by Lou Hoffmann
Perhaps it was the way he responded, but Henry looked at him with skepticism written all over his face.
“What are you not sure of, then, Thurlock?”
“Well…,” Thurlock said, then stopped to consider. “We-ell. I’m not sure of a few things, Henry. For instance, where Lemon Martinez ran off to, and why he has attained physicality.”
“Attained…?” Henry shook his head, which seemed to indicate he wasn’t following Thurlock’s line of thinking.
“He may no longer be a ghost.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Look at my robes!” Thurlock responded, possibly sounding a little peeved.
Henry said, “Lemon did that?”
“Yes, with claws, so I’m thinking he may have gained a physical body. I haven’t seen him since, though, so I’m uncertain.”
“But,” Henry said, “why would he have changed?”
Thurlock pursed his lips and pulled at his beard—distracted only for an instant by how scraggly it felt—considering the question, which was a “why” question and therefore a type he, as a wizard, specialized in. After a moment he said, “I can’t say for sure, but perhaps it has something to do with the fact that Ethra does not have ghosts, per se. We do have wraiths—that’s the best word I can think of for them that you would know—but that’s really a different thing altogether. More like a dead person’s purposeful dream of themselves, if you will. Often a—”
Thurlock cut his explanation short when he saw the panicked look that came over Henry’s face. He didn’t think he could be that worried about Lemon Martinez. He was about to ask if Henry was okay, if he needed help, when suddenly Henry shrank away amidst a small cloud of black feathers, the light clothing he’d been wearing falling to the ground around clawed bird feet. Which were attached to the rest of the bird, of course.
Henry had become his condor self, and now hopped in place, stretching his wings to their full twelve-foot span and attempting to converse in grunts and clicks. Thurlock knew, because he’d read up on it, that these were the only sounds condors could make, as their anatomy didn’t include a larynx. That said, Thurlock also knew he was attempting to converse, because condors were known to actually do that, and because he was smart enough and experienced enough after a thousand years of life to recognize a being with something to say. Unfortunately, he could not interpret the language.
Too bad Han isn’t here, he thought, and then said to the Condor, “I’m sorry. I have no clue what you’re trying to tell me.”
Henry let out a squeaky little grunt that sounded a little sad, then hopped three times and flew. His wingspan being so wide, he flapped mightily to gain altitude, clearly finding little room to fly amid the trees.
Noticing the trees reminded Thurlock of the pressing issues. As he’d previously noted, he didn’t know where Lemon Martinez had got off to, whether material or not. He also did not know what had become of Maizie, the dog Luccan had raised during his stay in Earth, who had also come with Thurlock on this most recent trip through Naught. Thurlock was sure, however, Maizie had been at his side for a moment at least, after Lemon had shredded Thurlock’s robes, which they had both been wrapped up tight within. He stood, slowly pivoted in place, and called out Maizie’s name.
She didn’t come immediately, but Thurlock did hear a scrabbling farther back in the trees, which he thought likely indicated she’d heard him.
But it was the forest itself that presented the most pressing problem. He stepped out to tour the area in and around the small clearing in front of the Portal—now blocked by rockfall—from which they’d emerged.
Spring, he observed happily, or maybe even summer, judging from the way the oaks had pushed their old brown foliage out in favor of fresh and green. And the wild cherry buds were in rich bloom already. Even the dogwood’s white blooms had opened, and the clusters of elder flowers were poised to follow suit.
He put his hands in the pockets of his robe and drew in a deep breath, appreciating the mingle of scents. The faint, sharp, metallic hint of many inches of ancient humus—the remains of trees and creatures long dead—was overlaid with the rich, clean decay of leaf mold from more recent years. Weaving through that came the ever-refreshing sweet, green smells of the season. Away from the oaks, the understated wild heartseeds—they called them bleeding hearts in Earth—and the pale, starlike flowers of spring beauty colored the forest floor. He even found the three-petaled white lilies Ethrans called Behl’s promise. Near a low-branched evergreen, he could have sworn he caught the scent of wild ginger blooms.
It was all quite wonderful, and none of it helped much at all. He decided to talk to the god who had befriended and blessed and empowered him a millennium ago to see if he could get some help.
Behlishan? Thurlock here. I wonder if you might help in some way. You see, although I’m quite certain I and my companions have indeed landed in Ethra, I have no idea where in Ethra we might be.
That was really all he could do about the situation at the that moment, so he turned his attention to his appearance. With a simple imagining—picturing how his robes, hair, and beard were supposed to look—and a quietly spoken, “fix it,” he was done. “Much better,” he said, and just at that moment, Maizie came bounding out of the trees carrying a stick.
“Hm. Okay,” Thurlock said and threw it into the trees for her.
“Ow!” Unfortunately, Henry chose just that moment to appear, carrying a grumpy but pacified Lemon Martinez, in the path of the stick Thurlock had launched. Stark naked, holding the cat in front of him to try to hide his more private bits.
“That’s rather brave,” Thurlock said, but Lemon didn’t look inclined to shred anything at the moment.
“Would you mind tossing my clothes this way?” Henry asked, his tone suggesting he was making an effort to ignore his embarrassment, though his dark face had turned ruddy.
“Oh, certainly,” Thurlock said. He did so with magic rather than moving, and then politely walked in the other direction, hands clasped casually behind his back. Raising his voice to be heard, he said, “It seems to me that when you transformed from bird to human before, your clothes were… included, so to speak.”
“Yeah,” Henry said. “This hasn’t happened before. I’m sorry, by the way.”
“Oh, it’s no….” Thurlock trailed off, thinking Henry probably wasn’t talking about appearing in the nude.
“I mean about going condor so suddenly. When you said you thought the change in Lemon—you were right about that, by the way. He’s totally flesh-and-blood kitty cat now. Weird sort of resurrection thing, right?”
“Definitely a first for me, and that’s saying a lot. New things don’t happen often for someone my age.”
“Anyway,” Henry said, returning to his apology. “When you said that, I panicked, thinking maybe changing worlds would change me, and I wouldn’t be able to shift. Funny, I never really thought it would bother me all that much, but man—the thought scared the crap out of me.”
“Hm.” Thurlock thought about that for a few seconds. “Come to think of it,” he said, “I wonder if that’s why you lost your clothes.”
Thurlock expected Henry to ask about that statement, but he was glad he didn’t, as he had no desire to explain—which he wasn’t very good at—or quibble about trivial things. Henry stroked Maizie’s fur; contact with the gentle dog seemed to calm him. When he lifted his gaze to meet Thurlock’s, his eyebrows were raised in expectation.
What does he expect?
More. Of course he expects more from an old wizard who led him through a portal to a parallel world.
Thurlock took a deep breath and tried to look confident. “We go east and a little south, I think.” He truthfully didn’t quite know why he thought that, though, which was probably why he sounded uncertain, even to himself. He had the vague sense that he and Han must have visited this place before, or something.
Henry nodded. “Okay,” he said slowly. “You think, huh?”
“Yes. I think. But I have a plan to make it more certain. It involves you. How far can you fly?”
“Pretty far. I can cover two or three hundred miles, but, well, it’s complicated.”
Thurlock tried not to get annoyed, though the last thing he wanted was another complication. He sighed. “Enlighten me?”
“I’m not real fast. I mean, I’m fast for a bird—like say, thirty-five miles per hour—but that means three hundred miles takes all day. And that’s not all.”
“Please, just dump all the information at once, Henry.”
“Well, I hate to admit it, but when I’m a condor, I’m sort of a creature of habit. I… uh… fly in circles a lot.”
“Fly in circles?”
“Yes. And also I’m easily distracted by… food sources… carcasses.”
Thurlock just looked at him for a few seconds and then asked, “Are you hungry now?”
Maizie chose that moment to roll over with a little howlish-moan and beg for a belly scratch. Henry obliged before answering Thurlock’s question. “No,” he said. “Not very. But for a condor, food is more of a constant imperative.”
Thurlock brushed off the log and sat back down on it. After scratching his beard for some time, he asked, “You can’t control this distractibility at all?”
“No, I can,” Henry said. “I can try to hold on to my human thoughts, and it works, just not completely, and I’ve never tried to do it for hundreds of miles.”
“Okay, then. We have something to work with. Though it would be so much nicer if Han were here with us.”
“Wouldn’t it, though.”
“Right. Well aside from your feelings for him, I mean, he can communicate mentally with animals. He could keep you on track, I think, while you were flying. But as he’s not here, that’s no help. I’ll try to do something with a spell, shall I?”
“Uh, well, I suppose—”
“Rhetorical! Transform, please, but stay here.”
Henry didn’t look at all certain that he wanted to comply. In truth he looked a little angry and a little scared. Or maybe a lot of one or the other, Thurlock wasn’t sure.
“Why?” Henry asked.
“We-ell,” Thurlock drawled. “Because you really want to be helpful, perhaps. Or, if not, because I am a wizard of wide renown and you don’t want to spend the rest of your life as a crawfish.” Thurlock wasn’t really sure he could turn someone into a crawfish, especially if they were already half-condor, and he was very sure he wouldn’t do it.
Henry seemed pretty sure of the same thing, because he tsked, looked at him with disappointment all over his face and shook his head. But then he said, “All right. I’m a little nervous about having you do a spell to change me, but I want to help.” After a deep breath he added, “I don’t suppose there’s anything to fear,” and promptly changed into his bird form.
Thurlock studied the Condor for a few minutes, walking slowly around him to see him from all angles. When he thought he had a solid idea, he said, “Okay, be still, please.” He bent to search the forest floor, picked up a small, sharp-edged stone, and walked a few steps until he stood at the edge of a shaft of sunlight coming through the trees. He held the stone in his open palm out into the beaming ray, raised his eyes, and said, “Behlishan, my old friend, if you would please?”
The small glade where they stood grew brighter and warmer for a few minutes, and when the light returned to its original level, the stone had become transparent and shiny as clear quartz crystal and seemed to give off a little light of its own. Thurlock nodded, satisfied that the changes he’d aimed for had succeeded. He closed his fist around the stone, closed his eyes and focused on getting the rest of what he required. Specifically, he needed a chain, and not just any chain. He needed the chain that hung from a hook in the topmost room of his tower back at the Sisterhold. He’d crafted it with a series of spells that, combined, allowed it to automatically shrink and grow as needed to assure that the wearer didn’t lose it. It had been an exhausting endeavor to create it several hundred years ago, when he’d been considerably younger and stronger, but he hadn’t really known why he made it at the time. He’d just felt certain he would need it someday.
Someday had arrived. Thurlock had already begun to tire from magical exertion, so it was fortunate that bringing the chain into the pocket of his robe from that distant place took much less energy than making it—very little in fact. Often misnamed “manifesting,” the act was more like whistling for a horse. He knew the object, knew its vibrations and what sort of “whistle” it would respond to, so he simply called it into his presence. It was one of the first things a young wizard’s apprentice learned. and Thurlock had been doing it for a very long time.
So he was surprised when he instead pulled a Snickers bar out of his pocket. After thinking it through, he decided it meant his energy was depleted, so he ate the Snickers before trying again—with good results.
Using a little more magic, he passed the chain into and through the stone, closed the chain’s circle so it had no beginning and no end, and looped it over Henry’s condor head. “Hold the mind to match the man,” he said quietly and without emphasis or repetition, because his simple words were enough, after all these years of making magic.
Immediately the Condor began grunting and clicking and doing a sort of bob, weave, and flap dance.
Thurlock said, “If you want to discuss things, Henry, I think you’d best come back to human form. I can’t understand your language.”
Henry turned his back to transform, but there was no longer any need for privacy. Thurlock had included the idea of the clothes in the “match the man” spell.
After checking himself over quickly, Henry put a hand over the stone where it hung on its chain. “Wow, clothes,” he said. “That was fabulous, Thurlock. I could feel my thinking refocus the minute you put the chain around my neck. I think I’m smarter as a condor with it on than I am as a regular man. Give me thumbs and I’ll be a condor who can do anything.”
Thurlock rolled his eyes at the hasty thinking of the young. “No,” he said. “You can either be a condor with thumbs or a condor with wings.”
“Yeah, okay. Wings,” Henry said, “and I’m off to do some reconnaissance now.”
Wearily, Thurlock smiled as Henry shifted, flexed, and flew. He was growing fond of the young man, and he suspected Han’s romantic future had gotten brighter.
HENRY ALWAYS enjoyed flying—what human wouldn’t? But now, wearing the enchanted stone Thurlock had made, his spirits soared like never before. He kept all his knowledge, focus, purpose, and every ounce of his strong willpower. He was having so much fun, he almost regretted that, having discovered a road and followed it for no more than two hours, he found a manor house, village, and landmarks that matched Thurlock’s description of the Sisterhold perfectly. The granite face of an upthrust ridge topped with a mammoth oak sparkled some distance from the manor house and orchards, and he nearly collided with a lofty but somewhat disreputable-looking tower. Certainly, this was the Sisterhold. An aerial view painted the place peaceful and charming, and though he was sorry the flight was so short, Henry looked forward to being there.
He looked forward to it even more when he thought about Han Shieth being there. He refused to entertain a sneaky thought suggesting Han might not be available for romance. I’ll have to cross that bridge if I fly into it, I suppose.
He made a wide circle around the manor’s outlying fields and reluctantly turned back to report his successful mission to Thurlock. He spied the trio—Thurlock, Maizie, and Lemon Martinez—walking at a good clip along a narrow but clear path, headed in approximately the right direction.
As graceful as his descending spiral had been, his landing ranked as one of his clumsiest ever. With much flapping of wings and grunting, he righted himself, then transformed immediately. Marvelously, his clothes set themselves in place at the same time, but he felt a little worse for wear.
“Behl’s teeth,
” Thurlock said. “I thought you might have knocked yourself out when you hit that low branch. Are you all right?”
“More or less, yes,” Henry answered, allowing himself an annoyed tone. “I’m not built for landing in tight spots. I think I managed pretty well all things considered.” After checking to see he wasn’t bleeding and his bruises and scrapes weren’t life-threatening, he took a few deep breaths to calm himself. “Sorry I scared Lemon, though.”
“He’ll be okay,” Thurlock said. “He didn’t even climb too high in the tree.”
“That’s good. They tend to get stuck if they’re too high up. I know—I’m a… well, I was a firefighter, back in California. I’ve had to rescue a few.”
“Lemon’s too smart for that, I think,” Thurlock said. “But it’s good to know you could handle it if he did.”
Still irritated, Henry made a face. “Hello! No ladder truck here! Not even an ordinary ladder.”
“I could get you one, I think, but never mind that. You’re back much sooner than I expected.”
“Right,” Henry said, and getting back to that topic cheered him up. “I found the Sisterhold, I’m certain. All the landmarks were there. Looks like a really charming place. We’re only about fifty clicks away.”
“Clicks?”
“Uh, I mean miles.”
“Clicks means miles? I hadn’t heard that! I love learning new things!”
“Well, I don’t want to rain on your scholarly parade or anything, but it only means that sometimes.”
Thurlock sighed deeply. “Well, thank you for telling me. Now I suppose we’d better get back to the matter at hand, yes?”
“Hey, keep your robes on! I’m not the one who got all distracted by the clicks word.”
Thurlock was silent for a long moment. Finally after slowly releasing a deep breath, he said, “Has it not occurred to you, young man, that you are standing a few feet from a very powerful wizard whose patience has already worn quite thin, and that there would be no witnesses should I choose to perform some incredibly interesting magic on you?”