Tangle Box (17 page)

“Hmmm.” Questor rubbed his beard thoughtfully. “Yes, perhaps. This really works?” he asked again, looking Abernathy directly in the eye, taking hold of the hand that held the crystal.

Abernathy moved the crystal away, tightening his grip on it.

“Of course, I have one for you, too, Questor,” Horris Kew advised quickly. He reached back and closed the lid to the trunk. “These are all yours now.” He yawned widely. “Well, enough talk. You should both be in bed, resting for tomorrow’s challenges. I have tired you out with all this, I
am sure. If you could spare a pallet, I would be most grateful. In the morning I will be off again, waiting to hear …”

He stopped. “Unless,” he went on, as if he had just thought of it, “unless you would consider letting me help in some small way with the distribution of the crystals?”

He smiled at them hopefully and waited for an answer.

For two days Willow traveled due west through the lake country with Edgewood Dirk, heading for the fairy mists and the invisible path that would take them out of Landover and into Ben’s world. Dirk led the way, mostly without seeming to do so, content to keep pace or even follow, moving to the fore only when her path varied from the one he had chosen. He proceeded in leisurely fashion, dictating the pace by his refusal to be hurried, behaving as if time were inconsequential and their journey no more than a stroll through the park on a sunny afternoon.

Willow had encountered Edgewood Dirk only once before, and almost everything she knew about him she had learned from Ben. Dirk had been Ben’s constant companion during the search for the black unicorn after Meeks, older brother of Questor Thews and the former Court Wizard of Landover, had tricked Ben into believing he had lost the medallion that gave him the power and authority to be King. Bereft of his identity, spurned by his friends as an
impostor, and replaced on the throne by Meeks, Ben had been turned out into the wilderness and left to die. But the fairies, for reasons known only to them, had sent Edgewood Dirk to help him discover the truth about what had been done. Dirk had accompanied him in his wanderings, offering enigmatic cat advice and a sort of vaguely defined direction for the once-King to follow. Ben was tracking Willow, who in turn was tracking the black unicorn, and matters had climaxed in a violent confrontation between Dirk and Meeks that had proved the catalyst to Ben’s recovery.

That had been almost two years ago. No one had seen or heard from Edgewood Dirk since. But now, here he was suddenly, and again he had been sent by the fairies, and again no one but the fairies really knew why.

Edgewood Dirk was a fairy being himself, though one of the more independent ones, as much cat as anything, and therefore likely to do exactly as he pleased despite anyone else’s wishes, which made it very hard to determine his purpose in events. He had proved that beyond anyone’s doubt during his time with Ben. Dirk was a prism cat, a creature possessed of a very rare sort of magic. He could transform himself from flesh and blood to a crystalline as hard as iron that allowed him to capture light and transform it into a deadly fire. Dirk used this power sparingly, but with great confidence. However distant and aloof Dirk appeared, however removed from what was happening around him, he was no one to fool around with.

So Willow accompanied him with some sense of assurance that if trouble threatened, Dirk was probably its equal. She would have preferred to have Ben with her, but that option had already been eliminated by the Earth Mother. Sometimes you took what you could get. Willow was experiencing enough uncertainty about her quest that she was grateful for any sort of company.

Dirk, of course, seemed indifferent to the entire matter.

“Were you sent because of Ben?” she asked him their first night out. They sat together before a small fire that Dirk had insisted be built to ward off some imaginary chill. She had arranged the deadwood, and he had set it afire. The beginnings of a working partnership, she had thought.

Dirk was licking one paw diligently. “I wasn’t sent. I am never sent. I go where I choose.”

“Excuse me,” she apologized. “Why did you choose to come, then?”

Lick, lick, lick. “I can’t remember, really. It seemed like a good idea, I guess.” Lick, lick.

“Can you tell me where we are going?”

“West,” the cat said. Lick, lick.

“Yes, but …”

Dirk stopped preening and gave her his cat look, the one that suggested sly amusement, deep understanding, grave concern, and total amazement all at the same time. “Just one moment, please. You are losing me. Don’t
you
know where we’re going?”

She shook her head in confusion. “No, not really.”

He stared at her thoughtfully. “Oh, dear,” he said. “Oh, well. I guess we will just have to find our way as best we can.” And he went back to licking himself.

A little while later she grew brave enough to ask him again, taking a slightly different approach.

“We should reach the fairy mists by the day after tomorrow,” she advised cautiously. “Once there, what do we do?”

Dirk had finished his bath by now and was seated on a patch of grass close by the fire, paws tucked under himself, eyes closed.

The eyes opened to slits. “We pass through the mists into Holiday’s world.” The eyes closed.

“How do we do that?”

The eyes came open again, a bit wider. “What kind of question is that? I must say I will never understand humans.”

“I am a sylph.”

“Or sylphs.”

Willow’s lips tightened. “It is just that I am concerned for my baby. I am required to do these things to protect its birthing, but I do not know how I am to do them.”

Dirk regarded her with genuine interest. “Cats learn early on that very little is accomplished by worrying. Cats also know that things have a way of working out, even when the means are kept hidden from us. Best to deal with things as they arise, and let the future take care of itself.”

“That seems very shortsighted,” she ventured.

Dirk might have shrugged; it was hard to tell. “I am a cat,” he offered, as if that explained everything.

She didn’t talk to him about the matter again that night or all the next day, and so by nightfall when they had crossed out of the lake country and passed up into the foothills that bordered the fairy mists, she was surprised when he brought it up again of his own accord.

“Tomorrow morning, I will take you through the mists,” he
advised
as she worked on building the requisite evening fire. She had spread her cloak on the ground close by, and Dirk had taken a comfortable seat on it.

She looked over at him. “You can do that?” she asked.

“Of course I can do that,” he replied, sounding a bit put-upon. “I live there, remember? I know all the paths and passageways.”

“I suppose I just wasn’t sure what you could or couldn’t do.” She rocked back on her heels. “I didn’t know if fairy creatures could pass out of the mists anywhere or into any land. I thought it might be limited somehow.”

Dirk yawned. “You thought wrong. Cats can go anywhere. Nothing new in that.”

“Do you know where we will come out?” she pressed.

He thought it over a moment. “A city, I think. Does it matter?”

She felt her exasperation with him getting away from
her. “Yes, it does. I am going back to a world in which I once almost died. I am doing so against my will and for the sake of my child. I want to go there, do what I was sent to do, and leave again immediately. What are the chances of that happening?”

Dirk rose, stretched, and sat. “I haven’t the faintest idea.” He regarded her solemnly. “It all depends on you, I suppose.”

“Yes, but I don’t know where we are going,” she insisted. “I know I am supposed to gather soil from Ben’s world, but I don’t know where that soil is supposed to be found. It is a rather big world to be looking through, you know.”

“Well, I don’t know,” the cat said. “I have never been there. But everywhere is pretty much the same to a cat. I am quite certain we will find what we need without having to look too hard. I have a gift for uncovering secrets.”

She went back to building the fire, finished the job, stepped back, and looked over at him. “How many secrets do you know, Dirk?” she asked quietly. “Do you know secrets about me?”

The cat blinked. “Of course.”

“And about Ben?”

“Holiday? Yes, a few.”

“Can you tell them to me?”

“If I choose.” Dirk began washing himself. “But cats are secretive by nature and tell little of what they know. It is because no one listens to us, mostly. I spoke of that often to Holiday when I traveled with him last. He was like everyone else. I would tell him things, but he wouldn’t listen. I warned him that he was making a mistake, that cats know many things, but no one ever seems to pay attention. It was a mistake he should avoid, I cautioned.”

“I will listen, if you will tell me something,” Willow offered. “Tell me anything, Dirk. Any of your secrets. I know
so little of what is happening, and I am hungry for even a small bit of knowledge. Can you tell me something?”

Dirk looked at her, then began to wash. He licked himself fluffy and then licked himself smooth, stopping every now and then to see if she was still paying attention. He took his time with the job, but Willow waited patiently, refusing to become perturbed. Finally Dirk was finished, and turned his emerald gaze upon her.

“You are going to have a child,” he declared. “But matters will not work out as either you or Holiday expect them to. Expectations are dangerous things for parents to have, you know. Cats have none and are the better for it.”

She nodded. “We can’t help ourselves. Like not listening to cats.”

“I suppose that is true,” Dirk agreed. “A shame.”

“Tell me something more.”

Dirk narrowed his gaze. “Are you sure you want to hear what I have to say? I mean, that is part of the reason no one listens to cats.”

She hesitated. “Yes, I want to hear.”

“Very well.” He considered. “You and Holiday will be lost to each other for a time. In fact, you are lost to each other already. Didn’t you know?”

“The vision,” she said softly. “My mother’s vision.”

Dirk looked off into the growing dark. “You spend so much time wondering who you are, don’t you think? You flounder about, searching for your identity, when most of the time it is as plain as the nose on your face. You struggle with questions of purpose and need, and forget that the answers are found mostly inside yourselves.” He paused anew. “Cats are not included in that analysis. Cats don’t waste time wondering about such things. Cats just get on with the business of living.”

“Is the vision true, then?” she asked, trying to mask the growing sense of desperation she felt that something
terrible was happening to Ben, something beyond her control.

Dirk blinked. “What vision?”

“Is Ben in danger?” she pressed.

“How would I know?” Dirk growled, stretching once more. “Better step back from that deadwood.”

She did so, and Dirk shimmered and turned to crystalline in the fading twilight, gone from flesh and blood to liquid glass, drew in the glow of sunset, two early moons, and a scattering of stars, and sent fire lancing from his emerald eyes into the wood. The blaze burned hotly, and the prism cat transformed back again, settled himself down anew on Willow’s cloak, closed his eyes, and was instantly asleep.

Willow watched him for a time, then fell asleep as well.

She slept poorly, haunted by dreams of Ben and their child, of each being drawn away from her, stolen by invisible hands that wrapped about and pulled them from her side until nothing remained but the echo of her voice calling after them. There was an unspoken suggestion in her dream that somehow she was to blame for what had happened to them, that somehow she had failed them when they needed her most.

She had no appetite for breakfast, and since Dirk never showed any interest in food, they washed and were on their way up to the beginnings of the fairy mists shortly after sunrise.

The day dawned hot and still, the summer air a suffocating blanket that clung to the land even in the high country. Dew formed a slick upon the ground, and its dampness glimmered in the hazy first light. They climbed the rest of the way into the hills, found a narrows that led into a pass, and walked back toward the gray gloom of the mists.

They reached their destination in less than an hour and started in. No words passed between them as they did. Dirk
had taken the lead now, no longer content to leave matters to chance. He walked directly in front of the sylph, picking his way carefully over ruts, around stones, and across bare ground where lack of sunlight prevented any grasses from growing. They moved into the haze, following the trail until there ceased to be a trail and all the light from the rising sun had disappeared behind them and there was nothing but mist, swirling about them with relentless purpose, twisting first this way and then that, drawing the eyes to one side and then to the other, obscuring any sense of direction, any chance of keeping track of where they were going or from where they had come. Willow ignored the distracting movement, focusing her attention on Dirk, who sauntered along with his usual indifference, seeming to find his way as much by chance as by plan. He glanced neither left nor right and did not turn to see if she was following. He sniffed the air now and again, but otherwise showed no interest in their surroundings.

The minutes slipped away, but it was not clear to Willow how many of them passed. Time and place lost meaning, and everything took on a disturbing sameness. There was silence at first, deep and numbing, and then a series of small sounds, like the scuffling of forest animals in scrub or birds among leaves. After a time, the noises took on definition and began to suggest the presence of something else. Faces began to appear, just at the corners of her vision, just where they could be glimpsed but nothing more. The faces were sharp-featured and lean, with pointed ears and brows, and hair like trailing moss and spiky straw. Eyes as penetrating as an owl’s watched her pass. The fairy folk had come out to see her, to consider her, and perhaps to let her pass. She did not look at them, keeping her eyes fixed on the movement of her feet and on Edgewood Dirk. She did not look at them because she was frightened that if she did, she would be instantly lost.