“Is that why Ferra’s a queen?” I’d asked when he pointed that out. “Because iron is a stronger metal?”
“In a way. You don’t find her to be the picture of royalty?”
I made one of those unladylike sounds that Micah so disapproved of. Really, he was just going to have to accept the fact that I was not very refined. “I always imagined a queen as a kind woman, who cared for her people more than anything. Ferra is not that sort of woman.” An image of my mother appeared in my mind’s eye; while I hadn’t known she was a queen, Mom would move mountains for her family. I couldn’t imagine her behaving like the despicable Iron Queen, not one bit. “And shouldn’t the queen be a precious metal, like gold or platinum?”
He smiled ruefully. “Things are not always as they should be.” I caught the sadness in his tone, and remembered the gold gaudily displayed in Ferra’s palace, and the gold-lined oubliette. I also remembered that silver is a precious metal too, surely worthier of the throne than ugly old iron. But Micah didn’t want to talk about it, and he turned his attention to the far more pressing task of breaking Max out of prison. As for me, I let him get away with his distraction technique. For now.
“It is getting inside that requires stealth,” Micah murmured as we watched the guards. “Leaving shall be simplicity itself.”
By simplicity, Micah meant that he intended to take Max and me along one of the metal pathways he used for traveling, much as he did in the Mundane World. In order to accomplish this, he’d tasked the silverkin with placing sufficient metal at short intervals between the prison and his home, almost like a trail of silvery breadcrumbs, to guide us to safety. Since the prison proper contained only a small amount of metal in the various electronic devices, and all metal had been removed from the soil underneath it, that was the best we could do.
I nodded, deliberately not speaking, or even thinking, about our impending escape. Micah was confident, and that was all that mattered. Never mind that it was a foolish, risky plan that centered on a dead bird’s feather and a few pounds of iron filings. Never mind that it could very well end with Micah and me either dead or sharing Max’s cell. Nope, not thinking about that at all.
Micah lightly touched my arm and jerked his chin toward the prison. The guard had finally retreated to a small side building the size of a garden shed; through the window, I could see him munching on a sandwich. Carefully, we rose and Micah wrapped his cloak around both of our shoulders.
“You’re sure this will work?” I asked.
“It worked the last time,” he replied. “They never saw who breached their puny wall.”
“I thought you were your dreamself then.”
“I woke as soon as I sensed you in danger.” Huh. So Micah, in his wakeful body, had charged through a stone fortress full of enemies armed with terrible, terrible weapons, enemies with a special taste for Dreamwalkers at that, all for me.
I stood on my toes and stretched to kiss his jaw. He touched my hair but said nothing, not that I’d expected him to. He had to concentrate on blending in.
Micah referred to his cloak as his chameleon skin, but it wasn’t really a lizard’s hide. As near as I could tell, the fabric was woven from various plants with magical properties; close to the hem I could make out something like mandrake leaves, and the clasp was a curl of belladonna, complete with dark, shiny berries. The sum total of these plants meant that the cloak would keep Micah either warm or cool as needed, lend him speed if he were pursued, and hide him from his enemies. It was not like a cloak of invisibility, he’d cautioned me. Some things were quite rare, even in the Otherworld. No, this cloak worked more like a pencil eraser, blurring itself along the edges, so it was hard to tell where the cloak ended and the surrounding landscape began. If one looked directly at Micah one would see him, clear as day, but who looks directly at something that isn’t there? This chameleon skin was a most useful garment indeed.
Gingerly, we made our way across the open space toward the imposing cinderblock wall encircling the prison. Unlike Micah’s last visit, when he had rushed into an unknown environment hoping his illusion would hold, we were trying to be subtle. Conveniently, there was no door or fence, just an opening wide enough to drive a truck through, flanked by cameras and plastic spike strips poised to be flung under any uninvited tires. I wondered how well plastic fared against rubber.
My heart pounded so loudly I thought the guard would surely hear it, but he didn’t look up from his lunch as we walked by the shed or as we stepped beyond the wall. A few steps later, Micah opened the door to the facility, and, as anticlimactic as it was, that was it.
We were in.
The halls, all of them an identical shade of elementary-school green, made me feel like a rat in a maze. I couldn’t imagine how the labcoats managed to navigate the place without a map, but Micah strode purposefully ahead, making sure to drop a tiny speck of iron every few paces. When we reached the doors to the auditorium that held Max, Micah put another piece of our plan into play.
After I’d spoken to The Raven, my mother had rummaged around the dusty, morbid artifacts and produced a special gift of her own: a wolfhound’s tooth. Similarly to the desiccated sprite, it was encased in a stoppered crystal decanter, the tooth’s enamel long since cracked and yellowed with age. When I’d questioned her, she’d smiled wickedly and said that we would need a diversion. And, she’d added, she’d greatly prefer a diversion that would kill a few of her son’s captors
.
So we’d tossed the tooth near the hole in the wall that Micah had left during our last visit, and taken up our vigil on the other side of the facility. Now that we were standing before the auditorium door, Micah smashed the glass jar, and we heard the monstrous wolfhound burst into being, the bloodcurdling screams as it launched itself at the nearest guard, its sharp Otherworldly teeth making short work of the plastic guns. Wrapped in Micah’s cloak, we pressed flat against the wall as alarms sounded and the control booth emptied. The scientists rushed away, whether to help or hide, I didn’t know. After the last labcoat had fled, Micah grinned.
“Come, love,” he murmured, as he opened the door for me. “It’s time for me to meet your brother.”
At the sight of Max’s pathetic form, my gut clenched. He looked far worse than the last time I’d seen him, which, I reminded myself, had only been a few days ago. He was still in that plastic cylinder attached to tubes and wires, but the green, viscous liquid had been drained away, leaving him naked save for the electronics wrapped about his limbs. I think the liquid had been keeping him warm, since he was now covered in gooseflesh. He was freezing but too tired to shiver.
Also, without the liquid I could see how gaunt he really was; his ribs jutted out painfully, and the pasty skin hung in loose folds from his joints and abdomen. How long had Max been kept in this science experiment gone wrong? How long had it been since he’d eaten real food or seen the sun? Too long; far, far too long.
I hoped we weren’t too late to save him.
“I will kill whoever is responsible for this.”
I hadn’t realized I’d spoken aloud until Micah nodded. “We will.”
Micah popped the flimsy latch on Max’s plastic shell, but as I reached in to rip the electrodes from Max’s skin, Micah stayed my hand. “Careful,” Micah warned. “His dreamself may be held elsewhere.”
What? How is that even possible?
I swallowed and tried to keep from screaming. “What should we do?” My voice was hoarse, my arms trembling; we were so close to freeing Max, and now there was
one more fricking obstacle!
Micah, of course, remained as calm as ever.
“I shall call him back.” Micah gently nudged Max’s shoulder, then placed a hand on his forehead. Max cracked an eyelid, only to squeeze it shut again.
“He’s here,” Micah proclaimed, and we plucked away the feeder tubes and wires and other torments attached to my brother. Even without them, the evidence of his imprisonment was obvious, from the small circles crusted over with blood that patterned across his torso, to the greenish bruises where plastic bars had held him in place for—how long? Weeks, surely. Perhaps months, or even years.
Yes. I would like to kill every last one of these Peacekeepers
.
When we removed the last bar, Max slumped forward into me, his flesh so cold I gasped. My fingers flew to his neck, and I sighed in relief when I found his pulse. Micah hefted Max’s limp form and wrapped him in the chameleon skin cloak. Luckily, we wouldn’t need to worry about blending in for our escape. “The feather,” Micah murmured.
I pulled out The Raven’s gift and placed it where Max had stood, still unsure what a feather was supposed to do for us, but I didn’t have to wonder for long. As soon as the feather was out of my hands it began to shimmer and melt, its mass increasing, changing color and shape. In the space of a few heartbeats, it had grown into a perfect replica of Max, with all the assorted tubes and wires properly attached.
“Oh,” I mumbled, too stunned to do more than stare; the replica was perfect, right down to the bruises and gooseflesh. Micah, apparently used to such magical occurrences, grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the door and out into the corridor, Max slung over his shoulder. We could still hear shouts and growls from the far side of the prison. I imagined the wolfhound was ripping the guards to shreds. Good.
We walked out of the Institute for Elemental Research just as easily as we’d walked in and made our way to the nearby tree line. When we reached the first few scraps of metal, I asked Micah the fateful question.
“Are you sure you can do this?” I gasped. While we had been planning at the Raven Compound, and in front of my mother, Micah had been confident that he could travel along the metal path carrying both Max and me. Later, when we were alone, he’d admitted that he’d never done so with a single companion, let alone two.
“I should be able to,” he replied, settling Max more comfortably across his shoulders.
“Should?” Should was just a nice way of admitting that he had no idea. Should was not acceptable. I grabbed his shirt and pulled his ear to my mouth. “Listen, if you have to leave someone behind, leave me. Just get Max out of here!”
Micah touched my cheek, the sun breaking behind the thunderclouds in his eyes. “My Sara, I will never leave you.”
Before I could respond, there was a commotion in front of the Institute’s main entrance. Micah didn’t turn to see what it was. Instead, he threw an arm around my shoulders and we leaped into the metal.
Traveling via metal is…weird. As near as I can tell, the molecules of your body separate and merge with the metal, passing you along, slipping and sliding between protons and dodging electrons as they whizz by in their orbits. Remember chemistry class, and how they talked about covalent bonds? Well, imagine taking a covalent bond, instead of a bus. I know. Weird
.
The beginning of the journey was the worst; we were sucked into a piece of metal, then forcibly thrown into the next piece. More than once, I thought I’d be sick, and I might have been if not for Micah. He expertly steered us from one metallic island to the next, his calm never wavering, his arm around me never loosening.
Once we’d made our way into the woods surrounding the prison, the metal breadcrumbs lay closer together; Micah, who’d recently freaked over my driving, took off at a breakneck pace. When we finally arrived before Micah’s silver house, I had the distinct feeling that my stomach was still a few feet behind me. Micah, in order to set down Max, unwound his arm from my shoulders, which turned out to be a bad idea. Still off-balance from our swift travels, I tumbled to the ground.
I hadn’t realized that any time had passed when I opened my eyes, my first sight Micah’s concerned silver gaze. “Where’s Max?” I mumbled. I looked around and wondered why we were in the knot garden.
“The silverkin have brought him indoors.” Micah gathered me to his chest, and I felt him shudder. “My Sara, don’t ever frighten me in such a way again.”
“What happened?” I dimly recalled our journey, but we were here—Max was here—so everything must have worked out.
“Once we leapt free of the metal, you fainted. It has taken me more than an hour to revive you.” His embrace tightened, and I had to admit that it felt good to have him worry about me. No one but my mother had worried about me like that for over ten years.
“I’m okay,” I murmured. “Really.” I got to my feet only a bit unsteadily. “Let’s go see Max.”
With Micah’s arm about my waist, we went indoors and found my newly-freed brother lying upon a makeshift bed of cushions on the hall’s main floor. He was still out cold, but the silverkin attended their strange guest as if he were a prince. They had washed his raw, tender skin, and dressed the many puncture wounds. Now they gently chafed his limbs, warming him to a normal temperature, and had tucked a myriad of shawls and blankets, along with the coverlet from Micah’s own bed, about him. A bowl of steaming broth waited on a side table, ready for him when he woke.
I sank to my knees next to him and took his hand. “Hey,” I murmured. I couldn’t believe he was here, alive and (mostly) whole. I’d dreamed of finding him since the moment he’d been arrested. Weird. What girl’s dream come true was her older brother?
Maybe I had been his dream too, because Max opened his eyes. “Sara?” he rasped. I smiled, and he blinked. “Sara, where are we?”
“We’re still in the Otherworld, at Micah’s home.” Micah came to stand beside me. Max’s eyes flicked over to him for the barest second, widening in shock and terror.
“He’s a freakin’ elf!” Max sat bolt upright and grabbed my shoulders. “Sara, it’s not safe! You have to get away from him!” That outburst brought on a fit of coughing; once his hacking subsided, I continued.
“Don’t worry, I’m his consort!” Wow, that sounded stupid.
“You’re his
what
?” Max, weakened by his many years of captivity, still managed a disapproving tone. Mom would be proud—at least, if I told her about it. “Never mind,” he grunted. “Why are we here? I’m supposed to be at the Institute!”