Dandelion Fire

by N. D. Wilson

  The white shirt slipped back off his chin, and Henry left it. It hadn't been helping, anyway. He pulled in a deep breath of the foul air. It was time to do something.

  Henry looked down at the street below him, and he looked at the two intersections at the building's corners. It was a full city block. If his legs held out, he would try to walk the ledge all the way around to the other side. There could be fire escapes or ladders or something. If his legs couldn't hack it, or if the ledge stopped, then he would look for an open window. Or break one.

  Henry continued sliding in the same direction. Immediately, he knew that sliding wouldn't be enough. He'd reach the other side of the building by tomorrow morning. Breathing slowly, he turned, squaring his feet on the ledge. In order to fit and not overbalance, he had to keep his shoulders angled, one palm against the wall in front of him and the other dragging behind. But at least he could walk, and walking made the building feel less monstrous.

  Every twenty feet or so, he had to duck beneath another bank of windows, and each time, the backpack on his belly rubbed against his knees while he shuffled forward. Those were the slow times. But in between the windows, his speed was almost the same as it would have been on the sidewalk. Faster, if the sidewalk was in this city.

  Stooping beneath the final windows, he reached the first corner, straightened, slid to the edge, and peered around it. The road below him was hardly a back alley. But he couldn't see how long the building was on this side because the ledge ended. At least for a while. A huge metal pipe, tarnished green and crusted black, was mounted against the wall, and the ledge had been smashed out to fit it. Henry slid toward it and put out his hand.

  The pipe was warm, almost hot. Henry looked up and saw where it cut through two more ledges above him, and where it wheezed steam into the sky. There were two other pipes beside it, each as thick as a large tree.

  Henry put his hand behind the first one, between the warm metal and the wall, and he leaned out. The base of the far pipe bent into the wall six feet from where Henry was standing. The middle pipe ended and burrowed into the second-story wall below him. The one closest to him, the one he held, reached all the way down to the first floor, still tucking into the wall well above the heads of the people on the street.

  Henry ran his hand up and down its surface. It wasn't slick. The soot scraped off at first, but beneath it, older layers had hardened on. And the metal itself, where bare, wasn't smooth against his palms. The pipe was segmented. Every four feet or so, there was a lip, maybe an inch thick, where the segments were riveted together.

  It wasn't a ladder. But it might be possible. Henry looked down at the street. He was a lot higher than the pigeon roost in the barn back in Kansas. This pipe probably ended that high above cobblestones. And he was wondering if he could dangle from it and drop.

  Well, even if he didn't do that, at least he might be able to reach a lower ledge and climb in a first-story window.

  Sixty or seventy feet off the ground, three hundred in his mind, Henry moved his backpack to its rightful place, wedged his hand deeper behind the warm pipe, bit his lip, and swung his bare foot around to the other side. There was no ledge there between the pipes, but he worked his hand into place, hugging soot and warmth to his chest.

  Bending his one supporting leg, he felt for a toehold with the other. Lower and lower, he squatted, until his leg was shaking in panic and sweat dripped off his forehead. His toes splayed out on a hot rivet lip, and he relaxed for a moment. Then, shaking, he fished his other leg off the ledge and braced it on the lip as well.

  He'd just committed. There was no way he'd be able to get back up on the ledge. Down was all there was.

  Hugging the pipe tight, he tried to look for the next lip. Bending carefully, he reached for it, realized how impossible it was, and straightened back up. What had he done? It was four feet below him. He could reach two, maybe, and that would be an adrenaline-fed stretch. Just to make sure, he tried to squirm back up. It wasn't going to happen.

  He didn't have any choice. He was going to have to slide the pipe four feet at a time.

  He was going to die. In a city as beautiful as an oil refinery. In a world he didn't like. Barefoot. With his head knocked open on cobblestones. He'd probably land on someone really nice and kill them, too. The only nice person in this place. At least the factory girl wouldn't get to watch.

  Henry gripped the pipe with strength he didn't know he had and slid his feet down off the lip, pinching his bare arches against the metal. Plowing soot, he slid in one-inch jerks, relaxing and clenching tight. The lip he had been standing on dug into his thighs, and then his stomach. He didn't care, but it reached his ribs, and he had to. He relaxed his arms, trying to edge his way around it. Instead, it scraped up his chest as he dropped suddenly. He squeezed the pipe hard, grinding to a stop.

  He hadn't died. Blowing out relief, he nearly smiled. He'd climbed down one segment. One out of twelve. Or fifteen. Or some other too-large number.

  The pipe was getting hot against his chest. And his legs, noodly and sore when he'd first climbed out the window, really weren't up to this. He needed to go faster. And he wasn't sure he could go at all.

  Henry clenched his teeth. He couldn't be weak now. He couldn't think about failure. Instead, he focused on the pipe in front of him. He gripped it and slid again.

  The next segment did go faster. The third was the fastest, accidentally, and he bruised his heel on a rivet when he slammed into the lip. The pipe rattled and shook, and soot rained down in his hair.

  Without giving himself time to worry or to assess his shaking limbs, Henry slid again. And again. Until his raw, black feet dropped onto the second-story ledge, and he eased himself off the pipe and leaned panting against the wall. His arms were scratched and bleeding, and the soles of his feet were worse. His shirt was thick with black mud—soot mixed with his sweat—and the shallow cuts on his belly were stinging like fire ants.

  A few people in the crowd looked up at him while they passed, and a boy on the back of a quadcycle waved. Henry didn't wave back.

  He really wanted to give up. He wanted to stretch out on the ledge with his head on his backpack and go to sleep. And maybe roll off and never wake up. Whatever he'd gone through strapped to the table, it hadn't left him in pipe-sliding shape. He had never been in pipe-sliding shape.

  But he was also feeling stubborn. As much as he wanted to stop, he hated the idea of stopping. He shouldn't have even let himself rest on the ledge.

  Swinging his stiff leg back around the pipe, Henry braced himself and began to inch down. Only he didn't inch down. His knees gave out, his legs swung free, and he dropped, hugging the pipe. The next lip ground against him and clipped his chin as he passed. The pipe shook, booming its echo over the top of the clattering, chugging street. Yelling, he managed to get his feet and thighs back against it and felt the friction burn as he tried to stop. The pipe ended, bending into the wall.

  Henry dropped free, his hands grazing the wall and then grabbing nothing but air.

  Pain shot through his body as his feet impacted on the last stone ledge. His legs crumpled, his body collapsed, his face clipped something solid, and he fell back, limp.

  All falls happen slowly, and in a flash. Half the crowd had looked up when the pipe began to rattle and boom. They watched a boy with a bag on his back clutch at the wall and at the pipe, and then tumble into the air, grabbing at the sky.

  He didn't fall far.

  A red litter, carried front and back by two quad-cycles, was slowing to a stop beside the building. The flying boy crashed into it.

  The bright box rocked and leaned side to side, and then forward. But there was no disaster, no collapse, no dramatic spill. If the boy had died, he had done so where the crowd could not see and share in the experience.

  Traffic moved on.

  Henry opened his eyes. The world was a cloud. In the middle of the cloud, there was a pair of eyes behind glasses. A hand pulled on a beard.

/>   A distant Henry, some other Henry, spoke.

  “Can you take me to the post office?” he asked.

  The cloud darkened and disappeared. The beard was the last to go.

  Henrietta said. “You don't want me to go?” She looked down at the tray. The fish was gone, and so were half the olives. She hadn't touched the goat cheese.

  The woman pursed her lips and shook her head slowly.

  “Why?” Henrietta asked. She knew the answer already, but she was stalling. Her grandfather had stolen something, and now this lady was going to take it out on her. She looked at the open window and tried not to glance at the door. She hadn't heard Benjamin or Joseph return. The old woman couldn't be that hard to beat.

  The woman straightened in her chair and webbed her fingers in her lap. “I have explained it already. It is the prerogative of a nation to defend itself. We were robbed first, and then cast into ruin. Certain things must be retrieved to enable a restoration. Things taken by your ancestor.”

  Henrietta furrowed her brow and cocked her head. She was irritated and worried. It was hard not to be sarcastic. Even to this woman.

  “A nation?” she asked. “You're a nation?”

  The woman licked her lips. She was staring past Henrietta. “The FitzFaeren rose many centuries ago. We are a people first formed half human, half faerie, but we came to see that we had strengths of our own, the powers of both races. We separated ourselves, no longer mules among the faeren or pets among men. And we became great.

  “From the time we first laid foundations for our own city until our fall at the hands of traitors and Endorian dogs, we have been governed by queens. The throne and rod were passed from mother to daughter, never through sons.”

  “Like bees,” Henrietta said. “Or ants.”

  The woman looked at her. “Or certain breeds of tunneling rats, if you prefer. Or southern hive bats.”

  Henrietta shut her mouth.

  The woman sighed. “The ball,” she said, “the dance you've seen and listened to in the haunting, it was to be in celebration of my coronation.”

  She sat motionless, frozen in her pose, distant.

  “You were going to be queen?” Henrietta said. It made sense. All of it did.

  “I am,” the woman said quietly, “the Third Magdalene of FitzFaeren, Queen.” She looked deep into Henrietta's eyes. “Regina to a haunted ruin and a broken people. We have taken possession of you, granddaughter to an enemy, a traitor guest. An old debt must be paid.”

  Henrietta stood up. The queen watched her. She didn't move.

  “Okay,” Henrietta said. “I'm really sorry. I have no idea what my grandfather did or what he took, and nobody else in my family would, either. But it sounds like Eli would know, why don't you talk to him?”

  “Eli,” the queen said. “Yes, Eli has been spoken to. Many times.”

  “Well, talk to him again. I'm sure he'd want to help his queen.”

  “Oh yes,” the queen said. “I'm sure he would. But he has no desire to help his sister. In many ways, that was the beginning of the problem.”

  Henrietta stared. She wasn't at all sure what to say. She never was when people talked to her about family problems. Even when they were her friends.

  “He is here again, lurking in ruined houses beside the river,” the queen said. “He is rarely here, but it is still easy for me to feel him. As he feels me.”

  “So,” Henrietta said, “he has to know more than I do. I just need to get home, if I still can. You talk to him, and when I get back, I'll look around for anything. I promise I'll give it back if I find it.”

  “Sit,” the queen said.

  Henrietta sat.

  “You are our prisoner. You will be released on the following conditions. You will lead myself, my grandsons, and two others back to the house of your grandfather. There, his house will be stripped and searched, and your family's possessions will be turned over to us. If we do not find what we seek, his body will be exhumed and his coffin will be searched as well. That is your ransom. When all this has been done, you will be free.”

  Henrietta's mouth hung open. “You want to dig up my grandfather? You want all of my family's stuff or you won't give me back? Then what? You'll just kill me? You're not a queen, you're a kidnapper.”

  Magdalene, Queen of the FitzFaeren, rose. Her trim body tensed, and her eyes hardened. Henrietta waited for her anger, but it didn't come.

  “Yes,” she said quietly. “But you cannot understand the stakes. I feel more than my traitor brother's presence, squatting in ruins. The earth itself stirs. Its life is leeched in the distance. The forests are complaining. The fields shiver in fear, waiting for death. We were Endor's final conquest before she slept. But she sleeps no more. If Endor rises again, even to a fraction of its former strength, and we are unprotected, our lives will be drunk and poured into her strength like the lives of so many weeds. The FitzFaeren, having survived so much, will finally expire and pass into dust.”

  The queen paused, breathing heavily. “Our talismans will be recovered, or a heritage, a people, one of the world's goodnesses, will fade forever and never rise again. Believe me when I say I have no thirst for revenge. If I did, my brother would long ago have ceased to draw his sour breath. But I will lay my own life down, even if by doing so, I enabled the survival of just one of my people. And I will just as readily lay down yours. Such are the decisions of a queen.”

  Henrietta stood up. “I'm leaving,” she said. “I'm sorry.” She turned to the door. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the queen's arm rise. Words she didn't know filled the room. The door was being commanded, sealed.

  But Henrietta had expected that. While the words were still being spoken, she twisted, stepped toward the window, and jumped.

  Her knees caught on the sill, and she fell forward while words slammed the window down on her ribs. She fell through, landed on the goat, and rolled into rose vines. Her mind felt skin puncture and recognized the sound of thorns tearing cloth as she lunged through the garden, and then she was on her feet, grateful she'd worn shoes, and running hard.

  “We should turn around,” Zeke said. “The sun's going down, and it could get dark fast. Don't want to lose our tracks.”

  Sergeant Simmons nodded. He turned the bouncing police car to the right and pulled a slow U-turn in the tall grass, back toward the dusty pink horizon.

  They had driven five miles in each direction and then followed their tracks back. They had seen nothing. No structures, no animals, no trees. Just grass. A world full of it.

  Of course, now that the house had been relocated, there was one structure. And they didn't want to lose track of it. There would also eventually be trees. A very small cottonwood sapling had survived, unmowed beside the house. Two maple seeds were sending down roots in the front. An infant willow was touch and go.

  Given the surviving caterpillar population of the transported yard, there would also be two kinds of butterfly and seven kinds of moth. And ants and ground beetles, aphids and ladybugs and spiders and many other things with skeletons on the outside. But no cicadas. Only one had survived the cosmic move, and he was male, destined for loneliness.

  Descended from two long-lost and now-expired pets, it was the gerbils that had been making a living beneath the kitchen floor that would really bring change. They would discover a world without predation, without people. A world where gerbils would be the apex. They would grow fat. And they would grow many. Very many.

  Sergeant Simmons and Zeke Johnson didn't know any of this as they rattled back down their tracks, racing the light. Just as the man who had first entered the empty world with grass seeds on his boot could never have guessed what he was creating.

  Frank watched the car return. Penelope was sitting up, and Anastasia sat beside her. Richard sat by himself. He still hadn't spoken.

  Dotty had brought out a blanket and all the cold food she could find. She stood beside Frank, sucking on a cracker. She did not want to go back inside, back
into darkness and moisture and the smell of stale seawater.

  Frank ran a hand through his hair and watched the scorched strands drift down. He turned toward Richard and awkwardly lowered himself to the ground beside him.

  Richard looked up, and Frank smiled.

  “What can you tell me, Richard?” Frank asked. “Do you have any idea what cupboard it was?”

  Richard shook his head.

  “What did they do to you?” Anastasia asked.

  Dotty glared at her.

  “Was Henry there with you?” Frank asked.

  Richard shrugged. “I don't know. I really don't. We were going to go to a Fitz place, but then something sucked me at the wall, and I fainted. Or I think I did.”

  Dotty reached down and squeezed his shoulder. “Well, I'm glad you're here, honey. I'm glad we got you back.”

  “He's not back. We're all gone, too,” Penelope said quietly. “I need to go to the bathroom.”

  “Was Henrietta going to go with you?” Frank asked. “She in the room when you fainted?”

  “No,” Richard said. “Henry didn't want her to come. We didn't tell her anything.”

  Frank sucked on his lip.

  Penelope stood up, rocking. “I have to go to the bathroom.”

  “Good luck finding a bush,” Anastasia said.

  “I'm going inside.”

  Dotty looked at Frank. Frank was watching the police car hop closer.

  “Frank?” she asked.

  “Hmm?” he said.

  “Do you think it's safe for Penny inside? I don't like her in there with all those doors open. With what could come through.”

  Penelope was waiting.

  “Henry and Henrietta gone,” Frank said. “And us gone, too.”

  “Frank?”

  “Pick a world, any world.”

  “Frank, Penny wants to use the bathroom inside.”

  Frank stood up. The police car stopped in the shorter grass.