Pale: 5.d - Interlude

Back Away – 5.d | Pale
The little goblin dug deep, his long ragged fingernail scraping around the folds and corridors of his nasal cavity, which composed roughly half of the interior of his head.  He found what he wanted, in terms of consistency, double checked he had the right nostril, which he had snorted dirt into earlier, and excavated the desired mucus.

He smeared it on the base of a tree trunk, where it joined a dozen other strokes, smears, and gobbets.

“That,” Tatty Bo Jangles purred, “might be a masterpiece, snotty boo.”

Others in their crew made various noises.  Some turned their heads sideways as they looked at it.  One goblin grabbed Tatty, only for her to snarl and claw at him.

It was some of his best work.  A masterpiece?

Was Snotty Boo his name now?

He stared at it, thinking it over, then thrust both fists over his head.

He, belatedly, turned to look at her, but she got a grip on the loose skin at the back of his head and shoved his face into the artwork and the rough bark behind it.  As he flailed, trying to find footing, she dragged his face up and down the wood.

He managed to kick her away, and grabbed the tree for support, his hand sticking there.  Snorting for breath through a nose that was better for air than his beak of a mouth, he tried to get his bearings.  The scraping had torn his lower eyelid, and his one eye could see a bit through the tear when he looked down.  His face and eyelid were stuck to the snot, and he was bleeding, badly.  The sound of goblins yelling insults and calling for more fighting made the disorientation worse.

“Wasting our time, you stupid-”

She kicked him, right in the butt.

“-nose-breathing, skinny-assed, stupid-”

Each insult came with a kick.  She aimed them at the lower body.  Legs, knee, hip.  Goblins jeered.

“You said stupid twice, stupid!” Wangarang jeered.

Tatty gave him one last kick, then snarled and went after Wangarang.

The kick dislodged him, tearing skin from tree.  He collapsed, huffing for breath, then climbed to his feet as two more goblins drew closer.  Willydew and Bumcake.

“What’s that?” Willy asked.  “Wipe yourself and forget a piece?”

The goblin looked down.  A scrap of paper was stuck to his leg, on purpose.

Both goblins were larger.  Willy was tall and thin with jowls that rolled down the sides of his neck, and Bumcake was chunky.  The little goblin backed away from both, nearly tripping in his haste to get away and keep his one leg out of their reach.

They came after him.  He scrambled back, turning to run, and Willy got him, twisting his arm.  Bumcake drove a knee into the small of his back, with enough force that his toes burned and felt cold at the same time, then grabbed his leg.

He flailed, winging his arm and kicking, without use, as they stretched him between them.  The hits he did land grazed.

Bumcake pulled the paper away from his leg.

He redoubled his efforts.

“Is this from that picture?” Bumcake asked.  “You kept it?  This isn’t one of the pieces that has any megadick on it, you brainless wad!  It’s white paper!”

Bumcake drove another knee into his side.  He writhed, fighting to kick the knee away next time, even though Bumcake was twice the size, and Willydew smacked him in the face, stunning him long enough that he couldn’t fend off Bumcake again.

For a few seconds, the two took turns.

In the midst of it, making weak attempts at reacting to the hits or twisting away from them to keep the sorest parts out of the way, he saw a bright circle.

The circle reflected moonlight, and there was an eye on the other side.

He reached out, and there was nothing.  Instead, Willy grabbed the outstretched hand, then began to twist his arms together, like he was seeing what would break first.  Bumcake chortled.

No.  The eye had narrowed.  It was looking at him.

Arching his back, straining his twisted up arms, he put his face closer to Willy’s.  He drew in a breath, hocked, then snorted, violently.  The blood that ran down his face mingled with the reservoir of snot, and dusted Willy’s face.

Willy reached up to his face, and his hand stuck where he tried to wipe the snot away.  He used his other hand to try to free that hand, and ended up with both stuck in place.

He prepared more of the same, as he dangled by one leg.  He looked down at Bumcake’s foot, drew in a breath-

Bumcake threw him, instead.

He landed on all fours, and he couldn’t even think about how hurt he was.  He scrambled into grass and leaves, ducking low, as he went over to Willy, who had freed one hand and was trying to pry a glued-up eye open.

He ducked behind Willy’s legs, and used him as cover as Bumcake came charging over.

Bumcake shoved Willy off to the side, and Willy’s face hit dirt, gluing to it.  The little goblin hurried to get out of the way, but he was small and Bumcake was big and bigger was better for most things goblin-wise.

That circle with the glowing eye emerged from darkness.  It was a bit of glass, round, wedged into a very round face, on a round-ish goblin, who wore fancy clothes.

“That will do, dismal little sir,” the goblin growled.  He pointed at Bumcake.  “Sit.”

The goblin whipped a tangle of sticks at him.  He hadn’t been holding it a moment ago.  The sticks hit Bumcake in the face and the configuration shattered.  Centipedes swarmed out, sliding into Bumcake’s nose and ears.

Bumcake’s forward charge slowed, feet skidding on damp grass as he got to the new goblin, who had one foot out.  Bumcake was moving slowly enough that he bumped up against the foot and stopped.  What was happening seemed to register, and he began moving backward, crawling on the ground as fast as he was able, like moving backward enough could somehow get the bugs out of his face and head.

“I acquired those gleaming beauties at the edges of a dark place,” the new goblin said.  “They’ll keep masticating, carving out some new ear canals and corridors in that mug of yours, until I say to stop.”

“Stop!” Bumcake yelped.

“You’ll have to agree to my terms before I say it, my boy.  I have terms.”

“Agree, anything!  Stop!”

“You’ll have to hear them out, so we can both be sure.  Now stop with the interruptions.  Term one, you must obey all of my instructions, including the rules of this town.  Point of order number one, no business in town that’ll get noticed.  Minor mischief only.”

“Agree!” Bumcake yelped.

“Oh, beg pardon, before I continue-”

“Auuugh!” Bumcake shrieked.

“Little one, you have a name?  I didn’t hear it.”

The little goblin hesitated, then shook his head.  He wasn’t sure the ‘snotty boo’ counted.

“I’m Toadswallow, and if that one isn’t dealt with by the time I’m done, I’ll deal with you, or I’ll take out one-eyed goblins your size until I’m reasonably confident I’ve handled you.”  He pointed at Willydew.  “Do it.”

The little goblin scrambled over.

“Bumcake, was it?  No bringing outsiders in without my say-so,” Toadswallow said.  “I got permission for this, here.”

“Yes!  Fuckin’ hurry!  Get these out, you ratfuck shitsmear!”

“I’ll take all the time I want, and the more you try to hurry me, the longer I’ll take.”

The little goblin stood by Willydew, who was three times as tall as he was.  Willy was on the ground, still trying to free his face.  One eye was open, but both hands were preoccupied.

“Little shit,” Willydew snarled.

The little goblin hurried forward, ducking out of the way of a kick, and then scrambled up Willydew’s pants leg.  It was a pair of pants meant for a baby, with suspenders, and the suspenders made for the next way to get up.

He stopped halfway, then climbed down, reaching between pants and skin to get the scrap of white paper.  He wiped his nose with it, stuck it to one leg, then resumed climbing.

Willy tried to scrape him off, rubbing up against a tree.  He circled around to the front, climbed up to the neck, and grabbed Willy’s arm, where the hand was glued to the upper face.

“Little shit, you’ll pay for this.”

The little goblin, hanging from the wrist with two hands, feet braced against Willy’s collarbone, hocked, inhaled, and snorted violently over Willy’s lower face.

Off to the side, apparently deciding that he didn’t have time to sit through everything, Bumcake staggered to his feet, then charged off into the woods.  Toadswallow seemed to anticipate it, and intercepted.  Fingers caught on Bumcake’s nipple, then deftly tore it off, along with a strip of skin that went to the armpit.

“One asks to be excused, groin-for-brains, it’s only polite,” Toadswallow growled, but he was smiling wide, thoroughly enjoying himself.  He stepped on Bumcake, pinning him.  “Point of order number four.  You’ll owe a debt, for the protection this place gives you, and a debt for my kindness here, for letting your sorry excuse for a name live.  You’ll give power over to this place, to be handed out as we see fit.”

Willy struggled, mouth open, trying to free his hand, and the little goblin returned his focus to his task.  Still hanging from the wrist, he kicked back, swinging his legs back and away, nearly pulling Willy off-balance in the process.

He swung forward, bringing knees up, and swung his shins into Willy’s chin.  Willy’s mouth clacked close, lips gluing together.  Willy fell, and the little goblin fell with him.

Hurting, bloody, glaring with one eye, he clambered over the fallen Willy, with glued-up hands and glued-up mouth.  He dropped down to the ground, picked up a stick, and then climbed up the side of Willy’s face.

“Point of order number five.  Part of owing that debt is you’ll work here, on the perimeter.  Protect the town.  You work six days, you get one day in town and you ask me first to make sure I’m okay with it.  If I have something for you to do, you do that first.”

“Yes!  Fuckin’ hurry!  I can’t-”

“Point of order number six.  You don’t talk about point of order number six or seven.  They’re between me and you.”

The little goblin poised on Willydew’s face, and used the stick to prod.

Pushing one nostril closed.  It glued shut.  Willy realized what he was doing and rolled, trying to shake him off, and he had to jump to avoid getting glued in place.

He darted left, then right, trying to find the opportunity for his next move.

“Point of order number seven.  There’s a fight coming.  I don’t think everyone knows there’s a fight coming, but we’re rounding up help because we can’t do all of this alone.  Two sides are picking their teams but one side doesn’t even know.  You are not on these sides, Bumcake.  You’re on my side, understand?”

“I don’t- I don’t-”

“Should I start from the beginning?”

The little goblin saw an opportunity, and jumped up, jabbing.  Sealing the other nostril with a poke of the stick.  The stick stuck, and he let it go.

Willy rolled over, then began rubbing his face in rough dirt to try to free his nose and mouth.  His arms and hands got in the way.

“I can’t say.  There is no rule six or seven, far as anyone’s concerned!”

“Be cleverer than that, if anyone asks, and be faster,” Toadswallow snarled.

The little goblin crawled up Willy’s face again.  He saw Willy pull lips apart enough to breathe, then snorted on that gap.  Something in Willy shifted with that. One hand on Willy’s nose, one hand on Willy’s eyebrow, the little goblin made his face the entirety of Willy’s field of view.

He hocked and spat, right in the goblin’s eye.

Willy stared, making muffled, angry sounds, until he couldn’t stare anymore.  He blinked, and his eye glued shut.  Nose glued shut.  Mouth glued shut.

The little goblin looked up and back, and saw Toadswallow looming over him.

“You left and came back, did you?”

The little goblin shrugged.  The others had made the call.  He went where he was told.

“You heard the rules?”

The little goblin hesitated, then nodded.

The little goblin nodded.

“You die if you don’t.”

The little goblin hesitated more, thinking things through, then nodded.

“I need words from you to make this binding, you speak?”

The little goblin had to think for a moment to remember.  He shook his head.

“Open up a fresh wound on your hand.”

The little goblin looked around, then started groping for the branch still stuck to Willy’s face, trying not to get stuck in the mucus.

“You have a beak.  Use it, shitwit.”

The goblin looked down, touched his beak, then raked the back of his hand against the beak.

“Touch your hand to mine,” he said, holding out his fist.

The little goblin did, back of his hand held to the knuckles of the other goblin.

“You swear to accept my terms, sealed by blood?  Nod.”

Toadswallow dropped his hand.  He looked down at Willy.

“I don’t want him,” he said, almost sneering as he said it.  “I’d rather have you with one kill to you.  Sit.”

The little goblin sat on Willy’s chest, as it struggled to rise and fall, jerking.

Toadswallow put something on the little goblin’s head.  “Sit, wait.”

It was a little while before Tatty came around, tearing her way past a branch.  “Cake!  Willy!  Where the shit are you!?  We’ve been attacked all this while an’…”

She stopped as she saw Bumcake, lying in the dirt, huffing as he bled from his nose and mouth.  Nonverbal.  She looked past him to Willy, dead… and to the little goblin who sat on Willy’s chest, wearing a bloody nipple on his head.

Bangnut and Humpydump caught up, taking in the scene.

They were too distracted to see the large hands reach out, seizing them by their heads and lifting them off the ground.

Toadswallow lunged out of the bush, syringe in hands, and plunged it into Tatty’s chest as she turned.  His weight pressed her back against the tree.

“My fetid little dear,” he said, smiling.  “You’re going to want to listen very carefully as my compatriot Bluntmunch and I make our offer now…”

“Five rules,” Bluntmunch growled.

“It’s not enough,” Edith said.

“It’s the closest approximation we could honestly figure to what our share was,” Zed told her.

Edith shook her head, waving him off.  To Matthew, she said, “It’s not enough.”

“No,” Matthew agreed.

Zed spoke up, “If you’d free me to talk to others, we could come up with something else, like protection, or a more refined barrier.”

“We don’t want others to be a part of this.  Even you returning is concerning,” Matthew said.

“But appreciated,” Edith added.  “Appreciated, but all of this is difficult.”

“I was surprised.  There are a lot of Others around.  The drive in was tricky.”

Matthew bent down and laid a hand on the metal box.  It hummed and chugged as machinery inside worked, and the metal began to glow white hot in response to the touch.  He took his hand away and it cooled.

“The three girls were to get a full share,” Edith said.

“Accounted for.  That’s it, an equivalent in power supply that totals their full shares and thirty percent of the remainder.  With this, our deal should be done.  We get the info and permission to go for the Choir, you get this, on top of getting them gone, plus some odds and ends like the gifts to the girls, a chance to ask some questions.”

Matthew and Edith exchanged a look.

“It’s not what we hoped for, but your obligations appear to be met,” Matthew said.

“Cool.”  Zed yawned.  Edith visibly tensed in reaction, until Matthew touched her arm.

“Sorry.”  Zed uttered the word through the last bit of the yawn.  “I’m wiped.”

“It’s fine.  It’s not your crisis to be worried about,” Matthew said, intending it in part for Edith.

Zed being cavalier enough to yawn when their lives and everything they had built were all at stake was not Zed’s fault.

“The girls are good at school?  They’re fine?” Edith asked, the question a bit of a forced shift of tone and focus.

“Yeah, I think so,” Zed answered.  “I could have driven them back.  I offered and they said no.”

“They took their own route.  They wanted to catch the morning classes,” Edith said.  She looked up at the sky, which was already bright again.  “You won’t make it back in time without a trick up your sleeve.”

“Fair.  Makes sense, I didn’t know they were that excited for it.  That’s the, uh, binding class?  I think?”

“Was it?” Edith asked.  “Hm.”

Matthew put a hand on her shoulder.

“They’re good kids.  I’m trying to do right by them.  Introducing them to the half-decent people, steer them away from the troublesome ones.”

“There’s plenty of the troubling ones,” Matthew said.

“You’re not wrong,” Zed told him.  “You’re a practitioner?  Or were?”

“I can’t help but notice,” Edith mused, interrupting, “that you said there are half decent people, and you said there’s troublesome ones.  No decent ones?”

Zed put his fingers in his pockets, thumbs hooked over the sides.  “That’s a question for the philosophers, isn’t it?  Are any of us truly good?”

“Those girls might be close,” Matthew mused.

“They’re young, that helps,” Zed said.  “But you’re not wrong.  Brie and I are backing them up, for what that’s worth.”

“It’s worth something.  Thank you,” Edith said.  “Brie didn’t come?”

“She wanted sleep more than she wanted my company, apparently,” Zed said, smiling.  “I don’t mind.  She can welcome them as they get back.”

“That’s good.  It’s good to know they’re taken care of,” Matthew said.

“Be safe on the road,” Matthew told him.  “Especially if you’re that tired.”

“It’s a hypnotic drive, too.  So much nothing for such long stretches,” Zed commented.  “Was that you gently suggesting I leave?”

“A bit,” Matthew said.  “There are other reasons.  Four of them are over there.”

Zed turned around, his eyes flashing as he did.

Four figures stood at the clearing’s edge.  At first glance, they could be mistaken for human.  One was a man, smoking, with his partner hugging him from the side- a woman with greasy hair and tired eyes who wore a mask that was connected to an oxygen tank. There was a woman with damp hair, coughing, and a woman with a heavy coat that hid something she was wearing or carrying, her hair shorn short and dyed red.

“Vessels?” Zed asked.

“Three elemental vessels, and one man with something elemental-related in him,” Edith said.  Matthew nodded his agreement, his expression serious.

“Need help?” Zed asked.

“No,” Edith told him.

“Right.  Good luck, then.  Back to school I go.  Might take a nap on the way back.”

“Thank you, for being prompt with the delivery,” Matthew said.

Zed smiled, then he climbed into his station wagon with the paneled sides.  He started it up, turned, and went.

The four at the far side of the clearing straightened.

“No?” Matthew asked.  “Is it so bad to accept his help?”

“It unbalances the scales between us and him.  Means we owe him.  And it ties him more to this place.  That gets more severe if he gets hurt.  I can handle them.”

“Better that I do.  I don’t like the look of that coughing woman.  Too damp.  She’d put you out.”

Edith took a long moment, then nodded.

“I’ll try.  You noticed what Zed said?”

“I noticed a few things.”

“Binding class.  Others won’t be happy about that.”

“That was one of them.”

“I’m not especially happy they’re that eager about that.”

“Yeah,” Matthew said.

“They asked Yalda questions.”

“That was one of the other things.  Yeah,” Matthew agreed.

“They didn’t share that.  They’re keeping things close to the chest.”

“Yeah,” Matthew said.  “But so are we.”

“You should go before they get too close.”

“It’s frustrating,” Edith said.  “You can’t use your full strength while I’m near, which means that as long as we’re waging this war for Kennet, we’re being pulled apart.”

“From the day the idea of you and I was a mutual consideration, we knew it wouldn’t be easy, Edith.”

“What if this continues, and when it all ends, we can’t find our way back to each other?”

“Let’s make the time later.  Dinner, barbecue if the weather’s nice, then a cuddle and a movie?”

“I’m likely to fall asleep halfway through if my stomach’s full.  Stupid human bodies,” Edith said, yawning.

“If it’s any consolation, you have a very nice human body, Edith James.”

She smiled, beckoning him to bend down.  Then she kissed him.  “Dork.”

“Go,” he said.  “Keep that body safe, keep yourself safe.”

Edith bent over backwards, her ribs opening up, and the Girl by Candlelight emerged, unfolding and stretching out.  She hauled the candle out of the space where her heart should be, as long as she was tall, and rested it against one shoulder, the flames at both ends flaring.  She shot a look back at the four, who were tense.

The Girl by Candlelight touched his cheek, then bent down and picked up the power supply.  It wasn’t even close to enough, but it would power a barrier that could slow down the influx and filter out the smaller wildlife.

His connection to Edith was strong, and the power that sat heavy within him fed that connection because it and he were both in alignment in wanting to keep tabs on that.

“Hello!” he called out to the four figures.  Talking would buy some time for Edith to get further away.

They drew closer.  The smoker exhaled a breath of thick smoke that curled in the air.  He had no cigarettes or cigar, his hands in his pockets, his hair an ash grey, lips thin and a bit scarred.  His companion had a dead, blank stare with foggy eyes, her hair similarly pale and rather dull, like the gold had seeped out of the blondeness of it.  With one hand, she dragged the oxygen tank.  With the other, she adjusted her mask.

The girl with the wet hair- her hair wasn’t drying out even a bit, and it hadn’t rained that recently.  At best, there was morning dew on the grass.  She coughed violently, and spewed a quarter-lungful of water onto the dirt of the clearing.  She straightened and spat.

These three were vessels.  Like Edith was, but these ones were too neat, when he looked at them with the Doom’s eyes.  Closer to the space he’d carved out for his Doom, but… a much, much bigger hole.

There were practices that asked for high prices.  Practices like the Heartless practice his father had conducted.  Blood magic, host magic, cultists… and many preyed on innocents, or counted innocents among the collateral damage.  When too much was taken out, there could be vestiges.  Just enough of a person that it could stand, walk, and breathe, but something integral was gone and wouldn’t come back.  A house with an exterior and little in the way of rooms or furniture, if it had anything at all.  A practitioner could put anything in that space, really.

Someone had probably done that to these four.

“Do you want sanctuary?” Matthew asked.  “Protection from people like the one who made you?”

The smoker shook his head.  The leader, it seemed.

The one with the short red hair moved, adjusting her coat.  Matthew watched her with care.

To his Doomsight, there was someone nestled inside her, dark, chafed around the edges and shadowy, like she’d had pale skin before being rinsed in thin black ink that had settled into the creases.  It was a woman, long-haired, human sized and human shaped, curled up and contorted into a space as small as this woman’s upper body.  Her eyes and teeth were too white and bright.

A vessel, but the edges weren’t so neat.  Some were, but it was like a space of a certain size had been measured out, and this figure had forced her way in, breaking and straining some parts of the container.

Her weapon, beneath her coat, was a shard of something reflective, as long as her leg.  She held it, a bit of mirror or treated glass, and her fingers bled where they bit into the edge, the blood running down the length of it.

The woman inside her smiled, rictus, showing more teeth.  As if the long shard of mirror was connected to her, blood began to run into the space she occupied, tinting her progressively more red.

When a hallow or vessel was prepared, care was usually taken to guide the right things to the space created.  Here, something had failed and an elemental Other with an affinity for mirrors or reflections had crawled inside.

Possibly how they had escaped their creator.

“It’s a good deal,” he told them.  “Room to grow, protection from those who would prey on you.  I think my wife would love to have people she can relate to.”

“We don’t like to stay places,” the smoker said, in a raspy voice.

“You could stay here, provided you agree to our terms.”

“No.  We raid.  Take what we need, make our exit.”

“I was taught about Others as a whole, once,” Matthew said.  “That Others were once much more than they are now.  But the brutish and stupid were outwitted.  The weak conquered.  It’s the canny who survive.  Even goblins have figured that out.”

The smoke the smoker was breathing was pooling around him.  Tendrils like the tentacles of some squid curled in the midst of it, thick smoke in a haze of thinner smoke.  He didn’t walk directly at Matthew, but meandered, backed by his group.

“Don’t follow after the terminally stupid Others,” Matthew told them.

“We have to.  Four voracious hungry mouths to feed,” the girl with the red hair and coat said.

They weren’t talking about their human mouths.

“Doom,” Matthew murmured.  “Two min-”

The girl with the oxygen mask pulled her mask off and inhaled.

All the air in the clearing was sucked out.  Matthew staggered on the spot, the air dragged out of his lungs.

He couldn’t form the words without lungs.

The smoker smiled, then exhaled, like he was blowing out a long puff from a cigarette.  The smoke came out in a column of thick smoke that expanded out, limiting visibility.

He voiced the words in his head with as much authority as he could.  Two minutes.  Defeat them first-

The girl with the blade emerged, invisible in the cover of smoke until she was just five feet away.

With his toe, he dragged a line across the ground, backing away.

She hit the line and staggered.  A line could be considered the simplest of diagrams, and that thing that occupied her was more vulnerable to it than she was, and the momentary lack of synchronicity hurt her.

– then do as you will, but-

He closed the distance, stepping into a puddle, and he knew full well what that puddle was.  He grabbed her wrist, pushing her back across the line.  Same effect, but this time, he was rattling the bars of the cage his own Other was within.  Testing the metaphorical screws, bolts, and welding.

Not being able to breathe while exerting himself was a strain.  The smoke tickled his nostrils, then invaded them with will, drying up his nose, sinuses, throat, and mouth.

He knew from his studies and work with the Doom that Hosts liked to bind things to key points in the body.  It made sense that a Vessel would have their space carved out starting at one of those.

He slammed his forehead into hers.  The reaction wasn’t anything special.  Which others?  The Crown was one space, very top of the head, but he was pretty sure she’d manifest differently if the Other were housed there.

He punched her in the solar plexus.

She didn’t carry the mirror woman there.  He hit her again, dead center of the stomach.

There. He could see the Other within her react.  It looked like it was housed in two of the seven points.  Stomach and groin.

He wasn’t going to keep hitting her there.  The smoke was too much, he couldn’t breathe, and the drenched woman-

He heaved the girl with the shard around him, anticipating an attack from behind.  The drenched girl was barely visible in the smoke, rising from the puddle she’d formed to sneak around.

-you must return by the deadline, by the terms of your binding.

She grabbed him, and she was strong, water flowing off of her, as if it was propelling her forward.  The force of a wave.

She didn’t have to beat him.  She just had to keep him occupied until the lack of oxygen beat him.

He felt the Doom stir within him.  Agreeing.

With one hand, he touched a spot on the binding.

Best case scenario, you kill it, and you’re scared enough you leave.  Or you hurt it permanently before leaving or succumbing to your injuries, he thought.

In his heart, he knew he wouldn’t be so lucky.

It poured out of him, pale and twisted, fighting to get loose and doing everything it could to hurt him on the way out.  A mass closer to the size of a house than the size of a man, escaping his two hundred pound frame in a matter of seconds.

The four backed off.  The smoke immediately started clearing.

White shot through with inky darkness and veins.  The body was without set form, and for one moment, it was a morass of something between flesh and smoke, its back half like a kraken, the front half like a praying mantis, but with Edith’s face mounted atop it, twisted with emotion and crying darkness. It picked up the red haired woman, not by closing a limb around her, but by sliding one of those scythe-like limbs beneath her and holding her against the hard edge by the force with which it moved her around, instead.

In the next moment, it was closer to a bull, hunched over, muscular, and head low, surging forward, to separate Matthew from the drenched woman.

It reached ahead of where it was pushing her, moving tree branches.  When it slammed her into the tree, the branches of that tree and the branches it had put into place slammed through the seven ‘host’ windows of her body.  Crown, mind’s eye, throat, heart, solar plexus, stomach, and groin.

Matthew stood, dusting himself off.

The other two were running.  He could breathe, and did so with a kind of gratitude, even as a sick worry gripped him.

It hadn’t been fifteen seconds.  Two of the four were dead.

Had he given too much time?

He dropped to one knee, and began drawing in the dirt, scraping up his fingers as he broke the packed ground.  So long as he wasn’t hosting the Doom, he could practice.  He practiced now.  A rune, lines, inviting spirits of the solid earth in…

And with one dirty finger, he drew a line up his boot, pants leg, and, refreshing his material, continued the line up to his stomach.

“Come, spirits of Earth,” he said.

Inviting those spirits into the hallow in the bed of his own stomach.

He felt the weight of them, the grit of them like sand in his mouth.  He could feel strength, but it wasn’t easy strength.  More of an inevitable one, when it could be brought to bear.

He wasn’t looking to bring it to bear in that way, though.

“As I will it,” he told them.

As heavy as those spirits were, they were so much more comfortable within him than the Doom.

Blinking, his eyes dry and stinging from the smoke, he coughed, then touched a hand to the ground.

The spirits flowed easily.  Drawing out lines, erasing others.  They removed and moved plants in the earth at the clearing’s edge, then carried on beyond.

At his will, he drew out a line, roughly a hundred feet in one direction, a hundred feet in the other, then elaborated and braced it.

The Doom returned, depositing the heads of the smoker and the girl who had had the oxygen mask on in the clearing’s center.  It let the woman with red hair drop from a height above the treetops.

Her body broke on the landing.

The bloodstained Mirror Other crawled out, and was speared from above by a belated branch that the falling body had knocked free.

It paused, as if to taunt him, then soared forward, pressing against the barrier he’d erected against the Doom as it turned a hard right, flowing, flying.

He pushed, feeding the earth spirits, drawing on inner reserves he shouldn’t, to lengthen that barrier and extend the effect.

A few more feet, a few more seconds of delay.

He sat down hard as he felt the Doom slip past.  Using the remainder of the time he’d given it.

He could have given it less.  But that was the balance he always had to strike.  If he gave it too little time, it might meander.  It would hurt the enemy, just enough that he had to wrap up the job himself, or else summon it again.  And each time he summoned it, he established a pattern.

If that pattern ever got stronger than the pattern of his binding, it would be able to choose when it made its exit.  Forcing him to step up what he was doing, make the binding stronger.

A constant struggle.  Edith was right, that it was easier if they were apart.  He could ask the Doom of Edith James to do one thing and return, and it would.  Because that contributed to the pattern.  In situations where she was close, it was less reasonable.  He had to give it a chance.  To trust Edith.

He extracted the earth spirits to make room, then he waited, sitting in the dirt.  Stomach empty, Sight-blind, and weary.

It was good and bad that Brie hadn’t come.  He hadn’t voiced it to Edith, and Edith hadn’t voiced it to him, but there was the possibility of killing Brie and releasing the Choir again.  A horrible thought and a thought he wouldn’t have had a decade ago.  Before this collapse of the perimeter and the fallout he was facing, he wouldn’t have considered it so seriously.

This defense of Kennet wasn’t impossible, but it would be hard.  So, so hard.  They were having to bring in others for the extra strength and each of those Others would pose their own problems, conundrums, and require managing in some fashion.  Some would be traced by Practitioners and that would be its own kit and caboodle.

The Choir, awful as it was, was something stable, a known thing they could manage, and it was stronger than every Other they would recruit in the coming days and weeks.

But it would at least mean he wouldn’t have to do this as often.

This release, followed by the horrible wait, where he had to feel its unwanted presence settle in his stomach once again.

Or, one day, the elapsed time would pass, and the Doom wouldn’t return.  What that meant.

He wasn’t so deluded as to think it would be the Doom that had died.

“Tha lassie said to keek in, ask efter ye.”

“Ye’re a timorous yin, aye?  She said to ask that ye be guid, ‘n to nae tae et the wee’uns, whitever that means.”

“It’s sanctuary,” another voice purred.  She kept to shadows, which was easy when the sun was low in the sky.  “Community.  You seem to me like a creature of the divine.”

The Other blinked.  More slender than a human could be, beneath the sagging skin she was draped in, her sleek body was formed entirely of interlinked eyes, their irises yellow and bright in the gloom.

She had found a place to hole up in, a farmhouse that had been left abandoned, the door left open and the elements and animals having left their mark.  She sat without a book to read, or anything to do, relaxed, and didn’t seem any more or less relaxed as the Other looked down at her from the ceiling.  The windows were boarded up, and the surroundings overgrown, which meant relatively little light got in.

“Were you a naive girl who crossed the wrong greater power?  No… you don’t seem like the type.  They’re angrier.”

The purring voice was feminine and pleasant, and very human.  The form wasn’t, all spider legs, insect wings, leather and fur.

“Dinnae intimidate her, Maricica.”

The Other shook her head.

“Not bothered?” Maricica asked.  “Have you seen worse?  Sometimes the divine powers make your kind from scratch.  If they’re feeble or new, those new lives can be haunting and piteous.  Have you cared for brothers and sisters?  Are you the product of a god of little power, trying to figure out how to create a servant on this earth?  No.  That is a curious look.  This is a new story for you.”

“Guid thing, aye?  Ah’ve come by a few of those in my time.  They git a fair share o’ nightmares.”

“Child of a divine power and a human?”

The Other tilted her head to one side and blinked once.

“Close?  Child of two such creatures?  Or one creature and a human.”

The Other blinked slowly.

“A line of such.  Mmm.  It’s a lonely existence.”

“Tha lassie liked yeh.  Verona did.  If ye’d like to be less lonely, an’ if ye’d be good, we’d have yeh.”

The Other looked between them.

“She hesitates,” Maricica said.  “Because of the restrictions on violence, hurting babies?”

The Other shook her head, false skin slapping against the sleek true body, eyes in the location wincing shut at the impact.

“If you’d like to know more, we could tell you about Kennet, and what we’re doing,” Maricica purred.

“Ah’ll say what I can, but it’s efter hours fer me, ah’m ready ta turn in so I won’t be much of a use ta yeh.”

The Other nodded, shifting position.  Listening.

The day loomed bright and heavy around the three Others of the dark, who stayed within the dark farmhouse, talking.

The woman stood with one hand to the wall.

The wall was thick plaster over brick, and had crumbled in places.  This was one such place.  Where it crumbled, the bricks and blocks stood out bold; red clay bricks were intermingled with concrete blocks and blocks from a kids toy set in bright primary colors.

She touched each in turn, and each time she checked, she examined her surroundings.

A hallway of dingy, grime-caked tile, cracked plaster, and old windows with metal framing around the glass, badly rusted.  The lightbulbs flickered and buzzed but never quite went out.  The buzzing had a seductive pattern to it.

On the left side of the hallway, there were rooms.  Within each room, furniture was stacked in impossible configurations. In one, a single plastic chair supported four more chairs, which supported the segments of a metal shelf unit, which caged an emaciated corpse.  Above that was a desk, and on the desk, a radio buzzed in a complement to the lightbulbs, and a coffee cup sat, still hot.

In the next room over, two columns of furniture leaned into one another to form an arch.

Nothing about those rooms changed as she checked the blocks.

On the other side of the hallway, those dusty windows looked out on a vast field, all pale dirt, no green or crop.  Wooden wheels big enough to scrape the atmosphere were turning, halfway embedded in the earth.  No axles, nothing to fix them in place.  Some were slow, and some were fast enough to spit up geysers of soil on the one side.  Many were degraded, like these plaster walls.

When she had taken a day to walk out there, she had checked the slowest wheel and found that within the outer casing of wood, there were bundles of wood that included broomsticks, branches, and collections of pencils.

She’d kept a broomstick that had no broom part to it.  She knew it would carry the motive energies of the wheel.  In the right circumstance, she could refine that, and it would gain a function it could carry with it thereafter.  In another circumstance, much more likely, she would use it to help set something into motion, possibly breaking it in the process.

She found a brick, red clay, that was warm to the touch, compared to the others.  With a bent, bloody nail, that was a bit more coherent than the broomstick was, she scratched a ‘Y’ into the brick.

The arch in the one room was inviting, but this was her third time here, and she’d learned some of the things to watch out for.

This time, they took the shape of dead bugs.  Three dead flies at one windowsill.  One dead beetle sat in an indent, where tile was cracked.  Beneath the arch was a lone dead fly.

There was always something waiting at the window for anyone that ventured close enough to be grabbed.  That beetle amid the broken tile marked an area of the building that waited to collapse.

She didn’t trust the arch.

Further down the hall, papers fluttered in the wind from an open window.  A hazard she didn’t want to risk.  The one time she had made it far enough down the hall to see the pages, it had been what, in this version of the hallway, would be a bee drawn on each page.

Further down the hall was a set of double doors.  They were heavy, metal, and encircled by chains that included the handles and disappeared into the walls.  A single padlock, painted blue, marked a point of startling color that even the dusty bricks set in the walls didn’t manage.

She wasn’t sure, but it didn’t seem to have a keyhole, nor a dial or dials to put in a combination.

These places were woven together.  The weave wasn’t always obvious, but there were ways to work out their design.  She hadn’t seen any writing, even on the papers, which suggested that there wasn’t a specific phrase she needed to unlock something or get something to act differently.  There were no distinct, repeating patterns, only the tile, which was the same thing repeated endlessly, and the bricks in the walls, which were purely random, as far as she could see.  That told her that she wasn’t looking for something in the way of any specific orders or functions.

The sun never moved from its position.  It shone down with an oppressive brightness, bleaching everything it touched.  Where it reached past the windows and hit the wall, it wore down everything it touched.  If she touched the plaster where the window blocked that light and moved that touch further down to the light, she could feel the difference in level between the former and the latter, to the point there was a soft edge.

But there were hidden things, like bricks in the walls, and sticks in wheels, and a skeleton in a cage.  That told her something.  That if there was a way to open that padlock, it required finding things.  She didn’t want to try to slip past those fluttering papers until she was sure she had a way, or she would have to slip past, check, and return, and that was simply too dangerous.

She could also use context, from her greater explorations.  In terms of where it sat, this place was a trap.  It was as if a dozen other major roads led through here.  She was a pinball in a pinball machine, striving to get out, above, beyond, and past this.  When she failed, she settled back here, like the pinball between the paddles.

Many of the normal escape routes from a place like this didn’t apply.  She knew one escape that required that letters be gathered and assembled from signage and pages, or that she fling herself through a window and say the right words before she hit ground.  But there were no words here.  There was no drop steep enough, when this building was all ground level.  Perhaps if she grabbed a wheel’s spoke… but the odds were just as good she would grievously injure herself, falling before she was high enough.

This was a place where things got trapped.  It matched with the themes she’d seen on past visits.

This particular section of hallway asked people to become familiar with it.

She rapped on windows, listening to the sounds.  She checked several.

She slid it open.  The broken glass remained in place, locked in the air, while the metal moved, and she cut her arm.

Where the window slid open, the view on the other side changed.  It was like looking down at Earth from space, but she wasn’t in space.

She adjusted her view, and as she did, the view zoomed in.

It was like falling, and trying to control the fall, instead of anything precise.  Every movement brought her view closer, and also slid it to one side, or up, or down, or changed the angle.

It was a balancing act, to move in a way that brought her to where she wanted to be, without being too close or too far away.  But she had a lot of experience in positioning herself.

From high above, it looked troubled.  For the early hours of a summer day, people moved about like they were wary.

She slid her view past Matthew and Edith’s house, but the truck wasn’t in the driveway.

In that same direction, she went south.  To the Faerie cave where Alpeana slept and the Faerie toyed with one another.

There were no Faerie, and there was a lot of blood.

She turned, looking toward the girls’ houses, but the view drew in too close, until she was staring at the road from a point of view only a foot above it, then closer-

The glass of the window drew closer at the same time.

She moved, cautiously, and the glass reached toward her.  She was so close to the road she could see the grains of sand.

Glass broke, and a sliver of it pierced her awareness.  It could not pierce her eye, for she had none, but it left her awareness hampered.

A human would lose an eye.

But she was Other.  She was, much like this place, knit together, like thread or yarn stretching between individual elements.  She had once been human or human-like, but much of that was Lost, so forgotten by history and the Universe that it could not be readily retrieved.  She had no mouth, and as that thread of yarn had been pulled away, so had other, related things, like the need to eat.  The air that connected between the outside world and the open space in her lungs had remained, so she could speak.  It was the same with the light that shone into her eyes, allowing her to see.  That was what had been injured.

Much of her was like this.

At the other end of the hallway, a door opened.

A young man, who wore an old fashioned pilot’s cap with goggles built in had entered.

Practitioner, not human.  He stiffened as he saw her, shielding his eye. The light shining off the broken glass blocked his view of her face.

“I mean you no harm,” she told him.  “Do you know your way through here?”

He reached into his bomber jacket and pulled out a gun.  She dashed to one side, into the room with the arch, to be out of his way.

“I’m sworn to the seal,” she spoke, letting the sound echo down the hall.

“Any one of you can say that!” he called out.  “I’ll try not to kill you, but I can’t have a strange Other wandering around!  Places like this are too sensitive!”

“Speaking of,” she told him, again letting the echo carry her voice.  “Avoid the window with the houseflies by it.  They signal a trap.”

“Why should I trust you?” he asked. There was a ragged edge of fatigue to his question.  If his voice had five tremors to it, there was one each for hunger, thirst, fatigue, fear, and heartsickness.  He had been betrayed, and recently.

He had been stuck trying to find a way out for a long time.

Still, he drew nearer, and he was near enough that he’d avoided them.  He’d listened.

“Beetle on the tile as well.”

“If you’re here, then you’re either on your way to being properly Lost, or you know the way, and I can trade you information for information.”

“I don’t have to give you anything to get information from you.”

“I am not inclined to be bound,” she told him.

He was armed and she wasn’t.  She had the broomstick pole, but it didn’t really count.  She couldn’t be an armed attacker, really, because she would hurt herself more than she hurt the person she attacked.  It was the sort of thing that unraveled her, or it raveled her in ways she didn’t want.  People tended to put a face to their attackers, masked, imagined, or otherwise.

Besides, she wasn’t strong.  Weaker than an ordinary human.

“The broken window lets you see things if you open it,” she told him.  “It might show you a way out, if you know where to look.”

He didn’t open the window.  He drew closer, moving with short footsteps, no doubt with gun ready.

She had one option and she didn’t like it.

She let him come to her.  He stepped in through the door, and she put both hands out, to try and keep him from pointing that gun at her.  Then she brought her face close to his.

Plaster from a bit of broken wall above the door fell in his eyes.  She kept her face close, hands on the weapon, and as he tried to step away, she stepped in close, matching the turn of his body with quick steps.  Doing everything she could to stay to his side, away from the gun.

He tore his hands free of hers, and she ducked.

He wiped at his eyes, taking a step to the side, and she saw an opportunity.

Springing to her feet, reaching, she pushed him.

He staggered back three steps.  Through the arch.

He looked up at her, then pointed the gun at her leg.  He tried to look at her face, then blinked again.

She backed up, watching him clear his eyes, look at her as she edged toward the door, then look beyond.  His eyes widened.

She looked too, and saw that one of the great wheels out in the field had come free, and was tearing their way, chewing up the ground.

He pushed his way past her, out the door, and ran down the hall.

The wheel turned, tracking him as he ran.  It turned as he changed directions.  He stopped in his tracks.

He pulled a ring that was attached to a string on his backpack, like he was deploying a parachute.  Nothing happened.

He looked at her, or as much at her as he was able.

The wheel tore through the building, turning what had been a twenty-foot stretch of hallway and the two accompanying rooms into more dusty outdoors.  The Finder gone.

Everything tilted, sagging, like there was a depression and this end of the hallway was sinking into it.

The papers that were at the end of the hallway by the padlock began to drift her way, caught in a perpetual circle of a breeze that never let them fall to ground or stop.

They each had an entomological drawing on them.  They might as well have been churning buzzsaws, for the danger they posed.  She didn’t trust this room with the arch, or the fact that everything was collapsing, or that a stray paper wouldn’t fly in here after her.

She ran for it.  For the broken window, which she hauled open.  She braced herself, pulling her sweater up around herself, and threw herself through the broken glass.

She fell from what appeared to be the stratosphere.

“I am located at four-one-one-one-one-eight-eight-three-four-five-six-two-four Oak Avenue!” she called out.  “May I please request an operator!?”

The trajectory of her fall shifted to a right angle, plunging her into bright daylight.  The remnants of a neighborhood with brightly painted houses tumbled through the air with her.

Splinters flew off it as she used it to steer her fall.  As she moved it, she fell at slight angles.

It was tempting to touch ground, then leap from that ground, but she couldn’t afford to.

She steered her fall, aiming for a window, but the tumbling building turned, the window no longer available.

Another one.  She steered.

A newspaper hit her in the face, and she peeled it away.  It was raining, when it hadn’t been before.

She used the angle of her body and the pole to fly through a door.

The configuration of falling building was an entirely different ‘scene’ on this side, and a bell was ringing, large and brass.

Others were descending around her, expert fallers who drew closer to her.  A ballerina, schoolkids, and a small dog perched on a ball.

The ball hit a hydrant, and the dog was bounced off, flying her way.  She twisted out of the way, then veered closer to the ballerina in a blue tutu, who twisted and spun, but kept her face permanently turned away.

“A long time,” she murmured.

The ballerina touched her shoulder.

“I’m sorry this reunion is so short.  I can’t go back home to the stairwell, and this place only deposits humans on an Earthly Oak Avenue.  It would send me back.  Can you give me a hand?”

The Ballerina took her hands, and guided her fall, until they were hurtling in a tight spin that threatened to pull them apart.  The ballerina kicked away the ball again, and fended off a schoolchild with a knife.

“I’m trying to get out of this Stuck-in Place,” she told the ballerina.  “Would you send me to-”

She looked off to the distance.

“Some pupils of mine are calling me.”

She was released, and momentum sent her far from the falling buildings.  From sunlight, from the Stuck-in Place.  The course she was on paralleled the connection made as she was called.  This was its own pattern.

To a very empty, dark region of the Paths.  A laser show of silver lights shone against a starless sky.  Below, a bridge glimmered with headlights that had no cars, more lights along the suspension cables.

She reached for a beam and found it elastic.

Her momentum was slowing too fast.  She knew why.

Bits of glass and dirt clung to her, and they used that clinging grip to pull at her.  To pull her back.

As if there were elastics of their own stretched tight between those little particles and the Stuck-in Place.

When she stopped, extending one foot, she stood with her body out horizontally, head to one side, one foot to the other, resting balanced on the beam.

In the dark, three girls were running, jumping, and bounding, on the elastic beams.  When they fell, it was in slow motion.

As hazardous as this might have looked, it was easy.  More easy for them than for her, at least right now.

“Whoooo!” Lucy called out, flying through the air.  She caught one beam with the middle of her body, hauled herself up, and found her balance on it.

There was so little out here in this region that it was like the strings of light had their own gravity.

Snowdrop caught one with a foot, and she hung upside down, settling in as the Ballerina in Blue came to rest on Miss’s beam, just beside her, vertical where Miss was horizontal.

“Don’t look!” Snowdrop called out.

Avery, Lucy, and Verona stopped, looking over.

“You’re hurt!” Avery called out.

Cuts from the window.  “I’ll mend.”

“I have first aid things.”

“Save it as a just-in-case.  As I said, I’ll mend.  Tell me, Snowdrop looks older, but you don’t,” Miss noted.  “Has it been weeks?”

“Yeah.  Weeks,” Lucy said.  “Calling you like this works?”

Avery spoke up, “I can’t go back for the coin or I would.  We could send Verona and Lucy but you didn’t want…”

“No.  That would make them Finders, when they need to find their own way.  And the Wolf would be too hard on them, after the way you left.  I’ll manage for the time being.”

Avery shrugged, barely visible in the light shed by the beam she was standing on.  “I wondered if we should even call.  We decided we should try, because things aren’t great.”

“I know.  I’ve seen signs of that.  Some very recently.”

“What do we do?” Verona asked.

“What are you doing at present?”

“Investigating.  Searching.  We’re attending magic school to learn binding and some other stuff.”

“Those are good things to be doing.  Charles could teach you binding if you pressed him, but you’ll learn better things at the school, and you’ll be safer there.”

“Are you saying that because you suspect Charles?” Lucy asked.

“I can’t speak to my suspicions.  There are reasons I picked you.”

“Because we’re children, we’re more likely to not take over?  Because we might fail?”

“If I wanted failure, would I pick such exceptionally talented children as yourselves?” Miss asked.  She looked at the Ballerina.  “I’m quite fond of them.”

The ballerina in blue nodded.

“You picked us because you think we can do it, but the actual culprit is likely to think we can’t,” Lucy said.

“Yes,” Miss told her.

“We have a list of suspects, and it might be all of them,” Lucy said.  “But what we’d really like to do is narrow it down to specific things.  Who has the furs?  Because it seems like they hurt three locals who found them and left town with them.”

“Nobody panicked,” Avery elaborated.  “If it really wasn’t in Kennet anymore, there’d be someone freaking out more.”

“If they can don the furs and claim the throne, you’ll need to know who it is and take swift, decisive action to stop them.”

“Then that’s the goal,” Lucy said.  “And we need to know how to stop them, which means we need the binding class in… not very long.”

“And other stuff.  Ways to beat or slow down whatever they throw at us,” Verona said.

“It sounds like you’re on track,” Miss said.

“You’re really dead set on not giving us any concrete answers?” Verona asked.  “Because that defines you in some bad way?”

“As I told you very early on, the balance of things is maintained by having Practitioner handle the affairs of Others, and having Others like the Carmine and Sable make the final judgments on man.”

“But lesser Others get a bad deal, huh?” Lucy asked.

“How?  Why?  That’s the thing that’s getting to me, as I see this.  Others being enslaved. Others being exterminated in large groups.  I’m really having trouble with that last one, because they aren’t the nicest Others.”

“I prefer a world that spares one innocent if it means letting ninety nine guilty go free,” Miss told them.  “But I admit, I am not one of the ones those guilty prey on.”

“But how?  Why?  What the hell did this Solomon dude do?”

“Suleiman bin Daoud.  Solomon, in modern parlance.  I’d like to tell you three stories, if I may?”

“Sure,” Verona said, looking at the others.

“If they’re too long, we might miss morning class,” Lucy noted.

“It’s okay, if it’s for Miss.”

“They’re not long stories,” Miss said.  “To start with… imagine, Verona, that you are a traveler.  In this tale, you have been stranded without transportation, you’re hungry and thirsty, in a strange land.  You have no home to go back to, and no idea when and if you’ll find one.”

“Imagine, then, that an older couple in poor health stops and offers you rescue, a ride down this desolate road, and they’ll even offer you employ.  This couple offers you food, water, shelter, and everything else you require.  All you must do is labor for them.  And because they are kind, this couple offer you their inheritance, their home, and all the food and drink you could want, on the day they die and the family line ends.”

“How much older are they?”

“A matter of years from death.  You’re young.”

“Sure.  But there’s a catch?” Verona asked.

“There is, but in our story, the traveler accepts the deal.  In a way, they have to.  And for all that we thought they would pass from this world soon, sickly and old, they bear a series of children.”

“Sure?” Verona ventured.

“The couple dies of old age, and the family line continues.  The children inherit, as do the children’s children, the children’s children, and on through thousands of years.  And the traveler is left toiling the fields for those thousands of years, waiting for his due.  In some variations on this tale, he even toils on, keeping to his obligations, even though he’s forgotten the rest.”

“This is an analogy?” Lucy asked.

“We did not think humanity would last nearly as long as it did.  Lucy, imagine, please, that you are a hunter.  You and your family need meat, to survive the winter, but when struck with illness or an especially early and dire winter, you lack enough.  A neighbor offers you what you require, on the provision that you and your family leave him a certain woodland to hunt in, so he may cultivate it without your interference or worrying about a stray arrow from your bow.”

“Yes.  Over the generations, his family plants trees from the woodland.  Seeds are carried out, planted in other regions, even, and can be considered ‘his’ trees.”

“Civilization?” Lucy asked.

“The Others that came before did not think humanity would spread as it did.  Many of the predatory Others promised protections and sanctuaries, thinking your civilization would be pockets of light in vast darkness.  Now the light from your world is so bright you must often travel a distance to properly see the stars in the night sky.  Some suffered more than others.  Many have died out or become beggars instead of predators.”

“Avery.  Hearing these things unfold, you must be wary.”

“I suppose.  Rule of three, right?  There’s going to be another catch?”

“How would you avoid it?  What would you do?”

“Not make any more deals?”

“Some went that route.  They detach from humanity, finding their own refuges.  But humanity shapes the world, and everything is soon associated with humanity.  These Others now find the world unfamiliar and hostile, they are ill-equipped to catch up or keep up, and they fall by the wayside.”

“What’s the other option?”

“To try to formalize deals.  To hitch their wagons to that of humanity, by striking deals that would establish them as Patrons.  They teach their secret knowledge and ways of manipulating the world, in exchange for servitude… until mankind begins sharing that knowledge in ways few Others can stay ahead of, on paper and in tomes.  Knowledge, instead of being taught from patron Other to Practitioner, becomes something kept in families.  Others try to formalize a kind of equality, such as the familiar bond, and to make firm agreements about oaths, lies, and declarations, out of fear of being tricked again.  But these things become their own weapon that humans wield.  Humans sprawl, they work with concerted effort, and they establish and mutate patterns.  They subjugate the travelers as in Verona’s story, and crowd out the hunters in Lucy’s, and that becomes a means of establishing a pattern that bends yet more to their desires.  Language changes and new languages emerge, and texts are reinterpreted.”

“And the seal thing?” Verona asked.

“The Seal of Solomon, as it exists now, was essentially intended as one last concession.  Or it was meant to be the last.  A binding that would not be mutated further, that would be universal enough that it could be trusted by the Other, instead of having hooks and more traps attached to it.  And as part of it, there was a deal that practitioners would manage the affairs of Others but select, powerful Others would have some say over the movements and dealings of Practitioners.  Lords and judges.  Roles above all other things.”

“Bringing us full circle,” Lucy said.

“Why Kennet in particular, then?” Avery asked.

“I chose it because it was far enough from any Lords, it had no active practitioners, but for one young man who lived a short travel away, who had no higher aspirations than impressing his friends.  Yet it was civilized enough that there was no risk I would become de-acclimatized from civilization and humanity.”

“And you all seem to have reasons to want to avoid being bound, or to avoid practitioners,” Lucy said.

“So it appeared for a long time.  I wonder at the other motives, now,” Miss mused.

“The fact they moved the furs tells us a lot,” Lucy said.  “Suspiciously a lot.”

Lucy hesitated.  She looked at the others.

“They used a car to move stuff around.  That narrows down the suspect pool to people who drive.  Charles has no license or car, and if he had a car it’d probably get taken away or stolen.”

“Possible.  Our protection keeps many things from plaguing him, but it’s more likely than with most.”

“Edith doesn’t seem to drive.  Matthew had to pick her up, on several occasions, including the night of the Carmine Beast’s death and when we interviewed them.  And he’s done all the driving.”

“And Faerie don’t drive, or nightmares,” Avery added.

“They don’t.  Cars are a kind of machination few Fae embrace.”

“Hungry Choir’s dealt with.  We did that, by the way,” Lucy stated.

“Goblins are… it’s hard to picture them driving.  So we really only have Matthew and John, and Matthew’s looking pretty telling.”

“Especially,” Verona jumped in as soon as Lucy was done, “when John is in a position to take the role anyway.”

“He has the motive, the means, the opportunity.  We know they used summoning stuff to make the Choir.”

“You may know, but this is new information to me.”

“Yeah,” Lucy said.  “Yalda was at the root of it.”

“Ah,” Miss said.  “I thought her dealt with and disposed of.”

“Apparently not,” Avery said.

Lucy nodded.  “Matthew makes the most sense as the central figure.  Then people like Maricica, Edith, the Choir, and maybe Charles as accomplices.  Though that’s based on a coin turning up in a few ways, instead of anything concrete.”

“We should have until the end of summer,” Verona said.  “But that timeline might get compressed if things stay as bad as they are.  And it’s going to be hectic if there’s a civil war at the Institute.”

“I hope to be back by then,” Miss told them.  “I will help you however I can, which is likely to be indirect.  I only have to find my way out.”

“You can’t come with us now?” Avery asked.  “Just follow us out?”

Miss tested the connections to the other places she’d passed through.  To progress risked unraveling her.  Or worse, defining her.

“Bummer,” Avery said.

“I don’t miss you at all,” Snowdrop said.  “You’re stupid and uncozy and not mom-ish or good at explaining Lost stuff.  You made the world seem really stupid, weird, and scary when I was already having a bad night.”

“Pretty much what she said,” Verona said.

“I hope to return and tell you everything you want to know, Snowdrop.  To do that, I should carry on, and you should go to your class.”

“Good luck, Miss,” Lucy said.

She adjusted her footing.  The connections that pulled at her pulled her back to that gutter of a region that didn’t want to let her go.  She had a glimpse of the girls resuming their journey, jumping and bounding through the low-gravity darkness.

The ballerina in blue followed.  A friend from her prior escape attempt.  A good person to have with her now.  The ballerina had her own tethers, and when called on, would slip into a role.

She was pulled through dizzying images, past scenes and symbols, and landed hard on dusty tile.

She stood, and she got her bearings.  There was a long hallway, and blue lights shone on a password entry keypad on a door that was bound in seatbelts.

In an indent on the floor, a cast-off shirt button lay within.  Three more were on the windowsill.  She gave those a wide berth.

It was night, and the hallway was dusty, heavy with the smell of drying paint.  The walls were textured white plastic sheets, opaque, but had cracked in places.  Behind them were newspapers without words, only faded pictures.

Within the rooms to her left were configurations of computers, heaping, with everything in the wrong place.  A monitor with keyboard keys filling its ‘screen’, a mouse with a flat pane showing flickering images.  A keyboard with three balls set in it.

To her left, ferris wheels turned against the night sky.

She found the clue she had marked with a ‘Y’, now a tear on a piece of newspaper, and pressed her hand to it.  It felt warm.

Did the papers that blew in the wind from the vents move as she touched it?

She adjusted her touch, stroking, then holding a hand against it.

After fifteen seconds, the papers were sucked into a vent.

One step forward.  A trap put out of the way.

There was the arch of computer parts, with a shirt button on the floor.

She ignored that.  Passing through would bring a Ferris wheel right to her.

She walked down the hall to the cracked window, and she went looking.  For the school and for the girls.

She remained very still, poised, as she watched and waited.

To see them arrive at school.  To find their way to the classroom, exhausted from a night spent away.  Verona collapsed dramatically into Lucy’s lap, feigning that she was falling asleep, and Avery, inaudible to Miss, joked about something.

Lucy picked up Snowdrop, now in opossum form, and placed her over Verona’s face, where she latched on.  Verona laughed, her breath making the fur lift up and drop, but she didn’t remove the animal.

The Ballerina in Blue waited patiently, looking over her shoulder.

“Help me find my way, old friend?” she asked.

The ballerina, facing the other way, nodded.

Miss set to searching, unsure how the girls would do, but confident she’d picked good ones.

In too many places, the fundamental arrangements were breaking down.  The role of Other and Practitioner.  The oversight, the expectations, and the state of the longest-running patterns.  Kennet and the Carmine Beast would not be the straw that broke the camel’s back.  But there had been no such straw with the way Solomon and his ilk had established their precedent.  Kennet’s situation could one day be a parable and precedent both.  It mattered more than those girls could grasp.

She would put that ‘matter’ in their hands.