Wood Sprites

“You just checked our parents in.” Crow Boy glared at the man. “Brian and Helen Johnson.” He pointed at the reader in the conductor’s hand. “Can’t you call their names up on your machine?”

The conductor tapped on his console, checked their names against the Johnson family, and then nodded, “Ah, I see. Okay, you can go.”

The real Johnsons were mid-coach, still settling into a row of seats, two on either side of the aisle. Team Mischief claimed the next row. Crow Boy lifted the twins’ luggage into overheads as Tesla took the window seat on the left. Jillian and Louise took the seats on the right.

It had worked. They were on their way to Monroeville. They had nine hours of relative safety. Louise didn’t even want to think of what lay beyond them.

* * *

“Where are your parents?” Helen Johnson asked when she passed them the second time on her way to the bathroom with one of the boys.

Louise had been focused on ordering supplies for the rescue mission. Beside her Jillian was working with the babies to find out where Yves might be holding the tengu children. Assuming that they found and saved the nestlings, they would still need to figure out how to reunite the children with their families. Crow Boy had never been to the tengu village; he couldn’t give them clear directions beyond “someplace north of the city, flying to the point of near exhaustion.” There were safe resting sites—“cotes,” he called them — but they were tree houses high above the ground, and none of the tengu children would be able to fly. They would be blindly stumbling through an endless virgin forest. Except for one horrible trip to Vermont, the twins had never been outside the New York metropolitan area. Central Park was the limit of their exposure to “nature.”

“Where’s your parents?” Helen Johnson repeated. “You’re not alone, are you?”

Totally blindsided by the question, Louise blinked at the woman. Louise had never thought a stranger would actually talk to them on the train. The woman must not be a true New Yorker. Crow Boy was curled up in the aisle seat opposite to Louise, sound asleep. A side effect of the healing spell they had used on him seemed to be exhaustion. To a casual observer, the twins were alone.

“We couldn’t find seats all together as a family.” Jillian had a lie prepared. “Mom and our little sister are in the next car.”

“We’ve got our older brother.” Louise pointed at Crow Boy.

Helen eyed the tengu boy with the spiked hair with suspicion. Her five-year-old whimpered and tugged on her hand. “It’s wonderful when older siblings take care of their little brothers and sisters.” And she let herself be dragged away.

After that the twins took turns getting up every couple of hours to “check in with their mother.” But otherwise the trip on the train went without a hitch.

41: The Edge Of Two Worlds

During the first Startup, Monroeville had been one finger of urban sprawl extending along I-376 to where the artery led out of the heart of Pittsburgh to connect up with the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Businesses extended only a block or two from the main roads and few buildings were taller than one story. Its largest claim to fame up to that point had been a 1978 horror movie filmed in its shopping mall.

Reporters during the first Startup repeated that point often when a mated pair of sauruses went on a rampage in the parking lot. The twins had studied the hours of videos taken from that time, and Louise thought she would be able to recognize landmarks. Over the years, though, Monroeville had grown as a gateway to Elfhome, taking over neighboring towns as it expanded. The road edged with low-slung businesses was gone. In its place were dozens of thirty-story skyscrapers and skeletons of even taller buildings still under construction.

Their hotel was one of the newer buildings, and the presidential suite proved to be a penthouse apartment. From the living room, they could see for miles. The hotel had been built with views of the Rim in mind; it stood on the last hilltop before the quarantine zone. Even in the deepening shadows of twilight, it was easy to spot the curving line where Monroeville stopped and the Rim started. It arched from horizon to horizon, sweeping close to the hotel as it passed.

Louise peered downward and spotted the tall border fence just a block away, edging a 7-Eleven parking lot. She was surprised that Monroeville pressed up so tight against it. In all the news reports she’d ever seen, the video showed the fence bordered by desolate fields. Beyond it lay a mile of burned sterile land, a no-man’s-land to isolate Elfhome flora and fauna and make it easy for the EIA border guard to spot illegal immigrants. Far in the distance, the tall ironwood trees rose as a solid, unbroken wall.

“So close,” Jillian whispered with forehead and hands pressed to the glass.