John Wright - Orphans of Chaos

There were little metal aglets holding the bag laces shut. Victor squinted at them, even while we were several paces away. The bag’s mouth opened of its own accord. I could see the dark-matter particles like little specks flying out of his forehead and applying magnetic force to the bag.

I got to the bag first. He turned around while I was grabbing the coil of brightly colored mountaineer’s rope from the mouth, and he was ahead of me as we raced back.

We pushed through the trees, and were once again in the little bowl of snow beneath the feet of the two cliffs. Atop one cliff was Quentin and Colin. The other cliff was bare.

Vanity was gone.

Victor shouted up, in a voice of cold anger: “Where did she go?”

Colin gave a pantomime one-handed shrug (the axe was in his other hand), and shouted, “Since when can I control her?”

Quentin said, “She’s gone down the rock stairs to the White Ship. She said it was calling her.”

“Idiot!” Victor almost never lost his temper, but now he looked worried, angry.

“The curse is still fuddling her,” Quentin shouted.

“You’re a warlock! Can you stop the curse?” Victor called up.

“No such things as warlocks! But I can challenge the curse,” Quentin called down.

Meanwhile, during this exchange, I had taken the coil of rope and thrown it up toward Colin. It was an easy throw, and there was no way I could have missed it. I missed it. The coil spun through the air, clattered against the rocks some six feet below him, and fell lightly to the snow a dozen yards to my left.

Colin, helpful as always, called down to me: “Nice throw. Aim next time, Aim.”

I ran, picked up the coil, wound up, and threw again. Again, the rope coil fell short, bounced off the cliff side, fell back down to my level, and went spinning and bouncing another thirty or forty feet across the snow of the little glade. I ran after it again.

I was now about forty feet across the glade from the foot of the cliff where Colin and Quentin stood. I was at the top of the seaward cliff, the shorter one leading down to the rocky beach.

Around a shoulder in the rocks down below, I saw Vanity come into view. She was picking her way from boulder top to boulder top, while foam and spray from the waves fell around her feet. A larger wave sent spray reaching up past her head, and it fell like a shower around her. The water must have been cold, because she shrieked.

I shouted and motioned for her to go back, but she did not look up.

Looking back toward the cliff side, I saw Colin gesture toward me impatiently. Quentin was holding up his walking stick, and had his eyes closed. Victor was standing with his back to me, his arms akimbo.

I looked at the rope suspiciously. How could I miss two throws in a row? I have a good pitching arm. I closed my eyes and traced out the world-paths leading from the rope up to the cliff. The umbrella of possible paths spread out before me. Many of them were smooth parabolas leading up to the dark blotch representing Colin’s position.

And the parabolas were being warped. Like flower stalks bending in the wind, fewer and fewer possible world-paths led to the cliff, as they were pushed left and right, like a curtain parting.

I opened my eyes. Mrs. Wren stood on the cliff with Colin and Quentin.

Mrs. Wren was about twenty yards away from the boys, standing on a tall rock she could not possibly have climbed. And she was in costume.

In her hand she held a broom. It was an old-fashioned besom, just a bundle of twigs and straw tied to a staff, obviously handmade, and by hands that were none too steady.

She wore a green cloak that bore a tall, pointed hood. Around the point of this hood, like a horseshoe around a spike, was a crown of holly leaves with bright red berries. Her face was a smiling mass of wrinkles, surrounding eyes of tired sorrow, eyes that gleamed like black pebbles washed smooth and bright in a stream.

She laughed and smiled, saying, “ ‘Goosey, goosey, gander, whither dost thou wander? Upstairs and downstairs and in my lady’s chamber?’ ”

If anyone had ever told me I would be frightened to see Mrs. Wren in a dunce cap and wearing a Christmas wreath for a hat brim, I would have laughed. But I was not laughing.

Victor (always the logical one) shouted up, “If she got up, you two can get down. Push past her and find the path she used. Amelia and I are going to try to get to the beach where Vanity is.”

Quentin said, his voice trembling, “Her power comes from deep roots, from the core of the Earth. We can’t just push past her.”

Victor said, “Then kill her.”

A silence seemed to fill the area. Even the sea waves, for a moment, paused.

One seagull, below me, let out a mournful, high-pitched wail.

I said in a voice grown thick with horror, “You can’t mean that, Victor. What’s wrong with you?”

Victor said curtly, “This is not a game. Colin? Quentin?”

Colin, without taking his eyes from the old witch, nodded and hefted his fire axe. Quentin looked sickly pale and did not answer.

Mrs. Wren called out in a bitter voice of mingled mockery and sorrow, “Oho, kill old granny Wren, is it, my goslings? Not enough to leave her alone, and go scampering off, my little ungrateful ducks, no. Is this how you pay her back, the woman who raised you, fed you, and nursed your fevers, kissed your scraped knees and wiped your tears away, changed your shitty diapers, and taught you right from wrong? You pay me back in a false brass coin, my pups, my poppets, my young wolf-cubs. And now you think to wring old granny’s scrawny neck, it is, or chop her frail bones with a terrible sharp axe? Surely, surely, it is the greatest commandment, and the most ancient law, that thou shalt honor the woman who mothered you, that thy years shall be long upon the Earth.”

Victor was walking quickly across the snow toward me. “Can you see a path down?” he shouted.

I said, “The cliff is lower both to the left and right. We can make it down by going either…”

I heard music to my right, beautiful, beautiful violin music.

About thirty yards away, at the point where the cliffs to my right dipped down to a slope leading to the beach, looking as pretty as a china doll in her white fur and earmuffs, Miss Daw was standing in the snow, one fur-lined glove on her bow, one fingering the slender neck, of the violin she had pressed up to her red cheek. She wore a slender buff-colored coat, cute little black boots, and she had a hat of silver fox fur shaped like a dandelion puff on her head.

Victor turned and looked at her. He had come forward toward me, and so was about twenty feet closer to her than I was.

I could see wheels of ivory, as solemn as floating angels, as quiet as U-boats, approaching from the fourth dimension, the high-energy “blue” direction. The nearest had already dipped an arc into three-space, and was sending out concentric waves of energy, whose cross-section manifested themselves in our continuum, as music.

I ran a few steps toward the left-hand slope, not even bothering to wait for Victor.

Scrambling on all fours up the icy granite rocks was Mr. Glum. He was nude, except for a loincloth, and he had what looked like a bearskin rug draped over his head and back. The jawless skull of the bear was on his scalp like a hat; the claws had been tied to his forearms, he had painted his face with a wide brown stripe above the eyes, like a Red Indian. He was watching the placement of his hands and feet, and hadn’t seen me yet.

Over my shoulder, I said to Victor, “Victor, you have to stop Miss Daw! Her power is the one that cancels mine out! I’ll meet you down on the beach with Vanity.”