Aluminum Leaves

by Marion Deeds

  “What are you doing?” Trevian flexed his wrists, tugging at the bonds.

  “I can’t let you leave, Trevian. I must persuade you.” Oshane crouched on the balls of his feet, staring into Trevian’s face.

  “By trussing me up like a bait-lamb for a kiote pack? By setting that thing on me? That was an air elemental!” Trevian felt a familiar rage rising through his chest, the rage it usually took his father to draw.

  Oshane held up his hands. “You begin to see what we can do. We. You’re my family. As far as I’m concerned, my only family. Imagine the elemental worlds united, with an elemental army. Imagine what we could accomplish for our world, what we could gain. Healing, knowledge, wealth. Imagine it.”

  Trevian made himself breathe deeply, pushing the rage down. The sense of wellbeing still hung in his mind, but it was in the background, like a ragged curtain. Oshane thought it was like a bottle of good lick, an intoxicant that couldn’t be overcome, but that wasn’t how it was. He could set it aside.

  He blinked, pretending confusion.

  Oshane wobbled, then knelt and sat back on his heels. “When we were boys, when Fergal was dragging us like dogs through every mudhole and ditch in the Crescent, I was the one who made sure your father had food, blankets on his bed, a healer when he was sick, and I was the one that made sure he learned his numbers and letters. I took care of us. And when he found blackrock, he turned his face from me. I’ve searched, I’ve studied, I’ve worked. I’ve let riches go past me when a handful of his coin would have made the way easier a dozen times. But I am not bitter, Trevian, because you have come my way.

  “Copper-hunters have an affinity, a natural skill that we can combine with my knowledge and my will. And you, Trevian, with your mother’s bloodline…you sense fronteras. Surely you realize this.”

  “I…”

  “You tramped north from this town through three deep veins of Ancient. You found riches, but you went still farther north, as if something drew you, and you staked a claim in the midst of an Ancient city, in a place that contained a frontera to that dark world the Dosmanos woman is from.”

  “That is a coincidence of events,” Trevian said. The most frightening aspect of the man’s pronouncements was the fact that he had tracked Trevian all this time. How?

  The pulse of the copper warmth in the room stuttered, and when it settled again, it was weaker. He lifted his head. Oshane had not reacted to the change. He might be using the copper energy to fuel his charms, but he was not attuned to it. “I have no wish to enslave more elementals,” he said. “That’s where my father and I argued.”

  Oshane shook his head. “Your father imprisons them with no discrimination, no judgment, thinking only of wealth and how much respectability it can buy him. What we will do is different. A few will serve but most will be free.”

  Only moments before he had spoken of an elemental army. “What possible value am I to you? You have the charms.”

  “You sell yourself too cheaply. You are a copper-hunter, and we must have copper and gold, and loomin, for charms. You will help us find the fronteras that link the elemental worlds. In particular, there is one more tool I, we, must recover before we begin unifying the worlds.” Oshane paused for the space of one breath. “And you have seen the book.”

  “What does the book matter?”

  “It contains much wisdom.” Oshane stood. “And a map of the fronteras on our world. That will be our map, the map of the new way.”

  An image of the papers in the bottom of his knapsack flashed through Trevian’s mind. “The pages I saw were mostly words. Rhymes and poems, treatises, charms.”

  Oshane smiled. “You can’t hide the truth from me, Trevian,” he said, as if speaking to a rebellious child.

  “I do not.”

  Oshane shook his head sharply and staggered, reaching out for the table.

  “Are you well, Uncle?”

  “Fine.” Oshane’s eyes were closed.

  “Sit down,” Trevian said. “The charms are weakening you. You’re not meant to use them this way.”

  “Don’t think you can best me, boy,” he said, sounding exactly like Trevian’s father.

  “I fear that you’ll die leaving me tied to this chair,” Trevian said.

  Oshane’s eyes flew open, and he laughed. “Well, that’s honest!” He turned and poured himself a shot of lick from the pitcher. “I won’t die today.” He downed the shot, then sat in the other chair.

  The power emanating from the copper post had definitely weakened. Something had changed. Perhaps Trevian could use that.

  “I’m thinking of the book,” he said. “When you said ‘map,’ my mind made a picture, and there is no map like that in the book. But there is…a scheme. It may be what you seek. Let me look at the pages you have, and perhaps I can show you what I mean.”

  “Tell me.”

  Trevian shook his head as if dazed. “I, the book, the book imparts a powerful charm. You know that, you’ve felt the power just from the pages you hold, haven’t you?”

  Oshane gave a sharp nod. “Of course.”

  He was sure Oshane had not felt any such thing. “I cannot find the words to describe it. I think I must see it.”

  “You wouldn’t be trying to trick me, Nephew?”

  Trevian looked into his uncle’s face. “I fear for your health, Uncle. That is no sideways threat. I think this power takes a toll on you, and I can shoulder part of that burden. I care little about other worlds, my life is in this one, but you are my family, and, except for Aideen, my only family now. I would see you healthy.”

  Oshane smiled. “For Langtrees, blood always tells. I accept your loyalty.” He stood up slowly and advanced to untie the knots that held Trevian in the chair. “Now, let’s look at these pages.”

  “Daniel,” Mrs. Augusto said. She struggled to climb out of the box, and Erin helped. She stood shakily. “Is he…”

  “He’s alive. They all are, although the others don’t look too good.”

  “Others…” She looked around. “I was dreaming, but some part of me knew.”

  “What is, what are those,” Erin flapped a hand at the pink sac, words flying away from her, “those things…”

  “Some sort of symbiont. They nourish, but they also feed on us. And they kept me, us, in that dream state. The lantern isn’t meant to enslave, but it doesn’t distinguish between a willing melding or captive power. I don’t know where those things came from. Who are the others? I felt them in the dream. It’s not Wing Mei.”

  “I think they’re from here.”

  Mrs. Augusto looked at the three other boxes and bit her lower lip.

  “We need to get those sacs off them. And are you sure about the helmet, Mrs. Augusto? What if he can sense your state of mind?”

  The older woman smiled. “Call me Remedios.” The smile vanished. “Vianovelle has no magic of his own. He draws on spells and on the energy, the power, that is amplified by the lantern.” She held onto the edge of the box and crept along, peering into the neighboring one. “I worry about removing the sacs. I’m not sure they’ll survive without the nutrient.”

  “Isn’t it worth the risk?”

  Remedios looked around. “I’d feel better if I knew where Vianovelle was.”

  “He was in here just a minute ago. I think we’re underneath his house.”

  “How did you escape?”

  Erin shook her head. “He never caught me. I…when those things killed my parents, I ran through the frontera.”

  “Good for you.”

  “Not so good, because the first person I ran into is Vianovelle’s partner.”

  Remedios frowned. “He doesn’t have a partner.”

  “Minion, then, whatever. He said Vianovelle’s his uncle. He said he would help me, and then he led me right here. I went along, like an idiot.”

  “So he has the collar and the book, but we have the lantern. We can hide the lantern somewhere—”

  “He doesn’t have the
book.” Erin patted the messenger bag.

  Breath rushed out of Remedios, and she closed her eyes for a moment. “Oh, Erin! Thank God. We have the means to stop his hunter hounds if you have the book. Although, we’ll need…” She stopped and stared at the lantern. “There’s a charm in the book. We’ll need energy to activate it. I, I think we’ll need to use the lantern, and we’ll need to be mentally free.”

  Erin dropped to the floor and pulled out the book. “Where?” she said, flipping through the pages. “Do you know it?”

  “Your grandmother told me.” Remedios knelt next to her. “I’ve never seen the book. It’s one of the poems. Something about a well and a key. It’s a page that starts in the middle of a sentence.”

  “Where the page before it is missing.” Erin kept flipping. She had some sense of where those pages were. “Is this…? No.” She kept paging. “I’m not seeing it.” She flipped back and forth, trying to rein in her frustration. “Is this it?” there were two lines of text, and then rhymes.

  The key lies within the well,

  That the border holds.

  Look well within

  To free what gold has called,

  And loomin molds.

  Earth and fire do not blend.

  While earth consumes,

  And fire grieves

  The key will mend.

  It lies between the leaves,

  The armored cell to end.

  See the well within,

  Find what copper claims,

  Call like to like,

  Set free the flames.

  “Yes,” Remedios said. “That must be it.”

  “What does it mean?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “It doesn’t tell me what to do.” Erin heard her voice rise in pitch. “It just sounds like a nursery rhyme.”

  “We have to find a well,” Remedios said, “and a tree? Maybe you have to approach them.”

  Erin shuddered. The thought of approaching those murderous things… She shut her eyes. If that was what she had to do to keep the book safe, she would find a way.

  “I could do it,” Remedios said.

  Relief flooded Erin, and for a second, she imagined handing the book to Remedios and staying here to free the others. That fantasy vanished. “They were tracking me,” she said, “and I’m the keeper of the book. And, I think I’m one of those people who has an affinity for copper.”

  “Is that something good?”

  “I think it means I can work the magic here. But I don’t know for sure.”

  Remedios touched the page and looked over at Erin. “If Daniel and I can send energy to you, I think you just have to do what the poem says.”

  “Which is what, exactly?”

  “It says to look within and find what’s alike between you and the hounds.”

  “Alike?” Erin’s throat swelled. “Those things killed my parents. They tore some man’s heart out back at the place where I came through. We’re not alike.”

  “It’s just one interpretation, Erin,” Remedios said softly.

  Erin stood up. “We have to do something about these people, without letting Vianovelle know you’re awake.” She closed the book, then opened it only a second later, reading the charm again. The words were gibberish. She shoved the book into her bag.

  “How long have we been here?”

  Erin told her.

  “Four months.” Remedios gazed down into in the closest box. “Something doesn’t make sense. These people have been here longer, from the state they’re in, but he didn’t have the lantern. So what was he doing?”

  “Um, feeding those pink things, maybe?”

  “Or training them.”

  Erin tilted back her head, looking up at the twined copper cables that ran across the ceiling. “Or, somehow, drawing off the power without the lantern? Would that even be possible?”

  Remedios frowned as her gaze followed Erin’s. “I… Maybe those, those things allow you to conduct energy… He needed some power source to come through the frontera, since he’s not one of the Families.”

  “I’m not sure of that,” Erin said. “Trevian, that’s the minion, said they were related to us. To me, anyway, to the Dosmanos family.”

  “Erin, these artifacts came to our world three hundred years ago. There might be a blood tie, but it’s distant. And he has no innate magic, that’s why he’s perverting the tools.”

  “I just meant maybe it’s easier for him.”

  The sprites clustered around the lantern, circled, and bounced.

  “What are those?”

  “Sprites, they’re called. Some kind of elemental insect. People here use them as a light source.” The sprites gathered around Erin for a moment, and she felt a pleasant warmth. “Remedios, we need to do something for these people, and we need to get the lantern out of his reach. There are houses here, but only about a dozen people. Maybe you can hide in one of the buildings. He’s got some kind of a force field around this place, and I don’t think we can get out.”

  “A ward.”

  Remedios approached the box that held the girl and leaned over her. Erin handed her the knife. Remedios pulled the sac free and flung it aside. It expanded, puffing like a balloon and then deflated.

  As with Remedios, the girl’s arm expelled a bead of blood. “That looks infected,” Erin said, pulling open her bag. She reached for one of the antiseptic wipes in the first aid kit.

  “I think it’s a histamine reaction,” Remedios said, but she took the wipe and swabbed the puncture, then, after a moment’s thought, used a corner of the square to do the same thing to her own chest. Erin remembered that Remedios did something in health care. The older woman’s arms had gooseflesh. It didn’t seem cold to Erin, but she was dressed and Remedios wasn’t.

  The girl sighed. Her head turned, her body relaxed. Erin leaned forward. “Is she…dead?”

  Remedios was checking the girl’s pulse. “No. I think she’s asleep, actually. Let’s release the others. Don’t let one of those things—”

  “Don’t worry,” Erin said.

  She hurled the pink sacs into the corner. After a few minutes, the local woman opened her eyes. She looked frightened. Daniel was sitting up now, and when the local woman saw him and Remedios, she relaxed and began to speak. Remembering her own difficulty with the language, Erin interpreted while they freed the final prisoner of the pink things.

  He went immediately to the girl’s side and lifted her out of the box. She stirred, opened her eyes, and started weeping when she saw him. He sat down and rocked her, his copper strand stretched taut between his head and the lantern.

  Daniel looked at her. “We’re in…a subterranean chamber beneath Vianovelle’s house?”

  “He goes by another name here, Oshane. How did he capture you? Why didn’t he just kill you like he did my parents?”

  Daniel reached out and touched her arm. “Lo siento, Erin. We feel your loss. He came to us. He said he was from another elemental world and had some crazy scheme about forcing elemental power to serve us. We knew who he was because the Carews had mentioned a visitor and Mei sent us that picture.”

  “We didn’t doubt he was from another world,” Remedios said.

  Daniel nodded. “We stalled him, said we’d meet him to talk. We were ready to run, and those things, the hunter hounds, coalesced out of nowhere, and we knew then that he already had the collar. We nearly made it to our frontera, but he also had another elemental creature, some amulet on his coat controlled it, and it paralyzed us.”

  The local woman had approached, and she said, “Air elemental.” She reached up to untie the coarse twine holding on the helmet. Erin stopped her. She explained. The woman frowned, then looked over at the two slumped on the floor. The man had pulled the helmet off the stuporous girl.

  Remedios hurried to their side, stopping him from removing his own. With Erin’s help, they explained their reasoning. Even though the three locals struggled to understand R
emedios and Daniel, they acted as if they knew them and trusted them.

  “So, what are we going to do?” Erin said.

  The local woman answered. “Bring the lantern with us. We can shelter in one of the deserted houses.”

  “Erin has the book,” Remedios said. “She can neutralize the hunter hounds, and then maybe we can get the collar from him. Although, I don’t know how to get home.”

  “Remember there are two of them. Trevian’s with him.” Erin felt a cold wave of pain, immediately swallowed up in anger as she said his name.

  The local woman was shaking her head. “There is only Langtree,” she said.

  “No, his nephew brought me here,” Erin said.

  She frowned. “Trevian Langtree? He’s from White Bluffs. He is a copper-hunter.”

  Erin nodded.

  “Well, if he has joined with that one,” the woman said, “he’ll end up in a box.”

  The thrum of power faltered again. Trevian hoped his face stayed blank as he got to his feet. He could read the current of power just as well as he read a claim, and, turvy as it was, he sensed people within it. He couldn’t tell how many, or where they were.

  “Put the pages out, and I’ll show you what I mean.” He gestured toward the sheets.

  Oshane stared at him, one hand still grasping the lick cup. Trevian stood as calm as a prospector’s pack-caballo, the way he’d stood for years under his father’s bitter stare.

  Oshane turned to lay out the pages, setting the cup on the table. “They aren’t in order, but you know that. Some seem to follow one after the other, but not all.”

  “We’ll start with those.” Trevian coiled up the rope that had bound him. Moving up behind Oshane, he tucked it into the back of his shirt under his jacket. He could see his knife, still in its sheath at the end of the table, but it was beyond his reach. His iron club was not in sight.

  When the other man stepped to one side, Trevian leaned over the table, peering down. “None of these pages has the decorative glass in the border.”

  “What glass?”

  “There were a few pages with pieces of colored glass like you might see in a necklace.”

  “As you can see,” Oshane’s arm brushed Trevian’s, “there are none on these pages.”