Aluminum Leaves

by Marion Deeds

  Trevian pretended to examine the curves and loops. His gaze skated over the pages. Here was a charm for crossing a frontera, he tried frantically to commit it to memory. Oshane shifted from one foot to the other and sighed.

  “There.” Trevian drew out two pages that belonged together and put them side by side. “The pattern connects.” He did not fear betraying any aspect of the map. There weren’t enough pages here.

  “That means nothing. They pressed the pages on one large press, of course the pattern would connect.”

  “But not all of them do.”

  Oshane rolled his shoulder in a shrug. “Pages were added later.”

  “Then I have nothing for you. I’ve offered you my thoughts on the book, and you’ve mocked me. I’m of no use to you.”

  “Oh, you’re of use to me,” Oshane said. He smiled, his eyes twinkling, and he clapped Trevian on the shoulder. “Stop accepting the value my brother put on you, Nephew. Oswald has a nose for profit, it’s true, but a poor one for value. You don’t yet know your own worth. Now, tell me about these glass ornaments.”

  “Small, round with a curved top, of shimmering glass—green, blue, and white.”

  “How many?”

  “I saw two.”

  Oshane nodded, staring at the pages as his hand rubbed the scarf at his throat.

  “I thought they might represent fronteras,” Trevian said, “and these lines, rivers or mountains.”

  “If that were true, you would still need a key, something to orient you,” Oshane said. “And yet…”

  Trevian took a risk. “You said a Dosmanos cousin took your amulet, the one that calls the air elements. Did you find another?”

  Oshane looked up and grinned. “No. I found the one she took from me and threw into the lake. Four years ago, I heard how fast the lake was draining, and I came here. I pitched a tent on the north shore, on a spit just below the cliffs, where I helped her find a great cache of copper. I got an old winnowing basket, and every day I waded out into the water where she had thrown it, and I sieved through the mud. I did that for two hundred seventy-nine days, and I found it.”

  “You remembered exactly where she had tossed it, even though the lake had shrunk.”

  “I remembered.”

  Trevian glanced toward the doorway at the back of the room, mostly to break away from his uncle’s gaze. The source of the energy was through there—the sources. There were four individuals riding the current of the copper magic. Oshane had not mentioned helpers, and his only servants were the elementals. Were these people willing? Were they imprisoned? Erin said that the family that held the lantern had vanished, and the lantern helped copper-hunters direct copper magic.

  He pointed. “What’s in there?”

  “Can’t you feel it?”

  “I feel the power of copper charm.”

  “Perhaps it’s time for you to see what real power is, and what we Langtrees can do.”

  Past his uncle’s shoulder, Trevian could see the knife, still out of reach.

  Chapter Eleven

  Remedios lifted the lantern from the boulder, and the other three who still wore the helmets bunched together with her in the center. “If we need trees for that spell, Erin, we’ll need to bring down his ward. Once we’re out of the tunnel, we’ll disconnect from the lantern.”

  “Why do we need trees?”

  “Well, the leaves. The spell said something about leaves, didn’t it?” She juggled the lantern to her other hand and untwined the spare copper wire from the stud. “Hold out your hand.”

  Erin extended her arm, and Remedios wrapped the copper around it like a bracelet. “There. Now we can send you energy.”

  They wore clothes now, at least partially. Erin had dragged over the garments. Both the men wore trousers, which was a relief for Erin, since it had been embarrassing to try to talk to Daniel while he was naked. The local women had pulled on trousers and skirts, and they’d tied blouses at their necks like halter-tops, since they couldn’t pull things over their heads. The youngest girl, free of the cap, was fully dressed.

  The spell didn’t need literal trees, and it wasn’t a physical well. Erin knew what the reference to the well meant, and the two leaves it was between. She just didn’t know what she needed to do. “Freeing them from the earth forms seems dangerous. They could still kill us. They’re fire.”

  “If we can lure Vianovelle close enough, we can tackle him,” Daniel said, “and get the collar away from him.”

  That didn’t sound like much of a plan either. At least they could get the local people free of Vianovelle’s control. That was something. It sounded ragged and desperate, but above all, she didn’t want the book, or the lantern, back in his hands.

  “Let’s just get out of here and see if we can’t bring down his energy grid,” she said. “This way.” She led them back into the pool chamber.

  “There are more of those lightning bugs,” Remedios said.

  The local woman nodded. “They are drawn to water.”

  Remedios stopped, causing the others to bump into her. “Erin, could that be a well?”

  The local man, who had freed the girl, held up a hand. “Quiet,” he whispered. They stood still, listening.

  “Hurry,” Remedios said softly, and bolted forward. “Hurry!” They ran in a bunch for the opening, Erin following, reaching out to support the girl, who was faltering. Behind her, a man’s voice echoed off the walls.

  The way lightened. They came out into the late afternoon.

  Shouting followed them.

  “Run,” Daniel said. “Take off the caps.” They tugged at the twine holding the helmets in place and pulled them free. The local man tried to lengthen his stride, only to fall back, gasping. Remedios clutched the lantern, and the caps rattled along on the ground behind her.

  The shouting grew louder and clearer. Erin did not look back.

  She heard snapping and crackling, like wood in the fire. “Scatter!” she shouted. She knew that sound. “Remedios, run!”

  Not one of them could run quickly. Erin didn’t stop to see where Remedios and Daniel ended up. She turned, pulling the book free. Clods of pale earth and small rocks rose from the ground, clotted together, as the hounds took shape.

  Someone shouted Erin’s name.

  She made herself stand, flipping the pages of the book until she found the spell again.

  The key lies within the well that the border holds.

  She knew what that was.

  She dropped to her knees as the first hound manifested, turning the pages, back to the early parts of the book, to a page she knew. She found the opal, the puerta, that had swallowed the earth elemental, a well of blue light held in the scrolled border of the page.

  “Erin!” Remedios screamed.

  “Give me energy!” she shouted back, as two men stumbled out of the cave. One fell to his knees, head bowed.

  Vianovelle advanced. His scarf had pulled free, and gold gleamed at his neck. The scarf fell to the ground. He pointed at her.

  Her heart pounded, and her mouth was dry. She closed her eyes.

  Look well within to free what gold has called and loomin molds.

  Crackling like flames, the hounds advanced. The air grew hot around her, and the burns on her arm began to sting. What did the charm mean? Was she supposed to suck them both through the puerta?

  Her hands began to sting. She pressed her fingers onto the book, flanking the opal. She imagined the watery blue of the stone. Look well within. Call like to like.

  “Erin!” a man shouted. “Run! Run!”

  “After you, Trevian,” Oshane said, stepping aside. He wore Trevian’s iron spar on his hip. Trevian hesitated on the threshold. The air wafting out was cool and carried the scent of stone and a vinegar smell he didn’t recognize.

  “I don’t know the way. You lead,” he said.

  Oshane shrugged and stepped down seven steps into a narrow basement. Trevian followed, pulling free the coil of rope. The baseme
nt looked even narrower because it was lined with those long shallow boxes, the source of the vinegar smell. He wondered how the other man had been able to purchase so much wood, and for what? What types of things needed so many boxes? Maybe they were weapons.

  He strode forward and wrapped the ends of the rope around his hands. He hoped he could throttle Oshane into senselessness. The rope was the only thing he had.

  Oshane stepped through a ragged opening in the basement wall, and Trevian followed. The tunnel was dark, but golden light pulsed up ahead, like the glow of sprites. Trevian moved closer and raised his arms. Oshane stopped so suddenly that Trevian walked into him.

  “No!” Oshane whirled. Trevian could see the white edges around his eyes. “Who did this?” He pulled Trevian’s club from his belt and slashed upward, aiming for Trevian’s face. Trevian was so close that the other man could not complete the swing, but his force sent Trevian staggering.

  “You did this! You and the Dosmanos woman!” Oshane lashed out again, and Trevian flung up his arms, snaring the rod in the curve of rope. He pulled and the rod fell, clattering on stone. Trevian stooped to reach for it, and pain streaked up his left arm. His uncle closed in, and now he held the knife.

  Trevian picked up the rod and swung it at his uncle’s arm. He felt the jolt as the weapon connected. Oshane gave a yell of rage and stabbed down again. Trevian dodged, but the knife blade sliced through his jacket. He felt blood start to flow down his side. He had no idea what had set Oshane off.

  The other man whirled and ran. Trevian stumbled upright through a chamber with a series of open boxes, shallower than the ones in the basement, set out around a flat-topped boulder. He sprinted. He must get the collar. He ran past a small cascade and a spiral of sprites. His uncle was a dark shape against sunlight, and pain stitched Trevian’s side with each inhalation.

  He burst out the mouth of the cave. Oshane was standing, one arm raised. His scarf lay on the ground. Trevian started for him and saw Erin a short distance away, kneeling on the ground. Was she wounded? The hounds had clotted out of dirt and rock. She had the book in front of her.

  “Erin, run!” he shouted.

  “Kill her!” Oshane said.

  It was Trevian. As she stared, he staggered forward and grabbed Vianovelle from behind.

  Her jacket spouted downy plumes of smoke. The burn on her arm seared her.

  She was pretty sure she wouldn’t survive this.

  A sudden rush of warmth and strength filled her, nearly lifting her, as copper warmth bloomed in her chest. The skin of her arms stung. She looked down, mentally reciting the charm as the hounds grew closer. She closed her eyes again, sinking into the calm of the opal. The warmth she felt now wasn’t flame, or if it was, it wasn’t destructive. It was a warmth of belonging, of family. She hovered in a colony of dancing light, surrounded by adoration. She/they experienced the others around them, the safety, the closeness, the belonging. The joy.

  Cold. Alone. Safety, gone. Adoration, belonging, gone. Pain, pain everywhere. She saw her house, a whirlwind of flame, her parents. She flinched, and her eyes fluttered open. She didn’t want to see. The flames howled, frightened, abandoned, alone, severed even from each other. Alone. Like her.

  It hurt them, the armor of earth or metal. They were young, alone, and frightened. They’d been taken, pulled away from their kin, just like she had. She straightened her spine and lifted her head, looking at the fiery gaze of first one hound and then the other. They stood, unmoving.

  She put her attention into her hands, spread out on the aluminum leaves of the book as if protecting the puerta. In her mind, as strongly as she could, she spoke to the flames. I see you. I understand you. I am like you.

  Beyond them, the two men wrestled, but she couldn’t make out who was on top.

  Bits of dust and fragments of rock streaked through the air and disappeared above the puerta. Flame glimmered through the holes in the hounds.

  She was afraid of them, and she wanted to hate them for what they’d done. She’d felt imprisoned all her life. But she was not forced to do things against her own nature, the way they’d been.

  I see you, and you see me. We are alike in many ways, alone and frightened.

  Stones and clods of earth fell away from the hounds, hurtled toward her. They arced down and vanished into the puerta, faster and faster, swathes of earth vanishing and flowing like fabric into the tiny portal formed by the stone. The golden spires of translucent flames twirled, free. She waited. They could kill her, but, enfolded in the enhanced copper magic from the lantern and holding the book, she didn’t feel afraid.

  “Kill her—” Vianovelle’s words ended in a grunt. Freed of the carapaces, the flames wavered, turning first toward Erin, then back toward the two struggling men. They drifted toward Vianovelle. Distracted by the struggle, he had lost control of them.

  “Erin!” Trevian lifted his head and his hand. He flung something toward her that flashed like flame itself in the dwindling light. She jumped to her feet and sprinted for it.

  Vianovelle pushed Trevian off him and crawled toward it too.

  She ran between the two pillars of flame and scooped up the gold-and-opal collar. Vianovelle raised his face to her, his eyes slitted, his mouth pulled back in a rictus that might have been a grin.

  Trevian ran around him, holding his side, staggering. “Get the book!” he said. “Get away from the elementals.”

  “I’m not finished yet, Nephew,” Vianovelle said.

  Trevian caught her around the waist and pulled her back. “Quickly!” he said. His mouth was bleeding, and there was a long stain of red on his sleeve. “Use it! Command them, before they—before…”

  The flames levitated, up into the air, as high as Trevian’s head. She held the collar in her hand. She knew they would obey her command, if she gave one. She said nothing.

  They rose higher, the ends dipping, and dove toward Vianovelle.

  He screamed as his shirt caught fire. The flames harried him. He rolled, but there was no escaping them.

  “Uncle—” Trevian started toward him, then stopped. He turned instead toward Erin.

  Vianovelle curled up into a ball.

  Blue light flashed through the defile where they stood, and a cloud of bluish-silver enveloped the man and the fire elementals. A wind snapped Erin’s clothes and yanked at her curls, and Trevian shielded his face. The fire elementals faded, dwindled. Then the blue was gone, and so was Vianovelle.

  “Are they…” Erin took a few steps forward, the collar dangling from her hand. The flames reappeared, gliding toward her. She stopped. They stood, rippling. She gripped the collar more tightly. “Be free,” she said. “Go.”

  They didn’t, and she reached up to press the collar against her neck when they spread themselves out, growing more translucent, and then like blown candle flames, both were gone.

  “What was that thing, that other thing?”

  Trevian stood behind her, panting. “An air elemental he had tethered. Another creature he enslaved.”

  “Did it eat him?”

  “No. He still controlled it. I think it carried him to safety. I think, I think…we could get the pages of the book before he returns.”

  Running footsteps grew louder behind them, and Trevian turned. Remedios and Daniel ran toward them. “Where’d he go?”

  Daniel stepped in front of Remedios, who held the lantern, and glared at Trevian.

  “Trevian is Vianovelle’s nephew,” Erin said. “He just helped us.”

  Trevian looked at the ground. “He was my kinsman, but he lied to me and tricked me. At the end he set that air elemental on me. Erin, I did not know he was the one who had murdered your parents.”

  “I know,” she said, “and you’re right.” She looked at Daniel. “We need to go back, to get the pages of the book, and take care of those pink things.”

  Chapter Twelve

  For a moment, Trevian had forgotten that her parents were killed, and he thought the wo
man, Remedios, was her mother. Both she and Erin fussed over the slash on his arm and the shallow cut on his side. He thought he’d gotten off lightly. The husband, Daniel, watched him closely and did not speak. Trevian did not blame him.

  They walked back slowly. In the cavern with the shallow boxes, something flopped in the corner, and Trevian spun. A pinkish wallet stirred, inflating like a bellows. “What is that?”

  Erin pushed him aside and started to stomp it. A pink liquid squirted everywhere, and the leathery surface smeared into the rock, but she would not stop.

  “Erin, Erin!” Remedios turned to her and hugged her. Erin stood, shaking, and Trevian thought he heard her sob.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Those things,” Trevian said to the man, Daniel. “What are they?”

  “Symbionts of some kind. Do you know what that is?”

  “I understand the concept.”

  Daniel chewed on his upper lip. “Your uncle put their stingers into us, into our flesh. They kept us alive, but in a kind of dream, and he could draw on our power to fuel the lantern and his charms. And not just the two of us. There were some of your people here as well.”

  He didn’t want to believe it. He wanted to challenge this out-of-world stranger, call him a liar, but he thought of his uncle’s actions and his sense that there were people in the flow of the copper charm. And he thought of his uncle saying, “You have your uses.” He shivered. “How you must hate us,” he said.

  “Well. I hate him. The jury’s still out on you.”

  After a moment, Trevian worked out what that meant. “My uncle has many boxes in the basement. I think he might have been gathering weapons, crossbows and so on.” He looked across the chamber. “Erin, are you well?”

  She stepped away from Remedios. “It’s been a long couple of days.” Seeing his look, she said, “I’m all right.”

  “Let’s see these boxes.” Daniel took the lead. “I’m inclined to think that they’re more of those things.”