Wolf Who Rules

"The wizard?" Riki pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket, tapped out a cigarette, lit it and took a deep drag. "Hmmm, in the movie the wizard was the traveling performer that Dorothy met when she ran away from home. Chances are then, he's someone you've met but don't recognize now."

Taking another drag, Riki vented the smoke out of his nose in twin columns as he thought. "His nature is changing; some perceive him as great and powerful, others see him as foolish, but he's the only character that fully understood both Kansas and Oz. Most likely, you're looking for someone with great knowledge, but his intelligence is disguised somehow." Riki gazed off into the forest, eyes unfocused, thinking. "Like Dorothy, he's a traveler between worlds, just as lost…"

Riki's eyes snapped back in focus. "Impatience. He's your wizard."

"Who?"

"Impatience. The dragon that you fought at Turtle Creek."

She tried to fit the name of "Impatience" with the countless jagged teeth and massive snaky body.

"See, intelligence disguised." Riki waved his cigarette, reminding her of the astronomer post docs when they went into lecture mode. "Legends say that a dragon has a body and a spirit, and you can encounter the one without the other. Usually in the old stories, the dragons send their spirits out to cross great distances - but while they're doing it, it's a very unwise thing to approach them. The lights are on, but no one's home."

"Running on autopilot?"

"Let's just say that there's more than one story about someone getting their head bitten off while a dragon's spirit is absent."

She remembered with great clarity the sense of intelligence filling the dragon's eyes-its surprise at having a hand clamped into its mouth. "So you're saying the dragon was unconscious at the time he attacked me."

"Probably."

That would certainly explain how she managed to walk away with nothing more than a sore hand. "So where is this dragon now?"

"Even if I knew that, I wouldn't tell you. I want Impatience for the tengu. That's what I was doing at Reinholds. The oni had set a trap for it, using the fountain as a lure."

"The oni?"

"Impatience was one of two dragons the oni had waiting on Onihida for the invasion. The other is Malice, who is much bigger. Somehow Impatience managed to slip the oni's hold on him and escape."

"So, on top of the royal troops and the oni, we have an unaligned dragon running loose in Pittsburgh."

"Well, a party is only fun if you invite lots of interesting people."

She stuck her tongue out at him. "How do you plan to find Impatience?"

"I don't know. You apparently have to follow the yellow brick road."

In her dream, though, the road ended with the tree. This was going to drive her mad. In the silence between them, she heard a slight noise from Riki's hip pocket. He frowned, slipped out a cell phone and answered it with a cautious, "Hello?"

As he listened, his look changed to worry. "You're where? Jesus Christ what are you doing there? Oh fuck. Yes I said that, what do you expect me to say? No-don't - don't…" Riki sighed. "Put your cousin on. No, no, not Joey! Keiko." Riki waited a moment until the phone could be traded off on the other side of the conversation. "Yeah, I'm here. What's going on?"

Riki listened for several minutes, grimacing as if what he heard pained him. "I'll be there in a few minutes. Hang tight." Riki tucked away his phone. "Change of plans."

"You're letting me go?"

"Sorry," he actually managed to look it. "I'll never have this chance again. I can't throw it away." He pulled out a silk scarf and tied it over her eyes. "I don't want you to know where we're going." He took firm hold of her and jerked her off her feet. "This time, don't wriggle so much."

She felt him leap, knew that he left the safety of the tree, and nearly screamed at the knowledge. His wings rustled out, caught the air, and they swooped upwards.

Fifteen or twenty minutes later, Riki dove down and wove through light and shadows to land again. Numb from dangling, her legs folded under her. Riki lowered her down to a prone position and then knelt behind her, panting with exertion.

Their landing site seemed too flat to be a tree branch but it swayed slightly with the rustling of the wind.

"Damn it, Riki, where are we?"

Riki tugged down her blindfold. She lay just inside the door of a tiny cabin; only eight-foot square, it would have been claustrophobic if it actually contained furniture.

"We're at a cote," he panted. "Emergency shelter."

The cabin seemed to be made of scrap lumber. The one small round window letting in light held glass, and the high ceiling bristled with nails, indicating that the roof was shingled, so the cabin was weatherproofed.

"Stay put." He stepped past her to pull something off a set of shelves on the back wall. "There's no safe way down to ground. I'll be back."

Cabin, hell, it was a tree house. Under any other circumstance, she would have been entranced with the notion.