“We’ll be fine,” he asserted as the receding storm that was the sound of his sisters taking cover in their room finally faded from earshot. “I’ll watch out for the girls, and we won’t do anything stupid.” Dangerous, maybe, he thought to himself, or potentially fatal, or maybe crippling. But not stupid.
“All right then.” Taking another sip of her coffee, his mother peered over the rim of the cup at him. “You’d better get up to your room and start laying out what you want to take. If you and your sisters are going to do this, you’ll want to be on your way as quickly as possible. No point in going if you don’t get going, as my far-too-many-times-removed great-grandfather used to say when he was working as a deckhand for Odysseus.”
Traveling light enabled them to pack fast. Being a guy, Simwan’s backpack, when full, weighed considerably less than those of his sisters, who insisted on taking what limited makeup their mother would allow in addition to things they actually needed. To satisfy her, each of them had to take at least one new book with them, to read on the train and during the “slow” moments none of them felt they would experience.
A bit of a traditionalist, Rose chose Mrs. Brackenwraith’s Primer for Young Sorceresses—Level III. Amber opted to take both volumes of the newly published Asian Enchantments and Hexes—Skeptical Inquirer Supplemental Publication. N/Ice settled on Albert Einstein’s Universe—A Handbook for Transdimensional Tourists (Young Adult edition). As for Simwan, at the last minute he remembered to download his dad’s copy of A Metaphysician’s Manual for New York City—Where to Stay, Where to Eat, Where to Invoke onto his tablet. And all four of them, naturally, had their music with them.
It was cold but clear when their parents drove them to the train station the following day. To Simwan, the crisp morning air felt as if he were walking toward an open refrigerator that stayed a foot or two in front of him. He was glad of his heavy jeans and lined leather. If the Crub felt it was still being followed, it did not choose to place any obstacles in their way. Leastwise, Simwan mused, not yet.
His mother, thankfully, did not cry as for the tenth time she checked to make sure each of them had their bags. To his alarm, she looked drawn as well as tired. Clearly, the sooner the Truth was returned to Clearsight, the faster she would recover. It had been the responsibility of his family for thousands of years, and its disappearance from its storage space in Mr. Gemimmel’s drugstore was wearing on his mother mentally as well as physically.
“Now, girls,” she told the bright-eyed, attentive coubet, “you listen to your brother. And Simwan,” she reminded him, “you listen to your sisters. And all of you listen to Uncle Herkimer and do what he tells you.” By now all out of “We wills,” they just nodded. Lights flashed on the platform. The ten o’clock train was not nearly as long or as full of morning commuters as its predecessors. As they boarded, Simwan saw what he thought might have been a tear or two in his mother’s eyes. She really didn’t look well. Good thing she didn’t know the real motivation behind their trip. Then there would have been more than tears, and not necessarily in their favor.
Moments later, the train was accelerating away from the platform. At last, the Deavy clan was on its way: himself, his sisters, and Pithfwid, snuggled inside his innocuous, hard gray plastic pet carrier. While the cat fumed at having to travel in so degrading a fashion, he was enough of a realist to accept the need. As the train rattled along the track, Clearsight was soon left behind. Full of expectation and adrenaline, the girls giggled and chattered excitedly among themselves. As they gossiped and conversed, they listened to music on their tablets. There were only three other commuters in the car: a young couple leaning against each other in the first row, and near the back, an overweight salesman intent on snatching a few winks as he reclined across a row of empty seats. All three Ord travelers were asleep, catching up on their slumber until the time the train pulled into Penn Station. They ignored the children who had boarded outside Clearsight, and the children ignored them. Simwan thought it time to lean over and address the occupant of the pet carrier that was sitting on the seat next to him, close to the window.
“Pithfwid, are you okay in there?”
The carrier rocked slightly as its sole inhabitant shifted his position. “Other than the affront to my pride, yes, Simwan.”
Pulling out his wallet, Simwan checked its contents. There was his dad’s Aether Express card (don’t leave your reality without it), which he was only supposed to use in emergencies. Filling out the wallet was his school ID card, his driver’s permit (an invitation to suicide in Manhattan), several other forms of identification including one that was completely invisible except to those non-Ords who knew how to read it, and money. The latter was a combination of his savings (the girls had their own) plus cash his parents had given him to pay for minor daily expenses. There weren’t a lot of bills, but they were unusually compliant. Properly prodded George Washington, for example, would willingly surrender his place to Ben Franklin, or Ulysses S. Grant, or whichever presidential portrait (and corresponding denomination) might be required at the time.
As the train rolled on, he practiced murmuring the appropriate words and dragging his fingers over a sample bill, altering images and numbers and other relevant factors until he felt he had a feel for everything from singles to hundreds. As his dad had always told him, a person had to know how to be flexible with their money. Just for fun, he called forth on the paper the face of Woodrow Wilson, and spent several minutes studying the resultant hundred-thousand dollar bill. It would be fun, he knew, to use it to pay for a meal at McDonald’s and then ask for change.
Though he was traveling with all his sisters plus Pithfwid, he felt suddenly alone. While the cat was napping, he knew that the girls would welcome him into their conversation. Trouble was, he could guess the subject matter without even having to listen in: boys, the latest clothes, boys, popular music, boys … All things being equal, he decided that he’d rather be stuck in a self-induced coma.
Picking up his backpack off the floor, he dug through the outer layer of clothes until he came to his tablet.
He’d brought along a couple of titles. One was science fiction. Many of his Ord friends at school favored fantasy, but when your own life is someone else’s fantasy, it’s hard to get into literary interpretations of far more mundane material. But he liked the science in science fiction, so he scrolled to the James Lawson novel and opened it to where he’d left off.
It passed the time until they crossed into New Jersey. The salesman and the couple forward had stirred briefly a few times, but for the most part remained fast asleep. As the train ducked into the tunnel that snaked beneath the Hudson River, Simwan stowed his tablet, crossed his arms over his chest, and tried to ignore the babbling of his sisters behind him. Their inane girl-girl-girl conversation was as enthusiastic and mind-numbing (to a sixteen-year-old boy) as it had been when they had first stepped onto the train.
It grew dark inside the car as the train rumbled through the tunnel under the river. Minimal overhead illumination came on automatically. The girls’ voices seemed to grow even louder as the tunnel closed in around them. Simwan was already planning how they were going to get from Penn Station to Uncle Herkimer’s apartment building when the unlatched door to the pet carrier popped open and Pithfwid stuck his head out.
“Hey,” Simwan exclaimed in surprise, “we’re not there yet.” He glanced around anxiously, but none of the other three passengers was even awake, much less looking in his direction. “Get back inside.”
“I smell something.” The cat’s ears were erect, he had his head tilted back, and he was sniffing the air vigorously. Suddenly, his eyes widened and he shouted, “I call on the Deavy coubet!”
“Ssshh! What’s the matter with you?” Putting out a hand, a startled Simwan tried to push the emerging cat back into the carrier. “There are Ords here!”
In response to the cat’s cry, the girls had cease
d their playful conversation. Three heads appeared over the seats that formed the row where Simwan sat.
“What is it, Pithfwid?” Rose was suddenly all serious.
“Problem, quandary, dilemma?” Amber demanded to know.
N/Ice wasn’t looking at the cat. Instead, she found her attention drawn to the window that looked out into the dark tunnel. Except—the dark tunnel wasn’t entirely there anymore. It was dissolving, dissipating, fading away before her eyes.
In its place was the bottom of the Hudson, ton upon ton of black river water, on the verge of collapsing onto the last car of the train. The car that held four Deavy offspring, one Deavy cat, two dozing lovers, and one recuperating salesman.
VI
As the last of the tunnel appeared to disintegrate and the first thrust of cold dark river surged silently toward the side of the now isolated car, the Deavy girls automatically linked hands. Their delicate but strong fingers entwined in a manner that would have looked to an outsider as if every one of their girlish knuckles had been forcefully dislocated. Two sisters linking would have been insufficient to stem the incoming tide. Three might well have overreacted clumsily. But a coubet—a coubet was just right.
“Water rush and water flow, brindle back the undertow! Hold the line, sew it fine, stitch it up with aqueous twine!” In perfect sisterly unison they chanted and sang, muttered and mimed. “Station far, station near, bring us to the station dear!” Drops of water began to bead on the car’s windows as it continued to rattle along its lonely way through the tunnel that had ceased to exist. Theirs was the last car of the train, Simwan remembered. Looking out the tightly shut front door of the car, he could no longer see another in front of them. Whatever malevolent, diabolical force had placed them outside the railroad tunnel and under the Hudson had also separated them from the other cars and the engine. Which meant that somebody knew the Deavy offspring were traveling in it. Somebody, or something, that wanted them dead. There was little doubt in his mind as to its identity. How did the Crub know it was being pursued?
He would worry about that later. Right now his full attention was focused on helping his sisters ensure that their car emerged from beneath the river dry and in one piece. Thus far the linked, rhymed spelling of Rose, Amber, and N/Ice had been equal to the task. The interior of the car remained watertight. It continued to move forward, even in the absence of an engine.
A distinct aura surrounded the girls now, a pale fuzzy nimbus that flared brightly each time they spoke a new rhyme, voiced a new charm, murmured a new mantra. They were throwing off energy as freely and easily as new words. At the front of the car, the dreaming couple dozed on. In the back, Mr. Reluctant Traveling Purveyor of Frivolous and Overpriced Auto Accessories grunted in his sleep and rolled over, dreaming blissfully of commissions as prodigious as his waistline.
None of them noticed the absence of the rest of the train, or the ominous shapes that were starting to emerge from the dark damp that now enveloped the isolated, solitary car.
The fish arrived first: big, ugly, snarling monsters of the deep baring long, sharp teeth. Perch and bass threw themselves against the car windows, trying to shatter not only the glass but the spells that held them back. Now it was Simwan’s turn to move to the defense of himself and his sisters. Raising his arms and hunching his shoulders, he stabbed his fingers at one group of Piscean predators after another, spinning in his seat to defend both sides of the car. It was not all that different from the video games he liked to play, except that in this case he was manipulating magic instead of buttons and a joystick.
With each jab of his fingers, with each gesture that was accompanied by a suitable word of power or two, the attacking fish were driven back, away from the submerged but miraculously still airtight car. Or in some cases, depending on the words he used, the fish were transformed. Fried, usually. Sometimes in butter, sometimes in oil. As he fought frantically to stave off the assault, Simwan whispered silent thanks for all the time he had spent helping his mother and sisters in the kitchen. Flash fried, or broiled, or steamed, or poached, bass and perch and trout and even a farrago of ferocious flounder foundered in their repeated attempts to break through both window glass and tautly murmured spells.
The more he invoked, the fewer the creatures who assailed the car. Gradually, in ones and twos, they began to break off the onslaught, to fade away into the darkness of the river. Soon the water around the car was devoid of all but the usual river denizens: small fish and bits of drifting garbage. He was almost ready to settle back down into his seat when something vast and glowing appeared off to the left-hand side of the car.
It was coming straight toward them. On the seat by the window, Pithfwid stood up on his hind legs, his front paws resting on the bottom of the glass as he stared through the scratched and battered transparency and sniffed intently. Then he let out a yowl and ducked back into his cat carrier.
All at once, Simwan found himself somewhat fearful. “Pithfwid, what … ?”
By now he could make out the shape that loomed beyond the window. The nearer it came, the faster it seemed to move. It was heading right for the car. His eyes widened. His sisters, still actively chanting to hold back the insistent pressure of the river and maintain speed, didn’t notice it. The other sleeping passengers didn’t notice it. Unless there was a submarine lurking somewhere in the immediate vicinity, no one else noticed it.
Simwan sure noticed it. It’s pretty hard not to notice a giant squid.
In the Hudson River?
Whoever was trying to stop them from getting to Manhattan, Simwan realized anxiously, was really going all out.
What kind of incantation would stop a giant squid? Living as he did in the woodsy countryside of eastern Pennsylvania, he did not have much occasion to deal with oceanic monsters like Architeuthis. River bass and trout and catfish were one thing, but giant squid? In the course of his specialized, after-school homework he had been required to study many diverse creatures that sported tentacles. Was there a useful spell there? Urgently, he tried to think if he had ever watched his mother prepare calamari. No doubt his aunt Free, who lived up the coast just north of Boston, would know all sorts of appropriate spells for dealing with such a threat. But Aunt Free wasn’t here. It was just him and Pithfwid and the girls.
One long tentacle thrust out and slammed against the car, rocking it violently. Behind him, Amber paused in her chanting long enough to let out a soft moan of concern. The break in the coubet’s concentration interrupted the dike spell long enough to allow a brief gush of water to seep in under every one of the car’s windows. N/Ice and Rose tightened their fingers in Amber’s, restoring her resolve and restrengthening the coubet. The flow of water was shut off, but Simwan knew he’d better do something, and quick. Swallowing hard, he raised both hands over his head, all ten fingers pointing toward the rampaging squid. It hovered now right outside the windows, tentacles uncoiling. If it got a good grip on the car, Simwan realized, it could probably yank it right off course in spite of everything the girls could do.
Spell, spell—what was the proper intonation for the incantation? It didn’t matter. He was out of time, and would have to improvise as best he could. Thrusting his stiffened fingers in the direction of the monster squid, he opened his mouth and began to chant.
Radiance burst through the window, causing him to blink and turn away. It flooded in through all the windows, the illumination in the interior of the car shifting with astonishing abruptness from dim to bright. The squid shot away, fleeing back to the benthic basement from which it had come. Shaking his head, Simwan rubbed at his light-shocked eyes and peered outside.
The water was gone. So, for that matter, was the tunnel. He was staring at a concrete wall covered with graffiti. Other tracks sidled up to the one their train was on like so many male snakes courting a female. The fronts of old buildings appeared behind the spray paint–smeared wall. Of modest dimension
s at first, they quickly became taller and more massive, newer and more impressive. Cars, taxis, buses, pedestrians, streetlights, street vendors, street chaos manifested themselves as he stared. He looked forward. Another car rattled from side to side in front of theirs. They were once more part of an ordinary, everyday commuter train.
They were also out of the tunnel. They were in Manhattan. They were safe.
Letting out the longest single exhalation of his life since he had first competed in the school steeplechase, Simwan slumped in his seat. From the plastic pet carrier, Pithfwid ventured, “I love seafood, but not when it has eyeballs bigger than me.”
Something struck Simwan simultaneously on the top of his head and his right shoulder. He nearly jumped out of his seat, but the contact had come not from tentacles, but from the balled-up hands of his sisters.
“Way to go, Simmie!” Rose was laughing and tousling his hair. Angrily, he turned in his seat and swatted her hand away.
“Scuba lessons—I want scuba lessons!” declared Amber as she leaned over the seat back next to his and affectionately patted Pithfwid’s carrier.
“In vivo mares mysterium,” N/Ice murmured solemnly as she tried to insert a Wet Willy into her brother’s undefended right ear.
“Sit down, all of you!” he snapped as he whirled in his seat and pulled away from them. “How can you laugh about it? We nearly got killed!”
“Drownded,” Amber agreed with mock solemnity.
“Seriously saturated,” Rose admitted as she gazed out the window while still leaning over the back of the seat in front of her.
“Operative word is nearly, big brother,” N/Ice pointed out. “Might as well laugh now. Grab the opportunity when it’s presented to you. Can’t laugh when you’re dead.”
“I bet you could.” Rose quipped back. “I bet you’d cackle like a laminated lamia throughout all eternity.”