Spirits in the Wires (45 page)

It's impossible to find steady footing
as we follow the path into the wet forest, but we go slipping and sliding anyway, splashing through mud, banging up against the trunks of these big trees that sometimes, out of the corner of your eyes, seem to shift into enormous bookcases. But when you look at them straight on, they're trees again.

I don't know how long the panic has a hold of us, but Bojo finally grabs my arm, stopping me. Raul collides into us. He starts to fall except Bojo and I each catch an arm and haul him to his feet. Suzi and Aaran come to a skidding stop and only just miss sending us sprawling in the mud.

We're all breathing hard. I don't know about the others, but I've got a stitch in my side that makes me bend over and lean against the nearest tree. I stare at the bark. I don't know what kind of trees these are, but they're huge. Some have trunks so big that all five of us couldn't touch hands around it. And they go up forever. Redwoods are the closest I've seen like them in the World As It Is.

After we stand there for long moments, catching our breath, Aaran starts to say something, but Bojo holds up a hand. He walks a few paces back the way we've come, cocking his head to listen. We hear more thunder, but it sounds like it's a long way from us.

“I think we've outrun the worst of it,” Bojo says when he comes back to us, “but let's keep moving.”

He sets off and I fall into pace beside him.

“Does anybody else keep seeing bookcases instead of trees?” Raul asks from behind us.

“They really are bookcases,” Suzi says.

That brings us all to a stop.

“What?” I say.

“And they're trees at the same time,” she adds. “They both exist at the same time. Don't forget, I was born in this place.”

Like Saskia, I think, and I feel the sharp pang of loss that comes every time I think of her.

“Do you know which way we're headed?” Bojo asks. “What we can expect?”

She shakes her head. “I just know we're in the Wordwood. It feels very familiar.” Then she shrugs. “And very different at the same time. Something's really wrong with the Wordwood spirit.”

“Yeah,” Raul says. “It's trying to kill us.”

“I don't think so.”

“Let's keep moving,” Bojo says. “We can talk while we're walking.”

“How can they be trees and bookcases at the same time?” Aaran asks as we set off again.

“I don't know,” Suzi says. “They just are.”

“I think I know,” I say. “It's a perceptual thing. We see what we're expecting to see.”

Aaran chuckles. “So, what are you saying? That this is more of your ‘the world is the way it is because that's what we expect it to be' business?”

“Pretty much.”

“Except none of us knew what to expect,” he goes on, “so why would we all see it as a forest?”

“Maybe because of the name?” Raul offers.

Conversation falls off after that and we keep walking. Slowly our environment begins to change. The ground firms up underfoot. The mud's gone, turned into dry, packed dirt—the way the path was before we entered the mist. The trees are just as big as they've always been, but the constant drip of water from the leaves has stopped. It's like it never rained here.

I don't know about the others, but I keep getting more and more flashes of the ghostly, here-then-gone-again bookcases, of flooring underfoot instead of dirt, like we're walking through the stacks of some huge, deserted library. I'm about to ask if anyone else is feeling the same way, when Bojo brings us to an abrupt halt again.

“What is it?” I ask, pitching my voice low.

“I hear something,” he says. “Footsteps. Something's approaching, and moving fast.”

We all hear it then. It sounds like one person, running full out. To us, I wonder, or from some new peril? Then she bursts into view, a half-dozen yards ahead of us on the trail, coming out from between the trees … no, from a side corridor as the trees suddenly disappear and the bookcases firm up all around us. It's a completely disorienting moment—for all of us, but especially for me. Not just because of the abrupt shift in our surroundings, but because I recognize the woman. When she turns in our direction, I see the same shock of recognition in her features.

“What are
you
doing here?” we both say at the same time.

“Whoa,” Raul says. “Is this Saskia?”

I hear the hope in his voice. Because if it is, then mightn't his Benny be somewhere near, as well? I hate to bring him down.

“It's my shadow,” I say as she walks toward us.

I've never seen her this disheveled before. She's often scruffy, but I get the sense that's from choice, on a particular day, just as I know that right now she's been too busy to care about her appearance. She looks like she's been sleeping in her clothes, though I'm sure none of us look any better. Especially not after our trek through that old subway tunnel.

Her gaze goes from me to the others. “Do any of you have a weapon?” she asks.

As usual, there's no preamble with her. She just cuts right to the chase.

“What do you mean, she's your shadow?” Aaran asks.

But it turns out I'm not the only one to recognize her.

“I know you,” Bojo says. “You're one of Maxie's friends.”

My shadow nods. “Yeah, I've seen you around, but I can't remember where. Maybe in Hinterland?”

Who's Maxie? I wonder. Where's Hinterland? What I don't know about my shadow could fill this library.

“Say,” she goes on. “Do you have one of those tinker blades you guys are known for?”

Bojo shakes his head. “But I've got something that might be better. A hellhound knife.”

“You're kidding.”

Bojo sets his pack on the ground and pulls out a shirt that's been rolled into a bundle. Unrolling the fabric, he takes out the knife that the hellhound threw at Robert's guitar, that Robert dropped on the floor back in the basement of Holly's store. I'd forgotten that Bojo had picked it up and stowed it away in his pack.

“Perfect,” my shadow says when he hands it to her.

“Who are we fighting?” the tinker asks as he stuffs his shirt back into his pack and reshoulders the pack.

“We're
not fighting anybody,” she says. “But I'm going to try to kill a leviathan.”

Then she takes off again, back down the corridor she burst out of. We all stand around like dummies for a long moment, then hurry after her, but she's already way down the corridor, far ahead of us. Too far for us to catch up to her. I wonder why she doesn't do the fade away bit that she normally does with me back at home, then realize it's not even necessary, considering how easily she's left us all behind.

“Okay,” Aaran says. “What the hell was all that about?”

Bojo sets a brisk pace and we follow as we can, straggling behind him. We're already so beat it's hard to muster the energy we need. I explain what I know of my shadow's origins as we go along.

“This is insane,” Aaran says.

“You can still say that after the past couple of days?”

“I know,” he says. “But, come on. Your shadow can go walkabout on its own?”

“Were you sleeping during Philosophy 101? Jung says—”

“I
remember
what he said. But he was talking metaphorically, not literally.”

“Give it up,” Raul says. “Just because something's whacked, doesn't mean it's not true. Not anymore. And besides, what about Suzi here? What makes her origin any easier to understand?”

Aaran sighs. “I know. It's just…”

“It's all still new for a lot of us,” Suzi says. She tucks her arm into the crook of Aaran's. “Don't think I'm not feeling a little nuts myself.”

“So, what's your shadow doing here?” Raul asks.

“I have no idea,” I say. “The truth is there's more I don't know about her than I probably ever will. I don't even know her name.”

“It's Christiana,” Bojo says over his shoulder.

“How do you—” I begin, but then I remember that he's met her before.

“You tend to make a point of getting her name,” the tinker says in response to the question I didn't finish, “when a woman's as attractive and lively as Christiana.”

I turn the name over in my mind. Christiana. It's so weird to finally have a name for her. Like, yet unlike my own.

I want to ask Bojo what else he knows about her and her friend Maxie and anything else he'd care to share with me about her life, but Aaran brings up a new concern.

“So she expects to kill a whale with that knife you took from the hellhounds?” he asks.

Bojo shakes his head. “No, a leviathan.”

“That's what I said.”

“It means something different here,” the tinker says. “Though to tell you the truth, I didn't even think they were real.”

“Or that they can have a physical presence,” Suzi adds.

“Can we back up here a moment?” I say. “What's a leviathan?”

“They're big, old-time magic,” Bojo says. “Precreation spirits. Legend has it that they're the ones who gave Raven the music that let him create the world. And like Suzi said, they're not supposed to be able to manifest in the physical world.”

“So they're the gods that made god,” Aaran says. “See, I'm getting with the program now. I'm not freaking out or shaking my head.”

“Raven's not a god,” I tell him. “The way he tells it, it was like you or me starting a car. He just happened to be there and had the key in hand.”

“So now you've talked to God?” Aaran says.

I shake my head. “No. He's just this guy that everyone else keeps referring to as Raven. As
the
Raven.”

“Man, have I been leading a sheltered life,” Aaran says.

I'm about to say something like, that's what I've been trying to tell you all these years, but there's this huge cracking sound that I remember all too well from the subway tunnel. This time it comes directly from the other side of the bookcases to our right. No one stops to argue or even think about it. We just run, and none too soon. Behind us, in the part of the corridor where we just were, a fissure appears, splitting the floor. The bookcases on either side come crashing down, raining books. Except for Bojo, who's further ahead, we all lose our balance and fall against each other, sprawling to the floor.

Bojo returns and pulls Raul up. The rest of us scramble to our feet and then we're all off and running again.

It's funny. Moments ago I could barely keep up with Bojo as we chased after my shadow. But right now I'm running full tilt, fueled by adrenaline and fear.

The otherworld wasn't anything like Holly
had expected. She'd expected … well, magic. For everything to be strange and different, like walking into a Dali painting or one of those confusing Escher pieces, where down was up but it was also down, when it wasn't going sideways. The place Mother Crone had taken them to didn't even have some Bavarian-styled castle off in the distance, or the deep ancient woods that Sophie and Jilly were always talking about.

Instead, they stepped from the mall concourse out onto a wide dirt path. Ordinary grass fields stretched away to either side of where they stood, with mountains in the far distance. Some hawthorns and brambles grew along the verge.

The shopping mall with its dancing fairies had been far more magical. The only really strange thing here was the wall of mist that rose up a couple of hundred yards ahead of them, blocking a clear view of what looked like some enormous forest. Holly smiled when she saw the trees. Now
that
was more like Jilly's Cathedral Wood. Her gaze tracked down from the heights of the trees to where the path they were on disappeared into the mist.

Standing on this side of the mist were two men.

“Stay behind me,” Mother Crone said, stepping forward to place herself between the strangers and her companions.

“It's okay,” Holly told her, realizing that the seer was trying to protect them from the men. “That's our friend Robert.”

“And the man with him?”

Like Robert, the stranger was also dressed in a dark suit. He had a hat, too, but instead of a guitar, he had a cane.

“We don't know him,” Geordie said.

Mother Crone nodded. “But I do.”

Holly didn't like the sound of that. There was something in Mother Crone's voice that said they might have just stepped into a whole world of trouble. Maybe we should go back, she wanted to say, but then the men turned and an unnoticed retreat, at least, was impossible.

Geordie came up from behind to stand beside Mother Crone. He lifted his hand.

“Hey, Robert!” he called.

When he started forward, Holly trailed along behind him. Mother Crone waited a beat, then followed with little Hazel staying close by her side.

Robert gave them a welcoming nod. “You're about the last bunch I expected to meet here.”

“We got so worried,” Holly said.

“Well, you've got good cause.”

Holly sighed. She hadn't actually wanted to hear that. For all Mother Crone's certainty, Holly had still been holding on to the hope that the seer had made a mistake in her reading of the situation.

“What
is
going on in there?” Geordie asked.

“That world in there is going to pieces,” Robert said, “and it's pretty much all my fault. I was trying to exorcise the bad spirits that had taken it over, but once my first chord got into that place, the music left my control and it's not coming back.”

“Christy's in there,” Geordie said. “And the others. Bojo and Raul. And all those other people that disappeared.”

“I know,” Robert told him. “Don't think I don't know that.”

“But if the world's going to pieces—”

“It won't necessarily be completely destroyed,” Robert's companion said. “I think the chaos will last just until the spirits are banished. And they will be banished. This is only a little messier than we'd expected.”

Robert gave him a sharp look.

“Fine,” the stranger said. “Than I expected. But once they're gone, I'll slip in and lay down some order. Any of your friends that found themselves a hidey-hole, they'll be right as rain once I'm done.”

“Except we don't
know
that it'll work out that way,” Robert put in.

Mother Crone had slipped by them and stood inches from the mist— peering in, Holly thought, until she went over to stand by Hazel and the seer, and saw that Mother Crone's gaze was turned inward.

“It's extremely unlikely that anything is going to survive in there,” she said finally, turning around to face Robert. “That's a leviathan you've got going to pieces in there.”

Robert's eyes went wide. “What?”

“Oh, yes,” Mother Crone said. “I've never actually seen or met one—I don't know anyone who has. But that spirit is so ancient and strong … what else could it be?” Her gaze moved to Robert's companion. “What do you think, Kalfou?”

“You've got me mistaken with someone else,” the man she'd addressed said. “My name's Legba.”

Mother Crone nodded. “Today perhaps.”

“Look,” Legba said. “I don't know what stories you've been listening to, but I'm just a spirit, same as you, trying to get by. I don't look to cause trouble. All I like to do is see that there's some order in the world.”

Mother Crone continued to nod. “Not to mention broadening your influence a thousandfold once you're ensconced as the gateway spirit of that world.”

“It wouldn't hurt anybody.”

“Probably not. But you can't just work your mojo on a leviathan. That's like trying to keep a tornado locked up in a teacup. It can't be done.”

“I know that,” Legba said. “Don't think I don't. But I didn't know there was a leviathan in there.”

Robert was nodding in agreement. “They don't take on physical shape.”

“Then
you
tell me what's in there.”

“A gateway spirit,” Robert said. “Nobody I know or ever heard of before.”

“And?”

“Something old and potent,” Robert added with some reluctance. “I could sense that much when I got here. But… come on. How could anybody have known it was a leviathan?”

“You couldn't have, I suppose,” Mother Crone said. “But to have used a piece of the first music on it…”

Her voice trailed off and her gaze went inward once more, but Holly couldn't see what had distracted her. Her and the other two men. They were all three staring into nothing now, and so intently.

Holly sighed. The whole conversation between them had gone way over her head and when she turned to Geordie, she saw only the same confused expression on his face that she knew was on her own. Her gaze tracked past him and found Mother Crone's companion, the little twig girl Hazel.

“How about you?” she asked. “Do you have a clue as to what's going on?”

Hazel shook her head. “Something bad.”

“Yeah, we got that part,” Geordie said. He turned to look at the wall of mist. “It's so damn frustrating, knowing they're somewhere in there and there's nothing we can do.”

Holly nodded. “I was really hoping that somehow we'd turn out to be the cavalry.”

“Some things can't be changed,” Hazel said. “You shouldn't even try.”

Holly hated this stoic acceptance that they all seemed to subscribe to.

“Like this whale everybody's freaking about,” she said.

“It's not a fish,” Hazel said.

“Mammal, actually,” Geordie put in.

“It's one of the ancient spirits that the world grew out of,” the twig girl went on, as though she hadn't been interrupted. “Like the Grace.”

“I've heard of her before,” Geordie said, turning to Holly. “She's this spirit that embodies all that's good in … well, pretty much anything.”

“So, what… what does this spirit embody?” Holly asked. “The leviathan that Mother Crone says is in the Wordwood.”

Hazel shook her head. “I don't know. I don't think they actually embody anything. They're more like doors into the medicine lands—the place we all came from when the world was being formed.”

Holly was still trying to get her head around that when Mother Crone stirred.

“That's odd,” the seer murmured.

Then her eyes flashed open. She and Legba looked at each other in shock.

“Oh, shit,” Robert said. “We need to get out of here!”

Mother Crone grabbed Hazel by one hand and Geordie by the other and pulled them away from the wall of mist. Before Holly could ask what was going on, Legba had her by the hand, and they were racing down the dirt path after Mother Crone and the others, Robert taking up the rear.

If she'd been looking back, Holly knew she'd have been blinded. As it was, the flare of white light that came from behind them was still a shock to her eyes, leaving her blinking, tear ducts welling. There was no sound, just that awful, searing light. Then a blast of wind picked them up like they were so many leaves and twigs and scattered them along the length of the path.