Authors: Scott V. Duff
Naught smiled back. “I’m sorry, Mr. Davis, but Seth’s private life is just that. I wouldn’t want to break that privacy.” Then she stuffed the rest of the cheese in her mouth. I started snickering, couldn’t help it.
“You’re on the right track there, though,” I said with an embarrassed guffaw. “Yeah, they all slept in my room that night. They needed help to continue their Change and I provided it. There wasn’t anything sexual about it.” Michelle broke through the sound barriers carrying a tray of food, followed by a man with a larger tray and stand. “Lunch is coming, guys. Make some space, please. They have to be able to put down before they can pick up.”
“Well, no offense, why do these two seem so simple?” Ryan asked quietly.
“Simple? Oh, I see what you mean. Don’t underestimate them, Ryan. You’re seeing true inexperience in this world. They’ll adapt very quickly.”
“It looks like I should go ahead and bring some containers for you,” Michelle said, placing the last plate on the table.
“Oh, no, thanks, ma’am,” I said. “We’re not in a position to hold food for long. We’re traveling. You can bring the bill at any time, though.” Nil and Naught waited until Michelle headed for the kitchen before starting, but they each had three plates of vegetables emptied before she got there, sharing with each other no less.
“I didn’t like the corn,” Naught said quietly. “But the lima beans were good.”
“I agree,” Nil said. “These biscuits are interesting, though. Not at all what we’re used to calling a biscuit.” Michelle broke through the barrier with the check, appraising the table with a professional look.
“Shh, Nil!” I said sharply. I nodded sideways at Michelle obviously, catching her attention, too. “The definition of biscuit was one of the causes of the Civil War. The Yanks are still ticked off we wouldn’t give on that one even after we lost.”
Nil relaxed once Michelle giggled and set the small tray with the bill down beside Ryan. That made me laugh. Naught just kept eating and watching us.
“No,” I said, waving my hand at him, still chuckling. “You’re just gonna expense it to me anyway.”
“Was a recipe truly part of the cause for a war, Seth?” Nil asked before taking a bite out of a barbecued pork sandwich. I reached over and grabbed a few spoonfuls from their vegetable assortment and asked Naught for a small slice of her chicken and sliced avocado sandwich. She cut off a quarter and tried to give me the larger part.
“I’m sure you thought that sleight of hand would work,” I said, putting my plate down with the quarter sandwich where I wanted it. “But remember who you’re dealing with, dear. And no, Nil, that was a joke. There were a lot of reasons for the War against North Aggression, but biscuits weren’t among them.”
Michelle laughed and said, “I haven’t heard it called that except on old television westerns. But he’s right, son. People can be particular about their biscuits. It’s like you’re insulting their grandmothers, for God’s sake.” She shook her head in disbelief and turned to the kitchen with a large stack of dirty dishes in her hand. Ryan and I chuckled as she went but the other two kept chewing.
“Slavery was the true cause of the Civil War, Nil,” Ryan said, satisfied that he could provide some help.
I grunted, finishing my part of Naught’s fairly good sandwich. “Only part of the reason and a big bugle call, Ryan. A doctorate in British Law can’t prepare you for a debate in US history, especially with your other studies. There was a lot more to it than that.”
“There isn’t a lot a mention or explanation of other reasons in our textbooks,” Ryan said.
“I’m sure there’re mentions in ours, but the spotlight is on the abolition of slavery,” I agreed. “But I wasn’t taught from textbooks. I’ve only seen a few from a distance actually, pretty much looked like a book.” Ryan grinned briefly. I glanced over at Nil and Naught to discover them both sitting back and looking miserable. “Y’all finished already? Did you enjoy your first rally into Earth food?”
They both perked up immediately, all smiles and compliments. They’d both enjoyed themselves, especially, oddly, with what they didn’t like. I called Nil over to my side, chuckling at their exuberance, and pulled out my wallet. “There are many different kinds of restaurants. This one has a cashier. I’d like you to pay the bill for us and return with the change and a copy of the bill. Okay?”
“Yes, Seth!” Nil answered, smiling hugely in accepting his first solo assignment in the world. He picked up the tray with the money and headed for the door bravely.
“How old is he, Seth?” Ryan asked, watching Nil leave.
“Tough to say, really,” I answered. “As a brownie, he spent about thirty years in the sun, so to speak. His first Change gave him a few years back and this one even more. I think he’ll settle into an appearance of about twenty or twenty-one for a while. Relatively speaking, he’s about that age now.”
“And physically?” Ryan asked.
Shrugging, I said, “Who knows? The
huri
will age just as everything. Time will tell how.” Nil came back through the door with a handful of cash and the check, grinning from ear to ear.
“All done, Seth!” he said, excitedly, putting the check and money in a neat pile on the table beside me. I pulled out the check without counting the change and explained the process of tipping. Sensing Michelle hovering near the door, I dropped the sound barriers, letting her hear the conversation.
“Now in general, the people who wait tables don’t make a lot of money. Some do it professionally or perhaps it’s a necessary second income. I suspect our Michelle is somehow related to the owners, but that really doesn’t affect the decision of a tip. This is based on how well we were taken care of, in this case, very well, and their personality and disposition, depending on the style of the restaurant. We’re well off enough that our starting point is thirty percent of the total and go up or down on how well you liked them. You don’t have to put
that
much thought into it.”
Nil and Naught looked at each other for a moment as if sharing some communication between them. “She had help so she might have to share. I’d say thirty-five percent, Nil,” Naught said, raising her voice into an almost-question.
“What do you have the cash for?” Ryan asked. “Does it have to be an exact percentage?”
“No, not exact,” I answered, letting the two of them jump into this American custom with gusto. They came up with the cash to make a tip of thirty-two percent or forty-seven, but Naught judged the former close enough. Then I told Nil and Naught to start carrying cash when they reported and to tell the others, too, explaining briefly the concepts of currencies and countries and branching out into credit cards, saying we’d arrange some with their names in a few weeks time.
When we left through the restaurant, Michelle was back at the front again, smiling. Pleasantries exchanged, we paraded out to the car where I could set my mind to traveling the hundred and fifty miles we needed to go in ten minutes. Or else call and say we’d be really late.
I considered the possibility of starting a giant portal from here to there, pinching off a little and sealing this side like a zipper until I saw the other end. It could be done. I wouldn’t be the one to do it. The probability of something, anything, going wrong became a certainty after a short distance. Even moving one portal around became effectively the same thing. It would seem a small thing that I could fix, and I would—I’m not irresponsible, after all. The problem always lies in the seeming.
Even though I rarely thought about balance when I used my magic, I understood the concepts of balance and causal relationships with excruciating detail. Gilán taught me through the Fountain and Daybreak. Weather patterns, tectonic shifts, wave patterns against the shoreline, you name it and it has some consequence somewhere in the world, any world. Dimensional rips tend to have consequences in several worlds. I might tend a problem here, but miss one there that in a hundred years or so might turn into a rift thousands of miles long that tears through China or something worse. It’s all in the seeming.
I could bridge the space with a knowe, but I still need the endpoint.
Ryan watched the
huri
play at the edge of the parking lot, interested in everything from small stones to ants to clouds in the sky, while I studied the map more. The Weird hadn’t helped. Ohio was too vigorously traveled in one direction during the westward expansion and frontier days and too many wars and violent deaths during its colonization by the whites. The Weird was travelable, just not easily explorable through here. It’d take me an hour to figure out the state. Maybe two. I needed a marker for that to work.
“Nil, Naught,” I called, pulling out my phone. Punching the dial button twice, I called Col. White again and waited for the answer. The
huri
were only seconds away. “I think I’ll need a little help with this, please.” An answering machine picked up the line, so I disconnected. “Maybe not.”
Sighing, I handed my phone to Ryan, who followed Naught and Nil over. “Here, Ryan, in case White calls. I’m going looking in the Weird again.”
“What’s the problem, if you don’t mind me asking?” Ryan asked, taking the phone.
“It’s simple, really,” I said, turning back from the small patch of land at the back of the lot. “If I can find them in the Weird and open a portal in real space, I can get there without a problem. But the Weird through here is honeycombed with passageways. Most of those are dead-ends that are most unpleasant, to… understate the reality of it. I need a marker or a map. To make a map would take me a couple of hours and make us late, so a marker or a landmark of some kind is necessary to find them. It’s kind of like finding a place by burrowing underground without any instruments for direction.”
“I suppose I should have started with ‘What is the Weird?’,” Ryan said.
I chuckled and stepped over the curb, calling the Weird simultaneously. “That’s something better left for another time. Hopefully when I can answer better than just pointing and saying, ‘Um, that.’ Naught, stay with Ryan, please. Nil, you’re with me.” We stepped through the plane of Weird and entered the subtle geometry, slipping from the real world like shadows. Remembering Kieran’s spell, I dropped an apprentice loop of magic out and handed the end to Nil. He slipped the loop around his hand with relief and without asking, I suppose sensing its purpose.
“Mr. McClure’s phone,” I heard Ryan say through the membrane of Weird as I cast my perceptions through the thirty tunnels before me.
“Nil, watch for me as I spread out through the territory,” I murmured, watching those thirty turn into the thirty thousand or so at the next nexus. Geometric progressions didn’t do justice to the number of pathways and nexuses in the Weird, but thankfully it wasn’t quite exponential either. I just kept trudging through the pathways popping a tendril of attention out of each hole to see where it was. Surprisingly, many opened up a foot away from each other, randomly. I felt like a gopher.
“Seth, Naught says that Ryan is in contact with Col. White through the little box you gave him,” Nil said, tugging on the apprentice loop to gain my attention. “Ryan wants to know what to tell him.” His voice echoed and pinged as if against metal when he spoke. The Weird was aptly named.
“Good. Ask him to close his circle and pay homage to the Earth, White, not Ryan,” I said and started coalescing my consciousness together again. Pushing out of the holes, I found myself aware of a great portion of Ohio along with sections of Indiana, Michigan, and West Virginia. There didn’t seem to be any druidic magic around anywhere. I should be able to sense it when it starts with these prairie dog pop-ups I had all over the countryside. So we waited for their magic to materialize.
Turning to talk to Nil, I was suddenly very glad that I’d looped him—he wasn’t there! Walking back down the green and gray tunnel of eerie light, I retracted the loop slowly as I followed it back and found Nil nervously looking down various paths, waiting. I had passed through a probability nexus that he couldn’t and had to wait until the loop’s end–me–returned to reality so he could follow me again. He brightened hugely when I arrived.
“Naught says Ryan is laughing at something White is saying on the little box,” Nil said happily when he saw me, though I could hear her now, too, calling from the entrance. “White asked something like how did you know about druidry and Ryan responded evasively, saying that such should not be discussed over the air. We’re not certain what that means, sir.”
“The little box is a cell phone that works on radio and repeating towers to cables to satellites,” I explained. “Not secure at all and being electronic, cell phones aren’t reliable to wizards and most other magic users.”
“Is that what Michelle meant about using your laptop, Seth?” Nil asked, following me as I retraced my path back to the entrance. I still hadn’t felt any druidic song within the passages.
“Yes, exactly, didn’t you notice we were alone in the room?” I asked simply. “We spooked ‘em. Spooked ‘em so bad they put us in a heavily warded room. ‘Heavily’ being a relative term, of course, but there was enough magic in there to cause the laptop problems for most people.” Nil giggled briefly and adjusted his hold on the magical tether. “Ryan’s not talking anymore. Has he hung up?”
“Yes, sir, a moment ago,” Nil confirmed.
“Tell Naught to tell us when ten minutes have passed, willya, Nil?” I asked, turning back to the passages again. Nil and Naught were barely six feet apart across the membrane. “My sense of time is wobbly in here.” Nil grinned and spoke with Naught through the geas, though she no doubt heard me since she grinned in sync with Nil. Ryan stood glowering at shadows in the background, just in case, but I had the parking lot covered still. The Weird closed in as my presence receded. With no physicality beyond our existence, unless I gave it some life, it would once again slip into disuse. I had no plans on that, just to get enough awareness of the end to open a portal from here. It was no less real, twisted by the natural eddies of space and energies, life and living, and time and magic. I sank my senses deep into the Weird that I’d explored and listened at the edges where holes were made. We waited for the druid song.
“Seth, there’s a problem,” Nil said. “The waitress, Michelle, is coming out to the car. Ryan is moving to speak with her. You have three minutes left.” I nodded. Ryan and Naught could handle that or at least delay her for three minutes. So Nil and I waited. At three seconds after three minutes, I got worried about Naught and turned back to Nil to leave. And
that’s
when they decide to start.
“Nil, what’s happening outside?” I asked, turning back to the sound.
“Naught says our time is up and Ryan is still talking with Michelle. Naught isn’t certain of what the issue is, though, sir,” Nil answered, peering through the tunnel membrane.
The Ohio druid’s song was piercing and unfamiliar and easy to find. A hundred and forty-two different points of my mind found them among the forested hillsides. I had several endpoints now, the closest a mere ten yards from their circle. With my awareness, at least part of it, centered there, I hustled Nil out the membrane and back into the world again, following right behind him.
Slipping my arm over Naught’s shoulders as we went, I guided us closer to Ryan and Michelle. “Ryan, is there a problem?” I asked once we were within his hearing.
“Seth! No, not anymore,” Ryan said, exaggerating his accent slightly and swept to the side gracefully. “I think perhaps, initially Michelle was worried that something untoward was going on in the bushes. Once I explained that Nil was curious
about
the bushes, her fears were allayed.” Then he fluttered his eyes once or twice and adjusted his stance. He was flirting, I realized belatedly. Luckily. Otherwise I would have busted a gut and ruined whatever he was doing.
“That certainly sounds like a discussion for dumpsters and grease pits,” I said chuckling. “We’ll be in the car.” The three of us turned from the back of the restaurant and headed back for the car at the far side.
Once we were halfway there, Naught quietly and nervously said, “Seth… sir, I think Ryan was lying to you. I didn’t hear her say anything about sex, but she did mention the fairy ways a couple of times before it became hard to hear.”
“The fairy ways?” I asked, glancing down at the green girl. “Curious. Well, we’ll find out in a moment or two. It’s good that you waited to tell me about it though. Ryan wasn’t so much lying to me as misleading her. He knows he can’t really lie to me and get away with it.”
“You knew then, sir?” Naught asked.
“I knew he wasn’t saying everything, yes, but I don’t know what he’s not saying yet,” I responded. “I’d prefer to give him a chance to tell us first.” Unlocking the unfamiliar car, we piled in and waited for Ryan. He didn’t take too terribly long.
“Goodbye, Michelle,” Ryan called, walking to the car. I started the engine as he got in. “She certainly got chatty,” Ryan said, with a click of his seatbelt. “She wanted to know if you and Nil went into the fairy ways initially. As I don’t know what those are, I told her you were looking at the plants with Nil. She asked what kind of elves they are, too.”
“Is that when you started flirting with her?” I asked
“Well before then, Seth, please,” Ryan said, turning to grin. “We’re about the same age and she’s a lovely woman, really. And now that I’m free of the vow of chastity…” Naught giggled from the back seat.
“Why would you do that, Ryan?” she asked leaning forward slightly. “You’re a handsome man, fit and strong. You’d have lovely children. Are your skin pictures a natural trait?”
“Get ready for the jump, guys,” I said, laughing, looking left down the highway. Turning right, I started building speed slowly, skipping the car immediately from in front of the restaurant. At least one man was still watching from a window, most likely just idle curiosity on his part, but he saw the rental car vanish. The Whites’ driveway was the next right turn, now, and it was an easy turn at this speed. I parked at a long line of cars.
“I don’t think they expected us to come this way,” Ryan murmured, looking out the front window to the left into an area of recently replanted trees and shrubs, hurriedly being tended by a dozen or so people. Behind the widely spread stand of trees was the ritual site of their call, hidden behind a veil similar to the Hilliards’ veil in texture but on a much smaller scale.
“Of course they didn’t,” I said. “They expected us to come in a bright flash of light with a great deal of show. All right, kids, listen up.” I turned against the seat, looking back at them. “Naught, if you hear me say ‘bug-out’ at anytime, you go. No excuses and no hesitations, do you understand me? I’ve already had this out with Zero and Nil, and I’ll deal with the others as necessary. These people have presented a curious problem for me. They don’t know who we are and have decided to err on the cautious side. Unfortunately, this is also the type of test that pisses me off. Naught, do you know how to shield yourself?”
“Yes, sir,” she said confidently and nodded once. “I can also blend well and have some skill with a staff and bow, if necessary. It won’t come to that sort of violence, will it, Seth?”
“No time like the present to see,” I said and gave her a smile. “Now, once we get out of the car, both of you stay close to me unless I say it’s okay, but even then, be aware of danger. I don’t quite trust them, but it’s their choice to show their asses.”
With a cursory look around, I asked, “Any questions?”
“I have one,” Ryan said. “What am I doing here exactly? I mean, officially? Otherwise, this is all quite fascinating.”
“Legal advisor? I don’t know that you have to have an official capacity here,” I said cheerfully. “Let’s just say you’re a friend and leave it at that.” He nodded, a slight smirk on his face he thought I couldn’t see. “Let’s go, guys.”
All four doors popped at once. I mean, come on, how random is that! Have you ever tried synchronizing even three? Three people, three door handles, three locks… Pure chance. Anyway, all the plant-tenders stiffened visibly, then inched faster toward the back of the house.
I stepped out onto the cut grass and sent some subtle sensings through the ground and grasses. They didn’t have enough people for a serious offensive against us, but there were many latencies built up around the house and workshop, I guess it was, out back of the house. The large field to the right was where the Ohio circle chanted a few minutes ago. They were still holding their positions there, more or less. An entourage of people waited casually nearby. Of course, all this was conveniently blocked from view by the house.