Aluminum Leaves

by Marion Deeds

  Trevian looked at the five boxes. “My uncle spoke of a world where people had aligned themselves with an elemental force and there was no sickness or pain. Was it, are those…?”

  The woman lifted her shoulders up towards her ears, which he recognized as a shrug. “We had warnings about a world with parasitic creatures. Certainly we felt no pain or weakness, but we were in a stupor, while Vianovelle fueled his charms.”

  He followed her into the basement where Daniel and Erin stood in front of the boxes. The lids were fitted tightly but not fastened with pegs or nails, and with Daniel’s help, Trevian pried off the first one. Daniel stumbled back with a word that Trevian did not recognize but was clearly an oath. The smell of vinegar stung Trevian’s eyes and nostrils.

  “Dear God,” Erin said.

  The box was filled with flat pink bladders like the one in the outer chamber.

  “Are these all…?”

  “He was going to turn people into power plants.” Remedios glared at Trevian so fiercely he took a step back. “Where do these things come from?”

  “I don’t know. Not my world.” The edges of his vision turned gray. Had his uncle imagined scores, even hundreds of copper hunters, trapped in a dream-world, fueling the lantern as he leaped from world to world?

  “It’s disgusting,” Erin said.

  Daniel looked at the boxes, clearly counting. “We need to destroy them.”

  “Call those fire elementals,” Remedios said, gesturing to the bag where Erin had put the collar.

  Erin shook her head. “No. They’ve been enslaved long enough. We can burn these things ourselves.”

  “Let’s get the pages from the book and see what other weapons my uncle had in this place.” Trevian headed for the three steps. “And then Daniel and I will burn those things.”

  Remedios grasped her husband’s arm. “We will all burn them.”

  Six pages from the book lay spread out on a rough work table in the room adjoining the basement. Trevian gathered them up and handed them to Erin. She squeezed them into her bag. “You should let me treat those knife cuts,” she said.

  “Later, when we are done here,” he said. He had not asked about the collar since he had flung it toward her during the fight. She wasn’t one hundred percent sure that she could trust him, but she was at ninety percent, maybe. Almost there.

  They found more copper, knives, and a handful of powerful crossbows, and in a box, Remedios and Erin found forty-eight copper, silver, and aluminum charms of various kinds. She called Trevian over to explain them. Most of them, it turned out, were described in the book. She and Trevian could probably make their own now.

  “What should we do with them?” Trevian turned one over, looking at the design on the back.

  “The people who are still here could probably use some protection charms,” Remedios said.

  “Protection…” Trevian’s face became expressionless. He dropped the charm back into the box, fetched his hat and pulled off the copper hatband. “My uncle gave me this,” he said.

  “To protect you,” Erin said.

  He looked up at her. His gaze was flat. “And to track us. Remember the way the flames kept following? And my uncle knew we were coming. My uncle knew every place I’d been for the past three years. We burn this with those bladders we found.”

  “You are his family,” Remedios said.

  “He tricked me. We Langtrees are all the same. Every living thing is a tool to our hand or a rock to be kicked from our path.” He stood up and walked out of the room.

  “Well, that was awkward,” Remedios said.

  Daniel, his arms folded, looked at Erin. “Do you trust him?”

  She thought. “I do,” she said. “I do see how this could be a long con, but as I look back, I think he was pretty honest with me. And his uncle did try to stab him.”

  “I trust him,” Remedios said.

  “I do too,” said Daniel, “but I want you to be sure. Are you coming home with us?”

  “We’re not getting home,” Remedios said. “Our frontera doesn’t open here, and we have no idea where he brought us through.”

  “My frontera is open, and it will get you back to our world. California, not Florida, but still.”

  “Come with us,” Daniel said.

  She shook her head. “I can’t leave this world with Vianovelle still on the loose. Our world isn’t safe either. And there’s nothing for me to go back to, really.”

  “I know we’re not your family,” Remedios said, “but we could be like family, Erin.”

  She reached out and squeezed the woman’s hand. “I know,” she said. She needed to think. It was tempting to return with them, the book safeguarded, and pretend to lead a normal life, maybe even really study geology. “Vianovelle has an enslaved elemental and a lot of information about fronteras, including how to cross them. I think he has some kind of deal with the people who gave him those things. I have to stay. This is what… I need to do this.”

  Remedios started to smile and looked down at the floor.

  Erin said, “Words my grandmother never thought she’d hear me say, right? I was always the baby, the rebel.”

  “Do you think you were the only one who ever felt that way? I can tell you she’d be proud of you.”

  Erin blushed. She felt like crying again, but this time the impulse to tears came without pain. “Thanks. Well, whatever, I don’t believe that man doesn’t have a Plan B, and I don’t believe he won’t go after Mei.”

  “We don’t even know how he finds us,” Daniel said. “He probably tortured the Carews to get our location, but we didn’t tell him about you.”

  “He has a charm,” Trevian said from the doorway. He came into the room, his arms folded over his chest too. He shifted from one foot to the other. “A string of beads he wears on his wrist. I think he uses those to find the tools.”

  “Then Mei is at risk,” Erin said.

  “Not only her. My uncle told me that I can sense fronteras. I think that was what he hoped he could use me for. If I can, I’m probably not the only one, and he will find and beguile another copper-hunter with the promise of riches, or his wonder-tale of saving our world and making it better. Erin, before…all of this, we spoke of the capital and the university. Would you go there, with the book? And perhaps one of those, those things? People need to know, and we need help to stop him.”

  “Before he finds Mei.” Erin turned to Remedios. “Can I give you the collar? It needs a guardian family.”

  “It has one. You’re the best suited to protect it.”

  “But we don’t concentrate the artifacts into one set of hands. That’s what we just saw, isn’t it? And I nearly handed the book the Vianovelle.”

  “You did not,” Trevian said. “Even after I led you right to him like an addled fool, you did not let the book fall into his hands.”

  “We believe you two can protect the collar and the book,” Daniel said. “The odds are good that he will make another run at the lantern. We can’t protect it and the collar. It is safest with you.”

  Erin looked at them. All three were nodding. “All right,” she said.

  The pink bladders burned with a sour smell that caused their eyes to stream tears. The people in Merrylake Landing, a double handful, came and stood at a cautious distance. Only three were copper-hunters, and they acted as if they knew the out-of-world visitors while they looked sideways at Trevian. He could not blame them either.

  He kept out one of the freakish things, sealing it in a thick glass jar. His hatband charm went into the fire. He would charm other pieces of scrap copper for the journey back. Daniel and Remedios would use Erin’s frontera to return home. She had agreed to go to Duloc. After that, he did not know her plans.

  Erin handed around the box of charms so that the remaining townspeople had some protection while the three captured copper-hunters regained their strength. Earlier, he and Erin had sorted out a packet of charms for Daniel and Remedios to take, to protect them i
f Oshane came to them again in their world. Trevian led the group of prospectors into his uncle’s copper room and left them to divide it as they saw fit.

  He raked the ash back and forth to make sure that not a single sac remained, then went to see if Remedios and Erin needed help with provisions. Oshane had little in the way of fresh food, but there were dried goods in the pantry that were still good. They did not need his help. He took a pair of crossbows and as many quarrels as he could fit into his knapsack.

  He stood in the road, waiting, staring east across the lake. Erin came up behind him.

  “What are you thinking?”

  He sighed. “That White Bluffs is a half-day’s journey down-mountain. A braver man would go, make peace with his father…perhaps even ask his quiet, brilliant sister for help. And that I’m not that man.”

  “You’re plenty brave.” She touched his hand. “And besides, we already decided, we’re going to the capital. First to the frontera, and then to Duloc.” She nibbled her lower lip. “Do you think he was under the control of those things? Maybe one was on him too and you just never saw it?”

  “He was not. Everything he did was of his own will. I think he would have betrayed them eventually, just as he did everyone. If I found the frontera to that world, could I close it? You said there was a charm for such a thing.”

  “It’s incomplete.” She blinked. “Except now I have some of the missing pages. Do you want us to try?”

  “Us? I thought once I’d guided you to the capital you would have no more to do with me.”

  She blinked. “Well. I mean, you don’t owe me anything. You don’t have to help—”

  “I thought you would not want my help, that you would not trust me.”

  She shook her head. “Trevian, you helped me, you fought your uncle to get me the collar. I trust you, and I need you. I need your guidance. This isn’t my world.”

  He felt as if he were floating. His chest felt open, as if a weight had been lifted from it. It took him a moment to identify the feeling.

  “What did you think?” Erin shook her head again. “Men. You guys are so weird.”

  He laughed. It seemed a strange thing to laugh, but he let the joy spill out. “Then I will be at your side,” he said.

  She tilted her head. “That’s good,” she said. “Because we’ll need all the help we can get. C’mon. Daniel and Remedios are waiting.”

  They headed back toward the out-of-worlders, side by side.

  Acknowledgments

  Writing itself is a solitary act, but no work comes into the world by the efforts of the writer alone. There are so many people to thank and I can only list a few of you here.

  Thanks to my amazing editor, Jaym Gates, for offering me this opportunity, and to the great folks at Falstaff Books – Melissa, who virtually held my hand, and my diligent and thorough copy-editor Alisha. Thanks to Marta Randall and the Third Saturday Writers Group for critique and support; to the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference for providing an annual haven, and to the Benicia Crew for reading fantasy even though it’s not your thing.

  Thanks to Copperfields Books and Second Chances Used Books, for all the books; thanks to Taylor Lane Coffee for the space to write. Thanks to all my fellow writers on Twitter and elsewhere. Keep up the good work.

  Thanks to the writers who opened my mind to wonder, beginning but not ending with Madeline L’Engle, Andre Norton and Ursula K. LeGuin. Thanks to The Gang. They know who they are. Thanks to Brandy Mow, for encouragement and wit, and thanks to my husband, Dave Manley, for being a gadfly, sounding board, cheering section, stand-up comic and always my rock and refuge.

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  Copyright © 2019 by Marion Deeds

  Cover by Melissa McArthur

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is coincidental. Except that bit about that guy. That’s totally a thing. No, it’s not really a thing. Come on, do you think I’d admit it here if it was really a thing? Give me a little credit. Jeez.

  About the Author

  Marion Deeds has been a reader and writer her whole life. Her stories have appeared in Podcastle, Daily Science Fiction, Flash Fiction Online, and in the anthologies Strange California, published by Falstaff Books, and Beyond the Stars, Unimagined Realms. She lives with her husband in Northern California where she maintains a couple of bird feeders, watches crows, and pays protection to the local squirrel gang. Currently she is a reviewer and columnist for Fantasyliterature.com. Check out her blog, Deedsandwords.com, or find her on Twitter at mariond_d.