by J. A. Pitts
When we were packing up, Jai Li and Edith were talking, their hands flying back and forth. I really needed to take the time to improve my signing. I had no idea what they were talking about. I was barely at the alphabet stage, and maybe the baby-words portion of the education.
When I asked what they were talking about, Jai Li pointed at my hair and drew her hands far apart, frowning.
“She says you have lost your way,” Edith said, stuffing a few loose folding napkins in her saddlebag. “You’ve let your hair grow out, and she thinks it makes you look funny.”
I ran my hands up through my hair, contemplating. I normally kept the sides shaved, but with all the crap going on since fall, I’d let it go. I pulled the sides of my hair and could tell it was down below my ears.
“You don’t think it’s pretty?” I asked.
“Oh, I think it looks a sight better than you normally keep,” Edith said.
“I agree,” Mary chimed in, grinning as she checked the saddle of her horse. “You’re a beautiful woman,” she said. “But you definitely don’t look like yourself.”
I helped Jai Li up onto her horse and mounted my own. “Okay,” I said, looking over at Julie who was just shaking her head and holding up both hands.
“I’m not sure how I feel about it at the moment,” I said with a laugh. It was true. I hadn’t given any thought to how I looked, honestly. Oh, I still had my jeans and my concert Tees, even my Docs. But before I’d been cultivating an image of the rebel. Now, it didn’t really seem to matter.
Jai Li pulled her horse around close to mine and leaned out, patting my leg. I looked at her, and she signed quickly. I let her finish and looked to Edith who had been watching.
“She said you need to find yourself before you can find Katie.”
I drew a deep breath, taking in the clean country air and clearing my head of cobwebs. “Find myself, huh?” I asked.
Jai Li signed a response that I understood. Yes, she signed. We need you.
We rode back to the farm, one of us adults keeping pace with Jai Li, but the others rotating back to carry on conversations without the girl. She was happy to take point on the trail.
“Wouldn’t hurt you to start working out again,” Julie said, grinning. “You’re getting a little soft, or so the girl says.”
I looked down. I didn’t have a paunch or anything. But I hadn’t gone on a run for a while, and I can’t remember the last time I did sit-ups. Maybe I was depressed. Maybe exploring the Sideways was an excuse to not really do anything.
It was hard to tell. Was I wasting my time? Or, maybe I was just going about it wrong.
On the ride home, I decided I’d call Gunther, let him know about the wraith and see if he knew anything that would keep it away from Katie. I had a hunch that the magicked fence out at Black Briar could probably keep the wraith away. Would also explain why he had been following me. If he was still haunting Katie, he’d be there, not chasing me.
That thought buoyed me a little. Not that being hunted by eaters and wraiths were simple things. But them being after me meant they weren’t after Katie, and that was a relief.
Unless they were really looking for Katie and I happened to be in the same vicinity. Circles within circles. It made my head hurt. I rotated up the line to ride beside Jai Li and try and settle my whirling thoughts.
Time to get back onto my routine, do some smithing, restart life. Katie wouldn’t want me floundering around. And if Jai Li had to point that out to me, it must be pretty bad. No more dreamwalking for me. Time to face the real world.
Twenty-five
Then in the third week of June I got a surprise I hadn’t expected. Jai Li and I had pretty much moved full-time into Circle Q, so I drove down to our apartment in Kent to grab some odds and ends Jai Li and I needed.
I was in the kitchen debating if I had time to make a pot of coffee and go through the mail when I heard a voice calling to me from the old bedroom.
I spun around, reaching for Gram who was in her case in the living room. I vaulted over the bar, rolled over the top of the couch and ended up on my knees on the floor, pulling the case toward me, flipping open the latches, and grasping Gram by the hilt.
The world shifted like it did every time I held her—sounds were sharper, the world was a little crisper. We hadn’t slept in the bedroom since the night I went walkabout of my own volition months earlier. Astral projection, some called it. Like dream walking, but when you’re awake. It was crazy and damned dangerous.
At that time, I’d been exploring the apartment when I found we had a shadow door between our apartment and the next. It gave off that haunted house vibe, but I’ve never been one to be afraid. Being afraid was a good self-defense—a lesson I had a hard time retaining. I’d tried to push through the shadow door, like a ghost walking through the solid wall that it really was in the normal world. Just an experiment, to see what would happen. I expected to feel funny, maybe get cold or hot, something like when you walk through a ghost in movies. What I hadn’t expected was being sucked into the Sideways. Not the dreamscape, the real and for true land of eaters and malevolent spirits.
I could barely bring myself to walk into the room after that. Katie had humored me, and we moved the bed into the living room. Made having company a little awkward, but we didn’t entertain all that much. The place was too small as it was.
Katie had this ancient old mirror she’d inherited from her mother long before I’d met her. It had hung in that bedroom as long as I’d known her. She loved that mirror. I hadn’t thought much about it until I walked into the bedroom, looking for the source of the voice.
I got quite the surprise. In the mirror, glowing like an angel, was the elf boy Gletts—Skella’s brother—who’d been lost for so long. He’d rescued me from being pulled into the Sideways the day I’d discovered the shadow door. And lo and behold, here he was in Katie’s mirror.
His body lay in a house of healing in Stanley Park, Vancouver where his grandmother held vigil waiting for his spirit to return. I’m the one that told them his spirit was wandering the Sideways. They hadn’t been pleased.
His gran, Unun, was out of her head, worrying. I wasn’t sure she’d ever recover. It scared Skella. I think that more than anything was what was driving the girl to Bellingham and new friends—the grief and the madness brought on by the helpless waiting.
Pretty much how I felt with Katie.
My mouth went dry.
“Why are you here?” I asked, striding across the room. “Why don’t you go home, back to your body? Your grandmother is mad with grief.”
He held up his hand, grinning like an imp. “Keep your panties on,” he said.
I glared at him and he blushed.
“Or don’t.”
Such a boy. He’d gotten bolder since I’d seen him last.
“Why are you here, besides concern for the state of my underwear?”
The look on his face spoke of fear and nervousness. “Have you given up the search?” he asked.
It had been a few days since I’d gone dreamwalking. Is that what he meant?
“If not,” he rushed on, “you need to come up with a better plan. You’ve been searching in the wrong places.”
He looked like a normal gaunt Goth kid I’d first met, too thin, hair in his face, black eyeliner and fingernails.
“What do you know about it?” I asked.
He rolled his eyes. “Who do you think has been keeping you out of trouble, geez.” He pulled a face—petulant and exasperated. “You go running through places even the most experienced travelers fear, screaming your fool head off. It’s been damn close a few times, you know.”
“So it was you,” I said, finally putting the pieces together. “You’re the one who’s been guiding me, that voice in the dark.”
“Yep,” he said, grinning. “It was fun at first, following you, keeping the crawlies from catching you, but that was before he showed up.”
My blood froze. “Who? Who show
ed up?”
He leaned in toward the mirror, his face suddenly getting a little distorted. “The man in the bowler hat,” he said, shivering. “I’ll take the meanest eater over him any day. At least the eaters only want to eat. The hat man, he wants to hurt.”
I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to settle my breath. My heart was pounding like I’d been running.
“Is he chasing me, or looking for Katie?”
A grimace flitted across Gletts’s face. “Katie,” he said. “I’ve heard him talking to some of the others. Some he negotiates with, some he tortures and kills. Eats the dead,” he stammered to a halt, his voice quivering. “Not afraid of eaters or anything in there,” he said, looking up. “I think they’ve started being afraid of him.”
“Thank you,” I said, shivering. “Thanks for helping me.”
“Katie’s holed up somewhere,” he said. “Scared. I’m betting she’s waiting for a time she can come home, if she’s not so lost she can’t find her way.”
“Maybe I need to start hunting the hat man.”
He stepped back, hands up in the air, shaking his head. “He’s bad news, Sarah. I’m not sure you can handle him.”
“I’ll think on it,” I said. “Thanks for the warning.” I looked at him. There was more, I had a feeling. “What have you been doing?” I asked. “Why aren’t you going home to your family? To your body?”
He shrugged. “I was busy before you started running around like a crazy woman.” He pulled his shoulders back and raised his chin a little. “I’m on a quest. Doing important things and you’re keeping me from them.”
“What things?” I asked. “And I can most likely defend myself, even against a wraith.”
He laughed at that. “In the meat world, sure. But when you’re spirit walking, you should at least carry that sword of yours. I know you can take it Sideways, you told me.”
I looked at him. So I was definitely slipping from dreamland to the Sideways. I thought of my promise to Jai Li—my promise to stop dream walking and live in the real world—but this changed things. Maybe I should start sleeping with Gram in bed with me again. Probably not totally crazy. I’d had her the first time I met the bowler hat scumbag.
“Have you seen any clues of Katie?” I didn’t want him to hear the desperation in my voice, but he already knew. He’d heard me calling for her night after night.
His grin faded. “No, I’m sorry.”
“What are you doing that is so important, then?” I asked.
“You aren’t listening,” he said, glancing over his shoulder. “I can see it in you, the way you stand, the way your eyes are. You think you can beat anything, you think you can’t die.” He paused, gulping, and turned to the side. “I don’t want you to get hurt,” he said, quietly, not looking at me. “And Katie isn’t here, she’s not in any part of the Sideways I’ve explored. And she’s not in any of the between places I’ve been to. She’s someplace else, hiding.”
“Hiding?” I asked, really not expecting an answer.
“Yeah, I’m sorry. I just don’t have any idea where.” He shook his head. “I know something happened to her. There was a ripple affect across the worlds. Surely you felt it.”
Now it was my turn to nod. “Oh, you have no idea. Things have been crazy.”
The mirror behind him shimmered with golden flames, made me think of Bub. “Where are you?”
“Not sure,” he said. “Funny that no matter where I search, I can always find a window to you and Skella.”
That was sweet and creepy.
“So, dish. What’re you doing, exactly?” I asked again. “What keeps you from coming home?”
“That’s just it,” he said, smiling. “I’m searching for home.”
“Can’t you follow that thread back to your body?” When I’d gone walkabout in Vancouver at his grandmother’s insistence, I saw that each of the wounded and the lost had their spirits connected back to their bodies by a gossamer cord. Once that cord was severed, the spirit moved onward and the body died. Gletts’s cord had been strong. Not like some who yearned to move to the next place. “Your grandmother misses you.”
He shook his head. “Not that home. Álfheim. Our true home. I think I’ve found something you could help with.”
I watched him, considering all the crazy shit in my life. “My priorities are with Katie,” I said. “Sorry, she’s more important.”
He sighed, pursing his mouth into a pout. “When you find a way to bring her home, will you help then?”
Heck yeah. That was exactly the type of thing Odin wanted me doing. “Absolutely.”
“Excellent!” he shouted, doing a happy dance. “It’s in Bellingham, I think. South of Vancouver, anyway. But I’m pretty sure it’s in Bellingham.” He was excited, joyous. “Skella’s been searching, but she hasn’t found it yet.”
“You talk to Skella?” She never told me.
“Not directly,” he said, shrugging. “I talk to her in her sleep, but she listens. She thinks she’s dreaming. I’ve gotten that good. I tried it out on Rolph, your dwarf friend at first, but he doesn’t sleep very well, and besides he’s pretty grumpy.”
I chuckled. “Yeah, funny, that.”
“But, I finally got the knack of it. It took me a while, but I’ve convinced her to search Bellingham for signs of a way home, a way off this mudball.”
“Wait,” my head was buzzing. “Do you think you’ve found Yggdrasil, the world tree?”
“Maybe,” he said, thoughtfully. “That could be it. I just see it as a portal from this side. Another junction between one place and the next.” He looked thoughtful for a moment, edgy. “The problem is, it doesn’t stay put. I’ve seen it a few times, but it flickers, waxes and wanes.”
“So, go home, get your own body, and come back here.”
He shrugged at me, that old familiar reticence I’d come to recognize with him before he’d fallen. “Can’t see it from meat space,” he said. “If I can find this, figure out how to get my people off this world and onto our own, I’d die happy.”
I understood the sentiment. Needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. It was also bullshit in most cases. “Let’s see if we can find it, and get you home,” I offered, smiling. “Win-win all around. What say?”
He looked up at me, his hair covering half his face. For a moment I thought he was going to laugh at me, throw his head back, and cackle in the face of my absurd suggestion. Instead he smiled shyly and nodded. “I’d like that.”
“I’ll call Skella,” I promised. “You go take care of yourself. Don’t get eaten by … well … eaters.”
He grinned, and that rakish look I’d seen before returned. “They can’t catch me,” he said. “You’d be surprised what I’ve learned here.”
“Like secret passages to other worlds?”
“So much more than that,” he replied, suddenly serious. “Did you know another drake has come into the world? First in a century.”
“A new …?” I stared intently at him. “When? Where?”
“Not sure, exactly,” he said. “Direction and distance are not very relevant here. But I’d think you should check in on Frederick Sawyer. See what he knows. It’s definitely south of you, but it’s all a little vague.”
“Okay, I’ll check into that. Anything else?”
Gletts pursed his lips, thinking.
“Anything,” I said. “Even if it seems strange. You never know what’s important.”
He laughed. “You don’t know the half of it.” There was another moment, where he seemed to be wracking his brains. “You know, there’s this beacon I can see from time to time. Like a searchlight, only sometimes it’s green and sometimes it’s purple.”
Sympathy magic? Like with the diary. “Where?” I asked, suddenly excited again.
“Near here,” he said, shrugging. “They don’t like it here, whenever one of them gets too close to that light, they get zapped. Fries them in a heartbeat. Would be a powerful weapon to ha
ve, if you can find it.”
Maybe it was the diary. Who knew how far its magic reached. Something I’d look into, for sure. If it didn’t scare the hell out of me and everyone who knew of its existence.
“There’s a book,” Gletts said, off-handedly. “Not sure what kind, but I overheard some of the Bowler Hat Man’s minions talking about it. Something he wants pretty badly. Almost as badly as he wants you.”
“Like a diary,” I asked, a little weirded out that he was almost reading my mind.
“Could be,” he said, “Now that you mention it. Seems that either the book leads to you or Katie, and any of the three of you leads to the other.” He tapped his chin, thinking. “You know, makes me wonder which he’s really looking for. You, Katie, or the book.”
I nodded slowly. “Freaky,” I said, my mind running in circles.
“He’s a freaky dude,” Gletts said, nodding sagely. “But I should run, can’t stick around too long in one place, except for the few safe-houses I’ve discovered.”
“We’ll have to talk about all that after you’ve returned home,” I said, with a smile. “Now go home and stop making your grandmother go insane.”
He looked at me, his eyes reflecting the golden flames all around him. “Soon, I hope.” He gave a quick wave and stepped exit stage left. One moment he was gone, then Katie’s mirror was full of flames. Then I only saw myself reflected back.
Holy crap. Was he after the book? That made no sense. And a way home? Just the fact I had spoken with Gletts was gonna totally freak out Skella. Odin, on the other hand, was going to freak, but in a totally different manner. I looked forward to his next poetic ramblings. And what the hell was that about Frederick? My head was spinning. Diary, new Dragons, Yggdrasil. A path away from this world. A chance to explore other worlds.
But not without Katie.
That stopped the spinning. Other worlds or no, I wasn’t going anywhere without her. I’d promised her. Never again.