Ice cracked behind her. Pieces of the bridge began to fall away.
Keep moving forward.
She snaked along the melting surface. Polar-cold puddles were seeping through her clothing, soaking her neck to toe.
She slithered past the midpoint. Shivering. But steady. Skimming forward.
I can do this!
And then the bridge began to splinter in front of her.
The mockery cut like arctic wind.
You gotta be kidding!
She stole a peek back at the cleft. A cruel gust of wind burst the Snow Queen’s apparition into a shower of random snowfall.
Mockery has no mercy.
She heard the final fatal cracks, like the roll of a snare drum capped off by a cymbal. CRASH!
The icicle bridge was no more.
Crystal shards of ice rained down into the hot springs like gleaming daggers.
There was horror in Tin Man’s scream. “Caitlin!”
Blasts of cold air pressed hard against her face as she plummeted toward the boiling waters.
I’m so sorry, Nat. I tried.
The dark figure on the tree had already knotted a rope to his branch, already wrapped the free end around his wrist. With a dagger in his teeth and the duffel bag still strung on his back, he took a daring leap off his tree branch.
He swung across the gulf—swoooooooooosh—and snatched Caitlin clean out of the air.
Thuuuump!
They landed atop a soft drift of snow on the next ridge.
Scarecrow ran over to where the man had set Caitlin down in the snow.
“Use the knife to take the eye,” Scarecrow instructed the man.
“Who the hell are you?” the man responded.
Scarecrow’s eyes sizzled red. “Take the eye—now!”
The man drew his blade and moved it swiftly toward Caitlin’s face.
“Aaaah!” she screamed. “What are you doi—”
Before she could finish her sentence, her eyeball had been severed from its socket.
Oh my gosh—they’re butchering me!
Caitlin’s cold cry reverberated across the mountains.
Green, puslike fluid oozed around her eye socket.
She had one eye left, and with it she recognized the face of the man who had cut her eye out.
She gasped.
Derek Blackshaw! Gruncle Derek Blackshaw!
It felt as though her entire world had just fallen out of its orbit.
“It’s poison,” Scarecrow said. “Venom from the crow. A few more minutes and it would’ve seeped from your eye cavity to the brain, eating away at it until the skull became an empty shell.”
“Toss the eyeball,” Scarecrow said to Derek. “It’s toxic.”
Gruncle Derek threw it into the hot springs, where it spit up a thin blue flame and a burst of smoke. He wiped the blade of his dagger in a drift of snow, the rivulets of blood icing up.
He grabbed the back of Caitlin’s head with one hand, her forehead with the other. He titled her head downward. “In that case, if you prefer living, hold still, young Cait.”
The remaining globules of green mucus poured out of her socket, pooled on the chilled ground, and formed a top layer of frost.
Derek grabbed a fistful of wet snow. He packed it inside Caitlin’s vacant eye socket to freeze the area. Combined with her state of near-shock, which had an analgesic effect, Caitlin’s pain became manageable.
Scarecrow pulled the bandana off Derek’s head. He handed it to Derek, along with his own suede glove. “Patch it.”
Caitlin felt like she was having an out-of-body experience as she watched her Gruncle Derek ponder a moment. He gave Scarecrow a reassuring nod. He took his dagger and cut a circle of suede from the glove’s backside, then punched two holes on opposite edges. He threaded the bandana through the suede. Then he wrapped and tied it around Caitlin’s head, fashioning a makeshift eye patch.
She was emotionally numb.
“Well, young Cait, it’s a drag ya lost an eye, but ya look like one helluva swashbucklin’ pirate now.”
She was shivering cold. “H-how d-did you g-get here?”
“Followed ya after those bloody winged fiends left the house. Chased ya all the way to Forest Lawn.”
“I s-suppose you b-believe me n-now.”
“Never said I didn’t believe you.” Derek turned toward Scarecrow.
“And who are you?”
“Scarecrow.”
“That’s bloody blatant. But what’s under that Halloween mask?”
“Straw.”
“Are you off your chump? Okay, Mr. Straw, what’s your interest here?”
“To help Caitlin.”
“Help her what?”
“Live.”
“That goes bloody double for me as well. But why are you made up like a walking dead Scarecrow? And who was the poor lass that lost her life?”
“We’ve been infected by the blood of the living dead. We’re from Oz. The girl we lost was Glinda.”
Derek’s eyes widened as he cast a haunted look at Tin Man and Scarecrow. “My deepest condolences. So you’re the genuine article. From the Land of Oz.”
“T-told you so,” Caitlin said, trying her hardest not to think about what had just happened to her eye.
“How many times must I tell ya, young Cait? I never said I didn’t believe you.”
Gruncle Derek turned to Scarecrow. “I take it my great-niece is also infected, which explains her pasty complexion.”
“Yes,” Scarecrow said. “Now, please take Caitlin and go with the Tin Man.” His nostrils flared as he snorted like a fiery bull. “I’ll take care of the crows.”
The mountain ranges resounded with a perverse symphony of caws. A black ocean in the snow-swept skies swarmed above.
This is Hyde Park all over again.
Hundreds of thousands of black birds began to descend like a mile-wide, sky-obstructing meteor.
Seven large, distinctly humanoid shapes led the flocks of birds.
“Janus,” Scarecrow whispered to himself. He shouted at Derek and Tin Man: “You’re out of time!”
Derek swung the duffel bag from his back and passed it to Tin Man. “Careful with it, mate. She’s heavy.” He lifted a shivering Caitlin, cradling her in his arms.
The last time she had been held like that, she was around Natalie’s age. Ten or eleven. Her dad, Harold Fletcher, had carried her in from the car after she’d fallen asleep in the
back seat. Her dad had done that quite often. Her eye grew moist.
“W-what’s in that d-duffel bag?”
Gruncle smiled. “A few conveniences.”
Scarecrow had turned toward the legion of incoming crows. He gallantly raised his arms in preparation for battle.
Derek fled behind a galloping Tin Man, dashing over crunching snow, Caitlin nestled tight in his arms. The snow was still packed tight in her eye cavity, numbing the pain.
She glanced back.
Scarecrow’s arms lashed at the air in a methodical pattern. Sizzling blue arcs of lightning flashed from his fingertips, and blazing red firestorms shot from his eyes like jumbo Roman candles on the Fourth of July. His saw blade-cutting voice screeched out a bone-rattling war cry.
“Yawwwahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
A scarecrow indeed.
The straw man battled valiantly, bombarding murders of crows with pyrotechnics. Colorful explosions lit the heavens. The skies were aflame with recurrent flares of burnt orange, neon purple, and lime green. The shots hissed, whistled, and fried the fowl to a crisp.
Despite the dazzling aerial detonations, and despite the incineration of battalions of birds, Scarecrow was vastly outnumbered. Hundreds of crows managed to breach the “firewall” in ghastly fashion; many offe
red themselves as a sacrifice to the flames, allowing Janus and his crowmen to pass through narrow air pockets in the colorful combustion.
Tin Man and Derek Blackshaw picked up their pace, tracking along a narrow trail that disappeared down the side of the mountain. The last thing Caitlin saw back on the ridge was Janus and his crowmen rolling on the ground in a cloud of smoke, dampening their flaming garments.
Tears trickled from Caitlin’s eye. Poor Scarecrow. He was shriveling beneath a monstrous black wave of fiery feathers. Throngs of smoky crows flitted about, their beaks full with straw.
My God, that man of straw just saved my life.
And Gruncle Derek just saved my life.
And poor Glinda lost her life!
I’m alive, and yet there is so much death around me!
So much death . . .
Caitlin succumbed to exhaustion and fell into a feverish slumber.
CHAPTER Twenty-Six
The temperature had been gradually warming as the foursome slogged to lower altitudes. Caitlin’s fingers kept groping for an eyeball no longer in its socket. Instinct. She had to settle for fidgeting with the suede eye patch while coping through the trauma of losing an eye.
Despite the thawing environs and milder climate, she was shivering, still wet from ice melt and frigid from skin to bone.
“We’re l-late for the m-movie,” she said. “M-mom’s already there, and D-dad is decorating the apartment f-for the p-party. I think we’re all invited. B-but not squirrels. N-no, not squirrels. S-squirrels and c-crows eat n-nuts and earthworms, n-not party sandwiches.”
Gruncle Derek still cradled Caitlin in his arms. He smiled at her solemnly. Then he called over to Tin Man, “Need a fire, fast. She’s delirious—close to hypothermic shock.”
The woodman made of tin cut a sharp left off the trail.
He led the group into woodsier terrain, where knotted willow trees stood dead or dying. They reached a small clearing and came to rest.
Tin Man drew his ax.
He swung mightily, severing thick, dead branches from a lifeless willow.
He collected the chopped firewood and leaned the logs together in a triangular shape. He gathered dry twigs, tangled brushwood, and other flammable tinder and built a small pile of kindling at its base.
Gruncle tossed Tin Man a box of matches. Tin Man struck a match and lit the kindling. The dead wood caught fire quickly, and in no time they had a crackling-good bonfire.
“The woodman and I will go keep an eye out,” Derek whispered in Caitlin’s ear as he gently set her down by the fire. “And my apologies for the unintended pun.”
“I don’t want to die alone in the woods,” Caitlin said.
“You’re not dying today. Now undress and dry your clothes. Keep close to the flames. Thaw your flesh; warm your bones.” He unwound the long scarf from his neck and laid it like a blanket over Caitlin. Gruncle’s eyes were flickering like lit candlewicks. He kissed her on the head.
He got up and went over to Tin Man. They whispered, but she could overhear their conversation.
“We lost a flask of witch’s brew in the springs,” Tin Man said. “It controls our appetite. When her hunger returns, there will be no way to restrain her. Or myself.”
Derek’s forehead creased. “If she dies of hypothermic shock, hunger will not be an issue.”
* * *
A pack of fifteen werwulves loped along the moonlit land. The air was sand-dune dry, and choruses of crickets sang to the stars.
A spectacularly oversized moon was bright and full, gleaming gold like a comb of fresh honey. The lunar orb dominated the sky, looming an astonishing one hundred leagues in radius. It looked like a whopping moon pie that eclipsed the alien sky and filled the horizon.
That’s the way the moon always appeared in these parts. There was no other place like it—not in any other kingdom, not anywhere, for this was where the Man in the Moon
lived, along with the cow that leaped over the lunar sphere on occasion.
The lunar influences were heightening the werwulves’ senses. The blood flow in their veins quickened, and their appetites magnified.
But the wulf pack wouldn’t eat just yet. Finding the emergent portal was the priority for the group, as it was for all the kin-wulves hunting down the six other portals in neighboring kingdoms.
Werwulves were nearsighted creatures, but their long-range vision was sharpened by the full moon’s influence. The pack’s eyes smoldered red as they fixed their gaze upon the horizon.
These highly intelligent, biped carnivores had been searching for two days already. The pack stalked along weed-choked grasslands, led by their alpha male. As the mammoth-size moon crept along the horizon, one of the wulves caught sight of a rustic cottage off in the distance, the only cabin they had seen for leagues.
That had to be it.
The dwelling of the Man in the Moon.
Ribbons of moonlight revealed a cowshed adjoining the cabin—a good indicator they were in the right place. The cow that jumped the moon would be inside, which meant the portal would be inside that shed as well.
The werwulves discharged urine, staking claim to the territory and using the scent to mark the terrain for future navigation.
As they trekked toward the cottage, the alpha detected a worn metal sign fixed to the cowshed.
A spill of milky moon glow illuminated the name on the sign: Wolvercote.
The werwulves broke into a sprint, howling praise at the moon and signaling the news to their kin-wulves—and to the Lord of the Curtain.
One more of the seven budding portals to the nascent world of Eos had been uncovered. The ravenous pack would wait in the cowshed until the portal opened.
And then their invasion into Eos would begin.
Meanwhile, they would hope some stray animals or perhaps a couple of drifters should happen to pass through the
area, so at least they would have something to eat while they waited.
* * *
Caitlin raised her eyelid. Buoyant spits of fire fizzled in the air amid the hissing sounds of burning wood and crackling bark. The maroon glow of dusk was sinking heavily into the horizon, casting shadows from thick willow trees.
Her clothes had dried in the campfire. They were warm and toasty, making her as comfy as a quilted mitten. She nestled cozily by the bonfire next to Gruncle Derek and the Tin Woodman. She felt her strength returning. She gently touched her suede eye patch. The pain in and around her eyeless socket still throbbed, but not as intensely as before.
Thankfully she wasn’t hungry yet, but she was as thirsty as—
Whoa!
The trunk of a knotted willow tree suddenly seemed to have moved within a millimeter of Caitlin’s eyeball. The bark was so close she feared it would scrape her retina.
Whoa! Whoa!
A split-second later, clusters of thick willows looked as distant as the furthest horizon.
What the—
Her remaining eye apparently possessed some kind of power-zooming focus.
One moment she beheld a wide panorama of the willow-treed landscape, then she zoomed in on a microscopic focal point, a macro close-up so extreme she felt she could practically have sucked acetylsalicylic acid from the willow bark.
Her lone eye seemed to possess a mind of its own. And all the rapid telescoping brought on a bout of nausea far worse than her worst-ever case of carsickness.
“Something’s totally weird with my eye!” she said.
Tin Man leaned over and placed his metal hand on her shoulder. His touch was warm, soothing, despite the chilly turgidity of the tin.
“It’s the witch’s brew,” he said.
“What’s the connection?”
“Scarecrow answers the what questions.”
He’s unstuffed and unreachable at this moment!
She rephrased the question. “Okay, why is there a connection between the witch’s brew and my auto-zooming, run-amok eyeball?”
“Eye of the eagle. In the witch’s brew. That’s how the Wicked Witch developed her telescopic eye. When it influences both eyes, its power is balanced. If it concentrates into one eye, it’s an . . . overload. Takes a bit of time to harness it. But you’d better hurry.”
“Why do I see a funky translucent haze around you?” she asked.
“White or red?” Tin Man replied.
“White. Why?”
“Another side effect of the witch’s brew. It’s similar to an aura. White indicates truth is present. Red indicates deception and falsehood.”
She smiled. “Built-in lie detector. Should come in handy.”
“Are you getting hungry?” Tin Man asked worriedly.
Caitlin shrugged, hoping that by not admitting the inevitable she would delay it.
“I’m growing hungry as well,” Tin Man said. “I suggest we get moving.”
Derek shifted his body, settling into a more comfortable position by the fire. “Why the urgency? We’re finally catching a bit of rest and relaxation.”
Tin Man shrugged coolly. “I suppose we can sit here and sing campfire songs till the crowmen come and kill us. Or we can wait till our hunger returns—and then we can kill each other.”
“Much prefer campfire songs,” Derek noted. He pulled out his harmonica and played a few bars of the blues.
“Anyone have a favorite?” Derek asked.
Tin Man perked up when he heard the harmonica music.
Strange.
“What’s your pleasure?” Derek said.
Tin Man didn’t respond. Instead, his silver eyes danced and blinked like lights on a circuit board.
Then his whole face lit up like an oversize LED.
“I do have a song request,” Tin Man announced.
Derek nodded. “Bloody good. Let’s have it!”
“Play C and B sharp.”
Derek rolled his eyes. “Do me a favor, Woodman.”
Tin Man explained. “There are rumors coming out of Neverland and Treasure Island—reports about new plant life. Vegetation. I’ve been contemplating this phenomenon for some time. An intriguing notion has just occurred to me. It could be the nightingales of Neverland.”
The Lord of the Curtain Page 19