“So,” Ryan began nervously after a moment. “Wednesday night you left rather abruptly. Kieran said there appeared to be something… ‘not quite right’ happening that you were attending to. Your brothers and father tried not to look too worried as they rushed us out. Is this something you’re willing to talk about?”
“Um, yeah, sure, but it’s kind of personal so keep it to yourself please,” I asked quietly, surrounding the table with soundproofing. Jimmy would have to show my guards his phasing trick; it works much better when I didn’t want to devote my attention to service. “There’s really not that much to tell that I can explain. It started with Ellorn’s Change failing in the middle and requiring my intervention. Between Gilán and me, the huri were created. Gilán did most of the physical work while I handled tying everything together on the magical end.”
“Are all of them so brightly colored?” Ryan asked.
“You object to their clothes?” I asked chuckling, being deliberately obtuse.
“I meant their hair,” he said quietly, seeing Michelle enter the room with a tray of drinks.
“Oh, my brothers and I played a minor trick on some Pentagon brass and Ellorn enjoyed the affect,” I explained even as Michelle approached. “He wanted a similar color to what I wore and I couldn’t say no. That’s allowed for a number of unusual colors including purple, a lighter blue and yellow, as well as the normal range of hair colors.”
Ryan waited for Michelle and the food runner that came a moment after her to retreat before he asked anything else. Both Nil and Naught stared at the three plates of appetizers on the table in anticipation. “Dig in, guys,” I told them. “Don’t wait for me.” Then I reached over to my desk on Gilán and grabbed my laptop. Thankfully, we added a better mapping system to the laptops rather than relying on the Internet. The address White gave me showed as a farm on a county road. Ye-aa-ah, I was right. It would take longer than an hour to drive that and we were fifteen minutes into that hour. Still thought we could get there in ten to fifteen minutes once I put my mind to it.
“Well, I wouldn’t have expected that to work in here,” Michelle said from behind me. She set a stack of small plates on the table along with some extra napkins. “And that is just the loveliest shade of green, dear. However did you get it that color?”
“I’m just showing what my Lord gave me, ma’am,” Naught said, smiling demurely. “But thank you.”
“That’s natural? Really?” Michelle asked in surprise. Nil nodded at her look, being too busy eating to talk.
“Yes, completely natural,” Ryan said exuberantly, running his hand through his short reddish-brown hair, causing a minor chuckle and grin from Michelle.
“Do you know how long it would take us to drive here, ma’am?” I asked, turning the laptop toward her. Our mapping software showed two different solutions, a fastest route and a most direct route, both estimating over two-and-a-half hours.
“There’s road construction along there,” she said, pointing out a section of highway along the direct route. “That’s gonna slow you down some that way, prob’ly three and a half hours at least, that way. Other way is ‘bout two hours, maybe two-and-a-half.”
“Thanks,” I muttered, considering the landscape on the map. There had to be a Weirdway I could use to get through faster. Pushing the laptop closed, I decided to worry about it after lunch. I decided it was time to get in the spirit of the day. I leaned over to Ryan and conspiratorially said, “Mmm. If you think it’s odd to see a pair with fanciful hair color on top, imagine my first night when they were running the garden nude. Flashes of violet, blue, green, and bright red body hair were everywhere.” Lifting an eyebrow, I watched Ryan draw his own pictures by the reactions on his face as I turned to Nil and winked.
“I think that sleeping with Seth was the highlight of the night,” Nil said with seeming innocence. I grinned big at Ryan at Nil’s innuendo while directing calming emotions at Naught so she wouldn’t blow Nil’s joke before Ryan got caught up in it. Ryan gaped at me then got suspicious, snapping his jaw shut.
Centering his attention across the table, Ryan watched her eat a piece of fried mozzarella with child-like glee. “Naught, did you sleep with Seth that night, too?” Ryan asked sweetly.
Naught smiled back. “I’m sorry, Mr. Davis, but Seth’s private life is just that. I wouldn’t want to break that privacy.” Then she stuffed the rest of the cheese in her mouth. I started snickering, couldn’t help it.
“You’re on the right track there, though,” I said with an embarrassed guffaw. “Yeah, they all slept in my room that night. They needed help to continue their Change and I provided it. There wasn’t anything sexual about it.” Michelle broke through the sound barriers carrying a tray of food, followed by a man with a larger tray and stand. “Lunch is coming, guys. Make some space, please. They have to be able to put down before they can pick up.”
“Well, no offense, why do these two seem so simple?” Ryan asked quietly.
“Simple? Oh, I see what you mean. Don’t underestimate them, Ryan. You’re seeing true inexperience in this world. They’ll adapt very quickly.”
“It looks like I should go ahead and bring some containers for you,” Michelle said, placing the last plate on the table.
“Oh, no, thanks, ma’am,” I said. “We’re not in a position to hold food for long. We’re traveling. You can bring the bill at any time, though.” Nil and Naught waited until Michelle headed for the kitchen before starting, but they each had three plates of vegetables emptied before she got there, sharing with each other no less.
“I didn’t like the corn,” Naught said quietly. “But the lima beans were good.”
“I agree,” Nil said. “These biscuits are interesting, though. Not at all what we’re used to calling a biscuit.” Michelle broke through the barrier with the check, appraising the table with a professional look.
“Shh, Nil!” I said sharply. I nodded sideways at Michelle obviously, catching her attention, too. “The definition of biscuit was one of the causes of the Civil War. The Yanks are still ticked off we wouldn’t give on that one even after we lost.”
Nil relaxed once Michelle giggled and set the small tray with the bill down beside Ryan. That made me laugh. Naught just kept eating and watching us.
“No,” I said, waving my hand at him, still chuckling. “You’re just gonna expense it to me anyway.”
“Was a recipe truly part of the cause for a war, Seth?” Nil asked before taking a bite out of a barbecued pork sandwich. I reached over and grabbed a few spoonfuls from their vegetable assortment and asked Naught for a small slice of her chicken and sliced avocado sandwich. She cut off a quarter and tried to give me the larger part.
“I’m sure you thought that sleight of hand would work,” I said, putting my plate down with the quarter sandwich where I wanted it. “But remember who you’re dealing with, dear. And no, Nil, that was a joke. There were a lot of reasons for the War against North Aggression, but biscuits weren’t among them.”
Michelle laughed and said, “I haven’t heard it called that except on old television westerns. But he’s right, son. People can be particular about their biscuits. It’s like you’re insulting their grandmothers, for God’s sake.” She shook her head in disbelief and turned to the kitchen with a large stack of dirty dishes in her hand. Ryan and I chuckled as she went but the other two kept chewing.
“Slavery was the true cause of the Civil War, Nil,” Ryan said, satisfied that he could provide some help.
I grunted, finishing my part of Naught’s fairly good sandwich. “Only part of the reason and a big bugle call, Ryan. A doctorate in British Law can’t prepare you for a debate in US history, especially with your other studies. There was a lot more to it than that.”
“There isn’t a lot a mention or explanation of other reasons in our textbooks,” Ryan said.
“I’m sure there’re mentions in ours, but the spotlight is on the abolition of slavery,” I agreed. “But I wasn’t t
aught from textbooks. I’ve only seen a few from a distance actually, pretty much looked like a book.” Ryan grinned briefly. I glanced over at Nil and Naught to discover them both sitting back and looking miserable. “Y’all finished already? Did you enjoy your first rally into Earth food?”
They both perked up immediately, all smiles and compliments. They’d both enjoyed themselves, especially, oddly, with what they didn’t like. I called Nil over to my side, chuckling at their exuberance, and pulled out my wallet. “There are many different kinds of restaurants. This one has a cashier. I’d like you to pay the bill for us and return with the change and a copy of the bill. Okay?”
“Yes, Seth!” Nil answered, smiling hugely in accepting his first solo assignment in the world. He picked up the tray with the money and headed for the door bravely.
“How old is he, Seth?” Ryan asked, watching Nil leave.
“Tough to say, really,” I answered. “As a brownie, he spent about thirty years in the sun, so to speak. His first Change gave him a few years back and this one even more. I think he’ll settle into an appearance of about twenty or twenty-one for a while. Relatively speaking, he’s about that age now.”
“And physically?” Ryan asked.
Shrugging, I said, “Who knows? The huri will age just as everything. Time will tell how.” Nil came back through the door with a handful of cash and the check, grinning from ear to ear.
“All done, Seth!” he said, excitedly, putting the check and money in a neat pile on the table beside me. I pulled out the check without counting the change and explained the process of tipping. Sensing Michelle hovering near the door, I dropped the sound barriers, letting her hear the conversation.
“Now in general, the people who wait tables don’t make a lot of money. Some do it professionally or perhaps it’s a necessary second income. I suspect our Michelle is somehow related to the owners, but that really doesn’t affect the decision of a tip. This is based on how well we were taken care of, in this case, very well, and their personality and disposition, depending on the style of the restaurant. We’re well off enough that our starting point is thirty percent of the total and go up or down on how well you liked them. You don’t have to put that much thought into it.”
Nil and Naught looked at each other for a moment as if sharing some communication between them. “She had help so she might have to share. I’d say thirty-five percent, Nil,” Naught said, raising her voice into an almost-question.
“What do you have the cash for?” Ryan asked. “Does it have to be an exact percentage?”
“No, not exact,” I answered, letting the two of them jump into this American custom with gusto. They came up with the cash to make a tip of thirty-two percent or forty-seven, but Naught judged the former close enough. Then I told Nil and Naught to start carrying cash when they reported and to tell the others, too, explaining briefly the concepts of currencies and countries and branching out into credit cards, saying we’d arrange some with their names in a few weeks time.
When we left through the restaurant, Michelle was back at the front again, smiling. Pleasantries exchanged, we paraded out to the car where I could set my mind to traveling the hundred and fifty miles we needed to go in ten minutes. Or else call and say we’d be really late.
Chapter 73
I considered the possibility of starting a giant portal from here to there, pinching off a little and sealing this side like a zipper until I saw the other end. It could be done. I wouldn’t be the one to do it. The probability of something, anything, going wrong became a certainty after a short distance. Even moving one portal around became effectively the same thing. It would seem a small thing that I could fix, and I would—I’m not irresponsible, after all. The problem always lies in the seeming.
Even though I rarely thought about balance when I used my magic, I understood the concepts of balance and causal relationships with excruciating detail. Gilán taught me through the Fountain and Daybreak. Weather patterns, tectonic shifts, wave patterns against the shoreline, you name it and it has some consequence somewhere in the world, any world. Dimensional rips tend to have consequences in several worlds. I might tend a problem here, but miss one there that in a hundred years or so might turn into a rift thousands of miles long that tears through China or something worse. It’s all in the seeming.
I could bridge the space with a knowe, but I still need the endpoint.
Ryan watched the huri play at the edge of the parking lot, interested in everything from small stones to ants to clouds in the sky, while I studied the map more. The Weird hadn’t helped. Ohio was too vigorously traveled in one direction during the westward expansion and frontier days and too many wars and violent deaths during its colonization by the whites. The Weird was travelable, just not easily explorable through here. It’d take me an hour to figure out the state. Maybe two. I needed a marker for that to work.
“Nil, Naught,” I called, pulling out my phone. Punching the dial button twice, I called Col. White again and waited for the answer. The huri were only seconds away. “I think I’ll need a little help with this, please.” An answering machine picked up the line, so I disconnected. “Maybe not.”
Sighing, I handed my phone to Ryan, who followed Naught and Nil over. “Here, Ryan, in case White calls. I’m going looking in the Weird again.”
“What’s the problem, if you don’t mind me asking?” Ryan asked, taking the phone.
“It’s simple, really,” I said, turning back from the small patch of land at the back of the lot. “If I can find them in the Weird and open a portal in real space, I can get there without a problem. But the Weird through here is honeycombed with passageways. Most of those are dead-ends that are most unpleasant, to… understate the reality of it. I need a marker or a map. To make a map would take me a couple of hours and make us late, so a marker or a landmark of some kind is necessary to find them. It’s kind of like finding a place by burrowing underground without any instruments for direction.”
“I suppose I should have started with ‘What is the Weird?’,” Ryan said.
I chuckled and stepped over the curb, calling the Weird simultaneously. “That’s something better left for another time. Hopefully when I can answer better than just pointing and saying, ‘Um, that.’ Naught, stay with Ryan, please. Nil, you’re with me.” We stepped through the plane of Weird and entered the subtle geometry, slipping from the real world like shadows. Remembering Kieran’s spell, I dropped an apprentice loop of magic out and handed the end to Nil. He slipped the loop around his hand with relief and without asking, I suppose sensing its purpose.
“Mr. McClure’s phone,” I heard Ryan say through the membrane of Weird as I cast my perceptions through the thirty tunnels before me.
“Nil, watch for me as I spread out through the territory,” I murmured, watching those thirty turn into the thirty thousand or so at the next nexus. Geometric progressions didn’t do justice to the number of pathways and nexuses in the Weird, but thankfully it wasn’t quite exponential either. I just kept trudging through the pathways popping a tendril of attention out of each hole to see where it was. Surprisingly, many opened up a foot away from each other, randomly. I felt like a gopher.
“Seth, Naught says that Ryan is in contact with Col. White through the little box you gave him,” Nil said, tugging on the apprentice loop to gain my attention. “Ryan wants to know what to tell him.” His voice echoed and pinged as if against metal when he spoke. The Weird was aptly named.
“Good. Ask him to close his circle and pay homage to the Earth, White, not Ryan,” I said and started coalescing my consciousness together again. Pushing out of the holes, I found myself aware of a great portion of Ohio along with sections of Indiana, Michigan, and West Virginia. There didn’t seem to be any druidic magic around anywhere. I should be able to sense it when it starts with these prairie dog pop-ups I had all over the countryside. So we waited for their magic to materialize.
Turning to talk to Nil, I was suddenly ver
y glad that I’d looped him—he wasn’t there! Walking back down the green and gray tunnel of eerie light, I retracted the loop slowly as I followed it back and found Nil nervously looking down various paths, waiting. I had passed through a probability nexus that he couldn’t and had to wait until the loop’s end–me–returned to reality so he could follow me again. He brightened hugely when I arrived.
“Naught says Ryan is laughing at something White is saying on the little box,” Nil said happily when he saw me, though I could hear her now, too, calling from the entrance. “White asked something like how did you know about druidry and Ryan responded evasively, saying that such should not be discussed over the air. We’re not certain what that means, sir.”
“The little box is a cell phone that works on radio and repeating towers to cables to satellites,” I explained. “Not secure at all and being electronic, cell phones aren’t reliable to wizards and most other magic users.”
“Is that what Michelle meant about using your laptop, Seth?” Nil asked, following me as I retraced my path back to the entrance. I still hadn’t felt any druidic song within the passages.
“Yes, exactly, didn’t you notice we were alone in the room?” I asked simply. “We spooked ‘em. Spooked ‘em so bad they put us in a heavily warded room. ‘Heavily’ being a relative term, of course, but there was enough magic in there to cause the laptop problems for most people.” Nil giggled briefly and adjusted his hold on the magical tether. “Ryan’s not talking anymore. Has he hung up?”
“Yes, sir, a moment ago,” Nil confirmed.
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