Sea of Silver Light (47 page)

"Are these . . . your brothers and sisters?" she asked.

The Stone Girl shrugged. "Sort of. There are a lot of us. So many that sometimes I think the stepmother just doesn't know what to do."

The shape of a vast shoe loomed before them, and Renie suddenly drew up and stopped. "Jesus Mercy," she said. "I get it."

"Come on," said the Stone Girl, and for the first time took Renie's hand. Her fingers were rough, with the cool dampness of forest loam. A little boy with the head of a deer looked up at Renie with shy, liquid brown eyes, as though he wished he could take the other hand, but Renie was busy wrestling with this new realization. "Of course—it's that damn nursery rhyme, 'The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe.' " Something else was tugging at her, too, some distant memory, but it was hard enough to deal with finding herself in a Mother Goose book.

"We
all
live in shoes," her guide said, drawing her through a door at the back of the ancient, moss-covered boot. "Well, everybody around here. . . ."

It was a very, very old shoe. To Renie's relief, no olfactory traces of its previous giant owner remained. Two or three times as many children waited in the smoky firelight as had come out to meet them, but the stay-at-homes seemed just as weirdly diverse. Those who had eyes watched Renie with fascination as the Stone Girl led her through the great boot toward the toe. Although there were far too many for introductions, the Stone Girl called a few by name, mostly while instructing them to get out of the way—"Polly," "Little Seed," "Hans," and "Big Ears" were a few Renie heard. She had to step over many of them, and a few times she trod on someone by accident, but no one objected. She guessed that the crowded way they lived had accustomed them to it.

Could these be the children in comas?
she wondered.
Is that what this place is—a kind of concentration camp for all the children the Other has stolen?
If so, the prospects for finding Stephen were daunting—there might well be thousands just here in the Shoes, and God alone knew how many in the other pieces of clothing throughout the hills.

"Is that you, Stone Girl?" a voice called, echoing slightly in the dome of the toe. "You're late back and you've set me worrying. These are bad times. It can't be allowed."

A dark shape sat in a rocking chair beside the fireplace. A brick chimney poked up through the shoe leather overhead, but to little effect. In fact, Renie first thought it was the pervasive smoke that made it hard to see the figure in the chair, but then she realized that the humanoid form was itself vague as mist—a suggestion of shoulders and a head atop a body shapeless as a gray cloud. Twinned glimmers of firelight seemed to reflect where the eyes should be, but otherwise it had no face. The voice, though faint and airy, did not seem either particularly feminine or kindly. It was certainly not any version of the Old Woman in the Shoe that Renie would have expected.

"I . . . I tried to find the Witching Tree, Stepmother," the Stone Girl said. "Because everything is going wrong. I wanted to ask it. . . ."

"No! You are back late. It's not allowed. And you have brought one who does not belong here. Already the streets outside are full of those who have lost their homes—why do we need another? We have nothing to share."

"But she was lost. One of the Jinnears tried to. . . ."

The smoky matter of the stepmother became for a moment more solid. The eyes flashed. "You misbehaved. That calls for punishment."

The Stone Girl abruptly fell to the floor, writhing and crying. The other children were all silent, their eyes wide.

"Leave her alone!" Renie took a step toward the fallen Stone Girl, but something jumped through her like electricity, a great convulsive snap of pain that threw her onto her hands and knees beside the child.

"This one does not belong," the stepmother said complacently. "Too big, too strange. This one must go."

Renie raised her head; her jaw flexed but nothing would come out. Fighting to control her jerking limbs, she crawled a short way forward. The stepmother stared at her, then another whiplash of agony ran up Renie's spine and exploded blackly in her skull.

She dimly felt herself lifted by many small hands. When they set her down again, she was so grateful to stop moving she tried to say so, but only managed a wheeze. The dirt against her face was cool and damp, rather like the Stone Girl's hand, and she lay against it appreciatively as the last painful twitches worked their way out of her arms and legs.

When she could sit up, she found herself in the middle of a dark street surrounded by huge Shoes, as though she had been tossed into the back of some gargantuan closet. Light leaked from some of the dwellings, but their doors were all shut tight. Even the campfires of the shantytowns seemed to have been hurriedly extinguished, but she sensed the silent homeless watching her with fear and mistrust.

Okay,
she thought blearily.
Don't have to hit me over the head. Know when I'm not wanted.

A thin wail floated down into the valley. Renie shivered, wondering what she was going to do now, lost and alone.

She was staggering down the twisting thoroughfare when a shape came out of the shadows.

"I left." The Stone Girl's voice was very small.

Renie wasn't certain—she wasn't certain about anything—but it seemed something important had happened.

"You . . . ran away?"

"The stepmother is getting meaner and meaner. And she won't listen to me about the Ending." The Stone Girl made a funny sound, a muddy little snort. Renie realized she was crying. "And she shouldn't have given you punishment." She thrust something toward Renie—a blanket, soft and threadbare. "I brought you this, so you won't be so cold. I'll go with you."

Renie was touched but a bit overwhelmed. As she wrapped the blanket around her shoulders, she couldn't help wondering whether she had been given a huge favor or a huge responsibility. "Go with me . . . where?"

"I'll take you to the Witching Tree. Ask it for help. That's where I was trying to go today, but the Ending has eaten up the path I used to take. We'll have to go through the Wood."

"Right now?"

The little shape nodded. "It's the best time to find it. But we have to be careful—there are things hunting. Jinnears—and Ticks, too." She looked up, suddenly hesitant. "If you want to come with me, that is."

Renie let out a breath. "Oh, definitely. If you promise you'll explain a few things to me along the way." The Stone Girl's dark line of a smile was odd but genuine. "That's right, you like to ask questions, don't you?"

The world around them, Sam decided, was becoming both more and less real.

More real because as they walked farther upriver, what had been glassy translucency became more substantial, the meadows and hills all solid objects now, the river itself un-arguably wet, splashing noisily beside them. More unreal because nothing seemed quite normal, as though it were all a picture improperly copied from life—or even a picture copied from another picture. The colors and shapes were all subtly wrong, too regular or simply not quite recognizable.

"It is purely an invention, I think," said !Xabbu as he examined one of a small, scattered stand of trees by the riverside, the bark whorled like fingernails, the perfectly circular leaves like translucent silver coins. "Like the first flower I made—a flower that was more an idea than anything else."

"The first flower you made?" Sam asked.

"When Renie was teaching me how things are done in these virtual worlds." He shook his head. "This seems the same—as though made by a child playing, or someone experimenting."

"Wasn't Renie talking about that? She said the mountain might have been made by . . . the Other. That system-thing. So maybe this all is, too."

"It seems likely. It certainly is not a perfect copy of some real-world place." He brushed aside some of the silvery leaves and smiled, "Look, there is too much shininess, too much color! In that way, it is much like what a child would do."

Jongleur turned back toward them, his bony face set hard. "Are you two still wasting time? It will be dark soon."

!Xabbu shrugged. "Perhaps. We do not know the rules of this place."

"Do you want to get eaten by something, then, because you don't know the rules?"

The little man paused, restraining his temper. Until recently, Sam had thought of him as perennially good-natured, but spending so much time with Jongleur was testing even !Xabbu's tremendous reserves of courtesy and equanimity. "It is probably a good idea to make camp, yes," he said with measured calm. "Is that what you are saying?"

"We're not going to find that . . . your friend. Not before dark." Jongleur's early mood of quiet withdrawal was over. He looked at Sam and !Xabbu as though he would gladly have hit them both with a stick, although he, too, kept his voice almost civil. "This is not like being on the mountain—there may be living things here that we would not want to meet."

"Very well," said !Xabbu. "Then this is as good a place as any to stop, since at least the ground is flat." He turned to Sam. "The man is right about one thing—we do not know what will come to us in this new land."

"If you want me to gather wood or something, you could go have one last look around for Renie. Call her or whatever."

He nodded, grateful. "Thank you, Sam. I think I can make a fire—it worked in that unfinished place where we were before. See what you can find that is loose on the ground."

She was not surprised when !Xabbu returned slowly, as though carrying something heavy. She had heard him shouting Renie's name for a long time. She decided to spare him the effort of making cheerful conversation.

He crouched and began building the fire. Jongleur sat on a spotted stone, brooding silently, his naked legs pressed together. Sam thought the old man looked like a gargoyle off a church roof.

Some of the trees stirred as a breeze blew across the grassy hills and through the camp. Watching the fire ripple, Sam realized that weather was one of the things that had returned when they had reached this area of greater substance.

Will it just keep getting more real?
she wondered. It was only when !Xabbu looked up at her in surprise that she realized she had said it aloud. She felt silly, but the thought would not go away. "I mean, if we keep walking, will this world just get more and more real?"

Before !Xabbu could speak, Jongleur leaned forward. "If you think we will walk all the way back to the network, child, you will be painfully disappointed. This is not part of what I built, none of this. We are in some backwater of the net constructed by the operating system, something separate from the rest—very separate."

"Well, what's it all for, then?"

Jongleur only scowled and stared at the fire.

"He doesn't know either," Sam told !Xabbu. "He's just dupping, like he knows everything, but he's scared like we are."

Jongleur snorted. "I am not 'scared like you are,' girl. If anything, I have more to fear, because I have more to lose. But I do not waste energy on pointless talk."

!Xabbu reached over and patted Sam's hand. "If only about one thing, he is again correct. We should get rest now, because who knows what we will find tomorrow?"

Sam hugged herself. "I hope one of the things we find tomorrow is something to wear. It's getting cold." She looked at !Xabbu, as contented in his own bare skin as if he were dressed. "Aren't you cold, too?"

He smiled. "I will be, perhaps. So we will spend some time tomorrow trying to discover if any of the plants here are good for weaving into clothes, or at least blankets."

The idea of a project, however small, lifted Sam's heart. Nothing since Orlando's death had seemed to have much point, and certainly they seemed no closer to learning what they truly needed to know . . . but it would be very nice to be warm again.

She felt sleep pulling on her, so she curled up near the fire.

Sam thought she had only been asleep for a second when !Xabbu's long fingers touched her face. "Quiet," he whispered. "Something is nearby." She tried to thrash herself upright but !Xabbu held her back. Jongleur too was awake and watching as shadows moved in the high grasses just beyond the firelight. Sam realized she was having trouble getting her breath. She reminded herself of all the frightening adventures she and Orlando had experienced together, how she had learned to fight through her nervous excitement to do what was needed.

Yeah, but this is real.

It wasn't, of course—just one look at the strange trees showed her that—but the danger was. A quiet hiss that might have been the wind, or might have been whispering voices, eddied past. Sam fumbled out the hilt of Orlando's sword and held it with both hands because she was trembling too much to hold it steady with just one.

A small shape slipped into the circle of firelight. It crouched low to the ground, huge round eyes staring nervously. It was one of the strangest animals she had ever seen, a bizarre hybrid of monkey and something like a kangaroo, its spindly legs covered with long fur, its tiny head set low against its body.

Jongleur suddenly lunged forward and snatched a smoldering branch from the fire. By the time he had straightened up the creature had vanished back into the tall grass.

"Stop," !Xabbu said. "It offered us no harm."

Jongleur scowled. "And doubtless the first piranha to reach a swimmer is well-mannered, too. But there are many more out there. I heard them."

Before either !Xabbu or Sam could respond, the wide-eyed face appeared at the edge of the clearing again. Despite the creature's unfortunate aspect, Sam felt her heart touched by its bravery—it was half the size of Sam and her companions, and clearly frightened almost to death. But she was still startled when the creature spoke.

"You . . . you talk?" It slurred and mumbled the words, but they were still clear.

"We talk, yes," !Xabbu replied. "Who are you? Will you come and sit by our fire?"

"Sit by our fire. . . !" Jongleur exploded. The scrawny creature flinched away from him but stood its ground.