Back | Next
Contents

46: STORM FURIES


Tinker had hoped, since the last step of the spell-casting would be at the tech center, that it would be less like the three-ring circus that Sacred Heart had been for the last day and a half. Unfortunately, the madness came with her in the form of Oilcan, the twins, eight of the draconic shards, all four of the unborn Dufae babies, and six sekasha. Roach was there as backup along with his big elfhounds Pete and Bruno—much to Louise’s delight. The dogs and the white-canvas tent protecting the casting circle lent to the circus feeling.

Tinker had no idea where the other three pocket-sized dragons were or how the Dufae babies were there at all as they were somehow projecting their mouse bodies instead riding inside the little robotic ones. Tinker couldn’t wait until they were born and became somewhat spirit-locked in their own bodies. Oh please, gods, don’t let them be able to dream walk after they are born.

Their caper to save the baby dragons aside, the twins turned out to be surprisingly quiet, polite, well-behaved children. They said “please” and “thank you” and “may I” in a way that Lain had never been able to beat into Tinker. Their range of interests was staggering, from making clothes to writing music to obscure Earth food culture. For some odd reason, they were also fascinated by Queen Soulful Ember and her court. Or at least Jillian was—she had been asking questions all morning about the queen of the elves.

“But does she have a sense of humor?” Jillian was asking Pony.

“I do not know the queen well enough to say that,” Pony admitted. “While I grew up in the house of the Wind Clan leader, and thus spent most of my life at Court, I rarely saw her beyond occasional family visits to her sister—Wolf’s mother. Stormsong would be a better one to ask.”

“Do not get me involved in this discussion!” Stormsong said in English from the grid of camera feeds on the twins’ laptop. “If I am going to answer questions about her, I want to be face-to-face and behind closed doors.”

Tinker hadn’t been sure how to keep all the various parts of the casting coordinated. They needed to sync up half a dozen locations scattered across the Westernlands, from the tengu village to Aum Renau. The twins had suggested the camera and monitors. Apparently the camera thing was something that they did routinely on Earth. It was called video teleconferencing and it let people see and talk to each other from two or more locations. It was very cool but made Tinker feel like some uneducated country bumpkin for not knowing about it.

In theory, Tinker was setting up the shield spell to protect the Dufae kids: herself, Oilcan, and the twins. In practice, everyone was helping out in the tracing and the double-checking. It made for quick work. Everyone had been given copies of the spell to carry with them just in case something unforeseen happened. (Considering the summer so far, “unforeseen” boggled the mind.)

Tinker had leaned heavily on her and Oilcan’s Beholden to pull this off. It gave her access to a wide range of tengu, elves, and humans. Stormsong had Blue Sky and Geoffrey Kryskill working with her to coordinate the Pittsburgh-based casters with the East Coast holdings via the distant voices. Blue and Geoffrey handled the computer end while Stormsong interacted with the highly protected “magical telegraph” devices. (Geoffrey had officially joined Moser’s commune because the elves wanted that clarification of “us” vs. “them.”) The monitor at Forge’s location showed Moser sitting back, strumming a guitar, chilling until showtime. Maya and Gin Blossom were somewhere off camera. The tengu were setting up the shield spell on the woman or women carrying the Dufae babies at Haven. (Tinker really needed to nail down how many women were pregnant. Every time she thought to bring up the question, the conversation would suddenly get derailed by the pale yellow baby dragon.) At the moment, there was only Jin Wong and Riki in camera range. Scratch that—Joy suddenly eclipsed the tengu to make faces at the camera.

Tinker sighed and went back to checking the spell tracings for a third time.

The twins remained fixated on the queen.

“Has anyone ever, like, done a play or something about Soulful Ember? Something with music and songs—and silliness?” Louise asked.

“Silliness?” Pony echoed as if he wasn’t sure what the word meant even though the question was in Elvish.

“Music and songs?” Thorne Scratch fielded the query. “Like an opera? They are usually tragedies. The queen has not had a tragic life.”

“The Fire Clan have a temper,” Stormsong added from the monitor despite her earlier comment. “No one would dare to face the queen—and, by default, my father…”

Whatever Stormsong was about to say was cut off as the baby dragon Einstein shut down the teleconferencing program—probably because of Joy’s taunting.

“No, no, don’t do that!” Louise cried. “We need to keep this up.”

Luckily, Tinker had foreseen that the insanity of babies—Dufae and draconic alike—would be at her end. Moser and his gang were overseeing the computer that hosted the teleconference meeting. They were manning the setup for Forge at the University of Pittsburgh casting circle.

While Louise picked up Einstein, Jillian got the connection back up.

Tinker had been fixated on go-karts and robots at the twins’ age. Somehow the difference between her and them made the twins far less frightening. It was kind of fun playing big sister and teaching them the finer details of magic. She explained using the big casting circles as they scrubbed clean the spell she’d laid down a few days earlier. They could have just used it again, but she hadn’t traced it out with multiple uses in mind. Many of the tracings had been damaged by the power of the spell pulsing through it. She’d been lucky that she hadn’t had a flare out. It was safer to clean off the stone and start fresh.

“I don’t see any flaws,” Tinker said after examining the new spell tracings for a third time.

“Everything looks good,” Oilcan said. “I’m still a little nervous about putting all our lives on one cast but with this many eyes on it, it should work just as well as it did last time.”

“This is a lot more scary…” Louise murmured.

Jillian nodded and finished the sentence. “When you’ve actually met all the people who could be hurt by getting it wrong.”

“It worked the first time. It will work this time.” Tinker turned to face the camera. “Is everyone ready?”

Jin Wong came to the camera and confirmed the statement with, “We’re ready here.”

“Wolf is standing by,” Stormsong said with Geoffrey Kryskill and Blue Sky at Poppymeadows. “He and Jay Bird have the spell scribed at Aum Renau and are waiting for your signal. Prince True Flame at Brotherly Love is in a safe position. Wolf’s siblings at New Haven are also ready. The Harbingers and Cana Lily report that they’re standing ready. They say that the domana at the Stone Clan holdings in the south have been warned.”

“Forge says that everything is good,” Moser said from the university casting circle.

There was a loud crowing from behind Moser.

“Is that our star?” Tinker asked.

Box’s interactions with the baby dragons had been sad to watch. He was used to being the only dragon in a flock of chickens. It was obvious that he wanted to strut about Sacred Heart as if he owned it but any time he got near a baby dragon, he visibly drooped. It did not help that the baby dragons seemed to see him as a clever dog, something to pat on the head and then ignore.

It reminded Tinker that Tooloo had once said that Box was never fully happy as a rooster. He wanted to be bigger and mightier. At the time, Tinker thought it was just an analysis of the chicken’s behavior. She realized now that Box was suffering from a major downsize as a rooster.

How long had he been a rooster? Since Unbounded Brilliance left Elfhome? Before that? Even if it was during the French Revolution, one was talking hundreds of years. Being that chickens only lived ten or twelve years—if not killed by attacking things like bears and wolves—that could be pushing two dozen lives as fifteen pounds of muscle-bound fluff.

No wonder Box always seemed annoyed.

Maybe he’d spent some time as a parrot. Some of those lived for decades. Tinker could see Tooloo swaggering about like a pirate with a foul-tempered cockatoo on her shoulder.

At some point Box had discovered the chick that Tristan had left and decided he could impress it with his size and grandeur.

After the literal pain she had gone through to catch him, Tinker hadn’t been feeling bad about his fate. Watching him with the chick, she couldn’t help but feel sad about what she needed to do to protect all the holdings on the East Coast.

“He seems to know that he’s the star of the show.” Moser rotated the camera to show that Box was perched on the tightly packed bones at the center of the university’s casting circle.

Box flapped his wings and then posed, neck feathers puffed up.

Yes, that was Box in full-of-himself mode.

Did he understand what was going on? Was he sick of being a chicken? Did he want to do one last big thing?

“Okay, let’s do this,” Tinker said. “Stormsong, let Windwolf know we’re about to start, once we know he has his shield up. Jin Wong, cast your shield now. I’m going to cast ours.”

She motioned to Oilcan and the twins. “Let’s get into position. Roach, you’re up.”

Roach shifted forward to take command of the laptop since it couldn’t come into the circle.

“Go, go.” Louise waved to the spirit mice, who popped out of existence like soap bubbles.

She and Jillian held hands as they hurried to Tinker. They huddled close to her and Oilcan.

“It will be okay,” Oilcan murmured.

Our fragile little family, Tinker thought. She really hated that everyone that she loved was on the line. If they messed this up badly, they would all be powerless and the domana dead. If the Spell Stones fell to the oni, there would be no Wind or Fire domana coming to the rescue from the Easternlands.

She felt the shield rise in Haven. The tengu had successfully triggered their spell.

She spoke the key word. The tracings all gleamed as the spell came to life. The ghostly shield rose around her. It pushed the walls of the tent out, bulging almost to the point of breaking. In the background, she could hear Box still crowing.

“Okay! We’re set!” Tinker shouted at the camera. “Jin, you’re set, right? Stormsong, is Windwolf ready?”

“Windwolf has the special shield up,” Stormsong reported.

“We’re ready here, domi,” Jin Wong reported.

“Okay, Moser, tell Forge to let it rip!”

There was a flare of power toward Oakland. Almost instantly their protective shield flashed to blinding light as it deflected the transformation spell.

“Oh! Oh!” Moser shouted. “Was Forge supposed to faint?”

Tinker winced. In the confusion she must have forgotten to warn Moser. “Yeah, that was expected. He didn’t get hurt—did he?”

“His people caught him,” Moser said. “I just wasn’t expecting it.”

“The babies seem fine,” Jin Wong reported needlessly as the mice popped back into existence when Tinker dropped the tech-center shield. They hopped up and down beside Roach, squeaking and clapping.

“Wolf is reporting that his shield worked,” Stormsong added.

The twins looked like they were about to burst into tears. At first Tinker didn’t know why but then she realized that the crowing had abruptly stopped. Box was gone.

“He seemed proud that there was something only he could do,” Tinker said quietly, hoping that would ease the pain.

“He was so brave,” Jillian said as tears started to pour down her cheeks.

Louise scrubbed away the danger of crying. “Did the transformation spell work?”

“We won’t know until Forge’s Hand can get him up,” Tinker said. “Moser, can you guys scrub clean the casting circle? We want to wipe out all traces of what we used.”

“Will do,” Moser said. “Are we done otherwise?”

“Yeah, everyone, we’re shutting down!” Tinker called to all the remote groups.

“Now what?” Louise asked quietly once it was just them. The camera was stored away and the laptop powered down.

“Now,” Tinker said, “we have a gate to build back to Earth.”

* * *

It took less time than Tinker expected. A baseball team’s worth of wood sprites, a dozen dragons counting Impatience, more magic-wielding tengu astronauts than you could shake a stick at, and one “borrowed” massive 3D printer made short work of what had taken her three weeks to build before.

They made a small prototype to test first. It reminded her of the dream she had at the start of summer where she made one the size of Hula-Hoops. In the dream, foo dogs, crows, Riki, the NSA agents, and Windwolf all jumped through the magic Hula-Hoops until the foo dogs ran off with the magical toys.

They drove to the end of the Parkway West. It ended halfway up a steep hill. Temporary ROAD CLOSED signs stood where the pavement abruptly stopped at a wall of towering trees. Autumn leaves littered the abandoned highway with brilliant reds and yellows—a reminder of how desperately Pittsburgh would need food for the coming winter. During Shutdown, the signs would be shifted to the berm and steel plates laid down to connect the Pittsburgh side to the roads of Earth.

Forge and the twins were fascinated for different reasons. Forge was impressed with the road design and engineering. The twins closely studied the clean line where the Rim cut through metro Pittsburgh, shifting everything from Earth to Elfhome.

Tinker pointed at the forest. “If the prototype gate works right, the first thing we’ll see is the quarantine zone outside of Monroeville roughly where Churchill used to be.”

“Six lanes of highway should be fairly hard to miss,” Oilcan said.

Tinker continued with the plan so that they were all on the same page. “If we see that, we power down the prototype, back up to Squirrel Hill Tunnel, and set up the big gate. If we see anything else, we cut power and go back to the drawing board.”

“Why don’t we set the big gate up here?” Jillian asked.

“The tunnel creates a natural chokepoint,” Tinker said. “It means we can better control who comes and goes from Earth. Also there’s electrical power, offices, restrooms for checkpoint personnel, and everything set up at the tunnels. Also it creates less road for us to maintain, which is especially important during the winter. This hill is a bitch in the snow.”

Oilcan nodded. “We wouldn’t come out here in the winter with our tow truck if someone called us. The chances are too high that we get stuck on the wrong side of the Rim as the EIA-controlled exit gates are clear back at Monroeville.”

“That’s scary,” the twins both said at the same time. It suggested strongly that they didn’t want to go back to Earth. It would be a step down, as they were currently surrounded by seventeen of the best warriors on the planet and a host of heavily armed trusted adults. On Earth, they’d be alone.

Tinker couldn’t blame them for wanting to stay on Elfhome. “Let’s see if this works.”

The prototype was only sixty-eight inches in diameter, shorter but slightly wider than a normal front entranceway. The twins called it a hobbit-hole door. They set it up on an asphalt road, made sure all possible metal debris was swept clear of the area, and then turned it on.

The six lanes of empty highway climbed the hill like an optical illusion against the backdrop of virgin forest.

“Oh, that’s so cool,” Louise murmured.

Jillian took out her phone, took a picture, and then stared at the screen a moment. “Oh, God! A signal!” She started to tap on her phone. “Oh, how I’ve missed you, Earth internet!”

“Sweet!” Louise took out hers and checked the screen. “You know, if we made a tiny one of these gates, we could have internet twenty-four seven!”

In Tinker’s dream, she’d shrunk the gate down to wedding ring size.

“You still have to pay for the internet connection somehow,” Oilcan said.

Tinker nodded. “That was the biggest pain about Shutdown: the Earth internet was there but you couldn’t access it directly without buying a device that was useless twenty-eight days of the month.”

“Money is not a problem,” Louise said, as Jillian said, “We’ve got money coming out of our ears.”

Tinker glanced at Oilcan, who shrugged. “Once we get the big gate up, you can connect as much as you want today and then we’ll work on a ring-sized gate for internet service.”

The twins bounced with happiness and unexpectedly hugged Tinker. “This is so cool! We have so much to upload!”

Over the last few days, Tinker had heard more about the twin’s rescue of the tengu children, how they had figured out how to create the new shield spell, and even what led them to charge across the forest to face the oni at the graveyard. Oddly, it washed away all the fear that she had of them. She would have made the same decisions. Yes, they could be wicked clever like her—but then again, she always tried to do what was right.

Tooloo might not have wanted Leonardo’s gate destroyed, but it was the right thing to do. Yes, it stranded Pittsburgh on Elfhome, but it shut the gate to Onihida and took the control of the pathway away from the Skin Clan. The right thing to do now was create a limited access but full-time pathway that would let Earth and Elfhome exchange goods and ideas. Ultimately the elves needed a goddess of war to sweep through and change their society. They needed to keep their people—like Oilcan’s kids—from falling between the cracks and disappearing. They needed the flexibility of the humans. And according to their own legends, the goddess of war did not ride alone. She rode with storm furies.


The End


Back | Next
Framed