John Wright - Orphans of Chaos

Vanity exclaimed happily, “She can take us anywhere in the world in a day and a night!”

She started down the steep slope, moving quickly, almost running. The snow began to slide and curl around her legs, so that little growing snowballs were trickling down the slope with her.

Colin said, “Hoi! Careful!” And, ignoring his own advice, with that axe still in his hand, went pelting and sliding down the slope after her.

Victor said mildly, “We should approach with care, if that ship was seen by the enemy.”

Quentin said in a hushed voice, “There is something ill afoot here. Vee and Coll usually aren’t so rash.” Then, shouting: “Come back! You two! Come back!” And he started down the slope, slipped, and fell, sliding at least two dozen yards before he spread his arms and legs and caught himself in a little wash of snow. His duffel bag went rolling and bounding and gliding down past where Vanity was skipping gaily down-slope, past where Colin was half-skating, half-stumbling. As it tumbled past, the bag began to spill canned goods from its unraveling mouth.

I saw Quentin’s walking stick, his precious walking stick, go shooting over a hump in the snow like a little toboggan, and vanish into the trees.

Victor said, “My wits, at least, are not clouded. Amelia, follow me. We are going to go left and circle this slope, and go down along the gentler slope over there, where those pine trees are. You see where I mean?” And he picked up Colin’s bag, which Colin had left behind. Vanity’s duffel was about forty yards down-slope from us. She had abandoned it, and it had rolled to catch up against a leafless tree, bringing down a little shower of ice particles.

In a moment, Victor and I were among the spruces, jogging quickly down a somewhat more level slope. We could still hear Vanity squealing and Colin cursing. Even quiet Quentin was bellowing to them to shut up. I felt an impulse to shout at them, and call out, and the impulse grew stronger until I had to put my glove in my mouth and bite down on it to prevent myself from yelling at them.

Victor looked at me oddly.

I said, “Something—a hypnotic influence—is trying to get me to call out. Quentin’s right. There is a spell here.”

Victor did not seem affected. All he said was, “Let’s hurry. We can cut across this slope as soon as it levels out, and rejoin them.”

Unlike the leafless trees we had been walking through all morning, the spruce pines blocked our view with their thick needles.

Fear gripped my throat when the voices of Colin and Quentin fell silent, and Vanity let out a long scream.

Victor said, “Maybe we should run. Let’s drop the bags. We can come back for them.”

We ran. Victor simply put his hands in front of his face and pushed through the snow-laden needles of the spruce, letting branches whip him. I followed in his wake, ducking whipping branches, letting him trample a path clear for me.

We broke into the clear. Now I began to pull ahead of Victor. Even with my powers turned off, I was still a swifter runner than he was.

Then I slowed, looking up. Victor came up behind me.

We could see Colin and Quentin on the brink of a little cliff, but we had passed them, somehow. A little empty round glade filled with snow lay between us and the foot of the cliff. The cliff was up-slope and above us, a wall of icicle-dripping rock, atop which Colin and Quentin stood.

There was a cleft which cut the cliff into two cliffs, as if a giant with an axe had chopped it neatly in half. On the far side of the cleft was Vanity, alone on a little island-cliff of her own, with snow in her hair, and her garments mussed. She was standing, gazing back at the slope down which she had just toppled, as if trying to see a way back up the slope, across, over, and down to where Colin and Quentin were.

In the seaward direction, behind us, away from Quentin and Colin, was another sharp drop, this one not as tall, leading down to a rocky beach. The ship, gleaming silver-white, was clearly visible behind us, delicate as a cloud, pale as starlight. It seemed closer than the quarter-mile she had been before. The eyes on the prow seemed to be watching us.

Vanity shouted, “I can see a path down from here; there is a set of rock shelves, almost like steps, leading to the beach.”

Colin shouted, “We’re stuck here. Up-slope is too slippery, and I don’t see any way down left or right. Is the rope in your duffel bag? We could tie it off to the rock here and rappel down. Heck, we could practically jump it.”

Victor made a little trumpet out of his fingers and bellowed up at them, “Amelia and I will go back and get the rope, and throw it up to you. Vanity, you stay right where you are. Do not leave each other’s sight.” I could hear his voice making flat, metallic-ringing echoes from the cliff we faced.

Victor turned. I said, “I could go around the foot of the cliff to see if I can find the bottom step of Vanity’s staircase.”

“Let’s not split up,” he said. Again, I felt a strong urge, almost dreamlike, telling me to leave Victor and go off to find where Vanity would be going. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine or visualize the little dot of light in my own head, my own monad, snapping back into place the way I had done for Quentin, when his memory had been influenced. It did not seem to work. The tugging impulse would not go away.

I said, “Victor, something is trying to stop me. You’ll have to drag me.”

At this same time, I heard Quentin yelling something across to Vanity. I did not hear what it was, because I was distracted by the sensation of Victor putting his hand around my upper arm, pulling me after him. Victor is much stronger than the other two boys, much more swift, definite, and precise in his motions. Much stronger than me. I wondered what it would be like to have him pin me down, as Colin once had done.

I heard Vanity call out in a solemn voice: “Bran! I call upon our agreement! Let open the boundaries which hem us in! Let the Four Powers of the Four Worlds of Chaos come forth from their homes to this place!”

At once, I could see my monad, my noumenal self, hovering in the fourth dimension above and inside my nervous system. I could sense the pattern of energies rippling through them, and detect a disturbing force. I tilted the rotation of my monad, to bring the identity/meaning axis back into alignment. The disturbing forces blocking my proper nerve-path flows flickered and went down, but I could sense them changing, gathering forces, moving into another position to attempt to set up another nerve block. It was not the system Dr. Fell had used; this was not an infection of dark matter; it was different. It was self-correcting in nature, organic, perhaps self-aware.

I turned my head. From somewhere, Quentin had found his walking stick. He had not had it a moment ago. Now he did.

Colin was staring down at the snow below. He said something to Quentin. It was too far for me to hear the words, but it was something about the snow being deep enough to break his fall if he merely believed hard enough that it was. Quentin knelt, looking left and right nervously, and put his hand on Colin’s arm, and was urging him to crouch down and hide.

Victor looked up. I looked up, too, and saw nothing but heavy, gray clouds. He said, “Boggin. I recognize his magnetic signature.”

“He’s here?”

“I think the masquerade is over. They are going to reveal their powers.”

“What do we do?”

“Go get the rope for Colin and Quentin. If you make us both lighter will that let us go faster? I get the feeling we are not going to have much time.”

We made it back up through the pines in record time. Of the cluster of world-lines leading from our bodies and snaking through the trees, certain ones had higher potential, and occupied a smaller time-depth. These were the faster paths. I selected one for myself and Victor. For some reason, even though I did not tell him which trees to dodge around, or where the path I’d picked was, his feet found the path swiftly and without error.