Wood Sprites

by Wen Spencer

  She had a sudden and awful feeling that she was looking at a frozen moment in time. A doomed ship, forever stuck on the event horizon of disaster. Had the Minghe Hao actually arrived safely? Or had it crashed?

  “Wǒ kàn bù dào!” a child’s voice complained loudly in what sounded like Mandarin.

  Louise glanced across the room as she struggled to translate the complaint. I can’t see!

  A flock of children crowded around the last display: a life-size statue of Jin Wong, captain of the first colony ship. Faces reverent, the children lightly touched fingertips to the glass. There were too many of them to be one family, but their ages were too scattered to be kids on a school field trip. A kindergartener with long black pigtails stood on tiptoe, trying to see past the older children, who looked like they could be in middle school.

  “Wǒ kàn bù dào!” the little girl cried again in Mandarin. This time Louise was certain that she was complaining that she couldn’t see the statue.

  A tall boy ghosted out of the shadows, gently shushing her. His quiet command was easy to translate. “Not so loud, Lai Yee Zhao.”

  The little girl eyed the boy with almost the same awe as being leveled at Jin Wong. “Yamabushi zhànshì, wǒ xiǎng kàn tā!”

  Louise parsed through the sentence several times, trying to translate it and failing. She wasn’t sure what yamabushi meant, although zhànshì seemed to indicate it was a type of warrior. The last part seemed to be a complaint again that she couldn’t see the statue.

  The boy scooped Lai Yee up so she could sit on his shoulder. She gazed in wide-eyed wonder and then pointed at the statue of Jin Wong.

  “Is he dead?” the little girl asked, her voice still loud.

  The yamabushi shushed her again. “We don’t know. He went away.”

  “Why did he leave?” Lai Yee whispered loudly.

  The other children half-turned to hear the answer.

  The tall boy gazed at the starship captain for a moment before answering sadly, “To find another world for us to live on.”

  “Elfhome?” the little girl asked.

  And all the children shushed her.

  Lai Yee was right: the first set of colonists had opened the door to another world. Ironically, Elfhome wasn’t light-years distant, but just an odd sidestep into another universe from any point on Earth. The distance to Alpha Centauri made all information on the colony four years out of date. Was that the reason the boy claimed that they didn’t know if Jin Wong was alive or dead? He’d been middle-aged when he left Earth; surely life as a colonist could not be easy for a man nearly seventy.

  And what of Esme? How had she fared in the eighteen years? The bios all indicated that she was still alive, but they could be wrong. Something could have happened to the colony, and Earth wouldn’t know for years.

  Jillian and Aunt Kitty were moving on to the next display, forcing Louise to guide Tesla into his next mapping position. Once Tesla was lined up, Louise pretended to study the model of the Alpha Centauri star system. As if to make up for the lack of movement in the first display, this one had the two stars whizzing through their complex dance with their various planets orbiting them. A red digital clock counted backwards, marking the time before the first reports about the Minghe Hao’s safe arrival would reach the Earth. Alpha Centauri was 4.37 light-years away; there remained four hundred and six days and a handful of hours before the fate of the ship could be known.

  But there had been radio messages from the earlier ships. At least, Louise thought there had been. Why would the boy say that they didn’t know if Jin Wong was alive or not?

  “Those poor people.” Aunt Kitty nodded at the crew photo of the Minghe Hao. “No one noticed when they left. No one will notice if and when they arrive. I don’t know why they keep sending out those ships. Even the first one—there was a ton of fanfare—and then Pittsburgh vanished—and everyone just forgot about the Chinese. It wasn’t until the Chinese started to flip the power on and off like a toddler with a light switch that anyone realized that the gate had anything to do with Pittsburgh blinking in and out of existence.”

  And Elfhome had continued to steal the limelight since then. Despite their wealth of information on Earth’s mirror planet, the twins had known virtually nothing about the space mission that triggered its discovery until they learned of their own odd connection to it.

  “The crews wanted to go.” Jillian led the way past the group photo of the second ship, the Zhenghe Hao, to stare at the crew of the Dahe Hao. Esme Shenske stood front and center as the captain. She looked so determined and fierce, like she was going to war. “They walked away from family and friends and ever coming back. I don’t think they cared a rat’s ass if anyone noticed or not.”

  The tall boy glanced over as if he fully understood Jillian’s comment.

  Louise looked down out of habit and nudged Jillian before she realized that she didn’t really know if he understood or what he thought. The twins were at the museum to plan a robbery to save their baby siblings. Until a month ago, they didn’t even know the names of the spaceships or any of their crew. Surely there was little common ground between her and this boy that worshiped Jin Wong, even if her genetic donor was a spaceship captain in her own right.

  Louise looked back up at Esme. Don’t care a rat’s ass if anyone noticed or not. That’s how she had to be. Fierce and determined. They were going to war. Everyone better stay out of their way.

  Only pretending to look at the rest of the Alpha Centauri exhibit, Louise focused just on the building. The hallway was one long, wide, vaguely boot-shaped corridor. There were only two openings, the toe into the reptile exhibit and the cuff into stair tower that faced West 77th Street.

  According to e-mails between curators, it would take a week for the colony exhibit to be packed up and shipped to the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. The space would be cleaned as the Elfhome exhibit arrived from the Australian Museum in Sydney. The AMNH had scheduled a week to unpack and arrange the incoming display cases. During that time, Dufae’s chest would arrive from Paris, escorted by an assistant registrar. On June fourteenth, the exhibit would open to the public.

  At the end of June, the frozen embryos would be thrown away.

  It gave them less than a month between the time that Dufae’s box arrived in the United States and the last possible day to save their siblings. That narrow window opened in approximately twenty days. They had to be ready to slip into that opening and take what they needed.

  At the end of the gallery, they continued through to the primates and then circled around through the North American birds, the New York State mammals and city birds and finally down through the African mammals to end up where they’d started. In the loop, the twins documented the two flights of stairs, the three elevators, the up and down escalators and the only restrooms on the floor. Since the access routes were grouped together into two tight knots, they only represented two main ways up to the level. A close examination of the map, however, showed that only one went all the way down to the lower level and access to the subway.

  So while Jillian kept Aunt Kitty busy in the gift shop, Louise quickly mapped the second and first floors with Tesla. She noticed how many guards were walking around and the care that the staff was taking checking bags coming in and out of the museum. Even in the middle of the week, with the recent bombing canceling all school trips and most people’s travel plans, there were hundreds of visitors scattered among the floors. The twins couldn’t hope to set up the generator, open Dufae’s box, take out what they needed and get it locked again without a visitor seeing them. Obviously they were going to have to stage the robbery after hours.

  The idea of sneaking around like cat burglars was at once thrilling and nerve-wracking. How in the world were they going to steal the nactka out of the Dufae box?

  * * *

  Louise returned to the gift shop to find that Jillian had picked out a souvenir slickie on the Alpha Centauri exhibit. Louise never saw t
he point of slickies. They weren’t connected to the Internet, so there was no way to share the data. They were barely indexed, so finding anything was a pain. And they often cut costs by making photos two-dimensional instead of three-dimensional with panning and rotation. She supposed that it allowed you to give something tangible as a gift instead of giving the “ethereal” download of a real book.

  “You want that?” They’d planned on getting something in a box that was approximately the same size as a nactka, just in case they needed to get one through security the day of the robbery. Of course, they had to guess at the size.

  “Yes.” Jillian gave her a look that said Louise was to play along even if she didn’t understand. Jillian held out the slickie flat on her left palm and flipped the digital pages with her right index finger. There might have been hundreds of colonists that went to Alpha Centauri, but judging by the quick flow of images, the only one that mattered was Captain Jin Wong. “It’s all videos they took of building the gate and the ships and training of the crews.” Jillian paused on the picture of Esme. Whereas the photo upstairs had shown her to be blond, this picture had her hair dyed a rich purple, the kind that only came with an expensive professional job. She hovered in midair, the Earth a blaze of brilliant blue behind her. She glared at the camera like she was going to plow it over. There was a bandage on her right temple, unexplained by the caption that read simply: Esme Shenske, Captain of the Dahe Hao, during final days of her training. “Isn’t it cool?”

  Judging by the fact that all the Chinese children held one or two in their hands as they lined up at the check-out counter, maybe it was.

  “Are you sure?” Louise had hoped that finding the right-sized object didn’t fall to her.

  “Yes. And I saw some snow globes you might like.”

  Louise followed Jillian, cringing inside. People were going to start thinking she loved snow globes if she picked out a second one for her birthday. The Pittsburgh on Earth/Elfhome one had a coolness factor that she doubted could be topped. A snow globe, though, would require a box.

  She bit down on a sigh when she saw the selection. There was a small but adorable red panda globe that Aunt Kitty pointed to. There were also a handful with various dinosaurs encased in indestructible plastic. Snow flurried around the poor creatures as if their doom were quickly approaching.

  With face carefully set to “excitement,” Jillian pointed to the largest, a replica of the Tianlong Hao suspended over Earth. Instead of snow, stardust littered the face of the planet, waiting for movement to send it whirling on a solar wind. In a band around the bottom were the words: Spread your wings, fly free. There was Chinese lettering, apparently repeating the sentiment, just showing on the curve of the band.

  Two of the Chinese girls were intently inspecting it with surprisingly blue eyes. There was only one globe left, so if Louise wanted it, she was going to have to buy it out from under their noses, which were unfortunately large for their faces.

  The yamabushi appeared between Louise and the girls. The tall boy was like a ninja or something; Louise hadn’t noticed him until he was right in front of her. “No, Arisu,” he told the Chinese girls clearly in English and then dropped to Mandarin. “It’s too big. No.”

  “Mail?” Arisu apparently was the younger girl. She fumbled with the Mandarin word and then dropped to English. “Couldn’t we have it mailed . . . ?”

  The yamabushi sighed and shook his head. He spoke slowly and clearly in Mandarin. “No. I’m sorry. We can’t mail anything to Pittsburgh.” The boy tapped his wrist, indicating a watch that wasn’t present. “We need to go. Hurry.”

  Shutdown was on Saturday night at midnight, giving them less than three full days to get to the border.

  The three Chinese children turned with easy grace considering the close confines of the gift shop and circled around, gathering up the rest of the flock. With speed unheard of in a group of American kids, the Chinese were gone without a trace.

  It left Louise no reason not to buy the snow globe. Jillian sharpened her look. At least it wasn’t expensive.

  “Oh, it’s wonderful. I just love snow globes, and this one is so cool.” She did love that it took them one step closer to stealing the nactka.

  * * *

  They had Tesla’s recording of the museum’s security camera placements, the number of security guards and their positions, floor plans, verification that the floor where Dufae’s box was going to be displayed was marble, train schedules from their house and school to the museum, and the gift-shop box (and the decoy snow globe). Louise wanted to get started on figuring out how to put them together into a logical plan.

  Impatient as she was to get started on a plan, the twins had to entertain Aunt Kitty for the rest of the day. After the museum, they walked to Celeste on Amsterdam Avenue between 84th and 85th streets. The tiny Italian restaurant was packed with lunch rush. Louise would have been happier going home and ordering something delivered, or even a frozen pizza. Eating at the restaurant, though, maintained the image that the twins were perfectly fine.

  The twins knew that they wanted margherita pizza, so they ignored the menu. They ordered Sprite. Aunt Kitty considered a glass of wine before telling the waiter that she’d have a San Pellegrino. She added in an order of the carciofi fritti.

  While they waited for their drinks and food, Aunt Kitty checked her phone and answered a text. Whatever she read on the screen made her wince and sigh.

  “What’s wrong?” Louise asked.

  Aunt Kitty sighed again. It was probably more bad news; she’d already warned them that if their performance of Peter Pan was changed because of the bombing, she wouldn’t be in town for it. She had set up several business meetings the week after the original date. “Do you remember a little while ago—well, you probably think it was a long time ago, it was like the beginning of last year, I think—we talked about production companies?”

  It had actually been three years ago, shortly before they posted their first video.

  “Maybe,” Louise said cautiously. Perhaps Aunt Kitty had talked to Jillian about it last year.

  Jillian caught Louise’s glance and gave Louise a surprised look to say she had no idea what Aunt Kitty was talking about. “No.”

  “I’d told you that when people did videos, they had a production company and a logo? Like Spike Lee’s production company is 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, and the logo is the number forty over the letter A?”

  That was the conversation from three years ago. Adults had a weird, loose concept of time. It was a full third of the twins’ life and they still remembered it completely.

  “We remember that,” the twins said. Jillian added an impatient, “And?”

  “Well, you picked out the name Lemon-Lime Jello.”

  Louise’s stomach turned to stone and dropped to the floor. “And?”

  “You can’t use it,” Aunt Kitty stated.

  “What?” both girls cried.

  “I just found out that someone else is using it,” Aunt Kitty said.

  “They are?” They glanced at each other. Was a musical group taking advantage of their popularity?

  “I was approached to do a TV show soundtrack with an elf fusion music element to it. The network people brought with them a sample of what they’re looking for, and it was from a company called Lemon-Lime Jello. I’m not sure if they’re spelling it the same way you two were, but it’s close enough that you’ll probably have to find another production company name.”

  “We had it first,” Jillian pointed out.

  “Oh, Jilly, I know you thought of it first, but they got to market first. Apparently they’ve gotten quite famous even though they’re based on Elfhome.”

  “Wait!” Louise realized that it wasn’t another company; it was her and Jillian. “This was an elf fusion soundtrack from a film production company called Lemon-Lime Jello?”

  “Yes, the network copied the music from one of their videos and played it for me.”

  “D
id you see the video?” they both demanded to know.

  “No.” Aunt Kitty waved them down, mistaking their alarm for being upset with the supposedly stolen name. “It was a short meeting. They’re after a very specific sound, something very authentic. People are starting to be elf fusion snobs and they want the sound of traditional Elfhome instruments.”

  Jillian started to sulk. Obviously she was thinking of all the money they could be making if the networks hired them. Louise had to agree that it sucked that so much of their problems could be fixed if their parents wouldn’t be so focused on “letting them be children.” What was so wonderful about being a kid? They had to lie to go anyplace that they wanted to go to, and they wasted hours sitting in a classroom, supposedly learning how to fit in with the rest of humanity when quite frankly it seemed fairly pointless to try. They weren’t really humans; they were elves.

  “So what are you going to do?” Louise asked as casually as she could.

  Aunt Kitty looked at her in confusion.

  “About the soundtrack?” Jillian clarified.

  “I had to turn the gig down. They specifically wanted instruments that I don’t have.”

  “Oh.” The twins shared a guilty look. They could have given her their software, but that would mean explaining about the videos. They couldn’t tell her the truth; everything would start to unravel. Lemon-Lime led to YourStore that led to a joint bank account under Esme’s name that led to what they really were doing at the museum.

  “I know you really like the name,” Aunt Kitty continued. “But you need something new. I’m sorry to have to tell you, especially after such a bad day yesterday. If you promise me not to tell a soul, I’ll tell you a secret that might make you feel better.”

  “Okay.” At least they were good at keeping secrets.

  “NBC is going to green-light a series on Elfhome by Nigel Reid.”

  “Really?” they both cried with amazement. Last they’d heard, Nigel had been blocked at every attempt to get to Elfhome.

  “They do focus groups and such like that. And this Lemon-Lime Jello production group apparently used Nigel in one of their videos and suddenly he’s the hottest thing on the face of the planet. So the network is going to do a pilot and see what the focus group thinks.”