The Gypsy Morph

  He felt a sudden pang of regret, thinking of Cheney this way. He had saved them so many times, and still it wasn’t enough. It was unfair to expect more. He expected it of himself, though. Even knowing it was taking on more than he could manage. Especially here. Panther was right; sometimes there was nothing you could do to save people; sometimes you just had to let go of them.

  He broke away from Panther and Sparrow and sprinted up beside his dog. Cheney didn’t so much as glance at him. He just kept walking, one paw in front of the other, big head swaying from side to side, heavy muscles rolling beneath his shaggy coat. Hawk walked next to him, keeping pace, his mind awash with unrealized expectations of how he had envisioned things would be and stark memories of other tragedies that had claimed the lives of other Ghosts. Mouse and Heron. Squirrel. Each time, he had felt like this—bereft, helpless, furious with himself, frustrated with his inability to act.

  Behind him, he heard Sparrow and Panther whispering. They were all wondering the same thing: if he was as magical as he was supposed to be, then why couldn’t he do more? Could he even do the one thing he had promised? Could he take them to a place where they would all be safe? He didn’t know. He couldn’t be sure of anything. All he could do was try to follow through and hope that somehow he would find a way.

  But telling this to himself didn’t make him feel any better. So much depended on him. Even when he could stop thinking about Tessa and their unborn child, even when he could reduce the numbers of those he led to only those who were his immediate family, he was confounded by the enormity of his task.

  His instincts guided him, just as the King of the Silver River had said they would, just as they had from the moment of his return. But his instincts were all he had. It didn’t seem like enough.

  Cheney veered suddenly and brushed against him with his big head. Hawk sidestepped, thinking he was the one who had veered out of his path, caught up in his musings. Then the big dog did it again, a deliberate act that conveyed an unmistakable meaning.

  Tears filled Hawk’s eyes, and he wiped them away quickly. He reached down and rubbed the grizzled head, smiling faintly. “Me, too,” he whispered.

  HE IS NEVER a good fit for his family, he tells his best friend not long after they meet. He is an outsider almost from the beginning, for as far back as he can remember, seemingly forever. It isn’t that anyone wants it that way. It’s just how things work out. He isn’t like them. He isn’t a worker, a toiler, a committed survivor. He barely cares about the world around him. His mind is always somewhere else, never on the task at hand. He is unreliable, they say. He is a dreamer.

  He knows this is so and that it isn’t a good thing in the eyes of the others, but there is nothing he can do to change it.

  His family is a large one, so the care and protection of the whole take precedence over worrying about the one. His mother spends time with him when he is little, fussing over him the way mothers do over small children. These are his fondest memories. She encourages his artistic pursuits, indulges his talent, his creativity. No harm in letting him be a child for just a little while. She thinks it will all drift away as he gets older, that he will move on to other things as he matures.

  But he doesn’t. He isn’t like that. He isn’t the sort of kid whose passions ebb and flow with the years. He is formed early on, shaped by his devotion to his artistic discoveries, by his need to explore things that no one but he can see. It is a useless talent in a world where everything is about being pragmatic, about staying alive and staying safe. He doesn’t worry about such things; he worries about how he will make his drawings turn out the way he sees them in his mind. He does his work, and he fulfills his family obligations. Most of the time, at least. But he doesn’t do anything more than that. He doesn’t go the extra mile, as his older brothers keep telling him he must. He doesn’t prepare himself against the unexpected. He doesn’t live in preparation for what might happen. He lives in the moment.

  When his mother and next oldest brother die after becoming afflicted by one of the endless plagues that scour their already ravaged community, their tinderbox fortress, a fresh siege mentality takes hold. The family must work harder, be more vigilant, and keep closer watch. He does not think this will help; in truth, he thinks nothing will help. They are victims of times and events that are overwhelming. They are trapped in their lives like rats in cages. They are dead men walking.

  He doesn’t let this thinking dominate him the way he thinks it probably dominates his brothers. He refuses. He is caught up in the magic of his art, and in art there is escape from the realities of life. There is peace and beauty and a sense of satisfaction. He cannot change the world around him, but he can make a stab at changing it in his drawings.

  He becomes more and more of an oddity to his family. They are angry with and disappointed in him, and they no longer bother to hide it. They have come to view his behavior as a burden on the family—one that they increasingly see as unnecessary. If he is to be a part of the family, he must change. He must become like them—hardened to the future, focused on survival, willing to put aside childish pursuits in favor of mature commitments.

  He is eleven years old.

  He tries to live up to their expectations, but it is impossible for him. He can carry out the tasks they give him, can fulfill the obligations he is assigned, but he cannot become what they are. Father, brothers, aunts, uncles, and cousins, they are all of a piece, and he does not fit.

  A few of the younger cousins show interest in his drawings and his vision of things they cannot see. But their elders quickly discourage them and direct their attention elsewhere. They are told not to spend time with him, and are given work that will make certain that they can’t. It is all done subtly and surreptitiously, but he sees what is happening. His isolation grows. His sense of disconnection increases.

  One day, he is asked to accompany his father and two of his brothers on a foraging expedition that will take them down out of the foothills in which they reside to a nearby ghost town. It is an expedition that requires several nights away from home. He senses there is something odd in the way his father makes the request, but accepts that he must do as he is told.

  When he returns, all of his drawings and art supplies are gone. He searches for them everywhere, but they are nowhere to be found. No one claims to know what has become of them. Several of his brothers suggest he has misplaced them. His father tells him to forget about them and think about more important things.

  He is devastated. His art is all he has that he cares about, and now it has been taken away from him.

  A week later, he leaves home in the middle of the night. He walks south and west toward the city of Seattle, a place where he knows he can find the supplies he needs. He has never been to Seattle. He has barely been anywhere and does not have experience or skill at finding his way. But he is lucky. Nothing bad happens to him in the five days it takes him to reach his goal. He is hungry and thirsty much of the time, having not thought to take much of anything with him to eat or drink. He reaches the city in one piece and begins his search.

  Fortunately, his search puts him in a place where he encounters the Ghosts. He becomes a member of their family and finds a place where he is accepted for who and what he is. His passion for drawing is indulged. His eccentricities are tolerated and even admired. He is given a chance to become the person he knows he is meant to be. He is loved.

  But finding you, he tells his best friend over and over again, is even more important than all of this. Finding you is the best thing that ever happened to me.

  FIXIT STARED OUT across the abandoned campsite, the ground empty of tents, equipment, supplies, and vehicles, cleared of people. The wind was blowing dust in sharp gusts, sweeping across the hills and scooping out the gullies. Overhead, the midday sky was cloudless, and the sun was a blazing white ball in an endless blue sweep.

  Chalk would have admired a day like this one, if he had been there.

  Fixit kept searching the
landscape, thinking that he had overlooked something and might still find it or that he would miss something if he looked away. He already knew it was hopeless, that Chalk wasn’t coming back. But he couldn’t help himself; he still looked. A part of him refused to accept what the rest of him already had. A part of him still hoped.

  How had it happened? How had he allowed it to happen?

  He blamed himself, of course. He was Chalk’s only real friend, and he knew that the thing hunting them was out there, stealing kids from the camp. He knew that they were supposed to look after each other, and he had resolved to do his part. But somehow he hadn’t. Somehow, Chalk had slipped away when he wasn’t looking, had stepped just out of view when he wasn’t paying attention, and that was all it took. The other Ghosts had told him that Chalk would be back, that he had wandered off before—seemingly forgetting that Fixit was always the one who had wandered off, not Chalk. Or maybe hoping that he would forget the truth of things, and be encouraged.

  Didn’t matter. They were gone, following Hawk to their new refuge, wherever that was. All of them save those who had remained behind to defend the bridge against the army coming up from the south. And himself, because he refused to leave his best friend. The others had wanted him to come, but he couldn’t. He had to stay. As long as there was hope for Chalk, he had to wait. Maybe they were right. Maybe Chalk had wandered off and would be back. Maybe he needed Fixit.

  Maybe.

  He hugged himself against a chill that ran through him at the thought of what he knew was true and couldn’t accept. He felt tears welling up, and he tightened his lips and eyes against them.

  Then he heard footsteps behind him. Composing himself quickly, he turned. Logan Tom was there.

  “We could use your help at the bridge, Fixit. They’re finishing the wiring, and you know as much about it as any of the adults. More, even, than me. Will you help?”

  Fixit shook his head. “I have to . . .”

  “You have to keep an eye out for Chalk,” Logan finished. “I know. But you can do it from there. It will help pass the time if you do something other than just stand around. And it will help us, as well.”

  Fixit stared at the other, at his hard face, at the grip he kept on the black staff. Nothing ever bothered him. He was as steady as the rising and setting of the sun. He wished he could be like that.

  “All right,” he said quietly. “I’ll help.”

  “Fixit,” Logan Tom called after him as he started to walk away. “Don’t give up hope. We still don’t know.”

  Fixit nodded, his thoughts dark and angry. Maybe you don’t, he told the other silently, but I do.

  He kept walking.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  S OMETIME DURING THE NIGHT, Catalya disappeared.

  She had insisted on staying behind when the remainder of the camp departed with Hawk and Angel, arguing that she could do more good by staying than leaving. When pressed for an explanation, she had shrugged the matter away by telling Logan it was obvious if you thought it through. Hadn’t she saved him once already? What if he needed her to save him again? She was only half joking about this, and her determination to remain close to him was unshakable. What was really at work was her fear of losing him again, something she seemed terrified would happen. He had almost died once already and then disappeared for days afterward in search of the Elves and their talismans and been seriously threatened a second time. Apparently, she had decided that enough was enough; she would take her chances sticking close to him rather than seeking safety by leaving.

  He had chosen not to press the matter. When Panther’s attempts at talking her out of it failed, including a futile effort at insisting that if she stayed, so would he, he saw the handwriting on the wall. Somethings you had to back away from. She was sufficiently grown that she could make her own choice in the matter. He did not feel that she really belonged back with him or that her staying made him any safer, but if she felt so then it was better to let her have her way.

  That was what he had thought the previous day. Now he was sorry he had not insisted she go. Early that afternoon, when his attention was focused on other things, she had suggested almost casually that she should go out in search of Chalk and the other children. She had a better chance of finding them than anyone else, she insisted; she was more experienced in these sorts of things. He had no idea why she thought that this was so, but it didn’t matter because he wasn’t about to agree. He told her no, pointing out that the creature stalking the children of the camp was far too dangerous to take chances with.

  “Why would a monster stalking human children want anything to do with me?” she asked at once. “I’m a bigger freak than it is.”

  He stuck to his refusal, and when she shrugged and walked away without saying anything more, he thought that was the end of it. Obviously, he had been mistaken.

  Sometimes he wondered what good he was doing. He was supposed to serve and protect those weaker and more vulnerable than himself. He was supposed to keep them safe. But when no one would listen to him, when they did whatever they chose despite his warnings—which was true of almost everyone, it sometimes seemed—what was he supposed to do? Even Simralin had refused to listen to him when he told her she should come with Kirisin and himself and flee the Cintra, that it was too dangerous to remain behind, that she would not be safe.

  He hadn’t allowed himself to think of her during the past few days, keeping his concerns carefully locked away and separate from his responsibilities for the inhabitants of the camp. But with the disappearance of Chalk and now Catalya, all his doubts and fears resurfaced in a rush. It was like a dam breaking, its walls giving way all at once under the crushing weight of his emotions.

  He could tell himself whatever he wanted to about her, but it didn’t change the truth of things. He was in love with her, and he couldn’t come to terms with the idea that something might have happened to her, too.

  By midday, though, two things happened that diverted his attention once more. The first was that Catalya returned, sauntering into camp with Rabbit hopping along beside her, seemingly unaware that she had done anything either unexpected or wrong. Her search had been unsuccessful, but she hadn’t looked everywhere yet. There were still places she needed to search. She hadn’t seen any sign of the creature or anything else, and she had never been in any danger.

  It took everything Logan had not to tell her what he was really thinking, but instead to let it all pass unmentioned. He did suggest that if she was going out again, maybe he should go with her. At least they should discuss it.

  Then a short while later, as he was still weighing the advisability of his suggestion, an alarm rose from the defenders on the bridge. He hurried down to see what was happening and found the men and women on watch gathered together at the bridge center pointing and gesturing toward the other side.

  Skrails were landing in small groups of two and three, perhaps a dozen with as many as fifty that were still airborne. They clustered safely back from the bridge defenses, hunched over like ghouls as they stared across at the humans, eyes baleful and calculating. Beyond them, the slopes of the Cascades were blanketed with dark shapes flowing down toward the banks of the Columbia. Thousands of misshapen, nightmarish forms, they stretched away into the hazy distance for as far as the eye could see.

  Logan Tom took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.

  The army of demons and once-men had caught up to them.

  WITH HELEN RICE DIRECTING TRAFFIC, Logan Tom reset their defenses. It was something that had been discussed at length in the time they had been waiting for the enemy to arrive, so it didn’t require much discussion now. Mostly it was a matter of making the best use of limited resources and a superior defensive position.

  Logan had no idea how many of the enemy there might be, but from the look of things they numbered well over ten thousand. His own force of men and women was less than two hundred, a small contingent even against an enemy a quarter of the size of the one approaching
. They would be fighting a battle they already knew they could not win. At best, they could delay the assault, could tie up the attackers long enough to allow the children and caregivers already in flight to put even more distance between them. When it became clear that the enemy was going to break through, they would blow the bridge and retreat, effectively stopping any pursuit until a second bridge or shallows could be found. Helen Rice had sent scouting parties up-and downriver for thirty miles in both directions days earlier, and neither was in evidence.

  The forward defenses were situated about halfway across the bridge and consisted of steel buttresses and overturned trucks scavenged from the prior defenders and repositioned to suit Logan’s needs. Heavy-caliber sprays and cannons filled the gaps. In addition, the arched bridgework formed a heavy metal canopy over the heads of the defenders. The dense foliage that Hawk had summoned to secure the bridge several weeks earlier was still flourishing, and it covered the whole of the bridge spans and trusses, forming a thick screen behind and under which the defenders could hide. From an enemy’s viewpoint on the far bank, it would be difficult to tell exactly where their targets were positioned or what sort of weapons they had at their disposal.

  In any case, the attackers would be forced to rely on small arms and light-caliber field weapons in making an assault. Anything heavier would chance compromising the stability of the bridge, and losing the bridge would defeat their purpose in attacking in the first place. The enemy needed it in one piece to cross.

  The defenders had no such problem. Their only purpose in defending the bridge was to delay the enemy advance. If they were forced to blow the bridge earlier than planned, it wouldn’t matter. Blowing the bridge was a given. But the enemy didn’t know this. It didn’t know that they had the necessary explosives. It would have to attack to find out. It would have to strike as hard and fast as it could in the hope of overrunning the defenders before they had a chance to do anything.