Wood Sprites

Time was lost in a haze. She remembered only vaguely being woken up, carried about in the dark, buried under blankets, forced to drink countless cups of what seemed to be giblet gravy, and Jillian clinging to her, sobbing. She had long odd dreams about Mary Poppins and a horde of tengu chimney sweeps and giant penguins doing tap-dance routines. Later she was lucid enough to understand the others had done what little they could to keep her from dying from massive blood loss. Sitting up had the alarming tendency to make everything go swimmy and occasionally dark. At first her left arm felt like it was on fire, but later it was only annoyingly itchy. Worse than the fainting was the fear plain on her twin’s face. It reminded Louise that she had left much undone before losing consciousness.

Louise tried to list them out to Jillian. “I don’t know how much of the cave I blocked. .”

Jillian pointed at a nearby patch of brightness. “We’re on Elfhome. Joy collapsed the pathway days ago. We’re safe.”

Louise sat up. “The babies!”

“Joy moved them!” Jillian pushed her back down. “I don’t know how. I don’t know when. But she did. She’s got them in something that seems just like your spell, but I don’t recognize any of the glyphs. It’s huge, but it works. Crow Boy says it’s dragon magic. I’m trying to get her to teach it to me, but you know how she is — a senile grandmother on a sugar rush.”

Louise wished she could laugh. Jillian was so fragile she couldn’t even weave a mask to hide behind. Laughter would have soothed her twin.

“I have no idea how we’re going to get you and the babies to Pittsburgh.” Jillian gripped Louise’s hand tightly. “We ran the luggage mules out of power getting all the gear through the caves, and there’s no way to recharge them. Crow Boy says there’s lots of oni moving through the woods around us; he’s afraid if we don’t travel fast and quietly, we won’t be able to avoid them. I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

“We’ll figure it out.” Louise squeezed Jillian’s hands, trying to summon courage that she didn’t have anymore. It had all bled out when she was shot. It left a hollow space inside her, coated with a sick, cold dread that the babies were already dead and they were just moving icy remains around.

* * *

She’d lost track of time and, when she felt well enough to walk shakily out of the small cave they’d been camping in, was shocked. The leaves on the trees were tinged with fall oranges and yellows. Somehow, while she was too weak to notice, September had raced up to meet them.

The egglike nactka sat on a section of rock that had been polished to a mirrored surface and a large complex spell etched into the glass. The nactka sat at the center, wreathed in frost and mist. A small hut of wicker had been woven over both.

“How did Joy. .?” Louise trailed off, confounded by every part of the structure.

“I don’t know.” Jillian held on to her arm like she was afraid that Louise might fall over. It wasn’t a completely unreasonable fear. “And I don’t know how we’re going to move it.”

“Joy moved them once.” Louise clung to that idea. “She can move them again.”

“I don’t think even she can move them the whole way to the tengu village.”

“I mean onto something more portable. Like a shipping pallet.”

Jillian gave her a look that said she wasn’t sure that Louise was fully lucid.

“I’m brainstorming,” Louise said. “Work with me.”

Jillian sighed. “Okay. If we could get it onto the pallet, then we’d need wheels or something. Maybe use the ostriches—”

“We still have those?”

“God, yes. Joy dragged them through the caves.” Jillian glanced around. “They’re around here somewhere. They actually make good guard dogs against things like spiders and strangle vines. This would be so much easier if we’d been able to fit the hovercarts into the caves or we could make the ostriches fly. .” She paused, squinting. “Do you think we could do that?”

“We could steal something that flies,” Louise said.

Jillian looked at her puzzled a moment, and then her eyes widened. “The gossamer call!”

* * *

They climbed up to the rocky outcrop at the top of the ridge. It was a clear summer afternoon and Pittsburgh was a break in the dense forest canopy on the horizon. The one thing they hadn’t packed was a powerful telescope. There was no way to tell if one of the massive living airships was docked over the airfield next to the enclaves. If there was, the whistle should be able to reach it. Everything the twins knew about Elfhome, however, suggested that the airships rarely traveled to the city. The common elves traveled via train. Only Windwolf and Sparrow ever arrived via gossamer.

Last the twins heard, the viceroy was at Aum Renau.

It was possible that the whistle could reach as far as the East Coast, but Louise doubted it.

Nor was there any guarantee that the gossamer would be unattended.

Louise pressed her hands together and prayed to any god that might be willing to listen. Please.