out his hand, his palm inches from its surface, and felt the heat sinking in. His palm thrummed like a heartbeat. He had never felt copper this way before, like a live thing.

  The copper piled around the base of the pillar looked like broken bowls. He stooped and picked one up. It was as big as his head, with sides tapering to points. Holes had been drilled near the end of the points. In the center of the bowl was a hammered square of copper, with a hole drilled through it. He tilted the bowl and peered at the rim of the hole. It was threaded. It looked like headgear, the kind some prospectors wore in caverns and tunnels, except for the hole in the center. There were several in the stack. Some were different sizes, and to his inexperienced eye, they looked crudely made. Perhaps the local prospectors had used them and traded or sold them to Uncle Oshane when they left.

  Behind the copper pole stood a wooden structure. Upright, it was slightly taller than he was, with shallow sides and a slatted bottom. It was a box. He couldn’t think what would be stored in such a box; it was too long for crossbows and too shallow to haul food.

  He took a step back. He needed clear wits. It wasn’t logical to think that Erin was safe while she wandered in a strange place filled with unstable earth. And his uncle…there were lots of questions for his uncle to answer.

  But there was so much copper, so much welcoming, beautiful copper.

  He forced himself to walk past the piles of charmed metal to the door. As he stood with his hand on the latch, his uncle came out of the kitchen with a cup.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I must not stay in that room.”

  Uncle Oshane smiled, the bright, eye-crinkling smile Trevian remembered from his childhood, a smile that hinted at secrets just the two of them shared. “You’re a copper-hunter,” he said, holding out the cup to Trevian. “Can you tell me you want to leave that room?”

  Trevian took the cup and drank two swallows of water. “Of course not. Because of that, I must. It’s clouding my thoughts.”

  Uncle Oshane shook his head. “Or allowing you to think, perhaps for the first time.”

  “I think,” Trevian said.

  “You think narrowly. It’s no fault of yours. You’ve been hobbled since birth. I was pleased that you tossed off my brother’s harness and went your own way. It was a good beginning, but it is only a beginning.”

  Trevian drained the cup and turned, pulling open the door. “Still, I prefer to talk outside.” The sense of comfort, belonging, faded as he stepped across the threshold. His uncle followed.

  “Uncle, I must find my friend before she comes to harm.”

  “She’ll come to no harm.”

  “You don’t understand. She’s not from here. Not from our world. She doesn’t know—”

  “I know where she’s from, Trevian. I know who she is and what her family is, better than you do.”

  Trevian stood with his mouth open. “What do you mean?”

  “She is not what she told you. Her world is a dark and evil place. Her family traded in that evil. We must not let her bring that evil here.”

  Everything ached. Erin twitched her toes and fingers. Once sure that she could move everything, she propped herself up, gasping in pain. The bag dug into her ribs.

  Her heart still raced. She struggled to her feet. The hounds would be after her. She dug into the bag and pulled out the stake.

  The hard ground under her feet was covered with dense brown grass, gravel, and small rocks. She looked up at the steep slope she’d fallen down, its side studded with boulders like gray teeth. Far above, one of the hounds paced, twisting its head from side to side, but it didn’t come down after her. She glanced around, panicked, but didn’t see the other one. What was stopping them from materializing here? To her right, a gap broke the hillside, and she hobbled toward it. Pain stabbed her side with each breath.

  She couldn’t see much inside, but it was wide, easy to fit through with room to spare. She waited for her eyes to adjust. The shaft or tunnel ran back as far as she could make out, and the smell—burnt hair and licorice—teased her. It wasn’t as strong as it had been at the house, but it was present.

  The house. Vianovelle’s house.

  God, he was so clever, Trevian, convincing her that Vianovelle was from another world, not this one, and that his uncle was the only person who could help them. He’d been so sincere with his story of some girl he’d kicked to the curb, steering her away from a real town where there was probably real help. She’d trusted him. She’d let him handle the book.

  She wondered why she was still alive.

  The quality of the darkness changed as she stood, and she could make out dim shapes. She shuffled forward, looking over her shoulder, but the hounds didn’t follow. For all she knew, they could already be ahead of her. The tunnel curved slightly to her left. She could see the curve of the tunnel against a faint golden glow. The scent of burnt hair and licorice grew stronger. She shifted her grip on the aluminum stake and pressed close to the rock wall. The ground grew uneven, and she stumbled once or twice. The glow seemed to pulse. She blinked, then closed her eyes for a count of three and opened them. The light still pulsed. It wasn’t just her vision.

  She stopped, staying as much in the shadow of the wall as she could. She listened. From ahead came a soft whispering sound, but other than that she heard nothing. She slipped forward a couple of feet. The sound grew louder and a bit lower-pitched, a soft rushing with an occasional musical tinkling. She closed her eyes and listened. It sounded like a steady stream of water.

  She waited, listening for the shuffle of feet on stone, a rustle of clothing, a spoken word. Except for the water, the tunnel was quiet. She looked over her shoulder and saw no sign of the hounds. When she looked back, a green oval afterimage swam in her field of vision. She cursed herself and stood still until it faded.

  She moved forward.

  The curve of the space was gentle, and mist touched her face as she came into a grotto. Water spille
d down one side of it, forming a small pool that drained away into the dark. She could see it clearly because a twined column of glowing insect-like things revolved in front of it, casting a golden glow that lit the cavern. They were about the length of her middle finger. As she stood, trying to get a good look at them, a trio broke away, landing on her bag for a moment. They flitted back to the water, then back to the bag. She looked down and a fourth one lit on the back of her hand. She hoped they didn’t sting or bite. Slowly, she raised her hand to eye level. The creature had a sticklike body with forelegs that looked slightly like arms. The triangular head was dominated by rounded blue eyes above a furled proboscis. Her hand felt pleasantly warm. The creature darted off, and now she saw that a number of them were circling her. She didn’t feel frightened, although she wondered if she should.

  They produced a lot of light. California didn’t have a lot of bioluminescent insects, but she thought this process was something different from fireflies. And the creatures looked a little like butterflies, a little like dragonflies with their four wings, and a little like human figures. It was uncanny. She saw now why people would trap them in lanterns. One or two in a jar would provide enough light to read by.

  She squatted down and looked at the pool, which reflected the glow. The sprites changed course again, massing between her and the water. She looked down. What she had thought was a reflection was coming from under the pool’s surface, a cluster of oval orbs like golden grapes, wrapped in a shimmering membrane that undulated with the waves of the pool.

  She edged away. Those had to be eggs. The sprites needed water to breed. She remembered Trevian saying something about the marshes west of town being filled with sprites, and how they had dwindled. The dying lake had done that.

  Erin stood up. Interesting, but none of this mattered unless sprites could be persuaded to fight off the hounds or show her a way out of this dead town, a way to get the book someplace safe. She touched her forehead and flinched, cursing, at the jolt of pain. She’d run headfirst into some invisible barrier. Trevian’s camp had been protected by a similar barrier. Vianovelle’s covered a larger area, which meant, probably, that she could hide, but she couldn’t get out. And she had no idea how to face both of them.