Novel - Arcanum 101 (with Rosemary Edghill) (17 page)

Kenny looked at Tomas, raising an eyebrow. He didn’t say anything because they were surrounded by teachers, but his expression was plain: oh yeah, like he thinks he’s going to get over with any of them?

Tomas had to agree. Devlin was so convinced he was caca fuego, that and if he’d just lose the attitude, he’d probably do a lot better with the ladies…

“I believe I shall take a short constitutional in order to settle my repast,” Mr. Moonlight said, getting to his feet. “Yourself, Bard?”

“I think I’ll stay with our ride,” Eric said. “I’m pretty sure nothing will happen to it here, but…”

“But Triple-A charges a wicked premium for those Underhill service calls,” Ms. Smith finished. She got to her feet as well. “Go on, guys. Check the place out. How often do you get a chance to visit Elfland?”

“True,” Kenny admitted. “C’mon, Tomas.”

“Try to be back at the wagon in about half an hour,” Eric said.

The two of them walked off under the trees. Tomas stared up into the leafy canopy. Only tiny chinks of daylight filtered down.

“Not much like home, is it?” Kenny asked.

“Yours or mine?” Tomas said, smirking.

“Well, anyone’s. But I was thinking, this is a lot more like Seattle than it is like Texas.”

“Yeah,” Tomas said. “I—Oh, wait. Is that a house?”

Both boys stared at something nestled in the roots of one of the enormous unfamiliar trees. It wasn’t a whole house, but it was the front of one—in miniature. A shingled roof and a door with a tiny brass knocker. The whole thing couldn’t be more than six inches high.

“Yes-s-s-s…” Kenny said cautiously.

Tomas stared up into the branches of the tree. He couldn’t see anything, but he had the strong feeling that something was watching them.

“Do you want to find out what comes out if we knock?” he asked.

“No,” Kenny said hastily. “Not really.”

As they moved on, Tomas could swear he heard high-pitched giggling behind him.

They didn’t—exactly—see anything else as they walked through the forest. Not if you didn’t count birds in more colors than a whole box of Crayolas, and all kinds of flowers. Some were twining up the trees in vines, some were growing on bushes, and some were just growing right out of the ground. They all looked… fancy.

By mutual consent, neither of them went very far into the forest. Tomas was hoping to find the water he’d heard earlier—it had sounded like a waterfall to him—but although he could hear it, it never seemed to get any closer.

“I think we’d better turn back,” he finally said.

Kenny was staring dreamily at a big yellow flower about the size of his head. It smelled a little like bananas and a little like grapefruit—which was better when you smelled it than it was to describe. He didn’t react.

Tomas poked him. Hard.

“Hey!” Kenny said. “What’d you do that for?”

“Because I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life out here watching you stare at una flor, amigo.”

“Um… yeah.” Kenny took a deep breath. “Let’s get back.”

When they got back out to the meadow—Tomas breathed an unconscious sigh of relief—he could see that the three teachers were already waiting by the wagon.

“I don’t suppose you saw the others?” Eric asked, when Tomas reached him.

Tomas shook his head. “We were over there.” He pointed.

“And they are there,” Mr. Moonlight said, pointing in turn.

Eric sighed faintly. “Let’s go get ‘em. C’mon.”

The five of them crossed the meadow and walked into the trees for a short distance. The sound of the water that Tomas had heard before got louder.

Suddenly the trees opened out again. Not into a meadow this time; it was more of a clearing, an open space about the size of one of the classrooms back at St. Rhia’s. At one corner of it there was a rocky pool, and a backsplash down which water was bubbling and spilling just as if this were an ornamental fountain in somebody’s back yard.

The other four were here. And they weren’t alone.

Devlin was lying with his head in some girl’s lap. She had short pink hair, and her ears were even longer than Mr. Moonlight’s. They were also furry like a donkey’s, and when Tomas looked down at her feet, he saw that she didn’t have feet, she had hooves.

Megan was sitting with something that looked like a giant German Shepherd in her lap. She was scratching it behind the ears, and talking to it adoringly. Only dogs weren’t supposed to be bright blue. And they weren’t supposed to have hands and feet instead of paws.

Chloe was sitting with a harp in her lap while two pretty-normal looking girls in brushed and braided her hair. At least, they were normal-looking except for the fact that they both had enormous butterfly wings growing out of their backs.

And Destiny was sitting staring into a mirror that was being held up for her by what looked pretty much like a kid Tomas’s own age—although considering all the others, Tomas bet he wasn’t. All he was wearing was a bunch of vines and flowers and a loincloth like Tarzan. When he saw them, he turned his head and smiled at them over his shoulder. Tomas saw that his teeth were pointed like a cat’s, and his eyes were all green, no white at all.

“Well, this is going to be fun,” Ms. Smith said. She didn’t sound particularly upset.

“Okay,” Eric said, turning to Kenny and Tomas. “These are Low Court Sidhe, meaning they’re tied to this Node Grove. They’ve englamoured your friends in order to keep them with them. What are you going to do about it?”

What am I going to do about it? Tomas thought in exasperation. “Guys! Hey, guys! Time to go!”

The dark-haired boy holding the mirror laughed, and the butterfly-winged girls giggled. The whatever-it-was with the hooves just ignored him, and so did the pink-haired girl and the big blue dog.

And so did his classmates.

He walked into the clearing and grabbed Devlin by the ankles, dragging him out of Pink Hair’s lap. Devlin didn’t react, but when Tomas got him to the edge of the clearing, he struggled free—getting to his feet and elbowing Tomas painfully in the ribs in the process—and made his way back to his new girlfriend’s side, cuddling up to her again. She looked up at Tomas and snickered, flicking her ears back and forth like an irritated cat.

“Well, now you know that won’t work,” Eric said calmly. “As long as they’re englamoured, they’ll just want to stay here.”

“So… break the spell?” Tomas asked. Eric nodded.

And it was obvious that the teachers were going to leave it to him and Kenny to figure out how to do that. He looked at Kenny.

“We could, um, throw holy water on them?” Kenny suggested.

“Nice try,” Ms. Smith said, “but they aren’t vampires. And I don’t think you’ve got any holy water, either.”

“We could, um, burn down their grove,” Tomas suggested tentatively.

“Well, yes,” Eric said. “That would certainly work. But it might be a little extreme.”

“It would kill them, wouldn’t it?” Tomas said.

“It would,” Mr. Moonlight said. “The Sidhe of the Low Courts are bound to their Groves. They have no other habitation.”

Tomas thought about that for a few minutes. He thought about how much he was looking forward to going to the Mall tomorrow, and what it would be like not to ever be able to leave St. Rhia’s, ever. And the Sidhe were supposed to live for a really really long time…

“So I guess they get really bored, right?” he said after a moment.

“Perhaps they do,” Mr. Moonlight said, in tones that indicated he’d never thought about it before.

“Kenny,” Tomas said. “Get the mirror.”

Kenny looked puzzled—just for a moment—then smiled. He reached out his hand, and the mirror shivered in the dark boy’s hand—and then rose up into the air.

The boy snatched at it, but Kenny swooped it out of reach. He made it fly all around the clearing, swooping and sailing, but after that first failed grab, the dark boy simply sat back and watched it, a smile of delight on his face.

At last Kenny brought the mirror to himself.

“Do you want it back?” Tomas asked. He was hoping to trade the mirror for Destiny.

“I can get another,” the dark boy said, shrugging. “Make it fly again.”

“What’s he so excited about?” Kenny whispered. “He’s got magic. He can make dozens of mirrors fly.”

“He can’t make them fly without magic, though,” Eric said.

“Hey,” Tomas said, getting an idea. “Look. We want our friends back. We’ll make the mirror fly again in exchange for them. And other stuff, too.”

“You would bargain with us for your friends’ lives?” the dark haired boy asked. His eyes gleamed.

Kenny opened his mouth to say something. Tomas kicked him. If there was one thing Tomas knew something about, it was cutting a deal with bangers and not getting skinned. He’d done it for years back in El Paso, when he’d had a skill that everybody had wanted, and had used it to buy his safety and freedom and not get dragged into any of the gangs.

He shrugged, feigning disinterest. “I just want you to let them go. Got stuff to trade, you know?”

“What “stuff?’” The dark haired boy looked interested now.

“We’ll make your mirror fly again.”

“Not enough,” the boy said quickly.

“Did I say that was all?” Tomas held out his hand, palm up. He concentrated, and a jet of fire leaped up from his palm.

Whoa!

Ms. Smith had been right about everything being… stronger… here. He’d only meant to make a little flame. She’d said it wouldn’t affect psions, only mages, but he was more nervous than he wanted to let on. This was no time to lose control, though.

The flame collapsed and died.

“Do it again!” the boy cried. All five of the Sidhe were watching him now.

“If we’ve got a deal,” Tomas said.

“One of them,” the boy said, grinning.

What else have I got that they want?

He shrugged off his backpack and rummaged through it.

“No candy bars,” Ms. Smith said in a low voice. “The chocolate’ll kill ‘em.”

Tomas nodded. “I got genuine Earth sandwiches. I got potato chips. I got bottled water.”

Kenny had gotten the idea and was going through his pack as well. “Pretzels,” he said. “Jelly beans. Granola bars—no chocolate in those. Raisins. And, um, sunglasses.”

“I’ll go get the other packs,” Ms. Smith said.

A few minutes later, everything they’d brought with them that contained neither chocolate nor caffeine that was spread out on one of the picnic blankets—including two paperback novels, a Frisbee, and a bright pink boonie hat. The Sidhe had abandoned their new playmates—who were still sitting, entranced, in the middle of the clearing—to inspect the goods. Tomas couldn’t decide which of them was the weirdest—he was pretty sure it was a tie between the pink-haired girl with the hooves and the bright blue dog-thing.

He kept hoping that one of the teachers would step in and take over, but by now he’d realized that he and Kenny were pretty much on their own here. And that Kenny was expecting him to figure things out.

The dark haired boy reached for one of the books.

“Uh-uh,” Tomas said firmly. “Not until we’ve got a deal.” He glanced at Kenny and wiggled his fingers. Kenny got the idea. The book rose up off the blanket and hovered.

“You’ll give us all this? You’ll make fire again? You’ll make the mirror fly again?” the boy asked guardedly.

“You give us back our friends—all of them—”

“Undo,” Ms. Smith murmured in a low voice.

“—and undo what you did to ‘em,” Tomas added, “and yeah.”

The boy still hesitated.

“Seriously,” Kenny said. “This is cool stuff.” He picked up the Frisbee—Tomas wondered who’d brought it, because it hadn’t been in Kenny’s backpack—and skimmed it across the clearing with an expert flick of the wrist. It arced upward, turning, and came back again. Kenny reached up and caught it—no telekinesis required.

“You’ll have to practice with it,” Kenny said, shrugging, “but it will work for anybody. No magic.”

But they hadn’t closed the deal yet, Tomas could tell. What else did he have to sweeten the pot with?

“And here, okay?” Tomas said, untying the red do-rag from around his head. “This, too.” He held it out.

The boy took it, and tied it around his own head the way he’d seen Tomas wearing it. It looked weird with the flowers and the loincloth, but the boy didn’t seem to care. “A bargain, then, Child of Earth,” he said. “Now, make my mirror fly.” He held it out.

Tomas glanced back toward the three teachers, but from their expressions, he and Kenny were still doing okay. He nodded. “Done deal.”

For the next half hour, Kenny made the mirror swoop around the clearing like some kind of demented bird as Tomas juggled fireballs—small ones. It took every ounce of the control he’d learned in those weeks of tedious practice sessions with Mr. Bishop, and when he got tired, he switched to flashier—but easier—moves: lighting up his fingertips like candles, and then walking a single flame across the backs of his hands, the way a stage magician would manipulate a coin. His audience watched closely, and Tomas had the feeling they’d be willing to watch, well, forever.

“The bargain is fulfilled,” Mr. Moonlight said at last—to Tomas’s great relief. “Now you must fulfill your end of it.”

“Take them,” the boy said, sounding bored. And between one moment and the next, he and the other four Sidhe… weren’t there any more.

“Oh man,” Kenny said plaintively.

“Welcome to Underhill, hotshot,” Ms. Smith said, smirking. She walked over and began folding up the picnic blanket. It was empty now; its contents had vanished with the Sidhe.

“Hey!” Devlin had jumped to his feet. “Megs, I just saw a girl with wings! And—” Abruptly he realized that he was very far from alone. He stared at the others in confusion.

“So was this some kind of a test?” Tomas asked Eric. He hadn’t decided whether he was angry that he’d been tested, or pleased to have passed.

“Yes and no,” Eric answered, shrugging just a little. “No, because it isn’t anything we planned to have happen, but yes, because it’s the kind of thing that does happen Underhill, and you need to know what to do if something like this does.”

“So… what if we couldn’t get them out, you know? I mean—” Tomas said hesitantly.