Rose glared irritably at the third member of the trio. “C’mon, N/Ice—quit flexing in and out!”
On the bed next to hers, a third shape lay on her stomach with her feet in the air and her chin resting on her hands. Simwan kept blinking at her because sometimes he found himself looking right through her.
“In and out of what?” N/Ice teased.
“You know.” Rose sighed. “Reality.”
“Am not,” N/Ice objected innocently. “I’m always in reality. It’s just not always your reality, nyah, nyah!” She stuck her tongues out at Rose. All three of them.
“Look,” muttered Simwan as he moved further into the now quiescent room and toward the three parallel beds, “this is really important.” Behind him, Pithfwid lay against the base of the door, blocking it from being opened from the other side as he groomed himself. “Haven’t you heard about someone stealing the Truth from Mr. Gemimmel’s store?”
“Oh, wow, no,” Rose responded. Suddenly serious, all three girls turned their full attention on their brother. Amber even closed her magazine, and N/Ice densified herself to the point where she looked as solid as her sisters. They all knew how important the Truth was, especially because it was so tightly bound to their mother.
“How did it happen?” Amber asked.
“Who took it?” N/Ice wanted to know.
“The truth of it is, the Truth has gone missing, and Mom and Dad are worried that without it around, people will start to believe what those developers who want to cut down the woods are saying, and vote for the project to go ahead.”
“They can’t do that!” a thoroughly alarmed Rose exclaimed.
Amber looked equally shocked. “They can’t cut down our woods!”
“That’s for sure,” N/Ice muttered loudly. “If they cut down the woods, where will Joey and I go to—” She broke off, suddenly aware of the expressions on her sisters’ faces. “Well, what are Mom and Dad and the Ords doing about it?” Amber asked.
“Not much.” Simwan leaned against the wall, not wanting to divert his sisters’ attention or incur their rage by sitting on one of their beds. “They keep muttering about bringing in outside assistance, but everybody and anybody who could really help seems to be busy with other, more important projects. And since the Truth was taken, Mom hasn’t been herself. You know, there’s a lot of Truth in her, and a lot of her in the Truth.”
“Nothing’s more important than the woods,” Rose asserted firmly. “Or to Mom, the Truth.” But her tone was uncertain. “What can we do about it, brother?”
“What can we do?” Amber echoed plaintively.
Straightening as he pushed himself away from the wall, Simwan walked to one of the windows that overlooked the backyard and the first trees of the forest beyond. “You know adults. They’ll bicker and argue and try to find the best way to do something. What we need is the quickest way. So if they’re going to delay, I guess we’ll just have to find out who took the Truth and bring it back ourselves.”
“We’ll do it!” At the foot of Amber’s bed, the figure of N/Ice suddenly expanded to a height of twenty feet. Head scraping the apex of the ceiling, eyes blazing with fire, lightning crackling in the depths of the dark nimbus that swirled about her flowing locks, she thundered: “WOE UNTO THE FOOL WHO TOOKETH THE TRUTH, FOR WE SHALL SMITE HIM INTO ASHES!”
“Calm down!” Simwan told his sister. She immediately shrank back to her normal size, though a faint odor of ozone remained clinging to her blond curls. “First of all, we don’t know who took the Truth or where they took it. If it’s out among the Ords somewhere, we can’t go around flinging magic every which way while blazing and roaring like Titans. That would be an unforgivable violation of the Prime Codex and you know that sort of thing just isn’t done.” He glared at N/Ice. “Secondly, tooketh isn’t a word.”
She looked properly abashed. “Oh, Simwan.” Her expression reflected her uncertainty. “Taketh?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he told her impatiently. “If we’re going Truth-hunting among the Ords, we have to control ourselves at all times. Otherwise we could unleash Chaos, upset the natural order of things, unsettle the World of Man, and our parents would probably cut our allowances.”
“Right,” Rose agreed somberly. “We have to be careful.”
“So what do we do?” Drifting off her bed, Amber joined her sisters in crowding around their big brother.
“How do we get started?” Rose asked intently.
“Where do we begin?” N/Ice added, silently admonishing her hair for momentarily transforming into blond serpents. Having assumed the job of doorstop and turned a disarming puce, Pithfwid looked on approvingly.
Actually, Simwan hadn’t thought that far ahead, having focused on first convincing his sisters to join him. Now that they were asking about a plan, he realized he had better come up with one. Fortunately, a safe and always reliable source of advice and assistance was close at hand.
Television.
“On all the cop shows, the first thing everyone does is examine the scene of the crime.” Checking his watch, he turned and started toward the door. “We can ride our bikes over to the drugstore. There’s still time to get there, talk to Mr. Gemimmel, and make it back before Mom has dinner ready.”
“Let’s do it,” barked N/Ice. “The quicker we get the Truth back, the sooner everyone will see what a bad idea this awful development is.” She added more somberly, “And the less Mom will be affected by its absence.”
“Right,” agreed Rose as she approached Amber. “But I’ll have to ride double with somebody. My bike has a tummy-ache. I don’t think that last patch Dad put on its front wheel is holding, and neither does the bike.”
“I’ll take you,” her brother told her. For once, a matter of real importance outweighed the danger that some of his friends might see him riding through town with one of his sisters balanced behind him, her arms around his waist.
“It shouldn’t take long to fix this,” was Amber’s appraisal as the four of them filed out of the big room with its bright wallpaper and lace curtains. “We’ll just locate the Truth, explain the situation, and get it back from whoever took it.”
Pithfwid followed, causing the door to close behind them, and said nothing. They were only kids, he reminded himself, with three of them not quite in their teens, and one of them not even always there. They couldn’t be expected to know the truth.
Much less realize how hard the truth could be to find.
II
Leaves like shards of gleaming electrum spun lazily around the Deavy children as they rode into town. Whenever Ords approached them on foot or in cars, they kept their feet on the pedals of their bicycles. But when the winding, hilly road was devoid of pedestrian or motorized traffic, they relaxed and let their bikes do the work. The bikes were glad to do it. After being cooped up in the garage, they were happy to be let out to roll. No one who saw the four children power their way into Clearsight’s small, funky downtown shopping district had the chance to wonder how the wheels of their bicycles kept turning steadily and smoothly when the sneakered feet of the four riders rarely touched the rapidly spinning pedals.
Mr. Gemimmel’s drugstore was located in a historic two-story, nineteenth-century structure fashioned of yellow brick. The second floor was home to overflow storage, Mr. Gemimmel’s apartment, and a minor displaced fourteenth-century Indian potentate known as the Pukran of the Phu. As the Deavys pulled up in front of the pharmacy, Pithfwid leaped lithely from the wicker basket mounted on Amber’s handlebars and padded confidently toward the entrance door. In response to his approach, the front doors promptly parted to admit him. This in itself would not have been remarkable save for the fact that the entrance to Gemimmel’s Pharmacy was not equipped with an automatic door opener. Certain cats, however, are. Simwan and the girls followed.
Inside the pharmacy, both of Mr. Gemimmel’
s clerks were helping customers. Simwan and the girls made their way to the back of the store, where the dispensary was located. This meant they had to walk past the old soda fountain. Even though it was closed for the day, they couldn’t keep from looking in its direction, knowing full well of the wonderful treats that were concealed behind the granite-faced counter. Nobody knew quite how Mr. Gemimmel managed to obtain flavors like acajou and cupuraçu and maracuja and other tropical specialties that could be found nowhere else in eastern Pennsylvania, but given the old-fashioned prices he charged, none of his customers cared to probe. Besides, his bestseller was always the vanilla, with real vanilla-bean specks. If you knew how to ask, he would sell you vanilla with Mexican jumping–bean specks, which tickled with every swallow that went down your throat.
Approaching the back counter, they found him busy filling a prescription for Dolores Hopkins. “Oh, hello, Deavys.” Capping the filled plastic bottle, Mr. Gemimmel placed it in the basket marked with a big h–j and turned to face the children. He tried to smile, but Simwan could see that the old man was not feeling well. This was hardly surprising, considering what had been taken from him. “What can I do for you kids? Nice to see you too, N/Ice. Is everything okay at home? How is your mother doing?” He ignored Pithfwid as the cat jumped onto the counter and disappeared among the shelves of pills and powders and salves and liquids. Pithfwid would cause no trouble and make no mess. Besides, the druggist knew better than most that the Deavy cat went wherever it wished no matter what anyone said.
“Everything’s fine, Mr. Gemimmel,” Simwan told him. “With us.”
“We know what happened.” Peering over the pharmacy counter, Amber tried to see where Pithfwid had gone. “We know about the theft, and we want to help get back what was taken.”
“Sssh!” Leaning over the counter, a nervous Mr. Gemimmel peered toward the front of the store. Both of his employees were busy doing their jobs. Neither they nor the customers they were helping were looking in his direction. “That kind of talk can be bad for business, Rose. Your mother left that bottle in my care.”
“I’m Amber,” the girl corrected him patiently. “Why the worry? Even if the Ords knew about the theft, it wouldn’t make any sense to them.”
“You never know. Customers can be funny when they start overhearing words like stolen.”
“Can we have a look around, Mr. Gemimmel?” As always, Simwan felt funny looking down on an older man from a greater height. Having shot up significantly in the past year, he was discovering how altered height could change a person’s perspective on many things. In a matter of months, he had gone from looking up to people to looking down at them. But not, thanks to his upbringing, down on them. “Please? We won’t tell anyone if we see something, and we just want to help.”
“I know you do. I know about the close bond between your mother and the Truth. Everyone just wants to help—but they can’t. I’m afraid this sorry business needs the attention of an expert.” With a sigh, the apothecary lifted up the counter barrier and stepped aside, using his other hand to brush at his nearly hairless skull. Toward the back of his head but near the crown was an interesting birthmark that to enlightened and educated eyes might have resembled a snake curling around a staff. “You might as well, I suppose. It can’t hurt—and who knows, you might see something I’ve missed.” None of the customers, nor the two busy clerks, saw the four children file into the dispensary area at the rear of the store. Not that it was against any law for Mr. Gemimmel to let them back where the drugs were kept, but in a small town like Clearsight, people with nothing better to do tended to talk about things that were really none of their business. Mr. Gemimmel had a potion for dealing with that, too, but was very careful about how he dispensed it.
Behind its protective white walls and ranks of floor-to-ceiling shelves, the dispensary area was a lot bigger than it looked from the outside. Thousands of vials and bottles and packages filled the shelves, and the farther back one went, the odder and more peculiar some of those containers became. Not only the containers, but the shelves themselves betrayed steadily increasing signs of age. Fluorescent lights gave way to older incandescents, then to oil lamps, and finally to candles seated firmly in holders of graven granite and schist. Occasionally, something dark and swift went rustling off into the increasingly gloomy distances as they worked their way deeper and deeper into the depths of the dispensary. The visitors didn’t ask the pharmacist about it, and he didn’t volunteer an explanation.
After what seemed like a hike that ought to have taken them all the way to the edge of town instead of just to the back of the drugstore, they reached the very last shelves. Each of these had been hand-milled from a strange mottled gray wood. Several of them were so old that they had collapsed or crumbled to dust. Taller than Simwan or Mr. Gemimmel, the ones that still stood were packed with jars spun of fine porcelain, their once-intricate, bright glazes now cracked and yellowed with age. Other containers on the surviving shelves were of dark green and red and blue glass. Some were still stoppered while others stood with their vacant mouths open and sucking at the damp, musty air. A few shelves held boxes meticulously fashioned of wood, or ivory, or semiprecious stones, or carved cinnabar from the Orient.
Near the very back wall, which appeared to have been hewn from the raw bedrock of Pennsylvania itself, a middling high shelf was notable for an obvious gap between two large, stoppered clay jars.
“I don’t suppose either of those holds anything like the Truth, Mr. Gemimmel?” With a hand, Amber indicated the two large vessels.
“Oh no, certainly not!” The pharmacist was indignant. “They’re perfectly ordinary amphorae from Athens. A little old, though. Seventh century BC, I believe. Medicinal gifts some Greek gentleman named Mantiklos intended to give to a temple of the god Apollo, along with a little bronze statue.” Raising a slightly shaky finger, he pointed toward the gap on the shelf between them.
“That’s where the bottle holding the Truth was kept, and now it’s gone. One of my back-office homunculi noticed it missing when he returned to work after being away for the weekend.” His small, delicate hands formed into tight fists. “Who could have taken it? For no good purpose, I’m sure. In the wrong hands . . .”
Smiling encouragingly, Rose put a hand on the old man’s arm. “Don’t worry, Mr. Gemimmel. We’ll get it back. Simwan and Amber and I, and sometimes N/Ice, are good at finding things. Why, one time we were playing hide-and-seek and we found where N/Ice was hiding even though she’d hid herself on a different plane of existence.”
N/Ice folded her arms and pouted. “You cheated! You ordered a pair of my shoes to come and find me, and then you followed them. You didn’t find me, my shoes did.”
Amber grinned. “Never try to keep a girl from her shoes—or her shoes from the girl.”
Ignoring them, Simwan had stepped forward to inspect the shelving that until the previous weekend had held the Truth. He tried to remember what he had learned from watching the relevant TV shows. Sometimes a thief would leave clues behind. Maybe a fingerprint. Or a tentacle print. Or a piece of clothing, or a telltale claw mark. Straining on tiptoe, he reached up to run the tips of his fingers along the empty length of shelving. To a trained eye, even dust could be revealing. Of course, his wasn’t a trained eye. At least, not in that way. But there had to be applicable forensic-analysis spells in the big books his parents kept at home in the den library, or on the part of the Internet that only non-Ords knew how to access.
“Look out!” a sharp, hissing voice warned him. Yea and verily, sometimes a thief would leave clues behind.
Or a booby-trap.
The mass of bristling fur that hit him in the face struck with fang and claw retracted, so that it was like being hit by a large, fuzzy fastball flung by a relief pitcher for the Phillies. It hit him hard and soft simultaneously, just forcefully enough to send him staggering backward, arms flailing as he fought to retain his b
alance. Almost instantly (the almost was critical), something shot through the space where he had been standing a second before. It attacked with mouth agape and teeth positioned to tear his face off. Letting out a simultaneous scream, Rose and Amber jumped in opposite directions, while N/Ice simply went sheer. Mr. Gemimmel threw up both arms to protect his face.
As soon as Simwan had stumbled safely clear of the immediate attack, Pithfwid whirled, leaped, pushed off his friend’s face without scratching him, and threw himself at the attacker. Letting out a scream of frustrated fury at having been thwarted in its initial assault, that creature hit the shelving opposite, did a complete back flip, and bounded in the opposite direction. Dust bunny and yowling cat met in midair.
Composed of lint and grit, slime and grime, the dust bunny had formed itself wholely only when Simwan had reached for the empty space on the shelf where the Truth had been stored. All bits of gray gunk held together by lashings of darkly enchanted goo, it had blazing red eyes, a mouthful of razor-sharp teeth, claws hooked like those of a small owl, and big floppy ears. They were so bound up in a furious fighting clinch, it was difficult for those looking on to tell where cat ended and dust bunny began.
Pithfwid tore into it with a ferocity that would have stunned anyone who had only seen the big tomcat sleeping peacefully on the front stoop of the Deavy house. Bits and fragments of dust bunny went flying everywhere: big chunks for every hair that Pithfwid forfeited. But no matter how much of itself the attacking creature lost, it retained every bit of its viciousness. Though determined, Pithfwid was clearly beginning to tire, while its spellbound antagonist was not.
“Do something!” Rose was yelling as she stood off to one side, wanting to help but uncertain how to go about it.