So I veered for the wall, thinking I could scramble over and—I hoped—lose him in the neighborhood.
"Hey!" I heard the aide yell a second time. "No running, you two!"
Julian was too close behind me. If I didn't make it over that wall on the first try, he'd be right on top of me. And if the wall was that easy for me to just fly over, it wouldn't slow him down, either.
And what street was on the other side of that wall, anyway? Already I was disoriented. If I came out on South, which was a busy street, somebody was sure to notice if Julian ... what? Pulled a knife on me? Cast a spell on me? Dragged me into a nearby spaceship? And just because people were driving by, that didn't mean any of them could stop, or would even
try to
stop in time to rescue me—even assuming they could tell I needed rescuing and that we weren't just horsing around. Robinson might be a good street to come out on, being residential, but what if it was Mount Hope Avenue on the other side of the wall—which was lined with mostly empty parking lots?
I could dodge behind one of the trees and hope that Julian went right past, without circling around it and coming face-to-face with me.
I glanced over my shoulder.
He was gaining.
There was another little stand of trees, and I ran into that, and out the other side a moment later, around the gazebo, headed for some more trees, saw an archway—and lost track of where I was.
Oh, yeah,
I thought,
those arches the lilac committee put up.
I knew it wasn't the one near my house, all the way across the park, but assumed they must have put up a bunch of them, never mind that Highland Park was across the street, not on Westfall Nursing Home grounds.
I sped through the arch—which sure looked like granite, though I knew it couldn't be—and there were a lot more trees on the far side, for which I was grateful. I zigzagged, watching the ground so I wouldn't trip over tree roots, and wondered if now
was the time to try hiding. I couldn't hear Julian anymore, so I glanced over my shoulder.
Not a sign of him.
Of course, not a sign of the arch, either.
Or the wall.
Or the nursing home.
And there were
a lot
of trees.
A whole lot.
Even when I looked over the tops of my lenses.
I was in a forest. Not a wooded yard. Not a park.
A freaking forest.
There was no time to panic. I heard Julian call, "Wendy!" His voice was close by. I was pretty sure it came from the direction I was facing, from where the gate, and—beyond that—Westfall Nursing Home should be, and wasn't.
On the other hand, I heard the crackling of brush coming from the other way, the direction in which I had been heading.
It was probably a case of sound echoing or bouncing off all those tree trunks, but I
had
been zigzagging, and I was willing to grant that finding myself in a forest in the middle of what should have been a backyard might have disoriented me.
Might have.
He
was
closing in. I just wasn't sure from which direction.
So I dived off to the side, behind a fallen tree, into a patch of really tall wildflowers, thinking only at the last moment that I would be lucky not to impale myself on any of the branches.
Twigs jabbed me, but didn't inflict any fatal injuries—or at least not immediately fatal injuries. I raised my head from my prone position and peeked over the tree trunk. I saw that, for all my elusive maneuvering since going through the gate, I'd been following a path that ribboned through the trees.
And standing on that path, not five feet away, having caught up some time between my last glance in that direction and now, was Julian. The path was so twisty, there was a chance he hadn't seen my graceful hurtle into the vegetation even though he appeared to be looking directly at me. I told myself this was probably an optical illusion. I didn't duck, lest that movement attract his attention.
My heart was beating so fast and loud, I wasn't aware of any other sound. So I was taken completely by surprise when five men burst onto the scene, no doubt the brush cracklers from the other end of the path. Like Julian, they were tall, slender, and pointy-earred. But there the similarity ended, for instead of jeans and T-shirts, they wore clothes right out of a Renaissance festival—tunics over breeches and tall boots—and they carried weapons: bows and swords and daggers.
Julian must have called in reinforcements, I realized. I didn't stand a chance.
But they sure looked startled to come face-to-face with one another: Julian, who had been preoccupied with pursuing me, and the men, who'd been making so much noise that they wouldn't have been able to hear much beyond themselves.
Four of the men went for their swords—not the kind of move people who are working together generally make. The one who had not unsheathed his sword told the others, "Don't kill him unless you absolutely have to." Definitely on the wrong side of friendly.
So much for my ability to assess a situation.
Julian dodged one of the two guys who lunged at him, but the second tackled him, and both of them went sprawling in the dirt. While the man who had given the don't-kill-him order stood aside, all four of the others kicked and pummeled Julian until he stopped struggling. I'd seen guys horsing around before—I'd even seen sports brawls—but this went beyond that into vicious. Then they dragged him up
on his knees, bruised and bloody, and one of them, Mr. Don't-Kill-Him—the leader?—placed a sword blade to Julian's throat.
"Well met, Julwin Y'orick," that one said. "This will give us some bargaining power."
Julian looked mad enough to spit, only his good manners holding him back. "My father will not deal with you just because you hold me hostage," he snapped.
"Then your father will get you back one piece at a time, and he can reassemble you to bury you," said the other man.
Man.
Who was I kidding? These were no men.
He was an elf.
They were all elves.
I peeked over the top of my glasses to see what these guys would look like in normal vision and got two surprises:
(1) They still looked the same. Even Julian. In this place I'd accidentally found, whatever it was that caused Julian to pass for normal no longer worked.
(2) Either wearing these glasses all day had cured my nearsightedness, or being in this place—wherever this place was—had. Because despite the distance, I could see clearly.
Just when I thought I'd caught on to the way things worked.
That old saying, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend," came to mind, and I considered whether I should announce myself to Julian's attackers. But Julian wasn't exactly an enemy. And would these guys be any happier than he was to know I could see them and had wandered into their world? What made me think that five punks who would beat up on a single, unarmed guy would treat me any better?
I waited for Julian's attackers to notice me, for them to come over and chop my head off since I didn't make a good hostage, my father being in Hong Kong, my mother being in Syracuse, and my mother's current husband being in an all-day performance appraisal meeting. And, in any case, I guessed none of them was likely to have anything this group of bully warrior elves would want.
Or—just in case they didn't notice me on their own—there was the possibility that Julian would tell them, "Hey, you want someone who doesn't belong here? Try behind that tree trunk over there."
But he didn't.
Of course, there was no reason to believe they would treat him any better if he turned me over to them, so that was no reason for me to go and feel grateful to him or anything.
But I was seriously spooked by those guys and the rough way they handled Julian as they bound his hands behind his back and taunted him with threats of violence whether or not his father gave in to their demands—whatever
they
were. So I was ... okay, I'll admit to
relieved.
I was relieved Julian didn't give away my hiding spot.
Don't look this way,
I mentally begged the elves. If they took Julian away, I could head back the way I'd come, find that gateway back into my own world....
I ignored the little voice that reminded me I hadn't gone that far beyond the arch before glancing back. Sure, I'd zigged, I'd even zagged, but I still should have been able to see the arch.
What if it was a one-way passage? What if I couldn't get back home, but was stuck here where the natives were less than cordial and I'd let the only person I knew get taken away by thugs intent on putting him through the elven equivalent of a food processor?
I am not a very nice person to be worried only about my own skin,
the voice of my conscience chimed in.
Hey, it's
my
skin,
I reminded my conscience,
and it's the only skin I've got.
Besides, what could I do?
Besides, I had no idea what was going on in this
world, who these guys were, or what their grievance was with Julian and his father.
Besides, hadn't I already decided that Julian and Tiffanie were the bad guys?
But I knew I was weaseling: I was too afraid to get involved. I stayed under cover of the fallen tree and the wildflowers, and tried not think about how the leaves and grass were making my skin itch, tried not to breathe, tried not to sweat. My cover, such as it was, was skimpy. Julian had seen me right away, I was sure of it. The only reason these guys hadn't was that they hadn't known about me to begin with. Trying to bolt or sneak away would only attract their attention. I just had to remain motionless and wait them out.
Finally, with Julian bound and helpless, his captors put away their swords.
But when the leader slammed his blade into its sheath, the buckle on his sword belt slipped open, and sword, sheath, and belt ended up around the guy's feet.
Someone started laughing.
I knew right away it wasn't the other elves; they just didn't look like the kind to find the humor in a situation like that. I figured it wasn't Julian because he'd pretty much had the breath kicked out of him.
Besides, the laughter was coming from near me.
Good grief, it wasn't me, was it, getting hysterical or going crazy or something? I didn't think so because the laughter was very high-pitched, more so even than a child's, like a tape on fast-forward, or like someone who'd been inhaling helium.
I tipped my head, slowly so as not to rustle the leaves, and spotted a chipmunk-sized little blue guy on a branch one tree over from me. He was doubled over, holding his stomach, and wheezing from laughing so hard.
"Look at you!" he taunted, his words coming out between the peals of laughter. "Lucky for you I loosened your weapons belt and not the belt to your pants."
The elf took a step toward the little blue guy. But he'd lost track of why he was so angry, and the fallen belt tripped him so that he went sprawling.
The blue guy found this hilarious. He laughed until he sounded about to throw up from laughing so hard. He couldn't get out any more than "You ... you ... you..." He fell to his knees on the branch, then flopped over onto his back, clutching his stomach and rolling, while the elf tried to kick himself free of the belt around his ankles.
But one of the other elves moved in. He came so
close to where I was lying on my stomach that he stepped on the little finger of my right hand.
Don't scream, don't scream, do NOT scream,
I ordered myself, and thought I'd burst from the effort of not even drawing my hand back. Who'd have guessed a skinny elf could weigh so much?
The elf didn't notice what he'd stepped on; he was all focused on the blue guy who was ridiculing his leader. He caught the blue guy up in his hand, evidently taking the blue guy totally by surprise. Evaporated his laughter, that was for sure. "Want me to pop its little head off?" the elf asked, his thumb at the ready under the blue guy's chin, as though he was talking about a dandelion.
The leader motioned for him to come closer.
I curled my fingers into a fist, and only the barest edge of the elf's boot grazed the outside edge of my hand.
The elf leader pointed to another tree that had a little hollow in its trunk. "This'll be slower. Give it time to regret mocking its betters." He bent to pick up a rock from the path.
"No," the little guy begged. "I already regret my foolishness, kind sirs. Kind
better
sirs. What a stupid thing to do. I'm a stupid, worthless creature. I'm sorry to have inflicted myself on you."
They didn't heed him. The one shoved him into the hole, and the other jammed the rock in after him.
"Don't leave me here!" screamed the blue guy, his voice muffled and faint. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!"
The elf leader picked up another rock and used that to hammer the first rock deeper into the tree trunk.
There was a bloodcurdling scream. Then silence.
The elf said, "Oops."
"There was no call for that," Julian hissed at them from between clenched teeth.
One of the others kicked him in the small of his back.
Annoying as those blue guys could be, I agreed with Julian. If this elf lived in my world, he'd be the kind of person who swerves his car to hit the raccoon trying to cross the street. I felt my eyes grow hot from the unfairness of bullies.
They'll do the same, more or less, to Julian,
that damn conscience of mine warned.
Or to me,
I warned my conscience back.
I stayed safely where I was while the elves forced Julian down the path. I stayed, even when—for the briefest instant—his gaze rested on where I lay, and he said nothing.
When I was sure they were gone, I finally allowed myself to stretch out, to lay my head against the coolness of the grass. But I didn't give myself long. No telling if an even worse group of elves would come by.
I glanced apprehensively at the tree where the unfortunate blue guy had met his end. He had to be dead. Didn't he? My mind played with the idea that he might just be injured. Horribly, shockingly injured. There really wasn't anything I could do.