Windblowne (11 page)

“That’s mine,” Oliver lied. “I made it, so hands off!”

Lord Gilbert shrugged. “Useless.” He tossed it aside on a bench and went back to digging around in Oliver’s pack. Oliver reached out carefully and took the handvane, slipping it onto his wrist. Then he went to the crimson kite, where it lay pinned under the microscope, and reached for it, too.

“Don’t touch,” Lord Gilbert warned without looking at Oliver. He gave the HM IV a meaningful tap.

Oliver looked longingly at the kite, a terrible sadness falling over him. It was hard to believe that this poor, ragged, torn thing had ever flown at all. It looked like
nothing more than an old piece of silk drooping over the edge of the workbench.

“Try to focus on the future, Oliver One,” said Lord Gilbert. “This is all for the greater good. My machine, once perfected, will be able to send more than just one child, or a few letters—it will be able to send anything and anyone across all the worlds!”

“But you’re killing the oaks,” Oliver pointed out. “And your grandnephew.”

Lord Gilbert waved a hand dismissively. “Yes, yes, there are inefficiencies. I have to draw power from the oaks on my mountain to run my machine. Soon they’ll all be dead. But there are more oaks on other worlds. I’ll build conduits between those worlds and this one. The oaks are limitless.”

“But you’re not just killing the oaks on this mountain,” said Oliver. “You’re killing all the oaks on all the worlds.”

“Nonsense, boy,” chuckled Lord Gilbert. “Don’t argue with me about things you couldn’t possibly understand.”

“You didn’t know you were killing oaks on other worlds?” said Oliver. “Don’t you know the oaks are all connected? That they’re all the same oaks?”

Lord Gilbert sighed heavily. “Don’t expect me to try
to explain these concepts to you. But what you describe is impossible.”

Oliver looked at him in disbelief. “You don’t even know how your own machine works, do you?”

“Of course I do,” huffed Lord Gilbert. “Phase resonance! Principles of quantum polyality!”

“You don’t know,” interrupted Oliver.

“I almost do,” said Lord Gilbert defensively.

“But Great-uncle Gilbert knows,” said Oliver with satisfaction. “And he wouldn’t tell you.”

Lord Gilbert gave a thin-lipped smile. “He’ll be willing to cooperate soon enough.”

“He’ll never cooperate with you,” said Oliver evenly.

“Two said that before, as well,” growled Lord Gilbert. “But look at him now.”

The argument was interrupted by a muffled explosion from outside. Lord Gilbert looked at the HM IV with alarm. “You!” He pointed at Two. “Train the other one. I’m needed outside.” He rushed from the laboratory.

Two and Oliver looked at each other. “Well,” said Two uncomfortably. “I suppose I should show you how the hunters work.”

He began repairing the damaged hunter with a
screwdriver, providing detailed explanations as he went. Oliver did not understand a word. But he nodded and said, “Ah, I see!” anyway. Now that he knew what Lord Gilbert was capable of, he didn’t want the old man to discover that Oliver could be no use to him at all.

He nodded, and pretended, until he realized that Two was saying something about the brain and a thought occurred to him. “Wait,” he said. “Doesn’t traveling between worlds with that machine hurt the hunters, too?”

Two pursed his lips. “Yes. It hurts them. It even kills them, eventually. That’s why Lord Gilbert needs constant replacements. He’s trying to build a whole fleet of a hundred hunters to guard him once he’s able to travel to other worlds.”

Oliver looked at the folded hunters in their fifty-six hutches. “Why aren’t these … uh …”

“Activated?” said Two. “He’s using the oaks for power. The drain from so many hunters would kill the oaks within hours. Once he can get to other worlds, he’s going to build conduits that will add their power to his machine. Then he can activate them all.”

“But—” Oliver began, when suddenly Lord Gilbert’s voice crackled from Two’s handvane.

“Two!”
ordered the scratchy voice.
“The damage is worse than I feared! The machine could explode and destroy the entire mountain. I need your assistance at once!”

“That sounds serious,” said Oliver.

“It will be fine,” said Two. He looked around the laboratory, then grabbed a small metal can. “This is an oilcan. The joints on each hunter have to be oiled. Can you handle that?”

“Of course,” said Oliver, irate.

“Good. Get started.” Two thrust the can at Oliver and hurried from the laboratory.

The oilcan appeared to have a lever on top of it. Oliver gave it an experimental squeeze, and a squirt of black fluid shot onto the floor. Quickly, Oliver set the can on a workbench and pulled a rug over the dark stain.

He looked around the laboratory. He had no intention of helping Lord Gilbert, but he had no idea how to escape from this terrible situation without the crimson kite. He needed to come up with some kind of plan. Maybe he didn’t understand the equipment in the lab, but he might find something he could use among Two’s kitesmithing tools.

He went upstairs to find Two’s bedroom, which he guessed would double as his workshop, just like Oliver’s did.

There was no mistaking the room. Everything in it—the bed, the chest, the workbench—matched the furniture in his own room at home. But there was one large and dispiriting difference. Instead of the broken spars and misshapen sails and other kitesmithing monstrosities that had littered his bedroom at home, this room was full of beautiful kites—some on racks, some hanging from the ceiling. Oliver sighed.

He fell miserably into the chair in front of the workbench. He supposed that one of these kites belonged to him now. His gaze wandered over them. The experience was eerily like looking into a daydream. Each of the magnificent kites was exactly like one he had imagined making but had failed in every attempt to construct. He thought he ought to feel happy that he now owned one of these kites. He tried to rouse himself with the idea that he could use it in the Festival. After all, it was
as if
he had made it. But that was no good.

Two had all of the talent that Oliver lacked. “Your
talents lie elsewhere,” Great-uncle Gilbert had said.
Sure
, thought Oliver.
All that means is that I don’t have any talents at all
.

He looked restlessly around the room. Two had probably built all of the other things that Oliver had imagined making, too.

He thought of his attempt at a secret drawer in his workbench. He looked carefully along one side of Two’s workbench. The wood appeared perfectly smooth, as though no door were there. But of course, Two had the talents that Oliver lacked. He would have built the drawer properly.

Oliver placed his fingers just where he had tried to put the hidden mechanism for opening his own drawer. And he pushed.

Click
.

Triumph. With a satisfying hiss, a secret drawer slid out from the workbench. Oliver felt a moment of intense jealousy, then lifted the lid on the drawer and looked inside—

And realized he just might escape after all.

Oliver reached into the secret drawer
. He withdrew a single oaken spar, still green and sticky and freshly cut. In the drawer remained a neat row of similar spars, all oak, whittled to various lengths. Oliver ran his fingers over their tacky surfaces. They felt as though they’d all been cut within the last few days.

He turned quickly to the kites and examined them one by one. None of them had spars of oak. No one used oak to make kite spars—no one except Great-uncle Gilbert. Yet Two had been crafting oaken spars and hiding them in a secret drawer in his workbench.

Oliver dropped onto the bed, thinking furiously. Two was a skilled kitesmith, and he must have noticed the odd oaken spars of the crimson kite right away. He must have
decided to make his own kite, modeled after Great-uncle Gilbert’s. For some reason, he had hidden all of this from his guardian.

Oliver didn’t know why, but he did know this—whatever Two was scheming, it was not going to happen. Oliver had a much better plan for these oaken spars: he would use them himself, to repair the crimson kite, and escape from this Windblowne.

He wanted to try the repair right away, but he had to wait for night, when Lord Gilbert and Two would be sleeping. So, with impatient reluctance, he replaced the sticky spars exactly as he found them, closed the secret door with a snap, and lay back on the bed to formulate every detail of his new plan. This time, he vowed, no mistakes, nothing left to chance, and no improvising. This plan had to work, absolutely, with no excuses.…

Oliver woke to the sound of footsteps downstairs. He sat up in a rush. He must have fallen asleep. After all, he hadn’t gotten much rest last night. A delicious smell wafted into the bedroom, and Oliver realized he was famished. He was wondering if he should go downstairs
and sullenly accept some lunch when he heard slow, soft steps coming up the stairs.

He buried himself under the blankets, not wanting his face to give away any hint of what he had discovered.

He heard the door open.

“I’m trying to sleep,” said Oliver, his voice muffled by the bedclothes.

A weary, raspy voice replied, “Sorry.”

Oliver sat up in surprise, spilling pillows. He had not recognized the voice. But it was Two, and he looked terrible. He was even thinner, as though he had lost another ten pounds in the last few hours. In his hands was a bowl, and he bent forward as he held it, as if it were a boulder.

“You don’t look like you’re going to make it,” observed Oliver.

“Thanks,” said Two. He shuffled to the workbench and placed the bowl there with trembling hands. “Here’s your lunch.”

“I’m not hungry,” Oliver said, staring ravenously at the bowl. He was not sure what it was—some kind of complicated stew—but it looked and smelled heavenly.
He didn’t think, though, that it would be a good idea to eat anything prepared by Lord Gilbert.

“It’s okay,” said Two, seeming to understand this. “I cooked it.”

Oliver sighed. “Of course you did.” Naturally, Two was also an expert chef. Oliver crawled out of bed and sat morosely at the bench. He took a bite. Yes, sadly, the stew was absolutely superb—far tastier than anything Oliver had ever managed to prepare.

Two flopped onto the bed. He stared dully at the ceiling, saying nothing.

Oliver, as he wolfed down the stew, watched him out of the corner of his eye. Two’s hands would not stop shaking, and the skin on his arms and legs was raw and red. “Why are you helping Lord Gilbert?” Oliver asked between mouthfuls, trying not to sound too concerned about it. “That machine is killing you.”

“I don’t have any choice,” said Two distantly.

“I would never work for him,” mumbled Oliver with as much determination as he could muster with a mouth full of stew. He swallowed. “I would never do anything he told me to do, no matter what!”

Two fixed him with a solemn stare. “What if helping
Lord Gilbert gave you a chance to have the thing you’d always wanted most in the world?”

This gave Oliver pause. What would he do? The thing that Oliver had always wanted most in the world was to win first prize at the Festival.

“I still wouldn’t do it,” said Oliver. He realized with surprise that this was actually true. He had hardly given the Festival a thought all day. Oliver felt vaguely disturbed by this radical reordering of his priorities.

“You have no idea,” said Two wearily.

“How do you know?” said Oliver in irritation. “What’s this thing you want so badly?”

Two kept staring, saying nothing. Then, to Oliver’s surprise, he asked, “What are your parents like?”

“My parents? Why would you want to know about them?”

Suddenly he remembered what Lord Gilbert had said about Two’s parents’ “disappearance.” Of course Two would be interested in Oliver’s parents.

Reluctantly, Oliver told Two about the sculptures that littered the yard, creating an eyesore and an embarrassment. He told Two about the long, boring books that almost no one read.

“They sound really nice,” said Two. He had an odd and wistful expression on his face.

“Well, they’re my parents.” Oliver didn’t know what else to say. The look on Two’s face was strange and a little scary. “What happened to yours?”

Two’s eyes had a faraway look. “Six years ago, Lord Gilbert began experimenting with a machine that would create free power for the whole town. He said he’d discovered unusual properties of the oaks and that he could draw energy from them without harming them.”

“That’s crazy,” said Oliver.

Two nodded. “A lot of people thought so, but back then everyone in Windblowne loved Lord Gilbert. He’s a brilliant inventor, and he’d made all kinds of devices that made life better for everyone. They were willing to let him try. I used to follow him around all the time, begging him to let me help him with his experiments. We were both inside the control booth the first time he switched on his new machine. But something went wrong. There was an enormous flash of light, and we were both knocked unconscious. When we came to, we discovered that everyone on the mountain had vanished. They were just … gone.”

“Everyone in the entire town?” said Oliver. He remembered his mother mentioning another leaf death that had occurred six years ago.

“Yes. After that, Lord Gilbert seemed to go a little mad—”

“A little?”

“A lot,” admitted Two. “He thought everyone had died. But he kept up his experiments with the machine. He convinced himself that if he could make the machine work, then the sacrifice was worth it. He had me help him wire up every oak on the mountain.”

“You mean those black strings?” said Oliver.

“Wires,” corrected Two.

“But what if they weren’t killed?” asked Oliver, hastily covering his mistake. “What if they just got sent to another world?”

“Neither of us thought of that,” said Two. “At least, not until the crimson kite arrived.” Then a queasy look came over him, and he began a fit of coughing. Oliver waited impatiently. Anything he learned about this world might be something that would help him escape.