Mulberry Wands (30 page)

Scout slipped under the door and ran across
the room. He climbed up the bed and from there jumped to the
desk.

“Are you almost finished?” Scout glanced
around as though he expected a cat to appear out of nowhere. “I
don’t feel safe here. Have you gotten the spell yet?”

“It doesn’t work that way. I’ve never done a
spell to make a cat lose her second sight permanently. I’ll have to
take a spell that’s similar and adapt it, and that takes time.
Okay, how about an obedience spell? Obedience spells are very easy,
and can be permanent. I’ve never done one, as they’re completely
and totally illegal, but I doubt the MIB will notice if I do it on
a cat. The only trouble is that I don’t speak cat.”

“We could make her obey us?” Scout sounded
awed, as though he just unwrapped a death-ray under the Christmas
tree. “To think what we could do if we had this hell-beast at our
command.”

Susan wasn’t sure she wanted to be
responsible for war among the translators. “Um, let me keep
looking.”

Scout didn’t get as bored as Darius did,
which is good, because by the time she figured out what she was
going to do, assembled the ingredients, made the ointment, and
figured out a way of carrying it, it was quite late. As she and
Scout slipped back outside, she heard the newspaper boy throwing
papers against doors, the faint shushing of sprinklers, and a few
early-risers warming their cars up before going to work.

They dashed across the lawn and climbed back
inside the pile of branches.

“You were gone so long we considered coming
in after you,” Shaluun said from the darkness.

“Yeah, it took me a while to figure out what
I was going to do,” Susan said. She held up the old film canister
that held the ointment in it. (She hadn’t wanted to sacrifice it,
as she didn’t get any more now that she had switched to digital,
but film canisters sealed well and didn’t weigh much.) After her
eyes adjusted to the dim light, she looked around. Two more
warriors had arrived, people she didn’t know. “Where’s Tuusit?”

“He didn’t want to be here for this,” Noruu
said.

“What are you talking about?” Susan knew
something bad was going to happen, but she also knew she was
outnumbered. “I have the ointment here that will disable Sphinx. I
just have to get it into her. Just dip your spears into it, and
then when you see her again, stick her with it.”

“You are trying to trick us,” one of the
strangers said. He sat cross-legged nearer the center of the pile.
He had long hair streaked with gray, and one of his eyes was
scarred. “We are not like Tuusit, to believe huge-man lies.”

“I don’t know who you are, asshole, but I’m
not a liar,” Susan said. She knew it was a bad idea to call armed
men “asshole” but she was cranky and tired and she just wanted to
go home. She jerked her thumb at him. “Who is this guy?”

“He’s Yoonu. He’s the, um,” Scout looked up,
as though searching for the right term. “He’s the prosecuting
attorney, and he’s here to see that the sentence is carried
out.”

“What sentence?”

Noruu, Shaluun, and the other stranger were
pounding a long wooden spike into the ground. Attached to one end
were several long pieces of sinew, so tightly wound that it looked
like it had been wetted and allowed to shrink.

“Tuusit didn’t tell you?” Runook said. “The
council determined that the cat’s owner would be responsible for
Garaant’s murder.”

“No, he said that I’d have to help subdue it,
that we were going to figure out how to keep Sphinx from killing
anyone else. What the hell do you think I went in there for?” Susan
said, using the film canister to point up at the house. “I’ve got
it right here. This will work. I know what I’m doing.”

“I hope, for Tuusit’s sake, that you do,”
Runook said. “He’s fallen in love with you. If you survive, he
plans to wed you.”

“She will not survive,” Yoonu said.

Wed her? Then he knew all along that they
never intended to reverse the spell. “So that thing about making me
big again was just a lie?”

“Make you big again?” Runook laughed, not
happily, just a short scoff of mirth at her gullibility. “We have
no magic. You can’t get big again, not unless you negotiate with
the Encanto mage yourself to reverse the spell.”

“If she survives. But first, she must disable
the beast,” Shaluun said.

He grabbed one of her arms. She tried to
struggle, but Runook grabbed her other arm and one of the strange
men grabbed her legs and lifted her. She knew she couldn’t get
away, but she kicked him anyway, because he was a jerk and he
deserved to get kicked. She kept kicking.

They tied the sinews around her ankles, quite
snugly, and coated them with something that looked like sap. In the
early dawn light she could see the sap turn opaque, as though it
were drying hard. Oh, great, how was she going to untie that?

Scout set the film canister of ointment next
to her.

“How the hell am I supposed to get the
ointment into her if I don’t have your help?”

“I’ll get you something,” Scout said. He ran
back to the branch pile, broke off a twig from the branches and
used his knife to whittle a point on one end. It was half the
length of a toothpick, and not much thicker. Yoonu protested, but
Scout handed to her anyway. “She should be able to defend
herself.”

“Garaant didn’t have a chance to defend
himself.” Yoonu pulled it out of her hands.

“She’s just a woman,” Shaluun pointed out,
softly. He was looking towards the house, like he expected the cat
to appear any moment and didn’t want to be there when it did. “Give
it to her and let’s go.”

The asshole prosecutor frowned, then handed
her the stick. “You will not survive,” he whispered to her.

“Wanna bet?” Susan said.

“Perhaps the cat will not eat you. I grant
you that possibility.” He clenched his spear and bared his teeth, a
fierce and angry grin. “Nevertheless, I swore that I would avenge
Garaant. You will not survive.”

The warriors melted into the pile of branches
as the pink rays of dawn illuminated the frost-touched grass. Susan
tugged at the stake, as they no doubt knew she would. She thought
about digging with the twig, but one look at the stick and it was
obvious that it would snap off with very little pressure.

She tugged again at the sinews, but they
weren’t budging. She tried chewing them, and made some progress,
but it would take her hours to chew through all of the strands.
They’d have to be cut.

Why did she have to be so trusting? She had a
spell of negation, she was fairly sure she could get it to reverse
the Encanto mage’s spell. Or she could pawn her emergency ten
dollar gold coins and buy a reversal from the mage herself. But
noooo, she had to go and do the right thing, the goody-goody
thing.

She tugged again at the sinews, feeling tears
prick her eyes at the injustice of it all. None of this was her
fault. None of it. She bit at the sinew again, more out of
frustration than from any hope that it would do any good. No good
deed goes unpunished. Even with Jess and Christopher gone, their
ashes in Tupperware in Maggie’s trailer, she was still paying for
the mistakes of others.

Tugging didn’t break them at all, it just
hurt her hands. She let the sinews fall.

Darius would probably let Sphinx outside on
his way to school. She might not have much time.

She opened the canister and scooped out a
handful of ointment. She put some on her hair, on the stick, and on
her body, just in case Sphinx ate her. She was pretty sure it had
to get into the cat’s bloodstream directly, otherwise she would
have just put it on her food. If she had known they were going to
betray her, she could have just made Zoë or Darius hold the cat
down while she poked her with coated sewing pins. Not that Zoë
would have liked that, but it would have been better than this.

Or she could have just worked on a reversal,
and made herself big, and then what were they going to do to
her?

Well, they’d kill her in her sleep,
probably.

Susan yawned. The cat wasn’t here yet. What
if Zoë kept the cat in her room? If she had to wait too long before
the cat got let out, the asshole prosecutor might get tired of
waiting and hurry justice along a little. Of course then Sphinx
wouldn’t be bespelled, but maybe he cared more about avenging his
friend than in preventing more deaths.

Just a woman. Jeez, what a bunch of pricks.
Well, she’d show them what ‘just a woman’ could do.

Paul had already dressed and unlocked the
door, even though it was eleven a.m. and in the middle of his sleep
cycle. Anything that was serious enough to bring an owl to see him
mid-morning was serious enough to get dressed for. He opened the
door to see that she had taken human form. She wasn’t large, less
than five feet tall, with brown Central American features. Her
black eyes had plenty of crow’s feet around them, and her long
black hair held streaks of grey.

“You’re—” the owl who had taught Fallon how
to shapeshift, Fallon and many others. She was one of the oldest
Sunwards, old enough that they said she met the very first Sunward
when she was still a chick. Paul swallowed, feeling a little
star-struck. “You are welcome here, senpai.”

“I’ve shapeshifted enough that I’ve found it
necessary to take a human name. You may call me Xochitl.” She had a
soft voice, quiet, and with very little inflection. She didn’t have
as much of an accent as Fallon did, but she still didn’t sound
quite human.

“I thought you lived, um, elsewhere.” Paul
had always heard she was a snowy owl.

Of course, he had also heard she could fade
into starlight, that she could take the form of a dog convincingly
enough to fool its master, and that she could bend the light of the
lady enough to make an enemy’s lands fall into shadow so that the
plants died and the prey fled. She had been named Raylight so often
that she no longer cast a shadow.

“I do live elsewhere,” she said. Xochitl
stepped over the threshold and shut the door. “I come here for the
rumblers. Everyone knows the prey in this valley are excellent for
shapeshifters. Some can’t shapeshift with any other prey. This is
why it is so important that we protect them.”

“Right,” Paul said.

“You must find and kill the mage who’s making
wands. She lives sun, and sunrise from here.” She tilted her head.
“I mean south and southeast, that is. She and the dead mage have
already taken so many that the population will not recover for
years. Stop her as soon as possible. Trick her into leaving her
wards, then strike her down.”

“Which mage is it?” He had a sick feeling it
was Susan’s mom. He was almost certain of it. He didn’t want to
murder anyone, especially not the mom of the girl he was sweet on.
He was pretty sure that killing a girl’s mom completely ruined your
chances with her.

“She is … I shall discover.” Xochitl stepped
closer to the window. She reached out and let her hands soak in the
sunlight pouring in the window. She was connecting with the lady,
to learn what she could from other Sunwards who were in the light.
He couldn’t do that very well yet. She turned back to him. “She is
the mother of the mage you were investigating.”

“Maggie Stillwater.”

“You know her.” Xochitl made it halfway
between a question and a statement.

“I can find her address,” Paul said. “But I’m
not going to kill her, not if there’s another way.”

“You will not betray the lady.”

“I’ll get her to stop killing our prey.”

“She’s a mage,” Xochitl said, sounding
exasperated, the first emotion she’d shown. “You cannot control
mages, and sometimes you cannot even intimidate them. You can only
kill them. Do not cross her wards, or you will die as well.”

“As well? What haven’t you told me?”

“She has a twinge trap that has felled many
of our sisters. Beware, kouhai,” she said, using the polite term
for a Sunward of younger rank. He rarely heard such a polite term.
Usually they called him ‘chick’.

“I can save them too.”

“It is not possible. They are lost.”

Xochitl stepped into the sunlight and let
herself vanish.

Paul grabbed his keys and wallet and started
walking, using his umbrella to keep in shade enough so he didn’t
fade. It was a beautiful day, clear, breezy and cool enough that he
was glad of his jacket, though it was warm in the sun. He passed a
few other pedestrians on the way, some of whom said hello, even
though he was a stranger. At a strip mall, he saw an inflated Santa
and realized with a start that Christmas was just a few days away.
Christmas. Was Susan going to ask him to spend it with her? He
hadn’t spent a holiday with other people in decades. It took him
about forty minutes to walk to Maggie’s trailer park.

He saw his first petrified owl lying
underneath a bush just outside Maggie’s trailer park. She was
breathing, just barely, but he couldn’t do first aid on an owl and
he couldn’t talk to her, so he just left her there. He found the
next one in the bed of a pickup truck. She was also stiff and flat,
wings splayed out at a strange angle as though she’d fallen dead
out of the sky. She was alive, but she was also fully in the sun
and hadn’t vanished yet. She was a member of the parliament, not
one that he knew well, but she had some sway. This must have been a
big deal for them if she was willing to come herself.

Wait a minute. If he was where the fallen
owls were, that meant he was also within the ward. Paul froze,
still staring into the bed of the truck. Why wasn’t he affected?
Maybe it only attacked flying creatures? Was that why Xochitl had
survived while the others hadn’t? Maybe she had sent him because he
was expendable.

No, don’t be so cynical, he told himself. She
said she sent him so he could trick Maggie into leaving her wards.
Yeah, fat chance of that. He kept staring at the owl. She wasn’t
moving. She was barely even breathing.