Wood Sprites

“We have to leave today,” Louise made herself say while trying to think of what they had to take. Other than the babies and Joy, what did they really need? Their tablets and phones and the flash drive of the codex. Louise found her backpack and set it down in the middle of the floor.

They had money. Lots of money. In theory they could buy anything they needed. In truth, kids normally didn’t buy anything alone. Not real food like frozen vegetables and raw fish. Not real clothes like underwear and jeans. Children always followed behind their parents who pushed carts in supermarkets. They were supposed to stand quietly behind the adult paying the cashier at department stores. And children never checked into hotels alone.

We’ll figure it out, Louise thought firmly to hold back the fear. They probably should take a change of clothes until they worked out basic life necessities. One shirt, a pair of jeans, and a single set of clean underwear, however, took up most of her backpack. They probably should take all of their socks and underwear, not just one set. Louise raided their underwear drawer and struggled to pack it all into the space remaining in her backpack. Nothing else would fit, even if they desperately needed it. Should she take the blue jeans out?

Panic surged up through Louise, like a shout that wanted to be let out. She covered her mouth, trying to keep it all in. How much could someone take before they broke?

“We may not have to wait,” Jillian said.

Louise stared at her for a minute. She’d lost track of what they were talking about. She’d never said anything about waiting, had she? “What?”

“We might not have to wait for Shutdown to get to Pittsburgh.” Jillian ducked into the secret room. Her muffled voice came through the open door. “Remember that in the codex, Dufae talked about the pathways between Elfhome and Earth.”

“Yes, but after his wife died, he tried to take his son back to Elfhome and all the pathways had been deliberately destroyed. He didn’t find one that was still intact.”

“In Europe he couldn’t find one intact!” Jillian came back out carrying an armful of papers that she spilled out onto the card table. “Dufae died in 1791. Windwolf was the first elf to land on the Westernlands in 1910. In the 1700s, North America was still largely unexplored. Even if Windwolf had access to the maps created by the humans, most of the cave systems wouldn’t have been marked. There are only a few thousand elves in the Westernlands even now, so they couldn’t have checked out all the cave systems.”

The papers were dozens of cave maps. Some of them were real geological surveys and others were brochures by tour companies that owned the cavern. Jillian sorted through the papers. The babies climbed up the table’s wooden legs and complicated the process by trying to study the maps themselves.

“Ming married Anna before the first Startup,” Jillian said. “If he was relying on the pathways in Europe to get to Elfhome, and they were destroyed, he would have had to search out a new way.”

Louise followed her logic. “Which is why Esme was collecting the maps.”

“Collected them and kept them hidden. If she just had some weird love of caves, they’d be on her bookcases, not stashed in the secret room.”

Louise looked down at the dozens of maps. “If there’s this many choices, then he was still looking. He didn’t find a way.”

Jillian whimpered slightly, shrinking with disappointment. She looked as if she was in danger of collapsing back to the stranger that had huddled in the bed the last few weeks. “That’s true.”

“But your reasoning is sound.” Louise rushed to repair the damage. “It proves that the pathways are natural formations and that the elves didn’t destroy the ones in the Westernlands. Ming has been seeking a pathway, so he believes it’s there, but he doesn’t really know how to find it.”

“How could it be so hard? He found this place.” Jillian gasped. “Wait! This place has magic, so it’s linked to Elfhome. Maybe this is like stately Wayne Manor with bat caves all under it.”

“There are caves!” Chuck Norris stated firmly.

“But there aren’t any bats,” Nikola added with some uncertainty.

“Not that we noticed!” the Jawbreakers finished.

“When were you in caves?” both twins shouted.

The babies cringed.

“Two days after we arrived,” Nikola volunteered.

“It was boring watching you sleep!” Chuck Norris cried. “So we went exploring!”

“We didn’t get into any trouble!” Green Jawbreaker stated.

“You never said that we couldn’t,” Red Jawbreaker stated.

“And why do we have to do what you tell us?” Chuck Norris asked. “Don’t we get to vote? We outnumber you!”

“Yeah!” her two sisters cried.

“No, you don’t get a vote!” Jillian shouted, throwing her hands up in the air. “Don’t ever leave the bedroom again without us!”