Chapter 25 #6
“He is…annihilation.” She blew out a breath. “Give me those names and let’s get these letters written.”
Colin wrote his letter, assuring his dad that he had escaped the bullyboys and bought a bus ticket for one of Wyrd’s neighborhoods and was safe. When the woman approved what he’d written, he folded the letter into the envelope and addressed it to Dad at Penwych’s 13th precinct.
The woman finished her letter and sealed it in an envelope addressed to the Sorcerer King, care of Lucas Frost at Destiny Park. On both envelopes, she added the word Urgent. She also added a postage stamp to each envelope.
“Whoa,” Colin said. “Those stamps are…” He couldn’t think of a word an adult might understand indicated something outstandingly unusual.
The woman picked up both envelopes. “Come on. The mobile library is here.”
When they walked outside, Colin noticed the line of Llamalidians waiting for the mobile library, including small beings that must have been children. All of them looked shorn, and all of them either wore a wrap that went from waist to knees or a long vest.
One of the small ones approached him. It tapped its chest, then held out a hoof-hand.
“That means hello,” the woman said.
Colin shaped his fingers to imitate the hoof-hand and repeated the gesture.
Hoof-hand circling the face. “Mmmm?”
“Name?” the woman interpreted.
“Colin.”
The youngster scampered back to the adults.
“I’m Tia Downing,” the woman said.
“Thank you for your help.”
“We all do what we can.” She hailed the woman who opened the library’s doors.
More signing had the Llamalidians patiently waiting for admittance.
“Tia.” The librarian gave Tia a big smile.
“Rya. This is Colin…Forrester? There are urgent messages that need to reach Destiny Park.” Tia held out the envelopes.
Rya took the envelopes. “It will still take time. I can’t change my route.”
“But some places on your route have a more direct line to the park—and to Lucas Frost?”
Rya nodded. “It will still take a couple of days.”
When Colin made a wordless protest, Tia put a hand on his shoulder and said, “That will do.”
“I’d better take care of getting books exchanged.”
“Stop in for a bit of food before you go,” Tia said.
When the librarian returned to the mobile library, the Llamalidians began entering to return books and find something new.
“The Llamalidians use drums to communicate between the family groups in the neighborhood,” Tia said. “Letters are the only way to communicate to any place beyond these borders.”
“Is the librarian like you?” Colin asked.
Tia shook her head. “I’m human. Rya Hedden is half Arcana. We come from different places, but we’re here because we don’t belong on the other side of the river. I needed a simple life. I needed peace. I found it here among these people.”
“I needed a safe place the bullyboys couldn’t reach, and a place where I could contact my dad.”
“Then you found it, even if it’s not exactly what you imagined.” Tia smiled. “Rya can issue you a temporary library card. You should pick up a couple of books since you’ll be here a few days no matter how things shake out.”
“This place doesn’t feel like it belongs to the geography around the island.”
“The uncanny has many anchors in the world.”
Colin thought about that. “So the Isle of Wyrd is kind of like the TARDIS? It’s bigger on the inside?” He wondered if Tia would understand a Doctor Who reference.
A moment of silence before she snorted a laugh. “Kind of like that, except there are neighborhoods instead of rooms.”
“Cool.”
He and Tia got in line and waited their turn to borrow books.
8
Lucas, Jack, Ethan, and Deerman studied the remains of a young doe.
Bad enough to see what the wild dogs had done to the animal.
If they’d done that to one of Deerman’s people, there would have been no way to bring the transformed humans back across the river alive without starting a fight between branches of the Arcana.
“They raped her,” Deerman said. “They caught her, severed the tendons in her legs, and raped her while they ate her.”
“As wild dogs or humans, that makes no sense,” Jack said.
“No, it doesn’t,” Lucas agreed. “But it’s the human inside the dog’s body that made that choice.” What did that say about what these males had done, or would do, to their own kind?
“We’ve been hunting these beasts for hours, and we’re near the edge of the park now,” Ethan said. “If the wild dogs go into one of the neighborhoods, it will be harder to find them—if we can find them.”
A convergence of the uncanny attracted the strange in the world, like a magnet attracted iron filings.
Someone long ago had called those clusters of places “neighborhoods,” implying that there were differences, either geographical or cultural, when a person crossed a boundary.
But the convergences were more complicated than that.
They were more like a patchwork quilt made up of static neighborhoods, which were anchored to a particular convergence, and roaming neighborhoods, which shifted their locations during the spring and fall equinox.
If the wild dogs left the park, they would end up in a static neighborhood that bordered the park.
If that happened, there would be no chance of finding them in time to change them back to human.
If that happened, the dogs would kill again and again until they, in turn, were killed by whatever beings lived in that part of Wyrd.
“They still think like humans. If they somehow manage to go through a moon gate that allows entry into our part of the park…” Ethan continued.
The Arcana’s residential area of Destiny Park held no predators—except the Arcana themselves—so the young there didn’t fear any wildlife that ventured into their area since the animal could be a member of the family.
“This savaging of a female is part of what is driving them,” Jack said. “They liked it.”
Lucas turned to his brother. “Your point?”
“If we’re going to catch them, we need bait.”
Mia Skov’s branch of the Arcana was the inspiration for woodland sprites in human art and literature.
As Lucas and the other males took up a position around the small clearing, Mia wandered, using one hand to pick wild violets and other flowers that nestled in the grass that various animals in the park kept cropped.
She sang as she moved around the moonlit clearing—and she kept the special slingshot and dart ready in her other hand.
*Something’s coming,* Deerman said.
Lucas couldn’t tell if the wild dogs knew the Arcana males were there and just didn’t care or if they didn’t understand that predators could also be prey.
The dogs’ attention was focused on Mia, and they burst into the clearing so fast, they were halfway to the Arcana female before Lucas and the others could raise their slingshots and take aim.
Mia raised her slingshot and shot her dart into the leader before she sprang out of the way.
Lucas also targeted the leader while Jack, Ethan, and Deerman took down the other three. After hours of searching, bringing down the dogs had been fast and simple.
They readied another dart as they approached the wild dogs. The dogs twitched as the Arcana approached, but whatever sedative Mia had concocted would keep the dogs contained long enough.
“We need to move if we’re going to take these males across the river and deliver them to that fenced-in place before sunrise,” Lucas said. Then he called to Ashley Laxton.
*The acquaintance who has a van and owes us a favor says there is a police cruiser sitting near the pier,* she told him.
*If he parks there to wait for you, the police will ask questions.
He says there is a boat launch connected to a river park not far from the ferry’s pier.
You can bring a boat in there without being seen. *
*All right. I know where that is.*
They had to wait for the Arcana who was bringing the pony and cart that would haul the dogs to the shore, aware of the passing of time.
Getting the dogs across the river and to the fenced yard before they recovered from the sedative didn’t give them much leeway.
Leaving the dogs anywhere else would bring death to at least one human as well as the dogs.
The Ladies Three had seen that possibility.
From the pony cart to the beach, where one of the smaller motorboats belonging to the Arcana waited. From the boat to the van on the other side of the river. From the van to the address Lysandra had seen when she sketched out the possible lines of fate.
The back gate was locked, so Lucas, Jack, and the human who owed them a favor lifted each dog and lowered it over the fence, back legs first. Just before he released each one, Lucas, as Wyrd’s Sorcerer King, sent his power and his intentions through each dog to assure they would transform back to humans when the sun rose.
The driver of the van—a man who had seen the truth about the Arcana—returned Lucas and Jack to the boat launch and the boat waiting for them there.
Upon their return to Wyrd, Lucas sought a rocky area of the shore and laid out four muslin bags that held fur and a little blood that he’d taken from each wild dog.
“We, the Arcana, reject your presence on our land,” he said quietly as he touched each bag and opened himself to be a vessel for the uncanny. “You will find no welcome, no succor on our shores or from our people. If you come onto our land again, the dark places will take you.”
Lucas stood on the shore, scenting the change in the air. The sun would rise soon. No point going home and disturbing Justine’s sleep. He would stretch out on the floor in his office and get what rest he could.
When the sun rose, someone would discover four naked boys in their yard. Hopefully that person would call the police. Hopefully those boys would tell the police the names of the two boys who wouldn’t be coming home at all.
9