Wen Spencer - Wolf Who Rules

"Domi?"

Tinker looked up. Stormsong was drifting toward her, a flowing angel of hazy gleaming white. The sekasha had one hand on the red thread and was following it to Tinker's tin can phone. "Stormsong, I'm stuck in the treacle."

"No, you aren't." Stormsong held out her hand and Tinker caught hold of it. It felt warm and intangible as a sunbeam. "Remember."

"Remember what?" Tinker cried as Stormsong hazed to a nebulous gleaming form.

"There's no place like home." Stormsong whispered, brilliant now.

Tinker blinked against the brilliance. Stormsong had transformed to a shimmering ghost of Impatience. She clung to some of his snaky mane.

" Sssssaaaammmmmmaaananana." Impatience's voice rumbled against her skin.

A loud gasp made Tinker turn her head. Jin floated a few feet away, gazing at her with amazement. They were back in the infirmary, the wall beside her lumpy and cold and the smell of smoke and blood omnipresent.

Am I still sleeping? Tinker looked back at Impatience.

" Huuhuuhuuhuuhuuhuu." Impatience rumbled and faded away.

Jin drifted toward her. His eyes still wide as he gazed at her. "Remember what?"

Tinker scrubbed at her face. Was she awake or still asleep? Her right hand felt warmer than her left - like she had held it over a open flame. "There's no place like home."

"That's it?"

Dragons have a weakness of sweets and space is treacle? "Maybe." Tinker realized that if she was awake now - somehow Jin had experienced part of her dream. "Did you hear Stormsong?"

"The dragon's name is Stormsong? That doesn't sound like a dragon name."

Was pinching yourself an accurate test to see if you're awake? If it was, then she was awake. "You saw the dragon?"

Jin nodded. "And I heard it. It said: remember."

"You understood what it said?"

"I'm Providence's child."

"You're what?"

Jin cocked his head in his bird-like inspection of her. "You walk with the dragons but don't know their way?"

"No."

Jin crossed to her side and settled beside her. "Providence is the guardian spirit of the tengu. Each generation a tengu child is born with the mark of Providence upon him." The tengu undid his shirt buttons to expose his chest. Over his heart was a red birthmark that looked like the flowing outline of a dragon. "We're taught the language of the dragons."

A whole mysterious part of her life suddenly made sense. "This is what he was looking for."

"The dragon?"

"No, Riki. He kidnapped me and made me strip. He wanted to know if Impatience marked me but he didn't tell me what the mark was for."

"Who is Riki?" Jin asked.

"A tengu - stuck between a rock and a hard place. Apparently he tried to stay out of the oni control, but they took his younger cousin, Joey, hostage. It put us on opposite sides, which is too bad, because I think we could have been good friends."

Jin reached out and touched the necklace Keiko had given her. She'd forgotten she was even still wearing it. "Did he give you that?"

"No, his younger cousin Keiko did. She said it would protect me from tengu."

"It will." He tugged it out of her neckline so it laid overtop. "But you've got keep it out where it can be seen. So we can tell you're under the protection of the Chosen blood."

"The what?"

"I'm the Chosen one. The spiritual leader of my people. I decide the path for my people and they follow me. Riki and his cousins are all my nieces and nephews. In my absence, my people are turning to them."

"Which made them targets for the oni wanting to control the tengu."

Jin nodded.

Having experienced people turning to you for leadership, Tinker felt sudden sympathy for Riki. "One thing I don't get. These people are astronauts and still buy 'the chosen one' bullshit?"

"When you're born a mythical creature, you tend to have a different mindset on these things."

"Wait - so-all this colonization - going back to Onihida stupidity was your idea?"

Jin looked away. For a moment, Tinker thought he wouldn't answer, but he sighed, and said, "We're half bird-we can't breed with humans - not without magic. Yes a couple hundred of us came to Earth before the elves destroyed the pathway, but it wasn't a big enough gene pool. For generations we've been careful not to interbreed, but we were coming to a dead end. We had to find someway to get back to Onihida and the rest of our tribe. You have no idea what its like to see genocide bearing down on you."

"If Riki was looking for a chosen one, then that means the tengu don't have a leader."

"It seems like it."

Tinker yawned. "When this is all over, I think I'm going to sleep for a week. Are we going to get gravity back?"

"We did another course correction, but it seems like something is pulling us down toward the planet. It's already pulled all the debris into reentry. We're not spinning up this time to save fuel."

"So - if we don't do anything, eventually the ship will be pulled out of orbit?"

"It seems like it."

Tinker groaned. She didn't want to deal with dreams! "No place like home - that's what Dorothy says to get home. The stupidity was that she had the means to get home the entire time, she just didn't know it. I have no idea how that Glenda bitch gets away with being the 'good' witch. What do I have on me?"

She unloaded her pockets, letting the items float in orbit around her. Although the dress had limited pocket space, she still managed to fit amount of stuff into them. Not only did she have her datapad, she also had her camera with the recording of Impatience trying to teach her - something.

"Oh my, these could be my ruby slippers!"

Tracking Malice proved difficult, despite his size. The massive dragon leaped and bounded and shifted through buildings like it was a ghost, leaving a shattered trail. Wolf chafed at the slower speeds that others traveled, but True Flame would not relent, and Wolf had to acknowledge that the older elf had battle experience, where he did not.

The trail led up the Monongalia River valley to beyond the Rim, and then disappeared without a trace.

"There is something wrong here," Wraith whispered to Wolf as his Hand gathered close. "Smell the blood?"

Wolf gazed at the still, boulder strewn forest around them. There was a slight blurring to the trees, as if a mist hazed the air. He would not have noticed it if the sekasha hadn't called his attention to it. Pulling out a survey map for the area, he confirmed his suspicions.

"I think this might be an oni encampment, covered by an illusion."

The sekasha pulled their ejae, readying themselves for a possible ambush.

Forest Moss did a ground scry, took a few steps and repeated it several times until he stopped beside an ironwood sapling. "Wolf Who Rules, break this tree."

Wolf aimed a force strike at the sapling and unleashed it.

The sapling vanished when the leading edge of his blow struck it. A tall square stone, inscribed with spells, replaced the sapling for a heartbeat before disintegrating into rubble. An oni camp sprang into being around them. The boulders changed into rough cabins. Mossy logs became well-gnawed humanoid carcasses. Blood soaked the ground and everywhere was dragon tracks.

"All the magic flowed toward the sapling." Forest Moss nudged the remains of the crude oni spell stone.

The sekasha moved out to search the cabins.

"Malice has wallowed in magic and feasted on oni." True Flame used his sword tip to point out that the skulls were horned. "Maybe it slipped its bonds, like the little one did."

"There were no spell markings on Malice." Wolf wondered too the significance of the dragon's name. Tinker had called Impatience 'hyper.' If the dragon's names reflected a personality, perhaps one named Malice needed no prodding to wreak havoc.