Solatium (Emanations, an urban fantasy series Book 2) (56 page)

I lay there quietly, thinking.

The night before, I’d been close to despair. It’d seemed bad when I was eighteen and had to drop out of college and go back to Dorf. I’d felt trapped. I’d thought my life had ended before it even started. But heck, being stuck in Dorf had its bright sides. I had family there, and a good friend. A decent job. A home. Compared to the future that lay ahead of me now, my old life in Dorf seemed idyllic. What did I have to look forward to, now? Being a danger to others. Politics and game-playing. An eternity alone, trusting no one.

Madness, perhaps.

It sure didn’t sound too good.

I stroked Ghosteater’s shoulder, and he sighed without waking. His odd coat was wonderfully soft, and the skin underneath was soft too. And warm.

Who knows what the future holds?

I’d felt utterly trapped in Dorf, but I’d ended up getting out of that situation in a completely unexpected way. Who’s to say that couldn’t happen again? Williams thought things always went a certain way for powers, but did he know everything? The doctors who said my panic disorder would never go away were being honest, but as it turned out, I didn’t really have panic disorder — not the regular kind, anyway. The doctors were blind to the world as it really is. Everyone has blind spots. That’s what Gwen would say. And Williams probably had a huge one when it came to kindness and generosity.

A few feet away, the man in question crawled out of his bedroll and began tying it up.

It occurred to me there was no reason to assume the power thing was a done deal. Sure, the signs were pointing that way, but signs are not certainty.

I sat up and stretched. Then I scratched Ghosteater behind the ears. “Hey, lazybones. You getting up this morning?”

He lifted his head, sneezed, and then stood.

“Pup,” he said.

His golden eyes looked warm.

I smiled. “Good morning.”

It really was a nice morning — cool and, from the look of the light filtering down through the trees, sunny.

Williams was pulling some food out of his pack.

He glanced at me, his eyes lingering for a bit longer than usual — probably trying to assess my mental health.

Then he passed over a bag of jerky.

I sat there holding it. The meat looked and tasted just like the stuff you could buy in a gas station at home, but I knew it had come from a giant stag Negus had bagged on his hunt. I recalled that I’d had this feeling before — surprise that animals that looked so different could be reduced to something so similar.

My mind took a little sideways hop. One source can be as good as another for information, just like with meat.

“Ghosteater, can you tell how strong I am?”

He tilted his head. “You are not strong.”

“I don’t mean my body. I mean my capacity to work essence. Marrow, I mean.”

“You are toothless.”

I mulled that response over for a bit.

“Yeah. But when I get teeth, how strong will they be?”

His shoulders twitched. “Like mine.”

My last shreds of hope withered.

“Maybe,” he amended. “You are hurt.”

Williams stilled. Apparently the conversation had taken an interesting turn.

“That’s right,” I said. “My capacity is damaged. But why would that matter?”

“Some wounds heal badly.” Ghosteater looked away, into the forest. “One of my littermates hurt her leg. It became shorter than the others. She could not run.”

“So I might not get strong teeth, even though I was supposed to?”

“Perhaps. I do not know.”

“I can always hope.”

“No, pup. My littermate needed four legs. You need teeth.”

I struggled with it for a long minute, then admitted he was right. I already had enough power to be a desirable commodity. If I couldn’t defend myself, I’d be a battery for life. Still, maybe I’d never get as much as I might’ve. If I had to be a power, maybe I could be the smallest of small fry. Or maybe I’d end up an anomalously strong Nolander. I mean, sure, Mizzy’s form-working was holding so far, but a few weeks isn’t much of a down payment on forever.

We finished eating in silence, then broke camp and headed west, picking up faint game paths here and there.

The land was hilly and the footing slippery. The heavy packs and thin air made for shortness of breath and light-headedness. We had to stop to rest every few minutes.

At lunch, Williams made another compressed-air bubble. It took longer for me to catch my breath — he must’ve been dialing back the oxygen content.

I guess it made sense. We had to adapt.

“Ghosteater, how far do we have to travel?”

“Not too far. They will find us.” 

Great. Something to look forward to.

That afternoon, we encountered a huge patch of destruction in the forest, fifty feet wide and three hundred long. We were actually some dozens of paces into the patch before Williams noticed the increasing number of fallen and leaning trees and stopped.

“What is this?”

Ghosteater looked back, his pale coat shimmering in the darkness.

“Dragon print. We will go around.”

Williams shook his head. “I want to see it, elder beast.”

We wove through the fallen trees until we reached the point after which none had been left standing. It was like being in the end zone of a football field. The trees down the center had been pulverized, leaving a thick, pale carpet of jagged splinters. Toward the edges, they’d gone down like dominos.

Here and there, dead animals were scattered in the wreckage — some of the forest dino species we’d been seeing.

I came up beside Ghosteater and put a hand on his back. “You’re saying a dragon landed here?”

“Yes.”

“Please tell me this isn’t just one footprint.”

He sniffed. “No. The whole body came down here.”

“Why would it want to land on all these trees?”

“Hunting.”

“Not long ago,” Williams said.

Ghosteater chuffed. “Two days.”

“So, they really do fly,” I murmured to myself.

“Yes. They are air-biters.”

That didn’t explain much. Andy was an air-worker, and he sure as heck couldn’t fly. I glanced at Williams, but he was staring out over the destruction.

“Are they all very strong?” I asked the wolf. “As strong as you?”

“Some are émigrés. Some makers still live.”

That caught Williams’s attention. “How many makers?”

Ghosteater’s shoulder skin twitched.

They’d lost me. “What are ‘makers’?”

“Those who made this place,” Ghosteater said.

“Made this stratum?” I turned to Williams. “This place is pretty old, right?”

“Late Triassic, probably the northern coast of Pangaea.”

“How can you tell that?”

He frowned. “Plants, animals, climate, season, oxygen levels, declination of the sun.”

“Oh. Right.”

Who knew there was a pedant hiding under that thuggish exterior?

I turned to Ghosteater. “So some dragons are 200 million years old. That’s what you’re saying.”

Ghosteater looked up at me, panting. “True elder beasts.”

There was no missing his wry tone.

“Hey, you’re all ‘elder’ compared to us.”

“Yes.”

I looked out over the destruction. It was like some massive airplane had crashed-landed.

“I don’t understand. Why would beings like that get involved with the affairs of humans? We must seem like gnats to them.”

Ghosteater was silent for a long moment. Then the skin between his shoulders did its shivery-twitchy thing, and he padded back under cover of the trees.

Maybe his thoughts on the matter were too complex to articulate. Or maybe he just didn’t want to insult us.

“So, when do you think the dragons will see us?”

Ghosteater looked up from the bloody carcass he was consuming — a carnivorous dinosaur that reminded me uncomfortably of the minis that had attacked me in the Octoworld isolate. It was a bit bigger but had the same general shape and coloration.

The wolf had let Williams take the meaty hind legs to roast over the fire.

“Soon.”

I glanced nervously up at the barrier Williams had propped over the fire to catch the light, smoke, and scent of cooking meat. I couldn’t really make it out against the dark canopy and sky, but the dense mass of smoke fifteen feet above us was hard to miss. Every so often, Williams peeled the inside layer off the barrier, enveloped the smoke, and compressed it into a dark, BB-sized lump of, well, whatever smoke is. There was a small pile of the things on the ground beside him.

Ghosteater had said dragons didn’t like fire.

We’d been in Eyry a week. Williams and I were getting along — barely. He seemed to have expected me to be crushed by what he’d told me that first day. He’d spent a couple days keeping a careful eye on me — probably watching for suicide attempts. Then he’d looked vaguely perplexed. Then he got mad.

He must’ve put two-and-two together on my coping method — trying not to think about it and hoping for the best when it did come to mind. I bet he didn’t approve. He seemed like one of those never-lie-to-yourself types. Normally I’d more or less agree, but not on this. It was too big.

Across the clearing, Ghosteater shifted his attention to the dino’s neck, and its jaws snapped reflexively. Not that it wasn’t dead — the wolf had caught and gutted it somewhere else and then dragged it here. But reptilian nerves have a long afterlife. I generally wasn’t squeamish, but the carcass’s continuous twitching and snapping gave me the creeps.

“It looks like the ones in the isolate,” I said.

He sniffed its hide. “It is a little like them.”

Maybe isolates worked sort of like islands.

“Do you think those came from here, then got smaller?”

The wolf ripped a chunk out of the dino’s throat. Its whole gullet came out with the meat — a slimy, pink tube. It landed wetly across his muzzle. He shook it off.

“Perhaps. There were paths to that place, once. Paths from here. From elsewhere.”

I wasn’t sure whether “paths” meant ligatures or straits — if he even distinguished between them.

“Why would the paths disappear?”

“The silence thins.”

“Um … the paths disappeared because things got too loud?”

His ears drooped to the sides.

I knew what that meant — I’d gotten something absurdly wrong. It happened a lot.

“What’s ‘the silence,’ exactly?”

“It is between.”

“Between what?”

“Places.”

“It’s the place between strata?”

“Not a place.”

“So it’s … the not-place between strata?”

He tilted his head, studying me. “It is the flesh cut by the tooth.”

What the heck?

“It is the womb filled with seed.”

“I don’t understand.”

“One day, I will show you.”

“You can go there?” Williams said, startling me.

“Yes.” Ghosteater swept his nose down toward his invisible forefeet. “I stand there, so I do not tear things.”

“And you can go deeper when you need to?” Williams said.

“Yes.”

“All the way?”

“No. I would be lost.”

They fell silent.

Darned if Williams didn’t know what the wolf was talking about. I was itching to ask him to explain, but he’d ignore the question. And he’d enjoy doing it. I kept my mouth shut.

Ghosteater went back to his meal.

I leaned back and watched the smoke collect above us. I tried not to think about a 747-sized dragon crashing down on us, but it was hard to think of much else.