by Wen Spencer
* * *
So the day went. The telephone number was busy every time Louise tried, except for one time when the connection went through and she heard someone shouting in the distance. “Watch! Watch! Don’t yank out the leads or the spell will collapse!” a woman cried and then they were disconnected.
Louise eyed the phone. If Pittsburgh was on Earth, how were they casting spells? Did Lain have a magic generator, too? Did this mean Lain knew Kensbock? Did Lain know where the M.I.T. student was?
“We have time for one more run. Can we give it a go?” Mr. Noble called.
Louise had been working on lighting and music to go with the action as she endlessly failed to talk to Lain. She waited until everyone was in their places and then dimmed all the lights except the nursery’s nightlights. She was aware that Mr. Noble and Mr. Howe had come to bracket her as she stood on a stool and worked the control boards. There were half a dozen monitors on the system. There were cameras that showed the audience and what was onstage. There was the screen that showed the programming for the lift-line robotic operators. The controls for the Tinker Bell projector. The sound mixing display. And her phone, cycling through dial, busy signal, disconnection.
This would be the worst possible moment for the phone call to actually go through.
Trying to ignore her phone, she cued in the gleaming figure inside a ball of light that represented Tinker Bell. She zoomed the gleaming circle about the nursery, leaving a contrail of glittering motes.
“Oh wow,” Mr. Noble breathed. “That is cool. I’ve never seen that before. What are you using?”
“A holographic pinpoint projector.” Louise moved the light about as “Tinker Bell” searched for Peter Pan’s lost shadow.
“Where’d you get it?” Mr. Noble whispered.
“I made it,” she admitted since Mr. Howe was standing right there. “I recorded a silhouette of my Barbie doll using stop-action for the wings’ flapping and then looped it.”
“Oh! Really?” It was impossible to judge if his whispered question was just surprise or disbelief.
“This is a school for the gifted, Mr. Noble,” Mr. Howe said.
Onstage, the window opened and Jillian peered in, impossibly high and half upside-down. Then she flew in and landed in a crouch. She was just in T-shirt and jeans, but she’d mussed her hair so she looked half feral.
“Tinker Bell,” Jillian gave a stage whisper as she slinked across the nursery like something wild. “Tink, are you there?”
“You two are scary good,” Mr. Noble whispered.
Louise caught the flash of light on the auditorium camera as someone opened the door and stepped into the darkened room. She didn’t catch who it was, but she had the sudden sense of impending doom. She glanced at her phone. It was dialing again. She made a big sweeping gesture with her right to cue up Tinker Bell’s gentle tinkle of bells that was J.M. Barrie’s “fairy language” and with her left quietly cancelled the phone call.
After Jillian did Peter’s joyous flight at finding his shadow, she shortcut through the scene to get to the flying. “I’ll teach you how to jump on the wind’s back and then away we go.”
Carlos and Darius were still awkward, despite the day’s work, but luckily in a silly, laughable way. Elle was graceful and refined. Jillian managed to impart boyish swagger as she zoomed about the stage as if she had been born with wings.
As Jillian landed, crying “Now come!” and pointing out the open nursery window, Louise’s phone rang. Mr. Howe looked down at her phone as “Mom” displayed on the screen.
“Louise,” he chided.
“I was expecting my mom to call, so I had it out,” Louise lied. “Can I answer?”
The lone person in the audience clapped, distracting him.
He huffed. “Yes. Since it’s your mother.” And he stalked out to see who was on in the auditorium, applauding.
“Hello?” Louise tentatively answered her phone.
“Louise, I forgot all about the fact that you two need gowns for the gala.” Her mother sounded like she was juggling a hundred things at once. Death would fall on anyone that made her drop what she had in midair.
“Gowns?” Louise cautiously tried to weasel out of whatever her mother had planned.
“Gowns, like dresses, only fancier.”
Louise gasped as she realized who had to be in the dark auditorium. “You want Aunt Kitty to take us shopping?”
“I called the school and let them know that she was picking you up. I didn’t want you to miss her.”
Louise brought up the auditorium lights and verified her guess. “She’s here now.”
“Be good for your aunt. Love you.” And she hung up with no idea that she’d just thrown all their plans into ruin.
* * *
There was a conspiracy to put little girls in pink and yards of tulle. It was tempting to agree to the first dozen they saw, but since they’d failed to reach Lain for almost fifteen hours, they held their ground. On the fourth store, they found a black satin full-length dress that the twins loved at first sight. It had a ruched sleeveless bodice and empire waistline wrapped with a matching black pleated sash.
“Are you sure?” Aunt Kitty asked a dozen times. “It’s awfully grown-up.”
“It’s perfect.” Jillian turned in a circle to show it off to full effect.
Aunt Kitty took a video and sent it to their mother. “We’ll see what she thinks.”
A minute later a firm “No black, it’s not a funeral” text came back.
Two stores later, just shy of closing hours, they found two matching tea-length dresses of soft shimmering yellow with wide black belts. The dresses had poof skirts thanks to layers of crinoline but were fully lined, so the itchy material didn’t touch bare skin. With their mother’s texted approval, the dresses were bought and they headed home, exhausted.
They spent the last hour getting ready for bed with phones in hand, dialing, disconnecting at the first tone of the busy signal, redialing. The minutes ticked down and then Shutdown was over.
They stared numbly at the clock as it turned to midnight.
“What do we do?” Jillian asked.
Louise called April, who answered on the first ring.
“Hello?”
“Ugh!” Louise flopped back in bed. If April answered, she wasn’t on Elfhome.
“Hello?” April said again.
“It’s us,” Louise said.
“Oh.” It wasn’t a good sounding “oh” but a “but I’ve got bad news” kind of “oh.”
“What happened? Is it Alexander? Did something happen to her?”
“No, no, it’s that I didn’t get across the border.” April sounded tired, but not stressed, yet somehow Louise was sure that she had horrible news. “I’d gone to Cranberry to try and get across. Normally it’s the best bet. There was a shoot-out on Veterans Bridge, though, and things got all screwed up.”
“A shoot-out?” The post-doc had mentioned a twenty-car accident but nothing about a shoot-out.
“I’m not sure what happened—the details are really sketchy—but apparently there was a big pileup on Veterans Bridge. There was a heavily armed group of smugglers in one of the cars, and they tried to kill the cops that showed up to direct traffic. They shot at least one person, and they rigged a bomb to take out the bridge. The EIA bomb squad managed to defuse it. Then the rescue teams used Earth-based life-flight helicopters to fly out the wounded.”
All of which would have stopped traffic incoming from Cranberry completely.
“I did get through to my parents and cousins,” April continued. “At first they didn’t know whom I was talking about. I think my mom is going senile early; Old Man Bell saved my life, and she didn’t remember him at all. She was no help. I had more luck with my cousin, Ellen. It took ten minutes of describing the hotel on Neville Island, Old Man Bell, and his two grandchildren who build go-carts, for her to figure out who I meant. Apparently Alexander doesn’t use her real name.”
>
“What name does she use?” Dufae would be just as dangerous.
“Tinker.”
“Tinker?” Louise echoed, mystified.
“As in Tinker Bell?” Jillian cried. “Eewww.”
“She doesn’t seem to use a last name. I think she just goes by Tinker. And Orville is Oilcan. My cousin saw the two of them last week. They’re racing hoverbikes professionally.”
“Hoverbikes?”
“Alex invented them!” April sounded surprised and proud. “They use magic to hover, but they also have a gasoline engine. I’m not sure I understood that part completely. Racing them is a big sport event that everyone follows. Ellen says that she only knows it’s the same two kids because my folks lived down the street from them for years. She thinks that Sparrow’s people are going to have a hard time finding her if all they know is her real name.”
“How much did you tell your cousin?” Louise cried.
“Not everything.” April sighed. “Nothing about you two. But it was getting obvious that I wasn’t going to get through, and I didn’t want Ellen drawing attention to herself or Alexander by talking to the wrong person. I warned her that it’s not safe to talk to the EIA or the police or anyone else outside the family. I told her that this is a widespread conspiracy, and it being elves, their moles could have been put into place shortly after the first Startup. The first time I talked to her, she thought I was an utter loon.”
“And the second time?” Because it sounded like there was a second phone call that had gone totally differently than the first.
“She heard on the news that one of the sekasha had been killed, and Windwolf was missing.”
“Oh no! Which one?” Oh, please God, not Pony!
“I don’t know. It might make the Earth news tomorrow. I wasn’t thinking about the elves. I was worried about Alexander.”
Louise tried to take comfort knowing that at least Alexander was well hidden. But what if Sparrow’s trap succeeded? What if both Windwolf and Pony were dead? Tears started to burn in her eyes.
“Ellen promised me that she’ll find where Alexander lives and go see her and tell her about Sparrow. And she’ll tell her that I’m willing to have her come live with me in New York. I’m not sure if Alex will take me up on the offer. I would have at eighteen, but I always thought of Earth as my home, not Elfhome.”
Louise would jump at a chance to visit Elfhome, but to stay? To leave behind everyone she knew? No. If Alexander were anything like her and Jillian, she would never leave her grandfather and Orville.
“Ellen will warn her,” April repeated firmly. “You can stop worrying.”
They said good-bye and hung up, feeling raw and drained. April was right in that there was nothing they could do now until next Shutdown. In the meantime, they still had the babies to save.
The news was full of the attack on Windwolf and his disappearance. Lacking concrete details, the media filled in with speculation. What was known as fact was that the viceroy and his bodyguards had been traveling in two separate Rolls-Royces from the south edge of the Rim. At some point the two vehicles had been separated. Near dawn, Windwolf’s car was found in an area called Fairywood, along with the body of his driver. To Louise’s guilty relief, the sekasha that had been killed was Hawk Scream; the warrior’s neck had been broken by a large animal. Since the police were involved in the shoot-out on Veterans Bridge, the search for Windwolf had been left to the EIA.
Knowing that the very people that attacked Windwolf also controlled the EIA, Louise was afraid that he might be dead. The only thing that gave her hope was an odd dream she had about him surviving the night without magic to protect him.
Certainly the media had decided that the viceroy was dead; they debated who would replace Windwolf and what his death would mean to Pittsburgh. Would the elves declare war on the humans? Should the UN pull in extra troops just in case to protect the human population? Or would the elves consider that a sign of aggression? Analysts pointed out that this wasn’t the first time that a sekasha had been killed by an animal while guarding Windwolf. Five years earlier, humans had a caged saurus on display at the fairgrounds. When the massive lizard broke free, it had wounded the viceroy and mauled one of his bodyguards before Windwolf killed it with a flame strike. The elves hadn’t threatened war at the time; they had simply deported the humans responsible.
Other sources, though, pointed out that Windwolf had been the one who meted out the punishment on the criminally negligent. Sparrow’s sense of justice was unknown. Analysts were optimistic. Louise was not.
It was surreal to stand on the train platform, hear the endless speculation, and know what the rest of the world didn’t. Surely this is what a sighted person would feel like in a country of blind people.
Sparrow would take command of the Westernlands until Queen Soulful Ember could choose a new viceroy. Between the moles in the EIA and her leadership of the Elves, Pittsburgh had fallen into the hands of the very people who had attacked Windwolf. There had been a reason that Sparrow wanted Windwolf dead. It may have been solely for the ability to start a war. By secretly controlling both sides, Sparrow could easily manipulate conflicts until humans and elves were at each other’s throats.
* * *
Zahara ambushed them at the top of the stairs to the fifth-grade floor. “Did you see the news?”
“About Windwolf?” Louise felt guilty. Guilty that she hadn’t been able to warn anyone on Elfhome. Guilty that she hadn’t told any of her friends. Guilty that they needed to go on acting like they knew nothing about forces of evil trying to destroy the peace that existed between humans and elves.
“No. Not that. That sucks. I mean about Nigel Reid.”
“What happened to Nigel?” Louise cried. The last twenty-four hours had been nothing but bad news.
“He’s going to Elfhome!” Zahara obviously thought this was good news. “NBC announced it this morning! He’s going to be doing a show called Chased by Monsters, and they’re going to start filming next Shutdown.”
“Last I heard, he was filming the pilot here on Earth.” The twins had verified Aunt Kitty’s news while arranging to give Nigel the gossamer call at the gala.
“What? No. The network pulled serious strings yesterday and pushed the visas through.”
“Why?” Louise cried. “This is the worse time possible for him to go!”
“Taggart,” Jillian muttered darkly.
“Huh?” Zahara was lost in the conversation.
“Taggart is a famous war correspondent,” Jillian explained. “He left CNN to team up with Nigel to do nature documentaries. NBC must be counting on war breaking out and want someone there that can cover it for them.”
“Why would a war break out?” Zahara asked.
The bell for homeroom saved Louise from having to answer.
* * *
With the addition of Iggy and three of his biggest pirate classmates, they were trooped downstairs to the auditorium for an entire day of flying. They were going to choreograph the fight scene on the Jolly Roger. The main focus of the battle was Hook and Peter’s duel, but the three Darling children would flit about on the edges, having their own moments as they took on and conquered a pirate. Louise had written big sweeping fight music for the battle, but it needed logical pauses in the score for Jillian and the others to deliver their lines.
Louise took her place at the control board and opened up a browser to the Internet. As Zahara claimed, NBC stated that Nigel would be sent to Elfhome next Shutdown to film Chased by Monsters. Horrible, horrible title for such a noble, gentle, and intelligent man. What was he thinking? She checked Nigel’s website. He had the same information that he’d featured a week ago. It was possible that the sudden change had flooded him with things that needed to be done since he had only twenty-some days to prepare for filming on another planet and get to the Pittsburgh border. The NBC press release said nothing about Windwolf or Taggart or EIA or visa problems. Zahara’s statement about the network pu
lling strings sounded right, but where would she get that idea, since she clearly wasn’t thinking about political ramifications?
Louise checked Jello Shots. The website was in furious debate. The source of Zahara’s comment was obvious as the fans weighed in on how NBC had rammed Nigel through the EIA’s visa bottleneck. What would their beloved Lemon-Lime do about Windwolf’s death? Would Lemon-Lime ignore it and continue on with Prince Yardstick or herald in Sparrow as the new viceroy of the Westernlands?
The question made Louise want to rage. She would never acknowledge Sparrow’s character, Jerked, as viceroy, even if the real person claimed the title. Prince Yardstick would survive the attack in their videos.
A new thread popped up: Did Lemon-Lime put Nigel in the last video knowing that Taggart would be needed on Elfhome?
Louise stared at the heading in dismay and anger. They had made the video before they had overheard Sparrow plotting. And certainly, they had never expected to be able to influence anyone to the point of getting Nigel a visa to Elfhome. If they’d known all that was coming and the extent of their fame . . .
They did know what was going on. They knew Sparrow and others were kidnapping scientists to build a secret gate between worlds. They knew that the scientists were balking when they discovered that their work would plunge Elfhome into war. They knew that Sparrow and Ambassador Feng had been behind the plot to kill Windwolf. They knew that there were moles in the EIA, using that agency to keep out anyone who might investigate their activities.
They knew. And as Lemon-Lime, they could do something about it.
Louise took a deep, cleansing breath. Right. Lemon-Lime was going on the warpath. It was a good thing that she needed to write fight music already.
* * *
“You did what?” Jillian cried as they detoured to the grocery store after school. It was odd walking through the store knowing that they could afford to buy anything they wanted.