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9: FLYING THE NEST


“Oh! Oh! They’re doing it again!” Jillian yelped as she leapt out of the casting circle.

“Jilly!” Louise cried in surprise and fear as her twin left the invisible protection of their shield spell.

Waves of tengu adults had been leaving Haven all day, responding to mounting emergencies in Pittsburgh. The first had left before dawn to search for Dufae’s spell-locked box. After that, the crow-winged warriors flew out to fight black willows. Toward the end of the day, it seemed like the sky was constantly filled with black wings as adult after adult headed into battle.

It meant that the twins had been able to work unquestioned, even as they pulled in more and more of the teenage tengu children for help. In the end, she and Jillian had gathered all the tengu children of Haven within the protective circle, unsure what exactly the oni magic might do or who it would be aimed at.

Louise couldn’t normally see or feel magic as it was invisible to the naked eye but when it built up to a dangerous level, it glowed purple. Thus, she hadn’t felt the oni attack spell hit but she had seen it crawl across the domed surface of their protective shield like enraged lightning. Judging by the whimpers of fear from the younger kids, the tengu had also seen it.

The oni had eleven nactka. They could use a second one at any time.

“Wait. Just wait,” Jillian murmured as she snatched up her tablet and started to scribble something.

“Are we safe?” Crow Boy asked.

Louise closed her eyes tightly and considered the question. Could she sense if there was going to be a second attack? Nothing came to her. In other attempts to see the future—successful ones—she had reformed the question while considering implications. It was as if she needed to enter search words to lock in on a vision.

Dufae feared for his family, so it was logical that the first attack would be aimed at domana. Had the babies found Tinker and Oilcan and gotten them the spell? Were she and Jillian the only ones left able to cast spells? What happened to Windwolf and all the elves off fighting the oni deep in the forest?

“The great Stone has been shattered and lies in ruin!” The words came to her fast and powerful. “The torch that is the true flame gutters on the ground. The wolf stumbles but does not fall! It stands ready, teeth bared! The light of Brilliance shines alone in the darkness! Stand! Fight! Or all will be lost!”

“That doesn’t sound good,” someone murmured.

“What do we do?” one of the teenage tengu asked.

“We do what we were told to do,” Keiko Shoji said bitterly. As part of the tengu Chosen bloodline, Keiko was basically a princess and semi-in-charge while the rest of the royal family was scattered throughout Pittsburgh or still recovering from laying four massive eggs the day before. “Stay hidden. Protect the young. Be ready to flee.”

“Ohhhh, farts!” Chuck suddenly exclaimed, her robot mouse body stirring to life. They had protected the babies’ eggs with their shield but, because of the metal inner workings of the tiny robots, the mice had been left outside the casting circle. All four mice were getting to their feet.

“Language!” Jillian said out of reflex.

“What’s wrong?” Louise asked.

“The oni cut the phones!” Chuck grumbled. “We got bounced back to the tengu network. We were halfway to the graveyard with the Mark Two.”

“The graveyard?” Louise echoed in surprise. “Why were you going there? And what’s the Mark Two?”

The babies all started to speak at once. It was nearly impossible to tell who was talking as they sounded alike when they were all squeaking loudly. “We told you that we found a big printer that no one was using…” “Alexander had these cool plans on her computer with everything all figured out and ready to go…” “The DJ said we should go to Oakland but we ran into this little old elf woman…” “Female! If she was a woman then she would be human!” “Ixnay onyay ethay anktay.”

“Tank?” Louise latched onto the last word in pig Latin.

The babies paused to look at each other.

“It’s not really a tank,” Chuck Norris said. “Just a naming convention. It’s like Tesla the robotic dog, only…only…only…”

“Only better!” Red Jawbreaker finished the sentence for her sister. “She said she was our grandmother and that we needed to go to the Allegheny Cemetery to save the baby dragons…”

“Also Sir Galahad and the White Goat!” Green added.

“Who?” Louise said.

“They’re just some people with cool names,” Green said.

“Everyone in Pittsburgh has cool names!” Chuck waved her tiny fists. “I’m staying Chuck Norris!”

“I’m Scarlet Overkill!” Red jumped up and down.

“I want a cool name too!” Green whined.

“I still don’t think their names are Sir Galahad and White Goat,” Nikola said. “I think they’re just code words for people—like the ones that the Resistance is using.”

“Vive la résistance!” his sisters squeaked in chorus.

“Who told you to go to the cemetery?” Louise asked loudly.

“Grandma elf!” the babies all shouted.

“Try and keep up!” Red muttered darkly.

“Oh! Oh! I found a way back to the Mark Two via the military communication network,” Nikola said.

“Go! Go! Go!” Chuck cried even as Louise shouted, “No! Wait!”

But all the mice went still and silent.

“Shit,” Louise whispered.

“Language,” Jillian repeated as she scribbled on her tablet.

“We need to teach them stranger danger,” Louise said. “They shouldn’t be doing dangerous stuff just because someone told them that they were our grandmother. We don’t have a grandmother! They’re all dead!”

“Unless we have a great-grandmother who is an elf,” Jillian said with amazing calm for the situation. “The tengu say that we have an elf grandfather in town. We could have an elf grandmother too.”

“If she knew that the babies were her grandchildren, why would she send them to the graveyard?”

“Because there’s no real way that they can be hurt?” Jillian said, pointing up toward the nest far overhead. “They’re really here in the village. It’s just some electronic ghosts or something that they’re projecting—into some kind of tank apparently.”

“They’re babies!” Louise hadn’t understood—back when they went to Perlman—why their teacher refused to let them help with giving first aid to the bombing victims. They were right there and certified first responders. After watching Jillian slowly lose it—after killing someone herself—Louise understood the danger. “They’ll be scarred for life if they go around killing things. They’ll be born with PTSD or something.”

“They might not remember anything from before they were born. We didn’t.”

“We didn’t have a tank! How can you be so calm?”

“Because I’m afraid of breaking!” Jillian snapped. “I have to believe that everything will work out. We can handle anything. We’re amazing. We saved Alexander and Orville—Tinker and Oilcan. They both got the spell off. They’re fine. We’re fine. Everything is fine.”

“How do you know that they are okay?”

“Because I can feel people when they tap the Spell Stones. Tinker and Oilcan are bouncing messages off them in Morse code,” Jillian flipped her tablet to show that she was translating the code into English. “Tinker is going someplace—I think Oakland. They’re using personal code words. She’s told Oilcan to stay where he is—which doesn’t seem to be Oakland.”

“Anyone else get the spell up?” Louise asked.

Jillian shook her head. “There were only three shields, counting ours. Tinker and Oilcan aren’t together and no one seems to be with them—casting spells at least—so it’s just us four. We’re going to have to go to Pittsburgh.”

“Us?”

“There were eleven baby dragons just like Joy in Dufae’s box—they might even be other parts of Joy. The oni just killed one of them to cast that spell. We need to save the rest—and stop our baby sisters and brother before they emotionally scar themselves.”

Louise pulled up the Pittsburgh map on her tablet, wondering how they would get to the cemetery quickly. The whole thing about Haven being “a village hidden deep in the forest” meant that it wasn’t on any map nor were there any roads or even dirt paths leading to it. The tengu had flown everything in just so there would be no trace of their passage. She knew that Haven was roughly northwest of Pittsburgh—so they would need to go southeast an unknown number of miles through dense virgin forest full of man-eating creatures and plants. And cross a three- to four-hundred-foot-wide river. At dusk. With a storm rumbling off in the distance.

She found the cemetery. It was uncomfortably close to Oakland, which was being invaded by an oni army. How were they going to get there? Airship? “Our monster call worked on the gossamer. Could we use it to get to Pittsburgh?”

Jillian narrowed her eyes as she considered the idea. “Doubt it. Gracie had ‘seen’ that something earthshaking was going to happen with Windwolf’s gossamer. She had her yamabushi grab a pilot before they gave chase. Besides, what do we do with the gossamer once we get there? An airship isn’t like a car that you can park anywhere. It needed all those people on mooring ropes to make sure it wouldn’t drift away with the wind. I don’t think the kids here could manhandle the tethers—and I don’t want to be responsible for their safety.”

And the tengu adults wouldn’t let the twins go charging off into trouble.

“We could just drop out of the gondola with a shield up,” Louise said.

Jillian thought a moment and shook her head. “Nah, we’re going to need a way to get back out of whatever mess we drop into. I don’t want to try and outrun an army while corralling the babies.”

“Yeeeaaahh.” That would be bad.

“Oh!” Jillian said. “I’ve got an idea but it’s a little crazy.”

“In comparison to what?”

Jillian pointed right as if indicating an event on the “crazy” bar. “Crazier than blowing up our playhouse.” She pointed left. “But not as crazy as storming Laurel Caverns.”

Louise flinched at the memory of the cavern. The falling rock. The knowledge that Yves had been snuffed out—erased from existence; a dark empty space like her parents. I killed a man. I can’t let the babies kill. I can’t let them feel this way. “What’s your idea?”

“While you were recovering at the caverns, I found this one spell in the Codex. It can apply acceleration to an object. I played with it—just writing it out because I didn’t know we could tap the Spell Stones. By itself—using just ambient magic—it’s fairly powerful. If we used the Spell Stones, then the sky’s the limit. There was notation for the fingering. It seemed easy—kind of like throwing a ball.”

“But we’re the ball?”

“We’re the ball.” Jillian repeated. “Happy fun ball. We can bounce over to Pittsburgh, grab Dufae’s box, and bounce out.”

* * *

Crow Boy didn’t like “Plan: Bounce.” He didn’t say anything but you could tell it by the way he was trying to keep his face neutral. He didn’t quite have control of his eyebrows, which kept flexing between “surprised” and “worried.”

“Oh, God,” Keiko murmured. “You’re just like Tinker domi. This is something she would come up with.”

Louise wasn’t sure if she was pleased or annoyed by this statement. Maybe both.

“I would say they’re all just like Esme,” one of the new tengu kids murmured. “She had the babies of a dead man that she’d never met, jumped through time to rescue Jin Wong in orbit, and then delivered him to her daughter so that domi could protect all of our people.”

“Esme is one powerful dream crow,” another tengu teenager murmured.

Listed together, the events made Esme sound God-level amazing.

“I’m coming with you,” Crow Boy finally said.

Jillian glanced at Louise as if she expected Louise to make the call.

How did it become her decision? Was it because she said, “Stand! Fight!”? She wasn’t even sure what that meant—not in any specific detail. The twins had already worked out one backpack full of useful things that they could take with them. Did she want Crow Boy—or anyone else for that matter—to come with them?

Crow Boy was taller and stronger than them, which had come in handy in the past when brute force was needed in lifting and carrying. He had actual weapons supplied to him by the other yamabushi when they arrived at Haven. He had learned to let the twins lead. What might be more important, Jillian would probably be braver with him backing them up. Having backup felt good—but was that “feeling” just sheer logic or something more?

“Yeah, sure,” Louise said, trying not to feel guilty. If he was hurt, it would be her fault. She focused on the fact that Crow Boy would be dead at the mansion if they hadn’t freed him from the cage that Yves had locked him in. What’s more, he’d probably try to follow them if they didn’t take him along.

Jillian didn’t seem happy but she did look relieved.

“Okay! Jumping!” Jillian clapped her hands together to signal the start of their casting protocol. Since the acceleration spell was complex—and they were complete noobs at using the Spell Stones—they decided that Jillian would control their movement while Louise maintained a shield around them.

“Grab hold,” Louise told Crow Boy as she wrapped her right arm tight around Jillian. “Hold tight.”

“We’re leaving now?” he said in surprise even as he wrapped an arm about each of their shoulders.

Louise nodded as she focused on tapping the Spell Stones. She cocked her fingers and brought them to her lips and spoke the key word. She might not be able to see magic or feel someone else cast a spell but she could feel the power suddenly surge into her. It felt like she put her hand down on a massive machine, rumbling with potential. Her heart was pounding with excitement and fear. She was a domana elf who could do the most powerful of spells—and they were about to risk all three of their lives on the possibly wrong hope that she could maintain a shield as they fell out of the sky.

She changed her fingers, spoke the key word, and felt the world get muffled by the powerful shield. “Shield up!”

“Jumping!” Jillian warned, wrapping her left arm around Louise. She clenched tight as she brought her fingers to her mouth. Jillian tapped the Spell Stones and then stepped through the gestures that defined the acceleration spell’s parameters of direction, angle, and speed of the thrown object.

They were jerked straight up in the air as if fired from a cannon, bursting through the forest canopy. Louise yelped in surprise and dropped her shield. The smell of bruised green flooded in. They kept rising, the world beneath their feet becoming an unending patchwork quilt of autumn leaves. The setting sun was a menacing red gleam on the horizon. Dark clouds blanketed the sky. Lightning flickered a few miles away and several seconds later thunder rumbled over them.

“Lou!” Jillian shouted.

Louise snapped through tapping the Spell Stones and reestablished her shield just as they started to fall toward Earth. “Got it!”

Jillian nodded for a full minute, swallowing hard. “I’m still trying to get our bearings.”

“We need to head south,” Crow Boy said. “The setting sun to the west is straight ahead, so we need to go left. Go straight south until we hit the Allegheny River. A landmark like that will make it easier to keep our bearings at dusk.”

Jillian cast the acceleration spell a second time, aiming in an upward slant toward the south. They shot off to their left. Somehow the change of direction was more frightening than just falling. Louise whimpered in fear but held her shield tight. The lateral speed seemed slower than their rocket upward had been, but it could have been the lack of reference points against the sea of leaves.

“The edge of that storm is five miles out,” Crow Boy said. “We need to outrace it. You can’t fly in cumulonimbus clouds. They have insanely powerful updrafts and downdrafts. The turbulence can be strong enough to tear an airplane into pieces. If we were over plains, we could just simply fly under the storm but with the hilly forest, there’s very little room to maneuver safely.”

“Understood,” Jillian said in a carefully monotone voice. She cast the spell again and they shot upward and forward, noticeably faster.

Lightning flickered again, lighting up the world. This time Louise counted it out. One one thousand. Two one thousand. Three one thousand. She’d gotten to “Twenty-five one thousand” when the thunder rumbled over them.

Crow Boy had been correct; the storm was five miles and closing quickly. The stormfront was moving west to east as they headed straight south. The only way they could “outrun” it was to reach Pittsburgh before the storm swept over the city.

Jillian cast the acceleration spell again and again, flinging them southward in giant arcs. It felt like they were on an invisible roller coaster, soaring upward on lift hills and then plunging down runs. It reminded Louise of riding the Jersey Devil Coaster at Six Flags. She and Jillian had worn thick-soled shoes last summer so they would meet the four-foot-tall height requirements. The Jersey Devil had been built to be scary with sudden twists and turns. It hadn’t scared her because she knew that the carts were firmly attached to a sturdy steel frame.

This was so much more terrifying. It took all her willpower not to whimper and yelp in fear with each jerk upward and plumet downward. Her stomach flipped and flopped to the point she was starting to feel queasy.

Forest stretched as far as Louise could see in patches of autumn yellows, oranges, and reds. The ironwoods were mostly shades of gold but dotting the canopy were the blazing orange-reds of Elfhome maples and the darker rust of Wind Oaks. The treetops tossed in the wind and little whirlwinds of dead leaves swirled up. She kept her eyes on the southwest horizon, willing for Pittsburgh to appear in the distance.

The lightning moved closer. The thunder grew louder.

“There’s the Allegheny River,” Crow Boy said.

“Where?” Jillian and Louise both said, as they could see nothing but dark forest.

Lightning lit up the sky. Where there been only darkness below, there was a bright ribbon snaking through the trees as the river mirrored the sudden light.

“Oh, there it is,” Jillian and Louise both said.

“We need to go west,” Louise added. “To what is left of the Fortieth Street Bridge.”

Jillian turned them downriver. “Washington’s Crossing to Nowhere?”

“Uh-huh,” Louise murmured as she scanned the darkness ahead of them. It was one of the first animations that they’d done as Lemon-Lime JEl-Lo. The bridge’s official name was Washington Crossing; it had been named after the fact that George Washington had nearly died crossing the river at that point during the French and Indian War. He’d been dispatched to tell the French that they needed to give up the lands around Pittsburgh or prepare for a military strike. The bridge hadn’t survived the first Startup: the Rim took out the piers on one side and several deck sections had collapsed. The American officer dispatched to deliver a similar “give up your land or fight” to Windwolf had driven off the end of the bridge, suffering the same fate as Washington. It seemed too perfect not to make fun of it.

It was difficult not to see it as karma that they would enter the city for the first time via the site of their first animations. Had she known? Was her gift quietly guiding her back then or was it just stupid luck? It would be nice to think that they had an ace in the hole, that she could see disaster looming and avoid it. The problem was she had a growing sense of dread that could be just common sense and logic.

“There it is!” Crow Boy’s night sight was better than hers. It was another minute before the dark arches of the bridge came into view. Three massive stone piers supported the two surviving decks seventy-two feet above the water. The fourth pier had been razed out of existence by the Rim. The deck ended abruptly at the third pier in the middle of the river.

“Okay, I see it,” Jillian said. “I’m taking us in.”

“Wait, wait, wait!” Louise cried. “If we hit the bridge at this speed, we’ll punch right through the deck.”

“I got it covered,” Jillian said even as they plummeted toward the deck. She cast another spell, one that Louise didn’t recognize. They checked in midair and then started to float downward.

“Oh, wow, that’s cool!” Louise said.

“I think the translation of the key word is ‘soft,’” Jillian said. “Oh God, look at the Thirty-first Street Bridge!”

The next bridge downriver seethed with oni. The headlights of large trucks shone on hundreds of warriors moving across the deck.

“That column just keeps going,” Jillian whispered. “There’s thousands of them.”

“Do you think they see us?” Louise asked.

“I doubt it,” Crow Boy said. “The light from the trucks will diminish their night vision.”

They drifted down to land on the second span of the Fortieth Street Bridge, a safe distance from the jagged end of the deck.

Lightning struck the western bank of the river, lighting up the world with a deafening crack and immediate boom. Rain came sheeting down, sweeping across the river and washing over them. It smeared down over Louise’s shield.

“We’re behind enemy lines,” Crow Boy whispered. “We must stay hidden. We can’t take a whole army by ourselves.”

“The cemetery is away from that mess.” Louise pointed upriver. “It’s about a dozen blocks that way.”



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