But then they reached the end of the block and they were walking across a frozen field, snow crunching underfoot. Aaran shivered and wrapped his thin jacket more tightly around him. He was about to ask Suzi if she wanted to see if they could find something warmer for her to wear in the pack that Holly had given them, when the landscape changed once more and they were walking through desert scrub, where every plant seemed to have a thorn, even the trees. But at least it was warm, and the nervousness Aaran had felt in the deserted city had faded.
They’d fallen into a new order as they walked. Bojo continued to take the lead, but Raul was now walking on his own behind him. Christy and Suzi were next, the two of them still talking about consensual worlds and parallel universes. Tired of that conversation, Aaran stayed in the rear.
Trudging along, he continued to fall farther behind the others, distracted over and over again by the changing landscape. By the time they came to another of what seemed like a perennial English countryside, the others were well ahead of him and didn’t hear him when he stopped and called out after them. He was surprised that none of them had noticed the little man he’d spotted just off the road. But perhaps he hadn’t even been here when they walked by, the landscape changed so frequently.
Aaran studied him curiously, half-disbelieving what he saw.
He was more the way Aaran imagined a fairy-tale character to be than Dick, the hob he’d met back at Holly’s store, had been. Barely a foot tall, this little man’s features were all sharp angles, his limbs gangly and stick-like. He was wearing a red cloth cap and leather pants, but his jacket seemed to be made of burrs and leaves, held together with vines and braided grasses.
He appeared to have his foot snagged in among the protruding roots of the tree that towered above him. Aaran couldn’t identify it. All he knew was that it was a solitary tree with a wide expanse of open fields spreading out from beyond it and some of its boughs overhanging the path. When Aaran stopped, the little man tried to make himself invisible, but without any real luck. He wasn’t having much luck freeing his foot, either.
Aaran glanced at where his companions were still foraging ahead. He remembered Bojo’s warning when they’d first crossed over.
I can’t emphasize this enough. Don’t leave the path.
But this wouldn’t really be leaving the path. It was only a couple of quick steps to where the little man was trapped.
He gave a last quick look at the backs of his companions, two hundred yards or so ahead on the path, then stepped off, into the field. The little man’s almond-shaped eyes went round with fear and he frantically started tugging at his foot again, his whole little body shaking and trembling.
“Take it easy,” Aaran said, gentling his voice the way you did with a frightened child. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
When he reached forward, the little man stopped moving. He lay there, terrified eyes staring at Aaran, nervous tremors making his limbs jump.
“Really,” Aaran told him. “I’m here to help.”
He dug with his fingers around the little man’s foot, found where the roots had wedged around the tiny ankle. It only took him a moment to stretch the knotty roots far enough apart to pull the foot out. Even with his foot free, the little man continued to lie there on the ground, shaking with fear.
“It’s okay,” Aaran said. “You can go now.”
He moved back, holding his hands open to show that he meant no harm.
“Or did you break something?” Aaran asked.
But as soon as he was an arm’s length away, the little man jumped to his feet and went tearing off into the field. In a moment, all Aaran could see was the small wake the little man left behind in the tall grass and weeds. Then that, too, was gone.
“So I guess you’re fine,” he said, straightening up. “No need to say thank you.”
He had a last look into the field, trying to see if he could spot the little man, before he turned around to get back onto the path.
Which was no longer there.
Don’t leave the path.
Oh, come on, he thought. I only took a couple of steps.
But retracing those steps didn’t bring him back to the packed dirt of the path they’d been following. Instead, he was still in the middle of this enormous field, knee high grass and weeds swaying in a light breeze, the expanse dotted here and there with large trees like the one under which he’d rescued the little fairy man.
And not at all a bright little man, either, Aaran thought. If the fairy hadn’t panicked, he’d have discovered that all he had to do was push his foot the other way and he could have worked himself free.
Maybe fairies weren’t all that smart.
Right. And look who’s talking.
He turned back to look at the tree, trying to judge how many steps he’d taken from the path to get to the roots where the little fairy man had been trapped. He was about to go back and try to retrace his steps when a hand fell on his shoulder and he suddenly understood the cliche of almost jumping out of your skin.
Adrenaline slammed in his chest and he whirled, flailing his arms, only to have them both caught in firm grips. Then he saw who it was that held him. Bojo let go as soon as he stopped struggling.
“Jesus,” Aaran said, heart still pounding in his chest. “You just about gave me a heart attack.”
“I told you not to leave the path.”
“I only stepped off for a minute.”
“Maybe for you,” Bojo said. “But you were gone two hours for us.”
That didn’t seem possible.
“Two hours?” Aaran repeated.
The tinker nodded.
“But…”
“Trust me,” Bojo said. “You were gone for a while.”
“But…”
Bojo smiled. “I thought a newspaperman would have a larger vocabulary than that.”
“He should. I mean, I do. It’s just…”
“Hard to get your head around. I know. It’s always like that at first. But if it makes you feel any better, the four of you are doing much better for a first trip into the other world than most people do. Now come on. Let’s get back to the others.”
He did something with his hand again, a sideways motion, a twitch of his fingers, but Aaran couldn’t concentrate on it. And then he didn’t care about it anymore because they were back on the path and Suzi grabbed him in a hug.
“I thought we’d lost you forever,” she said into his chest.
He put his arms around her and looked over the top of her head at the others.
“Look, I’m sorry,” he said. “There was this little fairy man who looked like he was pretty much made of twigs and leaves. He had his foot caught in a tree root and I just stepped off the path to help him out. I really didn’t mean to cause a problem.”
“Did he have a red cap?” Bojo asked.
Aaran nodded. “Yeah, he did. Does that mean something?”
“Just that you were lucky. It must have been a brownie under the cap instead of a goblin. Goblins get their caps that colour by dipping them in blood, and they get their blood from people like you that they coax off a safe path.”
“Jesus.”
“But a goblin also wouldn’t get itself into that kind of predicament in the first place.”
Goblins and brownies, Aaran thought. Next thing you know, they’d see a dragon.
“But it worked out okay, I guess,” he said.
Beside Bojo, Raul smiled. “Sure. You got to be like the hero in some fairy tale.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know, stopping to help a spoon or an old woman, and later on in the story it turns out they’re the only one that can help you?”
Aaran shook his head. “It wasn’t like that at all. And I think that the point of those stories isn’t that you should help someone now for a payoff later down the road. It’s that everyone’s important, no matter how insignificant they might seem.” He let go of Suzi so that he could look her in the face.
“It’s like our guardian angel thing,” he said. “You do it because you can. Not because you have to, or because you think you should, but because you want to.”
Suzi beamed at him, but no one said anything for a long moment. Then Christy stepped up and gave him a light punch in the shoulder.
“Maybe there’s hope for you yet,” he said.
Bojo nodded. “Only next time, don’t do it on your own. We were lucky we found you as quickly as we did.”
“I tried calling after you guys, but you were already too far ahead.”
“We were probably too distracted to hear you.” Before Aaran could ask for an explanation, the tinker added, “We found the Word wood, but … well, you’ll have to see it for yourself.”
He started off down the road again and the others fell in behind him. Suzi held Aaran’s hand.
“You’re really doing well,” she said.
“High praise,” he told her, “coming as it does from my guardian angel.”
“Don’t wear that into the ground,” she told him, but she was grinning.
“So what’s Bojo not saying about the Wordwood?” Aaran asked.
“There doesn’t seem to be a way in,” she said and pointed ahead.
For a moment, Aaran wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be looking at. All he saw was the others ahead of them on the path, the path itself leading off into the greying distance. But as they drew closer, he realized that the greyness he saw wasn’t in the distance. It was a thin wall of mist with pale, blue-gold lights playing deep inside it. Stepping right up to it, Aaran could plainly see a deep forest on the other side, the path continuing into it.
“You’re sure that’s the Wordwood?” he asked.
Bojo nodded. “It’s giving me the same feeling that I got from the residue the spirit left behind in Holly’s store.”
“So what are we waiting for?” Aaran asked.
Bojo bent down and worked a small stone free from the border of the path. When he tossed it into the mist, they never saw it land on the other side.
“Where does it go?” Aaran asked.
“Damned if I know,” the tinker said. “I guess into some between.”
Aaran gave him a puzzled look. “Some between?”
“A space in between where we are and that forest we can see. It could be a few yards wide, it could be the width of a continent. It could drop us into the middle of an ocean or a volcano. Or it could just be an extension of this path we’re following—a little detour of some kind.”
“But we’re sure that’s the Wordwood?” Aaran asked.
“As sure as I can be without having a native of the place confirm it for us.”
Aaran looked from him back into the mist.
“So I guess one of us should step through and find out for sure,” he said.
“That’s what we’ve been arguing about while we were looking for you,” Christy said. “It’s either step through into the unknown, or leave the path and try to find a way around.”
“Which is also a big-time unknown,” Raul put in.
Aaran turned to Bojo. “I guess you’re the expert. What’s your take on it?”
“I can’t decide which way is the least dangerous.”
“And while we’re all standing here wondering about it,” Aaran said, “who knows what’s happening to the disappeared people, lost somewhere in there.”
“Don’t think that’s not on our minds,” Christy said.
“I wasn’t saying it for that reason,” Aaran told him. “I was just reminding myself.” He glanced at Suzi, then shrugged. “I think one of us should follow the path, see where it goes, and I think it should be me.”
Robert Lonnie
The hellhounds were traveling too fast to hide their trail, but it wouldn’t have mattered if they’d had the time. Robert had developed such an awareness of them from all his years of avoiding their attention that he could have tracked them with his eyes closed and his fingers in his ears.
Their speed didn’t help them either.
For every twist and turn they took, Robert knew a shortcut. When he finally caught up with them at another crossroads, he was there ahead of them, sitting on a low wall under the skeletal branches of a bare-limbed hanging oak, guitar on his lap, bones of those unfortunate enough to have been hung from the boughs above scattered among the clumps of dried grass by his feet. He waited until they burst through the rags of mist that surrounded the crossroads, let them get a look at him sitting there, calm and waiting, then he played some music for them.
The first chord dropped them to their knees.
The second chord snaked right into their heads and went rummaging around in their souls.
The third chord left them lying in the dirt as though they were dead.
Robert let that last chord echo and ring. When even the memory of it had faded, he finally laid his hand across the strings. He was about to stand up when a solitary clapping started up behind him.
Robert turned. There was a man leaning against the hanging oak,black-skinned and white-grinned, a gold cap sparkling on one of his front teeth. Like the hellhounds, he was dressed in a white shirt and black broadcloth suit, except he held a cane with an ivory head and had a tall top hat on his head. There was so little warning of his appearance, it was as though he’d stepped right out of the hanging tree. Knowing who this was, Robert wouldn’t have been surprised if that had been the case.
“I didn’t think you had it in you,” the loa said.
“Didn’t have what?”
“The balls to kill them.”
“I haven’t gone back on our bargain,” Robert said. “They made the mistake of going after some friends of mine.”
“I know that.”
“And they aren’t dead.”
“I know that, too.”
“I just took all the meanness out of them,” Robert said.
“Which is pretty much the same difference as killing them,” the loa said.
He pushed himself away from the tree and walked over to where Robert was sitting. His movements were stiff, as though there were only bones under that broadcloth suit—no muscle or flesh. He took his time lowering himself down to the wall beside Robert, using his cane to take the weight until he was settled.
“Not that I care,” he added. “They were only under my protection if you killed them for yourself.”
“Except I didn’t kill them,” Robert said. “All I did was take away the waste of their lives and give them a fresh start on things. Did them a favor, really.”
The loa lifted a questioning eyebrow.
“Taking away their meanness,” Robert said, “leaves them with less to work through in their next lives.”
“Always thinking of others,” the loa said.
“Well, I try.”
The loa gave Robert another flash of that toothy grin of his. “And you’re doing a fine job of keeping your soul out of my hands, too.”
Robert shrugged. “Keeps me busy.”
“But I’ll have it in the end.”
“I’ve never had an argument with that.”
“You just haven’t been in a hurry, either.”
“Can you blame me?” Robert asked.
“I don’t know,” the loa said, answering what Robert had only meant as a rhetorical question. “I’ve never lived the way you do, so I’ve got no way of knowing if it’s the kind of thing I’d want to hang onto or not.”
Robert gave another shrug. “You hear people talk about immortality like it’s a curse, but the way I see it, that only holds if you stop learning. I don’t know that there’s an end to what there is to find out in that world I’m living in.”
“You’re not immortal,” the loa said.
“I’m working on it.”
“I can make it happen.”
Robert shook his head. “I’ve only got the one soul, and it’s already sitting in that ledger book of yours, so there’s nothing left to bargain with.”
“Maybe
I want you to do something for me.”
“Isn’t likely I’d be interested.”
“You’d be surprised,” the loa said. “You might find it of benefit to yourself, and I don’t just mean me forgetting this engagement we’ve got concerning your soul.”
Robert wasn’t about to start working for him and they both knew it, just like they both knew he’d hear the loa out. He stifled the impulse to touch the strings of his guitar except to hold them still.
“So what is that you’re proposing?” he asked.
“Interesting place, this Internet,” the loa said.
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Then take my word for it. Interesting and busy.”
“People have time,” Robert said, “they do any damn thing with it except look out for each other.”
“I suppose you’re right. I don’t know them as well as you do and it’s not something I need to learn. But I’m learning about the Internet. I see a lot of spirits making a home for themselves in that place. It’s getting to the point where if you need to contact one of les invisibles, all you’ve got to do is go on-line.”
“You’re right,” Robert said, when the loa paused, and he felt he needed to at least indicate he was listening. “That is interesting.”
“By which you mean, get to the point.”
Robert shook his head. “I don’t get a lot of time to sit around and yarn with someone like you. I’m enjoying this.”
The loa gave him a considering look, them smiled. “Damn, if you’re not telling the truth.”
“So what’s the Internet got to do with you?”
“Think about it,” the loa said. “When people have a direct line to the spirits through a thing like that, there’s not much need for an intermediary like me anymore.”
“You really think it’ll come to that?”
The loa shrugged. “Yes, no, maybe. It’s hard to predict something that changes and grows as fast as technology. Ten years ago, mention the Internet and most people wouldn’t know what you were talking about. Now everybody’s getting on-line.”
“Not me.”
“Maybe you don’t think so.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”