by Jim C. Hines
Exhaustion and triumph made me giddy. I pumped my fist in the air and whooped like a hockey fan at the bar during playoffs. Smudge grabbed a possum-looking creature and bit into it. Two rats tried to climb his leg, but his flames deepened from red to purple, and they fell back.
There was little question that Smudge remembered what these things had done to him back at the house. Nor was there any doubt in my mind that he was enjoying his payback.
I began firing into the second wave, trying to slow their approach. Once Smudge cleared most of the smaller creatures away from Lena, he charged toward the swarm Toni had been holding off. As he neared, fire rolled off his body and legs. Glowing bugs fell like rain.
Toni shouted and dropped to the ground. She slapped frantically at her dreadlocks, swearing up a storm. Smudge’s enthusiasm had burned through her yo-yo string as well.
“Easy, buddy!” I shouted. “She’s on our side!”
With everything I had seen today, the sight of a giant flaming spider slinking sheepishly back to the road barely warranted a second glance. Whatever guilt he felt didn’t last long. He skittered toward the railroad tracks and reared up on his back four legs to snatch an oversized batlike thing from the air. The rest of us took up positions around Nidhi.
“Whitney, get your Pratchett ready.” Toni jammed her straw through her belt and pulled out a portable fan, roughly the size of a small digital camera. “The rest of you, cover us.”
Lawrence and I shot at anything shiny that got too close, while Whitney switched books and started reading. Lena moved toward the trees to intercept another wendigo.
Whitney hobbled over to join Toni. Her face was white with pain, but she made it. She clutched Toni’s shoulder for support, then opened another book with her free hand. “Isaac, get your spider out of there.”
I switched my gun to my left hand and grabbed a laser pointer from another pocket. I had to shine the dot directly over Smudge’s face to get his attention, but once I did, he was all over it. I played the laser over a metal coyote, which Smudge happily trampled as he pursued the elusive red dot uphill.
“Man, you have the weirdest pet,” Toni said. The plastic blades of her fan whirred to life. “Brace yourselves!”
It was as if she had uncorked a portable hurricane. The wind blew insects and birds back, and even the larger creatures had to dig their claws into the pavement to hold on.
We were out of the wind’s direct path, but the negative pressure yanked my coat like a cape, the weight of my books threatening to drag me away. I pocketed my gun and grabbed the broken concrete foundation of the water tower. Lena stabbed her bokken into the ground and clutched it with one hand. Her other was locked around Nidhi’s wrist.
“How are we supposed to shoot these things if we can’t even stand?” I yelled.
“It’s a two-part plan. That was part one.” Toni and Whitney stood together in the eye of the storm, seemingly untouched. Whitney maneuvered her open book like a tray full of fine china, raising it above and slightly in front of the fan. Then she tilted the book forward.
Liquid spilled from the pages and sprayed forth like mist. Toni and Whitney turned together, moving to and fro like firefighters attacking a blaze.
“Welcome to part two,” Whitney crowed.
Whatever the stuff was, it hit the metal creatures like a blowtorch to an igloo. By the time Toni switched off the fan, the moose had fallen backward in a frothing, bubbling mass. The crumpled water tower had begun to dissolve as well. The pools of water in the parking lot bubbled and steamed like a Halloween cauldron.
Whitney closed her book, clipped it back onto her belt, and collapsed to the ground.
“What book was that, exactly?” Lawrence asked.
Whitney managed a grin. “Mort, by Terry Pratchett. That was pure scrumble. One of the most potent drinks in all of Discworld. You should try it. That shit makes the best tequila taste like distilled water. Now shut up and let me do something with this leg.”
If she had tasted the stuff and survived, then presumably it wouldn’t do to flesh what it had done to metal. I made my way down to the road, gun ready in case any stragglers had survived. “If you messed up my car with that crap, I…oh, no.”
I sprinted across the road. On the far side of the water tower, partly hidden by the wreckage, was the flattened remnant of an old SUV. The metal continued to dissolve, courtesy of Whitney’s aerosolized scrumble. Though the shattered windshield obscured the details, I recognized Loretta Trembath in the driver’s seat. She was a regular at the library, always coming in to e-mail her grandchildren.
I reached instinctively for a book from one of my front pockets, but it was too late for magic to make any difference. From the look of things, Mrs. Trembath had died instantly.
I made my way to the restaurant next. It had begun its life as a residential home back in the early 1900s. From a distance, it seemed to have escaped more or less unscathed. Not so the people inside.
The doorframe was splintered inward. Blood mixed with the water pooled on the floor. Metal claws had gouged deep lines in the walls.
I spotted three bodies in the dining area. I knew them all. Andy Marana fixed computers for the mine and sold racy pinup-style oil paintings on the side. I had gone to high school with Peg Niemi’s little sister. Joe Malki had just started up a landscaping business this summer.
“I’m sorry, Isaac,” Lena said quietly.
I moved toward the kitchen. “Is anyone there?”
The restaurant was silent. I found Steve Guckenberg in the back, along with a metal beast that looked like a housecat with six-inch blades for fur. I switched the shock-gun to setting six and melted a hole through the damned thing.
How many more bodies lay broken and dead throughout Copper River? No magic, at least none the Porters knew of, could truly restore the dead. The few recorded attempts to do so had ended badly. “August Harrison came here because of me.”
“This isn’t your fault,” Lena snapped. “If not you, then he would have gone after some other Porter. It would have happened anyway.”
“It happened here.” I knew this place, these people. Peg walked her hyperactive border collie past the library every morning, rain or shine. I always thought the crazy thing was going to yank her arm out of the socket. Joe had mowed my parents’ lawn after I went downstate for college.
I walked outside, stopping at the remains of the metal moose. It lay on its side, broken and pinned by the wooden sword that continued to grow through its body. Roots dug into broken concrete, and bright green leaves had begun to uncurl from new-formed branches.
The smallest bolt was thicker than my thumb. The cables inside were too big to flex. They might as well have been steel rods.
“More mining equipment?” Lena guessed.
I nodded. “The rear legs look like rock drills.” Normally, the drills could punch deep holes into solid rock, but they had been magically warped to fit the shape of the moose. A few kicks from those could easily have brought down the water tower.
Toni was walking down to join us. She held a slightly-charred wooden yo-yo in one hand, and was replacing the string. A corroded beetle was stuck to one side of the yo-yo. That must have been how she had held off the rest of the bugs, by whipping this one in a whirling pattern and imparting the same motion to its friends. “The moose charged the tower before we could stop it. Lawrence barely had time to jump free.”
Sweat sparkled on her forehead, and she was on the verge of hyperventilating. “No more magic,” I said, tugging the yo-yo from her hand. “You need a break.”
“We all do.” She coiled one of her dreadlocks around her hand and closed her eyes. “The other teams around town report that they’re in a little better shape. We’ve got three injured and one dead. Damn.” She blinked and stared at me. “Apparently a trio of shotgun-wielding werewolves in a pickup truck just ran down a wendigo. Your doing?”
“Jeff’s,” I said gratefully.
“Nice.”<
br />
“Remind them that the wendigos are victims,” Lena said. “Harrison did this against their will.”
“Will do.” Toni tucked her chin into her shoulder, relaying the reminder through her own hair. “Nicola, what’s happening with Bookmaster G?”
While Toni communed with Nicola, I turned to Lena and Nidhi. “How many ghosts do you think there are? How many broken minds trying to dig and claw their way back into the world?”
“Too many,” said Lena. “Thus the word ‘Army.’”
“They’ve found the tree,” Toni said before I could respond. Her next words turned relief to dread. “The mine was abandoned. There were a few ambushes and some partially-constructed metal nasties, but no wendigos, no resurrected cultists, and no dryad.”
“They knew we were coming.” I could use Bi Wei’s book to find them again, but not without Deifilia and the Ghost Army being aware.
Could she have gone after Jeneta after all? I grabbed my phone to call the camp, but before I could dial, Lena’s fingers clamped around my wrist.
“I know where they went,” she whispered, her face pale.
“How—” Understanding sank its fist into my gut. “Your tree.”
“She’s inside me. I can hear her.”
Nidhi took Lena’s elbow, and we lowered her carefully to the ground.
“What’s going on?” Toni asked.
Lena could barely stand. I had a shock-gun, a giant spider, and a collection of books that would probably cost me my sanity if I tried to use them at this point. There was no way we could take on Deifilia by ourselves, let alone the ghost wizards she had resurrected.
Gutenberg might have a chance if they struck fast enough, hitting Deifilia with everything they had.
“What about the graft from your tree?”
She glanced at Toni, then switched to Gujarati. “If I hadn’t taken that graft, I’d be comatose right now. You don’t understand. She’s inside me. I can’t separate myself.”
Meaning if Gutenberg dropped a magical nuke on Deifilia, it would kill Lena as well.
Lena grimaced. “She’s offering a trade. The books…”
I nodded to show I understood. The books for Lena’s life. I took out my car keys. “Toni, I need you to hide something for me.”
“Oh, hell, Isaac. What are you planning?”
I peeled the square of tape from my shirt. To Nidhi, I said, “If you don’t hear from us in thirty minutes, tell them.”
Nidhi nodded. Together, we helped Lena to her feet. Her body was trembling. She rested against me and whispered, “My oak is just the start. If you don’t give her those books, she’ll destroy Copper River and everyone in it.”
I often wonder what became of my first oak, whether it yet survives in the woods outside of Mason, or if it succumbed to old age or one of the winter ice storms. Or those woods might have been bulldozed years ago, paved and transformed into another subdivision with spindly maples and anorexic pines in place of the majestic trees that once grew there.
I’ve never had any desire to revisit that part of my past. It feels morbid, like visiting your own grave.
I know my fallen oak at Nidhi’s house was taken by a lumber company, but I never learned what they did with it. Perhaps it was mulched for wood chips to spread beneath playground equipment or to landscape someone’s yard. I prefer to believe it was dissected into usable timber, that my tree went on to become something beautiful. Bookshelves, perhaps. A comfortable chair. A bedframe.
In C. S. Lewis’ book The Magician’s Nephew, Digory planted the core of a magical apple from Narnia, and the seeds grew into a wondrous tree. When the tree blew down in a storm years later, he had its wood fashioned into a wardrobe, the same wardrobe that transported four children to a magical world a generation later.
What power might my trees possess once I leave them behind? What magic could one pull from shelves made of my oak? Where might a door built of my former body lead?
None of my acorns ever gave birth to another dryad. I don’t know why. It was an acorn from my own book that created me. Most of the time, I consider this sterility a blessing. The last thing I wanted was to bring forth an entire race of slaves. Fortunately, by the time I was aware enough to worry about such a possibility, it had become clear that my own seeds could produce nothing but ordinary saplings.
But what about my human body? Could this flesh become pregnant? I never had with Frank, and with Nidhi, it hadn’t been an issue. But if my lover wanted a child, and my body responded to his desires…
What would a human/dryad baby become? Strong and powerful? Beautiful and pliant?
Would she be free?
I often wonder.
QUESTIONS AND HALF-FORMED PLANS clamored in my head like a basket of hyperactive puppies. How had Deifilia and her followers escaped the mine without Gutenberg noticing? How many more of Bi Sheng’s students had she created, and were they protected by the books I had made? How had they entered Copper River unseen?
There were countless weapons we could use. I could fly in and drop a fairy bio-bomb from Artemis Fowl. Or let Gutenberg unlock the D&D handbook, and see how Deifilia liked playing catch with a sphere of annihilation. Assuming they didn’t simply absorb the magic of our attack and dissolve our weapons into nothingness.
“Lawrence, Whitney, what books do you have?” I hadn’t stocked up for a direct assault on Deifilia.
“Isaac…” Toni began.
“Thirty minutes,” I promised. “One way or another, you’ll know.”
It was an older fairy-tale-style romance that offered what I thought was my best chance at walking away from a confrontation with Deifilia. When I told Lawrence what I wanted, he looked past me to Toni, as if asking for permission.
“You’re sure about this?” Toni asked.
“Not in the slightest. But people are dying.” I waited for Lawrence to reach into the book. “Tell Pallas to evacuate the town.”
Toni folded her arms. “She’ll want to know why.”
“I know. Tell her I’m doing something stupid again.” I returned to the car and waited while Lena and Nidhi said their good-byes.
“What about megaspider over there?” Whitney asked.
Smudge scurried toward us. Whitney, Lawrence, and Toni jumped back as he placed his front legs on the bumper, as if he wanted nothing more than to climb up onto the Triumph and become the world’s first road-surfing spider.
“I don’t think so, partner,” I said. “Would one of you mind pulling the White Rabbit’s fan out of Wonderland and shrinking him back down to his travel-size?”
Once Smudge was back to normal and sitting—rather sullenly, if you asked me—on the dashboard, Nidhi and Lena ended their kiss. Nidhi stepped back.
“Isaac…”
“I know.” I glanced at Lena, who was slumped in the seat, her eyes closed. She held the branch from her tree across her chest. “I’ll keep her safe.”
Before, I had been too intent on staying ahead of our pursuers to truly see the damage Deifilia’s creatures had done. Driving back through town, I noticed everything. The playground behind the tennis court looked like a tornado had touched down. Whatever had come through here had ripped chain-link fence like cobwebs.
Sirens wailed from every direction. Twice we had to backtrack because police cars blocked the roads. Dogs were howling from their yards. Others sprinted through the streets in a panic. We passed a pair of EMTs assisting a man covered in blood. A half mile farther on, the mining museum was on fire. I slowed the car.
“I know what you’re thinking,” said Lena. “You’re in no shape to help.”
“I’ve got two books in this car that could give me enough elemental control to—”
“They’ve got a fully equipped fire engine. Let them do their job. If you overdo it, you’re likely to make things worse.”
I tightened my fingers on the wheel and kept driving.
“What’s in that vial Lawrence made for you?”
I started to answer, then hit the brakes as a wendigo staggered out of McDonald’s. Its stomach bulged like an overstuffed sack. Before I could grab my shock-gun, a blue Harley-Davidson sped at the wendigo from the opposite direction. The driver appeared human, but the woman in the sidecar was in the hybrid form some weres could take, all muscle and fur and teeth, but still humanoid. She jumped out of the sidecar and tackled the wendigo while the driver pulled onto the sidewalk and grabbed an aluminum bat.
“Don’t kill it,” I shouted.
“Easy for you to say.”
It was anything but easy. The wendigo had fed recently. I suppose it could have stuffed itself on Big Macs and fries, but I doubted it.
“The vial?” Lena asked again as I turned into the drive-through to get past the fight. Wendigos were slower when sated, and the werewolves appeared to have things under control.
“The Porter database catalogs it as Love Potion 163-F. It’s fast-acting, works on contact, and lasts for up to ten years.”
She pushed herself up in her seat. When she spoke, she didn’t bother to disguise her anger. “One dryad isn’t enough for you?”
“You know I don’t want Deifilia for myself. I want to stop her. If we fight her head-on, she’ll crush us. But if I can create more of a conflict inside her, split her loyalty long enough for Bi Wei and the others to act, we might have a chance. We might even be able to save her.”
“Save her?” Lena repeated softly. “With the magical equivalent of a date rape drug?”
“I wouldn’t—”
“I know. That doesn’t make it right.”
I couldn’t argue. I had racked my brain for another way to stop Deifilia and resolve this mess. But even if I could have risked using my own magic, it never would have worked. Lena and I would have to fight through wendigos and metal beasts while the students of Bi Sheng countered my every spell.
“163-F has an antidote. If we can capture her alive, we can reverse its effects. I’m open to other suggestions, but people are dying, Lena.”
“I know,” she said again.