by Rhett DeVane
An ominous feeling crept over Jondu, worsening by the moment. “Change of plans. No guide rope this time. Watch and do exactly as I do.”
Before Jen could answer, Jondu crawled on and straddled the sapling, placing both hands on the trunk in front of her. She butt-hopped forward, keeping her thighs clamped around the tree.
In the creek below, a ribbon of material bobbed in the current. Jondu stopped. She broke off a limb and lay down on the log. With one arm, she hugged the sapling. With the other, she used the limb to jab the fabric until it broke free. She lifted the cloth long enough to identify it, then dropped it back into the swirling water where it joined the debris rushing toward the falls.
As soon as Jondu reached the far bank, Jen followed. She slid to the end of the sapling and stood on the rock. “Why did you stop in the middle? What was that thing you pulled up?”
“Be quiet. Please.” Jondu whipped her head from left to right. C’mon Grant. You’ve left me signs all along. Don’t stop now!
The only depressions in the snow: those same large-ridged boot prints. Had to be something more, something she was missing. There! She dashed toward a small boulder, knelt, and tugged at the strap of a backpack until it slid out.
Jen ran and stood beside her. Her jagged breath came out in frosted clouds. “Isn’t that—”
“Sim’s pack.”
Jondu’s gaze darted across the surrounding snow. Only one faint set of prints followed the tree line, heading in the same direction as the boot prints. Why only one set? Sim would never leave his filled pack behind. Unless . . .
Jondu snapped to her feet. Flicked a quick glance to the growly gray clouds. “We have to follow those boot prints.”
When Jondu could no longer see any impressions hashing the snow, she stopped. “We’ll have to walk again at dawn.”
The last meager sunlight struggled through the barren trees. No shadows. No moon or starlight. No caves or anywhere to take cover.
“What’ll we do?” Jen asked.
“Gather as many branches as you can.” Jondu shucked her pack and leaned it against a tree. “Walk a grid, like we did before, and return in your same steps.” She shook one finger. “Don’t go too far.”
Jen dropped her pack at the base of the same large pine and grumbled, but did as she was told. Jondu aimed in the opposite direction and walked. By the time they had dragged back a pile of brush, Jondu could barely make out the outlines of the trees.
Jen scrubbed her hands over her crossed arms. “It’s fr-fr-freezing!”
Jondu positioned the two packs about a foot apart, then balanced two fat limbs between them. She stacked branches in a circle around the packs, using the first two for support. “Do like this.”
“Wha—?”
“No time to explain. Just do it!” Jondu immediately regretted her harsh words. “Hey, sorry. Just . . . please do it.”
The limbs formed a thick lattice above the packs, with a little space left for a door. “Now, grab handfuls of snow and pack them on top.”
They worked by feel until the small dome was covered.
“It’s like a little cave,” Jen said.
The call of an owl rang through the forest. Woo-ooo-ooo! Woo-ooo-ooo-ooo! One of the Pensworthy owls, Jondu hoped. Should she answer?
No. If it was not a friend, the cry would summon winged death. Claws swooping down with no sound. Jondu shivered.
“You climb in first,” Jondu whispered.
She heard Jen’s crunching movements, then felt her way into the makeshift storm shelter and tugged a matted clump of brush and packed snow over the entrance hole.
They huddled together with the packs on either side.
“Not bad,” Jen said. “Warmer than outside, for sure.”
Nothing was for sure. If they made it through the night. If they didn’t freeze into matching one-spirit sickles. If that storm didn’t hit. If they could still follow those prints and find Sim and Grant.
If. Jondu kept her worries to herself. I hate that word.
Chapter Nine
“My pack sure would come in handy right about now,” Sim said. He thought about the things he didn’t have—his rope tether, basic first aid supplies, extra food. At least he had his flashlight and knife.
“Owls never carry packs,” Kenneth stated. “And we seem to do quite well.”
Sim smiled, in spite of the churning in his stomach. During the long day, loaded trucks had left the complex in a steady stream, and jeeps came and went. What was going on? Nothing good, if the army was involved. With the growing darkness, the base had settled into relative calm.
“I’ll take you down to the shadowed spot behind the last building.” Kenneth indicated the direction with a tilt of his head. “There isn’t an outside light there, and the search beams don’t cross that area.”
Sim had been so busy worrying that he hadn’t taken into account the lights streaking across the grounds. Never had to concern himself with that before, since the base dumpsters occupied an area away from the barracks. Nights in the forest were easy, compared to being around lowlanders and all of their unnatural light. The owls hunted at night, but many in this part of the Emerald Mountains were either related to the Pensworthy clan, or close enough to honor the ban on killing, and eating, one-spirits.
When Sim made a move to crawl into his owl-gliding position, Kenneth twitched one wing. “Best if I pick you up with my talons. I can drop you easily and fly off before anyone takes note.” The owl blinked. “No reason to appear so alarmed, Master Sim. I can hook onto your jacket and never touch your skin.”
Sim swallowed around a dry lump.
“Make sure your jacket is secure,” Kenneth instructed. “I will swoop down to pick you up.”
Sim loved excitement, but being snatched from a treetop by an owl’s talons? Made him want to crawl into a deeper hole than the one where he lived. Maybe never, ever come out. What choice did he have?
“Keep your legs tucked to your chest, like I carry mine while I’m in flight. When I set you down, roll. You won’t get hurt. Clear?”
“Um . . . okay.”
Kenneth lifted from the branch and disappeared into the night. Sim checked to make certain his jacket was buttoned and folded himself into a ball, covering his head with his arms. Sim felt himself snatched up. The wind curled around him. Good thing the shadows hid the ground. It was a long way to tumble, but Sim couldn’t pick out details.
Kenneth’s wings made no sound. The wispy edges snuffled the rush of air moving across the feathers. No wonder the owl was such a deadly predator. A mouse would be jerked upward before it had a chance to squeak.
Death dropping from the sky.
Sim held his legs tucked tight. They passed over the treetops at the periphery of the base. The owl threaded between the buildings, avoiding the searchlights’ beams. Lower, lower, until Sim could smell the snow-damp ground. A couple of inches, then Kenneth’s talons released their hold. Sim hit with a dull thud and rolled over and over in the fresh snowfall.
He sat up and blinked. Snow clotted on his clothes. He patted his arms and legs. Nothing bleeding or hanging at a strange angle.
What a ride! He might learn to love flying after all.
He watched a soldier pass beneath the pool of dim light in front of one of the barracks. The army men looked alike in those uniforms—as if they were trying to be copies of each other. This one had short, stubby, yellow hair. Reminded Sim of a porcupine, the way it stuck straight up on top.
Was this quill-haired lowlander the one who had taken Grant?
Sim took a deep breath and stood, forcing himself to pull back his shoulders. Taproot always said, “Act brave and you’ll be brave.”
Tell that to my stomach, he thought.
Careful to stay within the shadows, Sim tailed the soldier. The man swung his left arm more than the right, and the right elbow crooked out from his body at a strange angle, as if someone had snapped it off and put it back sideways. The soldier
picked up his pace. Though Sim struggled to keep up, he fell behind. He reached the cross street where the man had taken a left turn. Quill-hair had disappeared.
Sim puffed out a breath. Nothing to do but choose a building and figure a way to get inside. He listened. No footfall. No lowlander talk. He dashed across the street, dodging the trail of the overhead beam slicing the air above his head.
Crouched in the darkness, he pondered. Where to begin? Grant would come up with some precise fashion for a search. Not willy-nilly. Sim pinched his lips tight, thinking about how many times his spirit-son had accused him of skipping from one thing to the next. Even at the dump, Grant worked a well-planned grid. Sim picked his direction based on whim.
Like the soldiers’ uniforms, the buildings looked identical. This one seemed as good a place to start as any. Sim pulled out the wind-up light, gave the handle a few turns, and then inched along the foundation. His eyes darted from the bottom of the steel siding to his surroundings and back. Unless a lowlander stood nearby, his tiny light could go undetected.
He worked the periphery and spotted no gaps large enough to pass through. Now what? A pipe led from the ground to the roof at one corner. Back in New Haven City, the buildings had pipes and vents, sometimes chimneys, breaking through the roof. Possibly a way inside?
Sim considered. If he could scale a bee hollow tree, surely he could climb the pipe. The first two tries, his feet slid on the metal and he made no progress. He slipped off his boots, stuffed the socks inside, tied the shoelaces together, and suspended the lashed boots from his neck. His lips pinched together when his skin touched the chilled pipe. It took three tries, but he finally inched his way upward and stood on the roof. His feet burned. Not good. Frostbite could nip off toes. Sim took a moment to rub both feet between his hands and catch his breath then pulled on his sock and boots. The pipe he had ascended ended, spilling forth a spray of thick wires. No passage into the building through that one.
A conical cap covered the next pipe he noticed. The air around it smelled like the stench from the necessary rooms. Sim backed away. No way would he crawl down some forbidding hole smelling of lowlander waste. He moved on. On the opposite side of the roof, he inspected yet another pipe, smaller, but not as stinky.
One problem. His dump-dive rope was in his pack, stuffed under a rock beside Mad Woman River. Sim unbuttoned his coat and removed his shirt. Good thing he had his knife, and it was always sharp. He hacked and ripped the shirt into long thin strips and tied them together. Mari would thump him on the head for destroying a perfectly good piece of clothing. He’d worry about that later. He donned his jacket next to bare skin.
One end of the rope, he looped around the pipe. The other, he fastened around his waist. Sim tugged to make sure the makeshift tether would hold his weight. Good as any dump-dive rope. He wiggled under the metal cap and rappelled down the inside of the tube, using one hand wrapped around the rope as a brake. The scent of stale oil hummed in his nose, a lowlander odor he recognized from dump-dive finds. Had to be some kind of cook fire vent. Hope the lowlander on the other end wasn’t hungry. If hot air seared up this pipe, he’d be charred like a stump struck by lightning.
A dim light glowed at the end of the vertical tunnel, and Sim used his hands against the rope to slow his pace. He dropped into a wooden box of some sort. Sim foraged in his memory. A cabinet? Had to be. The wind-up light held enough charge for him to do a quick search. Amber and clear bottles, some square containers. The scent of strange herbs and spices. Sim closed his eyes, willing his mind to recall details of his lowlander life, so many years in the past. A military slang phrase popped into his mind: chow hall. His father’s barrack had a cabinet like this, over a hot surface used for preparing meals. As he suspected, the pipe he had slipped down was a vent for cooking odors.
Sim wove past jars and canisters to another opening, the source of the faint light.
Ah, this is where the vent pulls out the stale air. On the other side of a strange contraption, a screen covered the opening. In the dim light below, Sim finally spotted the interior of the building. A way in! He noodled his body between wires and curved things that looked like stiff white daisy petals stuck to a hard center, then pushed against the mesh. Clips held it on two corners, but one side moved enough for him to wiggle through the gap. He untied the cloth rope after he landed on the stove surface and left it swinging. Escape route. Might need one.
The room looked at once familiar and foreign. Long counters. Objects lined up against the wall. Large shiny spoons, forks, and rows of dented pots hung from overhead racks. A cube of wood held knives. Only the worn handles showed. The business ends hid, sunk deep in the thick block.
Sim swung his head to take in the rest of the room. Stacks of dishes and drinking containers. A tower of dingy towels. In one corner, a large silver box hummed low, like bees in a hollow stump. The scent of seared meat hung in the room like a restless ghoul. Sim shivered.
The sticky tang of blended lowlander sweat irked him. Had his father smelled that way, too? Sim had been twelve years old the last time he saw the man. His father’s scent, like the memory of his voice, had long faded. The scientists who came to the glen every couple of years didn’t have this odor. It reeked of fear and anger and dark things.
Sim shoved aside thoughts of his father. No time for such. He had been dump-diving for half a century, since that first spring. If he could meander through rotting meat ripe with maggots, he could stand lowlander stench.
Anything to find his spirit-son.
Nearly an hour later, Sim crawled onto the hut’s ice-slick roof and sucked in clean air. The scents of lowlanders lingered in his nose. Though he seldom used Taproot’s special anti-stink goo, he slipped the tiny jar from his inside jacket pocket and swiped a glob above his lips. A blend of camphor and rosemary filled his nostrils. Even the dump in high summer smelled better than the metal houses of the soldiers.
Despair threatened to shut Sim down. He’d only covered five buildings. At this rate, it would take at least two nights to check the army base. He peered toward the skies. Without a moon to tell him how many hours remained of darkness, he had no way to judge how much longer he might search. Cloud cover blanched even the meager starlight. Other than the dim base lamps and the sweep of the search beam, the area was one dismal void.
A form dropped beside him. Sim jumped so hard, his feet slipped on the ice. He grabbed the pipe to regain balance. “Oh, it’s just you.”
“Who else?” Kenneth settled his wings. “Not much besides us moving around tonight.”
“Good thing.” Sim blew out a breath and reached into his coat for a sliver of dried plum. He chewed. True, few soldiers occupied the base. Where had they gone? Off killing people, doing things soldiers do, Sim supposed. “This is taking more time than I expected.”
“Why don’t I transport you from one roof to the next? I can observe from the watch tree until I see your head pop up from the pipe. Will that help?”
Why couldn’t he have thought of that? I’m the bold adventurer. The one who starts quests! Sim groused to himself. It’s not my job to think! No, that was Grant’s job. “Sure. Good idea.”
At least Kenneth didn’t offer a smarty reply. Sim stuffed down the fear threatening to close his throat. He took a quick swig of spring water from his pouch then tucked the water container beneath his clothing. “I’ll wave my muffler when I’m ready for you to take me to the next building. Let’s go.”
Sim hunkered down. The owl lifted and speared his jacket with sharp talons. In less time than it would’ve taken Sim to slide down the gutter to the ground, he stood atop the next building. Kenneth disappeared into the gray.
The next five huts proved more of the same. Nothing to tell who lived there, like rocks or drawings. Even some of Elsbeth’s dried flowers would be good. Sim felt a little sorry for the lowlanders. How would it be, to look the same, dress the same, act the same? Like nobody mattered. Only one hut held a soldier, and he slept in h
is narrow cot bundled beneath a moss green blanket, snorting out honks of air.
No sign of Grant. Sim’s spirit shriveled.
Chapter Ten
“Bah!” Taproot slammed his hand down on the tablerock. The lemongrass tea in his mug jiggled. “The one spring I want to go walkabout and we have not one, but two, late storms!”
The honey cake Elsbeth had barely managed to swallow churned in her stomach.
“Sure, I can shove my way from the hollow. Easy-peasy.” The old magician picked up a now-cold pancake and gnawed on one side, frowned, and thumped it back on the plate. “The recent storm cast a good two feet of fresh powder on top of that last soft layer. It’s a set-up for avalanches, given the heavy amount of snow we’ve had this winter.” He slumped into a cushion. “Guess I’m not going anywhere soon. Postpones our Spring Festival too.”
Elsbeth nodded.
“Ah, well. What’s a couple of weeks, more or less, when I haven’t seen my old friend Dell-Fee in decades.”
When Elsbeth didn’t reply, Taproot continued, “We have to do our spring chores too. Can’t get that done until the weather lets up.”
Elsbeth’s lip snarled at one corner. Spring chores. She thought of the most disgusting one: cleaning out the necessary rooms. Ugh! They’d have to dig five months of soiled dirt from the refuse holes and cart the buckets topside to a location far from their fresh water source. Left to her and the other one-spirits, that bad dirt could stay put. But Taproot insisted on the yearly spring cleanout. That, or they would have to dig fresh necessary rooms and tunnels every couple of years.
Taproot refilled their cups and tilted his head, studying Elsbeth. “What’s up, Princess?”
“Huh?”
“Don’t play dumb with me. I’ve been around you enough to know something’s amiss. You’re usually yammering away so hard I can barely get a word wedged between.” He pointed a finger at her and drew a circle in the air. “This is more than your usual winter doldrums.”
Under Taproot’s stern scrutiny, Elsbeth caved. “I’m . . . worried.”