Mulberry Wands (16 page)

“Hey, Paul,” she said. “Thanks again for
helping us move.”

Paul didn’t look at her. He didn’t even act
like he knew where she was (which didn’t make her mad, because she
wasn’t even sure where she was either.) The dog did though. It
flicked an ear at her. Wait a minute. That wasn’t a dog, it was a
fox, one of those little desert foxes. She’d never seen one outside
a zoo before. How cool was that?

“Where?” Paul asked in response to something
the fox said, though Susan hadn’t heard it speak. “I don’t see
her.”

“Hey, I get it! The fox can hear me, but you
can’t, and I can’t hear the fox, but you can!” Considering how
muddle-headed she still was, Susan felt like that was a remarkably
lucid thought.

“Ask her where she is. Is she safe?”

“I don’t know where I am,” Susan said. That
was true both of her body, which was in the cinderblock wall, and
of her consciousness, which was floating somewhere to Paul’s right,
above the ground hovering among the branches. “I guess I’m inside a
wall, and I’m also here in this tree. Whoa, I’m also back home too,
except that’s not my body anymore. Weird, huh? I’m in three
places.”

The fox apparently did something to relay the
message, though Susan couldn’t see how it was doing so.

“I don’t get it. What’s going on, Susan?”

“I ate a hexelmoth. Eating some gnosti gives
you magic powers,” Susan said. The fox flicked an ear at that, as
though she’d said something interesting, and it left a trail behind
it. She wanted to see if her fingers had trails too, but she
couldn’t find her hands. “Man, I am so. Yeah. Not right.”

“What’s wrong? Are you in trouble?”

“Yeah. A lot of trouble, I think. They got
me.”

“Was it the parliament? They didn’t have the
right to do this to you.” Paul gripped the branch tighter and
leaned forward.

“No, I’m fine. It’s cool.” She could get out
of this herself, as soon as she figured out where she was.

And where were her hands? She really ought to
figure out where they were. Just as she thought that, she felt
herself being pulled away, like water down a drain.

She was in her body again, in the dark wall,
lit only by a birthday candle. Oh, there were her hands. They were
lying on her chest. That was a good place to put them.

A little girl was looking at her, as if
expecting her to do something monstrous. She glanced back at her
mother, and clung to her mother’s hand then looked at Susan again.
Susan sat up.

“Are you, um,” the girl said, then asked her
mother a question in their language.

“All right,” the mother said. “Are you all
right.”

“Are you all right?” the girl asked.

“Yes, I’m fine.” Susan rubbed her eyes and
looked at her hands to see if they were still leaving trails. She
wasn’t perfectly sober, but she felt better.

“Tuusit wants to talk to you,” the mother
said. She pointed down the dark hallway, where there were the
sounds and smells of people, but no light. “He’s in the far
passageway.”

“Give me a few minutes,” Susan said. She put
her head between her hands and rubbed her temples. She needed
another drink of water, and she had to go to the bathroom. She
didn’t feel like she was going to throw up though, which is what
happened after most of Christopher’s manceogenic brews.

The woman nodded and pulled her child away.
The little girl looked back as she walked. She stumbled because she
didn’t look where she was going, but she didn’t turn away, as
though she’d never seen anyone as fascinating as Susan and might
never again.

Susan took a few more breaths. She was about
to stand up when two little boys came up to her. They were
whispering, as though daring each other to go closer. Finally one
of them did, though it seemed to take all his courage.

“Do you ...” He broke off into giggles. “Do
you have six fingers?”

Susan held up her hand, splaying the fingers
out. The boy held up his own five fingers, and almost touched her,
but then he broke down into giggles and the two of them ran off
together, whispering.

She stood up, rather shakily, and started to
walk down the passageway. People had begun to go to sleep, curling
up wherever they happened to be. One of them was a man, which
struck home again how most of the people were women and children.
No old people either. Were all of these women Tuusit’s wives? She
liked him even less.

Susan made a small witchlight in her hand. It
was a wan glow, about as bright as the screen of a cell phone, but
it helped her pick her way across the sleepers on the floor.
Normally she couldn’t even make this small of a witchlight. Despite
the name, creating light out of nothing was actually a psionic
ability. Generally, she sucked at psionics. She could credit the
hexelmoth meat for that.

The passageway seemed to go on forever.
People lay on the floor in groups, sometimes snoring, but more
often talking quietly. In one chamber, six children were piled in a
lump next to their mother, like puppies. She climbed down and then
across and then up, like she was a hamster in a Habittrail. And
then the tunnels forked. Down one passageway, she heard what
sounded like men’s voices. She didn’t particularly want to see
Tuusit again, or any other men if they were like him, and the other
passage smelled almost like fresher air.

She followed her nose, towards the cold
breeze. She still wasn’t wearing any clothes, but the winter air
hadn’t bothered her as much when she was next to all those people.
She shivered, and held her witchlight up over her head until she
saw a pale outline of a mouse-hole, carved into the side of the
wall.

Freedom.

She half expected someone to stop her, but no
one else was in this part of the wall. She covered her witchlight
with the other hand and crept forward, listening. Silence. She
crawled through the mouse-hole.

Freedom.

She was outside, underneath an oleander bush.
She had to climb a wall in order to see where she was. She walked
along the walls, searching for familiar landmarks. After about an
hour of circling she realized she was only two blocks from the new
house. It took a long time to walk when you were as small as she
was, but the night was cold and moving quickly was the only thing
that warmed her up. The thin moon had almost set by the time she
slipped under the side gate. She didn’t bother knocking on the
front door; they’d never hear her. She’d just climb in through the
cat door, up to her room, and look around on her hard drive until
she found a spell that would make her big again.

She set out across the backyard. The grass
had gone dormant for the winter, but it was still thick, and
because it was Bermuda grass, it made her sneeze, and itch on her
skin where it touched. It was dark, almost too dark to see by, even
with the witchlight. Her feet had gone completely numb from the
cold, and her hands were aching too. Maybe before she made herself
big again she’d ask Darius to fill the sink with hot water so she
could have a little swim. That sure would be nice.

She heard the rustling in the bushes, but she
wasn’t used to thinking of herself as prey, so she didn’t run or
hide. She heard it a second time, and idly turned to look, but even
when she saw Sphinx rush out, it didn’t alarm her enough to dodge.
After all the times she’d cleaned up that cat’s messes while she
was learning to be litterbox trained, after all the times she’d
brushed and pet her when she thought no one was looking, she’d
figured that the cat would feel some affection for her in
return.

It wasn’t until she was knocked to the ground
and felt the cat’s needle-sharp claws sink into her that the
realized how weak feline loyalty was. The pain almost stunned
her.

“No! Bad cat!” Susan said, shaking her finger
at Sphinx’s nose. It would have sounded more authoritative if she
hadn’t been supine and bleeding.

Sphinx responded by lifting her paws and
batting Susan hard to make her tumble end over end. She didn’t even
have enough time to get her bearings before Sphinx pounced on her
again, this time giving her an experimental bite and lick to see
how she tasted.

It hurt like hell. Even the lick hurt, like
someone taking a palm sander to a stab wound. Susan screamed.

Sphinx paused, blinking and regarding her
with a cat’s puzzled expression, like she was trying to reconcile
human words and human taste out of something that was obviously
prey-sized.

Susan used the cat’s momentary pause to sit
up and press her hands to her wounds.

Dilemma over, Sphinx attacked Susan again,
holding her down with one paw easily while she licked and gnawed on
Susan’s head. Susan screamed with the first bite, but after that
her adrenaline kicked in and all she felt was fear.

Susan flicked her fingers at the cat’s eyes,
throwing a small curse as she did so. If she’d had enough time to
think, to ground herself, she might have done more, but the
finger-flick was the only thing she could do without thinking. It
made Sphinx blink, as though she had sand in her eyes. She didn’t
let go with her paw (or her claws) but Susan grabbed the claw and
lifted it out of her flesh, and then stumbled to her feet. She took
off running, scanning frantically in the darkness for something to
hide under. Or the cat door. If she could make it to the cat door
before Sphinx did, she could lock it from the inside. Wasn’t there
a little plastic tab she could slide to lock it?

With a meow and a rustle of grass, Sphinx
resumed her stalking.

Susan realized she was still holding the
witchlight in her left hand so she threw it. It distracted the cat
long enough for Susan to sprint to the cat door. Her plan was to
hit it at a run, tumble into a somersault as she got inside, then
double back and lock it before Sphinx could reach the door.

The only problem with this plan was that the
cat door had already been locked from the inside.

She smashed into the plastic door with nearly
enough force to knock her unconscious. She couldn’t recover in time
to avoid Sphinx’s pounce, and she lay stunned, expecting the
stabbing pain of claws any second.

Instead, she heard a yowl of pain.

She gingerly lifted herself to see, cradling
her aching head with one hand. Tuusit had a javelin lifted, poised
to throw. Another javelin stuck out of Sphinx’s paw, wedged in the
webbing between her pads. She paused to gnaw on it with her
teeth.

“Susan Stillwater, go to the gate and wait
for me to take you back home,” Tuusit said. He pointed without
either taking his eyes off the cat or lowering his javelin. “We
don’t have long before the cat attacks again.”

“This is my home. I’m going to figure out how
to get inside.” She stumbled to her feet. Wasn’t there a hole for
the dryer exhaust? Maybe she could climb in that way. Or through
Darius’ window. He usually left it open when it was cool outside.
She looked up at the patio roof and the second floor windows. It
might as well have been a skyscraper. She’d try the dryer exhaust
first.

“Susan Stillwater!” he shouted. “Go back to
the gate! The beast is almost ready to attack again!”

Sure enough, Sphinx bit down on the javelin
and pulled, and it came free. It must have been wedged in there
deep. Sphinx pounced again, this time at Tuusit. He gave a war cry
and stabbed at Sphinx’s face. Susan pressed her hand against the
wound that was bleeding the most and stumbled towards the dryer
vent.

The good news, there was a space large enough
for her to slip through between the tubing of the dryer exhaust
vent and the block of the wall around the laundry room. The bad
news, it had been blocked up with screen to keep insects out. Also,
it was higher than her height, so she had to hold herself in a
pull-up just to see it. Some of her puncture wounds had closed, but
they opened again when she pulled herself up, and she was losing
her grip because her hands were slick with her own blood.

Tuusit grabbed her from behind and lowered
her to the ground. “Why didn’t you run when I told you? We need to
go home.”

“This is my home,” Susan said. She thought it
would take her months, or even years before she thought of the new
house as home, but knowing that her spellbook (on her computer) and
her friends were in the house was the most important thing in the
world right now, and she was desperate to get inside.

“I’ve wounded it, but not killed it. We have
to go now,” he said.

“Okay,” Susan said. She let him pull her
down. As soon as he let go, she broke into a run, heading for the
other gate. Maybe she could reach the doorbell.

Tuusit pounced on her. She tried to flick a
curse at his eyes like she had with Sphinx, but he had grabbed her
wrist and wrenched it behind her back so that she couldn’t flip
over without straining her shoulder. “Why do you have to be so
stubborn? Don’t you understand how important it is that you stay
with me? I’m your—”

“My what?” She spat grass out of her mouth.
Now that she was calmer, she could feel the cat bites and scratches
again. She wasn’t sure she’d ever been cut this badly, ever. “A big
bully who wants to make my life miserable?”

“I’m very important to you,” Tuusit said. He
had all his weight on her, though it didn’t feel like he was all
that heavy. She couldn’t get free though, not without wrenching her
arm further. “I’m the most important person in the world to you
right now.”

“I doubt that.” A pillbug crawled across the
dirt in front of her, seemingly as large as an armadillo. She’d
never really thought about how weird they looked up close like
that.

“It’s true,” he said. “I’m your—”

“My what?” She tried struggling more, but she
was growing so tired. Tired, and hurt and dirty.

“Your…it doesn’t translate well.”

“Captor? Warden?” She thought she could find
a way out of his arm lock, but Tuusit apparently knew what he was
doing. “Arch-nemesis?”