by Myers, Karen
“We’ve traded with his uncle and his grandfather in the past, in similar ways. Our lord Gwyn helped us work this out in the first place, and Mrs. Catlett works with us to make it better.”
As he helped lift the heavier items into the wagon, George thought about the situation. The Anabaptists would tend to mind their own business, and the goods they’re delivering aren’t the sorts of things that would bother them, like alcohol or guns. He wasn’t sure what they thought about tobacco.
Benitoe was taking careful note of everything Broch had set up here. George would have to speak to him later about possible cover stories the lutins could use. He didn’t think the same guise would work for them.
As Broch and Drilego were loading the last of the smaller items with Benitoe’s help and tying them down, George walked outside and headed over to chat with Mag who had set herself in the middle of the cleared ground. He paused to orient himself first. He knew where they were, on the maps he’d made at Mariah’s, and he’d used a satellite program to zoom in and see how private this was. Now, standing here on the ground, he looked at the barn and its setting with approval.
They were right up against a state forest, and there were no visible dwellings anywhere around. In fact, the barn needed a house and farm to make sense, but there were enough dirt roads around that maybe the locals really did buy the “just another splinter sect” story, with this barn as an outpost.
There was no such thing as true anonymity in a rural community, he knew—a plausible cover story was essential. The “English,” as the Amish called their neighbors, wouldn’t expect to know the details, and if the religious communities were content to ignore them, perhaps this was reasonably secure. In any case, there was little to discover if someone broke in, and any transits of the way would be done under cover. It was clever to hide it inside the barn. Even if it burned down, the way wouldn’t be harmed and the structure could be rebuilt, wagon load by wagon load.
But it would never scale up. George doubted the korrigans could double the size of this operation and avoid comment, much less grow it substantially. There had to be a better method, and preferably a more secure one. The lutins couldn’t use this method for themselves, and they couldn’t buy goods through korrigan agents without increased capacity.
What if Benitoe or others wanted goods that were more obviously not destined for an Amish or Mennonite community? He could help Benitoe identify some opportunities, but this whole distribution and delivery system needed more thought.
He joined Seething Magma where she’d planted herself, and leaned his shoulders against her, facing the barn doors and the activity within. He looked for other ways, but all he could sense was the nearby Korrigans’ Way entrance, and Mag herself. He thought he could feel something, far to the west, but it was faint.
Have you been here before, he asked Mag, silently.
*Not I, and few of my kin. I don’t sense any of mine here. How far is it to the place we met last winter?*
He straightened up and used his compass to locate south. “It’s a hundred and fifty or two hundred miles that way,” he said, pointing a little west of south.
Mag paused a moment.
*If any of mine were here, I think I would know. We don’t come often, there’s been no reason to.*
George tasted something odd in her words, a flavor almost of… uneasiness.
*I am not accustomed to feeling alone, neither kin nor traces of them. Even when my mother and I visited Llefelys in Gaul, we had each other, and all the ways that others had left behind.*
George thought it must be hard to be alone, when all your long life you had been within the hearing of others. Or whatever you could call their communication.
He pulled out Angharad’s pendant, and the arrow swung in the same direction as he had pointed a moment ago. “How do you suppose that works, even across the worlds? Cernunnos couldn’t sense his hounds, when they were hiding in the human world at Bellemore, and you can’t sense your kin back in the otherworld.”
*It must depend upon some other principle.*
George thought to himself, with a smile, it’s a wonder she didn’t say “Ask Ceridwen,” the usual reply to such questions. He’d have to remember to do that, when he got back in a few days.
He turned to face a little south of west. About fifty miles away, the place where the man who might be his father was last seen. He reached out but felt nothing.
Benitoe emerged from the barn carrying both of their packs, and Broch and Drilego followed him. “They’re done,” Benitoe told George.
George’s stomach growled and he pulled out his pocket watch and checked it. No wonder—mid-day and beyond, and time to get going.
“Let’s get cracking,” he told Benitoe. “Broch, are you staying?”
“Nay, we’re all loaded up. We’ll be off now. With my lady there,” he bowed to Seething Magma, “you’ll have no need of us to get about, but if there should be any sort of problem, look for us here every day or two.”
“My thanks for your help,” George said, and nodded to Broch. Drilego took one last look around while her father entered the barn again, and George thought he saw a look of longing pass over her face before she turned to haul one of the barn doors shut, from the outside, and then the other, this time from within. In a moment, he felt the way being used, and then all was still.
I wonder if she’s ever gotten the chance to explore the human world, he thought. Oh, well, time to get down to business.
“Mag, the first thing we have to get is a car and then we’ll need to coordinate things. I know you can make a travel way wherever you want, but we can’t just come along with you—how would we carry things? And it’s not safe for Benitoe. Besides, I should kill your ways after you use them, or we’ll just clutter the place up.”
She didn’t reply and he wondered if perhaps she had other plans. He knew she could pluck that thought from his head, but what could he do about it?
“Anyway, I’ve made arrangements for a car. The nearest place is over there, about seventeen miles.” He pointed due east.
“Think you can make us a way there? I’m curious what it’s like, from the inside, to just peek out like you’re planning to do. Better keep it well above the ground, a couple of hundred feet, or we might run into powerlines. Or even cell towers.”
He showed her an image of what he meant.
“The place I’m looking for is on the west edge of the town, Mifflinburg. If I can look down from the air, I can probably find what we want.”
“You’ll need to walk with me as I make the way,” she rumbled, “so you can tell me when to stop.”
“I’ll have to stay up front with her, Benitoe,” George said. “Be careful not to bump into her from behind.”
“Better take your own pack, then,” Benitoe replied, handing it over.
“Ready, Mag? Car first,” he said. His stomach growled again. “And then lunch, I think.”
*And then the visit to the university.*
George felt the barely restrained eagerness in her thought and lost his appetite.
CHAPTER 15
George smiled to himself at Benitoe’s expression when the pizza was delivered to his table. He hadn’t expected much in a town like this, but the food here looked better than most of the chain restaurants, smelled better, too, and it was the first appealing place they’d found after he’d picked up the car.
The travel to Mifflinburg had been… disturbing. Mag had paused in mid-air to consult with him—was that a cell tower, on the mountain to the north? It had been alarming to find himself standing on nothing more substantial than a way-passage floor, inches from a drop of a couple of hundred feet. He hadn’t been able to keep from grabbing at her smooth surface in vertigo, looking for handholds, and he blushed at the recollection of his panic. She’d extruded part of herself under his feet as a platform and wrapped a pseudopod around his waist to steady him.
*Better?*
“Sorry,” he’d said,
once his breath was back under control. “A fall from this height would kill me. I come from a long line of ancestors who managed not to tumble out of trees.”
*I had no thought of this. Like my daughter, I can catch myself with a way.*
Granite Cloud was named for playing with ways like a children’s slide in reverse, letting the mouth of one catch her and then flowing high out the other end to dive through the air into it again.
George had asked her to repeat her question, and this time she shrank far enough to the side to let Benitoe peer past her. When he’d seen how high they were, it was his turn to sit down on the passage floor and steady himself with George’s leg.
George had confirmed Mag’s guess about the cell tower and then guided her, from above, to the car rental place on the western edge of town. As in many small towns, it was part of an auto service store that covered all the local needs, not just repairs. She’d grounded the way in a corner of the empty parking lot and squeezed over to one side by extending backward into the passage, so that Benitoe could carefully get by her, once George had checked to see that no one seemed to be looking their way.
We’ll be done soon, he projected to her now, as he chewed on his second piece of pizza. She was watching over his mental shoulder, as it were, so she could participate in their conversation, through George.
“How do you like it?” he asked Benitoe who had mastered the technique of using his fingers to control a slice. “It’s better when the crust is even thinner, and crunchier, but that takes specialized ovens and most of these restaurants don’t bother with that.”
“I never thought of loading a flat bread this way. What do they top it with?”
George chuckled. “The list is endless. We call it pizza when it’s mostly cheese and tomatoes with or without additions, but the region this comes from has all kinds of related food. They brush bread with olive oil and herbs, for example, and then toast it.”
He thought for a moment. Had he encountered garlic in the local cuisine in Gwyn’s domain? Ceridwen had mentioned it to him once, joking about vampires. “Do you use garlic as a seasoning?” he asked Benitoe.
“Is that what I’m smelling?” He zeroed in on a nearby table with a platter of garlic bread and nodded to himself. “I’ve never seen an olive tree, though I’ve heard of them. Oil from a tree seems very odd. How do you squeeze the fruit?”
George held his fingers an inch apart to show him how big an olive was and described the pressing process. “Might be better to just buy the oil here than to find someplace in Gwyn’s domain where the trees could be grown. They’re picky about location and do their best in the old world. But garlic’s easy, and all the herbs, too.”
George could see him making mental notes.
The waitress came by. “Anything else?”
Strictly in the interests of education for the lutin, George told himself, he ordered a slice of cheesecake and a tiramisu for them to share, and gave her his credit card at the same time.
That was the second time today he’d given someone a credit card. He’d bought things online from Mariah’s place, but he hadn’t used a card in person for more than half a year, or presented a driver’s license for identification. It felt strange.
He looked at Benitoe uneasily. He was leaving a paper trail, wasn’t he, the car and then this meal. He didn’t see why it would matter, but he decided to do as much with cash as he could. He’d need to find an ATM machine when they got back in the car.
At least they had a car, now, a bland, white Japanese four-door sedan. They didn’t have to carry their backpacks with them everywhere, and that helped them blend in. George always got a glance or two in a crowd for his size, but now it was Benitoe he was worried about, drawing unwelcome attention. No one in the restaurant seemed to notice him, though. This will work, he thought, relieved.
Mag, he projected to her, if you can stand it, I want to make one more stop in this town for Benitoe, before we go on to State College.
*I will go and explore these mountains here, to the north. Call to me when you are done.*
His sense of her abruptly diminished. He reached for the end of the way she’d made when she brought them here from Broch’s barn. It wasn’t far, just down the road, and he killed it quietly. He intended to clean up after her as much as possible, not to leave ways dangling around in the human world, open for anyone to find. He felt the way she’d just made from there to the northern ridge of this valley, and shut it down, too. Any passages she made within the mountains would be inaccessible to him, and harmless to others.
Well, he had wheels, food in his stomach, and someone to show around. Time to get serious.
George pushed his plates aside and leaned his elbows on the table. “Let’s do some solid planning,” he said to Benitoe. He lowered his voice to keep their conversation private.
“I’ve arranged a few particular visits for you, in areas of plants, animals, and food. That much seemed obvious. But what does the Kuzul really envision? They’re not trying to compete against the korrigans head-to-head, are they?”
“You know, the korrigans have a whole town around those warehouses at Tremafon, Broch was telling me.” He waved his hands in the air to illustrate.
“There’s a river port, roads in all directions, and a way. Two, now, I guess, to supplement the roads. That sort of thing doesn’t get built all at once. It takes generations, I would think, and I don’t know enough about how lutins want to live. Do you ever gather together in towns? It takes a lot of people to run something like that, and they all have families whose needs must be met, so those sorts of places get big pretty quickly.”
Benitoe replied, quietly, “Tremafon is impressive, you’re right, but that’s not what the Kuzul wants. They’re looking for something that we can do best, without too much disruption. Something that our younger and more restless folk can build.”
“Someone like yourself,” George said, with a smile.
Benitoe smiled back and shrugged. “Perhaps. Or maybe they have my Auntie Maëlys in mind, with her Golden Cockerel in Edgewood. We’re not the only ones.”
He scraped his fork along the plate for the last crumbs of cheesecake. “No, they want me to explore, to come up with ideas. I don’t have any notion what to propose to them. Not yet, anyway.”
He looked down at the remains of the pizza. “Though maybe olive oil and garlic will make the list.”
“And cheesecake?”
“Could be.”
George accepted the challenge. “Alright, then, I’ll just have to surprise you.”
He pushed his chair away from the table. “I’ll be back in a moment, and you may want to use the bathrooms here, too. You can contemplate the uses of human plumbing after I return.”
The bathroom was set up for one person at a time. George washed his hands and looked at himself in the mirror. I seem normal, he thought, not like someone who’s been living among the fae for months. You’d think it would show, somehow.
He glanced up at the ceiling. It’s pretty high, he thought, and the door’s locked.
He set his feet for balance and called up the deer-headed man, and then the horned man. The empty forms came, readily enough, but there was still no sense of Cernunnos behind them.
Come on, he thought, get over it. Just because I’m looking for him doesn’t mean I don’t respect you, I just can’t understand your wishes. Why wouldn’t you want me to find my father, if he’s alive?
No response. He ground his teeth in frustration.
Well, dammit, he thought, and clenched his fist. In a few days, I’ll know if this person is my father or not, and then maybe this will all blow over.
His determination softened a bit before he even reached the door. Admit it, he said to himself, you miss him, in your head. What if no one’s listening? What if he’s gone for good?
Benitoe looked around the restaurant while he waited for George to return. This town was much bigger than Rowanton, when George’s grandfather drov
e them to look at it. The car is smaller—I wonder if I can persuade George to show me how to drive it? It didn’t look that hard.
The materials used for the chairs and tables were strange. The wood, what there was of it, was ugly, but the smooth slick surfaces on the counters, those were like nothing he’d ever seen. He thought they were stone until he touched them, but they weren’t cold and heavy. Plastic, George had called it. It was everywhere he looked, even in the car, as he recalled. Not metal, not wood, not stone, not fabric—a whole different type of material.
The humans came in all sorts of shapes and sizes, he saw. Thin and fat, tall and short, and different colors, too. He’d heard about that but never thought to see it for himself. They wore very little clothing in the summer heat—feet that were almost bare, and lots of skin on display, as if they were all at home in private. Unseemly, he thought it. He preferred his comfortable shirt with the odd stretchiness to it, even if he had at first objected to the short sleeves. And besides, it wasn’t hot in the restaurant. It was much cooler in here then it had been out on the street. George explained about that, some kind of machine that chilled the air.
So many things to sort out, to distill what mattered for the Kuzul. It made his head hurt, and he knew this was just the beginning. He’d have to trust to George to guide him properly.
We can’t set up something like Tremafon, he thought, he’s right about that. The lutins won’t want to live that way. We need something different, not just different goods, but a completely different way of life. I wonder if George can suggest anything.
What’s he looking so black about, he wondered, as he saw George returning from the bathroom. What’s the matter with him?