Chapter Eighteen #2
“Not very far, but hopefully far enough,” he said, and scooped each of us under an arm, holding tight as he tensed, then leapt forward, beginning to race away from the fire, which was quickly turning that patch of jungle into an inferno.
His choices of direction were limited by the wall of flame and the fact that the man from before had already taken the most effective escape route.
So he ran, leaping over obstacles and parkouring off tree trunks like he was being timed, and Arthur and I held on, me pulling my legs in as much as I could to prevent being jounced around more than was absolutely unavoidable.
Leaves and small branches slapped me across the face and shoulders, but Sam was doing a decent job of dodging anything overly large.
And then there were two figures ahead of us in the brush. Sam dodged around them, still running. I leaned over, getting as close to his ear as possible, and shouted, “Those were my grandparents, Sam!”
He jumped again, using a nearby limb to redirect his momentum as he bounded back the way we’d just come. Landing a few feet in front of my bemused-looking grandparents, he set me and Arthur back on our feet.
“Sorry,” he said. “I was in ‘Don’t burn to death or get caught’ mode, and I wasn’t really looking where I was going.”
“I’m going to be sick,” said Arthur, staggering toward a nearby bush.
I would normally have said something catty, or at least attempted to tease, but I was preoccupied with trying to get my intensely tangled hair out of my face and back behind my ears.
“You’re all uninjured?” asked Thomas. Sam and I made sounds of assent, while Arthur began retching into the brush. Thomas looked past us to him, a faint look of amusement twisting his mouth upward. “I suppose vomiting isn’t an injury.”
“He never liked rollercoasters either, the poor lamb,” said Alice, then grimaced. “I mean Artie didn’t like roller coasters. It’s the same body, so I’d assume things like ‘does not enjoy getting recreationally rattled’ would still apply.”
Arthur tried to straighten and reply, only to double over again, continuing to retch. I grimaced and turned away from him, trying to keep the sounds he was making from unsettling my own stomach.
“How did you get out?” asked Sam.
“Made a hole,” said Alice.
I rolled my eyes. “Is that a semi-polite euphemism for ‘threw a grenade’?” I asked.
“It worked,” she said serenely.
“And no one was injured,” said Thomas. “How did you get out?”
“Asked the fire to back off long enough for us to get out a window, then made for the trees,” I said. “We ran into a Johrlac down on the ground level, which is why we were moving quite so fast when we found you: he was about to send up the alarm when I called the fire to come to us.”
“Which would be why the forest is in the process of catching fire,” said Sam.
“Poor thing. It’s not the greenery’s fault that it grew so close to terrible people.” Alice cast a sympathetic look at the nearest tree. “I hope it’s wet enough that the fire gives up soon.”
“Whether it’s wet or not, there’s still a forest fire kicking off behind us, and we should maybe be getting the hell out of here,” I suggested. “Any thoughts on what we’re going to do next?”
“A few,” said Thomas. “Come along. Arthur, if you’re not up for walking on your own, we can ask Samuel to carry you.”
Arthur promptly straightened, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “I can walk,” he said. “I’ve had enough of being carried for today.”
“Excellent. This way.”
Thomas began walking boldly forward, forging a new path through the tangled brush.
It tried to push back a time or two, and he merely raised his hands, fingers radiating sufficient heat that leaves and boughs withered, going limp and becoming easy for him to brush aside.
The rest of us followed, Alice offering an arm to keep Arthur upright and steady on the uneven ground.
The ground. For the first time since we’d broken him out of his cell, I looked down at his feet. They were bare.
“The cuckoos took your shoes,” I blurted, horrified.
Arthur gave me a weary look. “Of course they did. They took everything. My shoes were part of ‘everything.’”
My cheeks burned, but I kept my chin up as I looked at him, refusing to be cowed. “I’m sorry I didn’t notice sooner. I was a little preoccupied with the whole ‘running for my life’ part of things. How are your feet?”
“Sore, but I’m being careful where I step, and Sam carrying us for the serious outdoor chase sequence was a big help.
I may not have enjoyed it much, but I bet I’d have enjoyed being punctured even less.
” He reached up to wipe a bit of half-dried nectar from his forehead, flicking it to the side.
“Also not a fan of the makeshift perfume barrier, but I understand the necessity.”
“Who knew flowers had that much nectar in them?”
“Bees, I guess.”
“And we’ll need another flower before long,” said Sam, slowing a bit so he could join the conversation. “The juice from the last one is starting to dry up, and then I’ll have a problem.”
“I know,” said Arthur mournfully. “I guess I just stay sticky until we get the hell out of here.”
“All we need to do now is find Sarah.” Easier said than done.
I hadn’t picked up on the crackle of her static, which was normally inescapable, since we’d landed on Johrlar.
It was like she didn’t exist. Her range wasn’t infinite, but if Arthur was here in Ka’krin, she should be too.
There was no point in abducting them both just to separate them.
That made the absence of her telepathic signal worrisome, and a little bit scary.
The cells back in the burning building had clearly been designed to blunt telepathy.
But Sarah hadn’t been there, and I didn’t know if they could build an anti-telepathy ward strong enough to contain a queen as powerful as she was.
They had good reason to know how basic wards worked: if nothing else, they would never have been able to punish the original cuckoos if not for the fact that they could be cut off from the collective.
Punishing a queen was something entirely different, at least based on what I’d been able to learn about them so far. Would they even be able to do that?
Sarah hadn’t been in the cells, and I was reasonably sure we’d have been able to pick up on her hum if she’d been in the building. Unless— I touched the anti-telepathy charm hanging around my own neck. Had we been blocking her out this whole time?
“No,” said Arthur, apparently predicting my thoughts.
“She wasn’t in the building. I’m not very sensitive, and she’s never willingly touched me, not even once, but she touched Artie all the time.
I have half a dozen people’s memories reminding me of that.
I’m so tightly skin-attuned to her that I’d have been able to feel it if she’d been anywhere near me. ”
“They had blockers built into the cell walls,” I said.
“Fine, then, I can say for sure that she was never on the same floor as I was.” Arthur shook his head. “If she were that close, there’s nothing that could have kept her out of my head.”
“You say that like it’s a good thing,” said Sam.
“I love her,” said Arthur. “I love her like I love … like I love air, or water, or anything else I need to stay alive. The world is hollow when she’s not with me.”
“I know,” I said quietly, forcing my face to stay composed.
Whenever Arthur described his love for Sarah, her reasons for staying away became easier to understand.
She’d constructed him as a frantic last-ditch effort to save Artie, the man she had actually loved.
All she’d done was collage together a pile of unrelated memories into the rough form of a person, and most of the family had remembered Artie as hopelessly in love with her from the time we were all children.
One thing I knew from talking to my siblings, and to Elsie: Artie had genuinely loved Sarah, truly and completely, to the bottom of his heart.
But while I’m not silly enough to say that love is a choice, it does have to be chosen, and he’d chosen it again and again, loving her despite it being a provably terrible idea.
Arthur never got to choose anything. Arthur came into existence with so many of his choices already made.
Even with as mad as I still was at Sarah, I knew she hadn’t intended to do that to him.
She’d been acting on instinct and panic, trying to save someone who was already gone, and she’d made a mistake. That was all.
No one would say it would have been better if Arthur hadn’t existed.
I liked him well enough. The ways he reminded me of Artie hurt, but the ways he didn’t were an endlessly unfolding delight.
Still, it worried me when he talked about Sarah: his love was too deeply rooted in who he was as a person, and it consequentially verged on becoming obsession, something that might eventually harm them both.
“So we haven’t managed to find Sarah yet,” said Alice. “But finding Arthur means we’re in the right place—dimensional crossings of this distance are expensive enough that they wouldn’t have sent multiple groups over unless they had a central working.”
“It didn’t seem that expensive for Grandpa,” I said.
“Your grandfather is working with a different set of rules,” she said, delicately.
“Tell me,” I said.
Thomas looked back over his shoulder at me, brow furrowed. “I don’t want you getting ideas about attempting dimensional crossings on your own,” he said. “I’ve been avoiding the topic until we’d finished more of your foundational schooling.”
“I don’t want to go dimension-hopping for funsies,” I said. “Mary would kick my ass. She’s never forgiven herself for not doing a better job of convincing Grandma it was a bad idea.”
“And I’d pout for days if she said she was going to run off like that,” volunteered Sam.